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APPENDIX D: ​
As this book goes to print, Donald Trump has been elected to a second term, and the popularity of conspiratorial thinking may well have increased substantially. With the advent of the Instant Information Age, a sitting President espousing conspiracy theories from the bully pulpit, and fact-checking websites at our fingertips, conspiratorial thinking may well be at a nadir.
Trump came to prominence in US politics by exploiting birtherism. While running in the primaries against Hillary Clinton in June 2008, the Obama campaign released a photocopy of his “short form” birth certificate showing that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 4 August 1961.
When Obama was elected the following November, the occasion was so historic, the public clamored for newspapers to save for posterity. The November 5, 2008, issue of The New York Times hit $400.00 on eBay. Around the world, Obama’s victory was hailed as nothing short of amazing.
Too amazing, it seemed to many conspiracy theorists. In May of that year, Jerome Corsi author of Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination released Where’s The Birth Certificate? : The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. Corsi alleged Obama was a citizen of Indonesia and was, at one time, a practicing Muslim. Corsi’s “evidence” of the deception includes Obama’s refusal to release his “long form” birth certificate.
To usurp the completely baseless controversy, the Obama administration released a digital photo of his long-form birth certificate one month before the book’s release. Despite the release, Corsi’s “expose” reached #6 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
Trump would continue flouting the conspiracy theory, tweeting he had an "extremely credible source" who told him the birth certificate was fraudulent in 2012, and publicly questioned Obama’s birthplace in 2013 and 2014.
During the 2016 race for the White House, Trump reversed himself, affirming Obama was born in the United States, but absurdly suggested the birther conspiracy theory originated from his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The “truth about the birth certificate” conspiracy theory was touted as recently as August 20, 2024, on an episode of Fox News, “The Five,” even though Obama had been out of office for eight years. Today, about one-third (31%) of Americans continue to believe President Barack Obama was born outside the United States, a falsehood bolstered by Obama’s successor to the Presidency.
While running for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016, Trump successfully fought off a challenge from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas by suggesting Cruz’s father was part of a larger conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Donald Trump’s eventual victory over Hillary Clinton shocked the world. He won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by three million, the largest such margin of any winning candidate. The reasons for his victory soon became clear: Clinton was a historically unpopular candidate who survived a primary challenge from a socialist who appealed to the Far Left, Bernie Sanders.
While the US Presidency is sui generis, Trump was unique in many ways. All Presidents before him had either served as legislators or military leaders. Since his first election, Trump has claimed the Clintons murdered Jeffrey Epstein, the killing of Osama bin Laden was staged, and the COVID pandemic was China’s fault, calling the deadly virus “the kung flu.”
When he lost his bid for reelection in 2020, President Donald Trump famously refused to accept his defeat, claiming he won. He did not. Multiple federal agencies (acting under President Trump) affirm the election was held with fidelity. The FBI, DOJ, Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) maintain Joe Biden won. Various courts in the contested states dismissed 61 out of 62 (98.5%) election challenges for lack of merit.
It should be incredible to nonpartisan observers that anyone believes Trump’s claims, as Trump’s own party flipped 15 seats in the House of Representatives to narrow their minority in the same election.
In office, Trump's highest approval rating never reached over 50%, hitting a high of .49 in May of 2020. Contrast this with the highest achieved by Biden: .57, Obama: .67, GW Bush: .90, Clinton: .73, and every President since Franklin Roosevelt, when approval polls started.
Trump’s claim that the results were “rigged” is reflective of his modus operandi: When Trump’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” failed to win Emmys from 2004-2006, he claimed the process was rigged against him, and repeated the same claim when he lost in the 2016 Iowa Caucus to Ted Cruz.
Right-wing media capitalized on Trump’s false claims of victory. FOX News paid a settlement of 787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for intentionally lying about the election results.
The film 2000 Mules purported to “prove widespread, coordinated and deliberate election fraud in the 2020 election.” The filmmaker, Dinesh D’Sousa, a convicted felon Trump pardoned, claimed that swing states Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona experienced “ballot trafficking” by “mules” into unattended drop boxes. D’Sousa’s evidence included phone pings to cellphone towers.
Analysis of the film by the Associated Press found gaping holes, false assumptions, and unreliable methodology. The film’s distributor, Salem Media Group, issued an apology for falsely depicting illegal voting and halted the distribution of the film. Despite these facts, nearly a third (30%) of Americans and a majority (69%) of Republicans believe the 2020 Presidential election was rigged against incumbent President Donald Trump.
During his bid for re-election in 2024, Trump again employed ad hominem attacks. Until he was suspended from Twitter for “Risk Of Further Incitement Of Violence” due to his tweets during the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump used the terms “FAKE NEWS,” “Radical Left,” and labeled the FBI “scum.”
In his path to victory in 2024, Trump called his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris “lazy” (a racist trope against black people), accused her of having a“low IQ,” and shared a vulgar post on his social media site implying Harris owed her political rise to sexual favors. Perhaps forgetting that he had once accused the father of his primary opponent of assassinating JFK, Trump would gladly accept the endorsement of JFK’s nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., himself a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine advocate.
Proving that conspiratorial thinking isn’t limited to Donald Trump, the day of Trump’s win in 2024, liberal pundit Michael Moore began floating unsubstantiated conspiratorial reports on Twitter. One read, “Reports from the field are numerous and offensive: Men insisting on standing there in the booth or at the polling station, hovering, lurking, making sure Women don’t vote for Kamala.”
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Questions & Answers
APPENDIX E. Clearly, the authors of the preceding conspiracy theories had agendas in promoting their different versions of the events of March 1, 1932. With the advent of the Information Age, the seven books thus far examined are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Lindbergh conspiracies. The following questions are culled from websites like, "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax" “50 Reasons Lindbergh Did It,” “,” “Crime Traveler: Did Lindbergh Kill His Son?”
Q. Jesse Pelletreau at The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax claims the family and staff at Highfields and Next Day Hill were in on the crime. Was it an “inside job”?
A. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone from the Lindbergh family is in any way connected to the crime. It is likewise very unlikely that one of the staff was a co-conspirator. The house servants were intensely scrutinized by the police and the media. Unlike Hauptmann, all of them had solid alibis, and there is no evidence any of them received any of the ransom money. A reward of $25,000 (an enormous amount at the time) was offered for information about the kidnappers after the body was found. This much money would have substantially changed the lives of any of the servants, and none of them provided any information whatsoever.
Phone records from Next Day Hill at Englewood were not kept in the weeks before the kidnapping. It is possible that one of the kidnappers called to inquire about the whereabouts of the Lindberghs, and Violet Sharpe (or another staff member) mentioned that they were staying at Highfields for the weekend. This hardly constitutes their culpability in the crime. The search of Violet’s bankbook revealed she’d saved quite a bit of money, but the search was conducted before the ransom was paid. Having all her living expenses provided for her at Next Day Hill, Violet probably just saved her money.
Q. JT Townsend of Crime Traveler claims Ollie Whateley made a deathbed confession claiming an insider was responsible for the death of Little Charlie. Is this true?
A. There is no credible evidence that Lindbergh’s butler ever made such a confession, and the fact that Townsend misspelled “Olly” as recorded on his original statement made March 3, 1932, is very revealing. A deathbed confession would be an exception to the legal rule barring hearsay, falling under the category of “the declarant being unavailable.” Reilly et al would surely have used this information in their attempt to exonerate Hauptmann.
It is worth noting that the family was still grieving from the death of Dwight Morrow, Anne’s father, who had died the previous October when the kidnapping occurred. Olly Whateley’s sudden death a little more than a year after the baby’s body was found no doubt compounded their grief.
Q. Bob Trebilcock at Yankee magazine asks why Little Charlie wasn’t kidnapped from his maternal grandmother’s home, Next Day Hill?
Q. Members of The Lindbergh Kidnapping Discussion Board claim Elsie Whateley’s and Betty Gow’s discovery of Little Charlie’s missing thumb guard was evidence of an inside job. Was it?
A. Only Gow, the Whateleys, and Anne would have recognized Little Charlie’s thumb guard and its importance. Such devices, commonplace in the 1930s, were simply pieces of twisted metal designed to keep infants from thumb-sucking. Charlie’s had a string tied to it, which only members of the household would be familiar with.
Q. Lauren Oster at The Travel Channel indicates the Lindberghs’ choice to stay at Highfields an extra evening (through Tuesday, March 2, 1932) is proof of an inside job. Is it?
A. No.
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