The Two Words They Use To Make You Stop Asking
How a Cold War smear became Trump’s favorite escape hatch — and why they keep reaching for it.
The Two Words They Use To Make You Stop Asking
How a Cold War smear became Trump’s favorite escape hatch — and why they keep reaching for it.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #878: Thursday, April 23rd, 2026.
They didn’t invent it.
They weaponized it.
Understand that distinction… and you understand how power has been managing your curiosity…for the last sixty years.
The phrase is “conspiracy theory.” Two words. Three syllables.
And…it has done more to neutralize inconvenient questions…than any law…any court ruling…any press release ever written.
Because once the label sticks to you… you’re no longer a citizen asking. You’re a crank. A kook. A guy in a basement with a bulletin board and red yarn.
That’s the magic of it. That’s the work it does.
The Document They Buried For Thirty Years
On April 1, 1967, the CIA’s Chief of Clandestine Services sent a classified dispatch to stations around the world.
The title: “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.” The filing number: 1035-960.
The memo’s purpose…stated in the document itself…was to provide CIA assets with material to “counter and discredit the claims of the conspiracy theorists.”
Let that sentence sit for a second.
By 1967…46% of the American public didn’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Almost half the country had questions. Legitimate, documented, persistent questions.
And…the Agency’s response wasn’t to answer them. It was to arm friendly journalists…with talking points designed to make the questioners look unhinged.
The dispatch went to media contacts at CBS, ABC, NBC, and the New York Times. It stayed classified until 1996. Twenty-nine years.
That’s not conspiracy. That’s history. You can read the document yourself. The Mary Ferrell Foundation has it.
What The Term Does
The label works on three levels at once. Analytically, it’s devastating.
First, it collapses the distinction between reasonable inquiry and paranoid delusion. “Why did flight records place a sitting president on a private island seven times?” and “The moon is made of cheese” get filed in the same mental folder.
Second, it shifts the social cost. Asking the question becomes an embarrassing act. Not answering it.
Third, and this is the one that matters most… it makes journalists afraid of the beat. No reporter wants to be called a conspiracy theorist. So…the question stops being asked. The story dies. The trail goes cold.
You don’t need to punish the investigator. You just need to shame him into silence.
That’s the entire trick.
Enter Trump World
The MAGA machine didn’t invent this playbook. They studied it. Then they improved it.
Donald Trump first called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt” ten days before he was even inaugurated…before the probe had released a single finding.
Before there was anything to refute. The rhetorical frame was locked in first…the justifications backfilled later.
That’s not defense. That’s pre-emption.
Philip Bump tracked it in the Washington Post: every rationalization for why the Russia investigation was illegitimate emerged after Trump had already declared it so. The conclusion came first. The evidence…such as it was… got drafted into service later.
Then came “hoax.” Then “weaponization.” Then “coup.”
By 2025, the vocabulary had matured into a full operating system. Epstein files surface? Pivot to an Obama “coup.”
Signal group chat leaks classified war plans to a journalist? Call it a witch hunt. A federal indictment drops? Scream “political persecution” before the ink is dry.
Each word does what “conspiracy theory” did in 1967…it preemptively discredits the person asking before they can finish the sentence.
The Tell
Here’s what they don’t want you to notice.
The pattern always runs the same direction. The label never gets applied to claims that help the powerful. Only to claims that threaten them.
Nobody in Trump world calls it a “conspiracy theory” when he insists the 2020 election was stolen…despite sixty-plus court losses and zero evidence.
Nobody calls it a “conspiracy theory” when Tulsi Gabbard alleges a “yearslong coup” by the Obama administration…contradicting the findings of Robert Mueller…the Senate Intelligence Committee…and the entire U.S. intelligence community… including Marco Rubio…who now serves as Trump’s Secretary of State.
Those claims get a pass. Those claims get amplified.
But…ask whether a sitting president’s name appears in the Epstein flight logs… and suddenly you’re the one with the tin foil hat.
The label isn’t applied to bad reasoning. It’s applied to threatening reasoning.
Read that twice.
Why This Works On Smart People
Here’s the part nobody wants to admit.
The smear works because most conspiracy theories really are nonsense. Flat earth. Lizard people. Birds aren’t real. The noise is so loud…so constant…so embarrassing… that serious people instinctively recoil from anything with that label attached to it.
Which is exactly the design. It’s camouflage. The ridiculous theories provide cover for dismissing the legitimate ones. And the people in power…know it. They count on it.
So…when they need to kill a real story…they just reach for the same word that gets used to dismiss the lizard-people crowd. And…your brain does the rest of the work for them.
That’s not an accident. That’s the machinery working the way it was designed.
What To Do About It
You can’t reclaim the phrase. That battle’s lost. “Conspiracy theorist” is going to mean “unhinged weirdo” for the rest of your life. Fine.
But you can refuse to let the label short-circuit your thinking.
When somebody in power calls a question a “conspiracy theory”… ask yourself three things.
Who benefits from the question not being answered?
What’s the documentary record?
Is there an actual refutation on the table — or just a label?
If the answer is “just a label”… you’re not looking at a conspiracy theory. You’re looking at a smear. And smears are thrown by people who can’t afford the truth.
That’s not paranoia.
That’s pattern recognition.
The Long Memory
The 1967 dispatch worked. For three decades, calling someone a Warren Commission critic was social suicide.
Respectable journalists wouldn’t touch it. The label did what bullets couldn’t.
Then the document came out. And the label…started to rot.
That’s how these things end. Not with a bang. With a FOIA request. With a dogged reporter. With a citizen who refused to stop asking.
The question isn’t whether today’s “hoax” and “witch hunt” talk is working right now. It is. Obviously. The question is what document…thirty years from now…explains how it worked… and who ordered it.
Somebody’s writing that document right now.
Your job is to make sure it gets read.
BONUS SECTION
The Four Phrases They Use When “Conspiracy Theory” Isn’t Enough
A field guide to the smear vocabulary — and how to spot each one in the wild.
“Conspiracy theory” is the flagship. But the fleet is bigger than that.
Power has a whole arsenal of dismissive phrases, each one calibrated for a different kind of threat. Learn the shapes… and you start to see the pattern in real time. You stop being managed.
1. “Witch Hunt”
The tell: an investigation is actually finding something.
As I mentoned about, Trump first called the Russia probe a “witch hunt” ten days before his inauguration. Before a single subpoena. Before a single finding.
He didn’t wait to see what investigators would uncover…because he didn’t need to. The purpose of the phrase isn’t to respond to evidence. It’s to pre-emptively frame the evidence as persecution.
Watch the timing. “Witch hunt” almost always gets deployed before the first shoe drops. That’s the diagnostic. If the accused is screaming persecution before the prosecutor has finished typing the indictment…somebody’s nervous.
2. “Hoax”
The tell: there’s documentary proof.
“Hoax” is the upgrade you reach for when “witch hunt” isn’t landing. It implies the underlying facts are fabricated…not just the investigation. Russia didn’t interfere. January 6 wasn’t an insurrection. The Signal leak wasn’t real.
Except Mueller found Russian interference. The House Select Committee documented January 6 with 845 witness testimonies. The Atlantic published screenshots of the Signal chat…and the White House itself confirmed them.
“Hoax” doesn’t refute the evidence. It ignores the evidence…and insults you for bringing it up.
3. “Deep State”
The tell: career professionals are doing their jobs.
This is the most cynical one…because the original critique…that unelected bureaucrats wield enormous power…had real merit. Wise and Ross wrote The Invisible Government in 1964. Serious journalism. Serious questions.
Then it got hollowed out. Now “deep state” just means any federal employee whose findings Trump doesn’t like.
The CIA analyst reporting Russian interference? Deep state. The FBI agent executing a lawful search warrant? Deep state. The career prosecutor indicting based on evidence? Deep state.
The phrase went from describing a real structural problem… to functioning as a slur against anyone in government who won’t bend the knee.
4. “Weaponization”
The tell: the law is being applied equally.
This is the newest addition, and maybe the most brazen. It reframes law enforcement itself as illegitimate… whenever law enforcement touches the powerful.
Indict a former president for retaining classified documents after a subpoena? Weaponization. Convict him of falsifying business records? Weaponization. Charge him with election interference? Weaponization.
The word treats accountability as aggression. It frames the rule of law as political violence. And the genius of it is the inversion…the people actually politicizing the Justice Department…get to accuse the prosecutors of doing the politicizing.
The Common Thread
All four phrases share one feature.
They don’t engage the evidence. They don’t cite documents. They don’t offer counter-analysis. They just label the threatening party…and invite you to do the rest of the dismissing yourself.
That’s the whole trick.
Your defense is simple. When you hear any of these four words, ask one question:
What’s the underlying claim they’re asking me not to examine?
Then go examine it.
The document. The testimony. The record.
Because here’s the thing power has never quite figured out how to beat…
A citizen with a library card and a stubborn streak.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S.
The CIA dispatch was written on April 1, 1967. April Fool’s Day. Whether that was coincidence or inside joke…we’ll never know.
But here’s what we do know. The document was filed, circulated, acted upon… and then buried for twenty-nine years.
The New York Times asked for it in 1976 under FOIA. They didn’t get it until 1996. That’s how long the architects of the smear were willing to wait you out.
Think about the patience of that. The discipline.
They weren’t worried about the short news cycle. They weren’t worried about one reporter. They knew they’d outlast the questioners. They knew memory fades… reporters retire…readers move on.
That’s the bet power always makes against the public. We’ll wait you out.
The only thing that beats it… is somebody who won’t get tired.
Be that somebody.
#HoldFast
Sources
CIA Dispatch 1035-960 — Countering Criticism of the Warren Report (1967, declassified 1996)
Merriam-Webster — Trump Calls Congressional Investigation a ‘Witch Hunt’
NPR — As Trump faces scrutiny over Epstein, the administration rehashes 2016 Russia probe
PBS Washington Week — Trump’s attempt to deflect focus from the Epstein case
MSNBC — Trump needs an Epstein files distraction. Enter Fox News and Russiagate.
CNN — Some of the times Trump called the Russia probe a ‘witch hunt’
They knew they'd outlast the questioners....
they knew the memory would fade.
I always LEARN something and I'm always left with something to really ponder about after I read your newsletters, Jack.
**I've had to drop any and all of the conspiracy theorists that I know because I never know where their thoughts are originating from, as they seem to change with their moods, and I worry that sooner than later I, too, will become one of their targets. They are constantly shrouded in fear.
That's not how I am. It doesn't work.
But SO many People ARE really getting played these days. Sad.
Only the strongest will survive.
I come here EVERY SINGLE DAY for more strength.
#HoldFast
And then there are the statements that allegedly proclaim the TRUTH, but are, in fact, hoaxes so people don't know what to believe or who, for that matter. It's like decades' long episode of The Traitors.