My latest special report, “Donald Trump’s Conspiracy Theories,” airs on @CNN tonight @ 9pm ET/PT & on @cnni @ 9pm ET. A few conclusions I’ve drawn … #TrumpConspiracy

Trump obviously has a history w/ conspiracy theories, as birtherism launched his political career. But he associates w/ & RTs conspiracy theorists broadly. The QAnon theory has spread remarkably. The recently de-platformed Alex Jones has been a principle news source for Trump.

As @TimNaftali says, “This is the first time in our history that a conspiracist holds the highest office in the land.” And as @JeffreyGoldberg says, “This is not something we’ve seen in a functioning democracy.”

Long before Trump, there was Joseph McCarthy’s communist conspiracy theory. And the week JFK was killed, a Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans believed it was a conspiracy. By the mid-70s, that was more than 80%.

One factor that helps these theories catch on today: @pewresearch data shows a decades-long decline in trust. By the time Trump was elected, faith in democracy had reached an all-time low.

Among Trump's theories, voter fraud is pernicious. (As @ProfCAnderson says, “Voter fraud doesn't change an election result. Voter suppression does.”) He's doubling down on it ahead of the election, pumping up notions from rigged mail-in balloting to votes being mailed from China.

In promoting these theories, Trump brings together three strands of history—in a profoundly dangerous way.

First, we all share a propensity to believe in conspiracies. When we confront huge events, we can’t accept that they might have happened because of a small or mundane cause. There must have been a cause commensurate w/ the outcome. So we search for a larger, grander conspiracy.

Second, the US has always had a rich history of conspiracy theories, what one historian called “the paranoid style in American politics.” Third, they’re appealing to narcissists, who see themselves as so important that the world is arrayed against them.

It's a problem: If Trump loses in November, he has already set up claims it was b/c of voter fraud or mail-in-ballot irregularities or China. In doing so, he's creating possible obstacles to the peaceful transfer of power—something more dangerous than anything he's done so far