https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/us/politics/trump-conspiracy-theories-spygate.html
Former aides to the president, speaking privately because they did not want to embarrass him, said paranoia predisposed him to believe in nefarious, hidden forces driving events. But they also said political opportunism informed his promotion of conspiracy theories. For instance, two former aides said Mr. Trump had resisted using the term “deep state” for months, partly because he believed it made him look too much like a crank.
But Mr. Trump saw that it played well in the conservative news media, and so in November, he began using it, the two aides said. The strategy appears to have yielded results. Several polls have shown a dip in public approval of the special counsel investigation over the past several months, as the president has repeatedly attacked it. And a Monmouth Poll released in March
found that a bipartisan majority believes an unelected “deep state” is manipulating national policy
Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide who worked for him when he began championing false claims about Mr. Obama’s birthplace, said the president was reflecting the media that fueled his core supporters.
“In the new media landscape, InfoWars and Fox News are where the president’s getting his support, and these theories are promulgated there,” said Mr. Nunberg, who disputed that “Spygate” qualified as a conspiracy theory.
Mr. Trump’s talk of conspiracies has also gained currency within a Republican Party establishment that once shunned it.
During the 2016 campaign, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, denounced Mr. Trump’s talk of the government hiding the real story about Sept. 11. “That’s something that really only comes from the kook part of America,” Mr. Graham
said at the time.
Mr. Trump insisted last year that Mr. Obama had tapped his phones in Trump Tower, a stunning assertion for which he offered no proof.
“I thought, ‘Well, that doesn’t seem right to me,’” Mr. Graham said last week. But, he noted, it was later revealed that one of Mr. Trump’s former campaign associates, Carter Page, had in fact been under surveillance. And on “Spygate,” the senator added, “There seems to be something to this one. I want to find out: Did it happen? Is there a good reason?”
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, distanced himself from the president’s sinister language, but not necessarily the questions he had raised about the informant. “I wouldn’t describe it the way he described it,” Mr. Cornyn said. “Confidential informant? Spy? I guess he can use his own words.”
Then, like many lawmakers who once denounced the president’s assaults on law enforcement agencies, Mr. Cornyn gave the president a level of validation, saying it was worth knowing what the F.B.I.’s “motivation” was in the inquiry into the Trump campaign.
“A lot of people really want to believe a conspiracy because it’s a lot easier to think a malevolent force is in charge than that our government is run by idiots,” Mr. Erickson said in an interview.