A few days ago, Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore was accused of initiating sexual encounters with four girls between the ages of 14 and 18 decades ago, including one encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32.
Moore's defense is a conspiracy theory.
He tweeted that this was a political attack by the "Obama-Clinton Machine's liberal media lapdogs." In other words, he’s claiming there is an overarching story that explains the real truth, and it has to do with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the liberal media working together to concoct evidence that he’s a pedophile.
The day after Moore tweeted his defense, Fox News host Sean Hannity — the biggest star at the most influential news network in America — legitimized this claim.
Hannity hosted Moore on his radio show and allowed him to paint the allegations as a political attack. Hannity later went on his Fox News show and spent 15 minutes lecturing his viewers about why they should give Moore the benefit of the doubt, and he somehow included Bill Clinton and 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died in Baltimore police custody, in his argument.
Hannity’s defense of Moore was egregious enough that some advertisers dropped their sponsorship of his show.
But looking at Hannity's history, this was hardly surprising.
I analyzed the past two years of transcripts from Hannity, his Fox News program that airs every weeknight, and found a show that peddles conspiracy theories more than any other news show in the US. Hannity often mirrors the language of online conspiracy forums, and it's only gotten more frequent since Hannity's friend and fellow conspiracy theorist Donald Trump became president.
