The Age of Donald Trump and Pizzagate

When trying to understand what has befallen Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C., over the past few weeks, should one start with the gun or with the lies? Both are durable; both are dangerous. The gun is an AR-15-style assault rifle that a man, reportedly a twenty-eight-year-old named Edgar Maddison Welch, carried into the restaurant on Sunday. According to press accounts, Welch waved the gun, pointed it at an employee, and then fired, thankfully not hitting anyone. Customers ran out; nearby businesses, including a bookstore, went into lockdown. The police managed to arrest Welch. He had another gun in his car, and he had a motive. He told the police that he had come to “self-investigate” a conspiracy theory, or set of theories, known as Pizzagate. These theories, which, most broadly put, place Hillary Clinton at the center of an international child-sex-trafficking ring, are the lies, and they are almost incomprehensible. The mystery within the mystery is how anybody with a shred of good will would even try to connect point A to point B. Foremost among those nonetheless doing so are Donald Trump-supporting social-media figures, including the son of retired General Michael Flynn, the President-elect’s choice for national-security adviser. (General Flynn himself hasn’t tweeted Pizzagate allegations, but he has tweeted stories about different pedophilia-related conspiracy theories, also supposedly entangling Clinton.)