Trump's Opening Speaker for Tonight's Las Vegas Rally Is an Insane Conspiracy Theorist 

Tonight, President Trump will speak at a rally in Las Vegas in an attempt to shore up votes for the GOP ahead of the midterms. His opener for the rally is Wayne Allyn Root, a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist, talk show host, and prominent Libertarian. Root, it turns out, has some pretty interesting ideas about everything from mass shootings to the DNC, according to The Daily Beast.

Root and Trump have been friends for a few years, since Root wrote a book—Angry White Male: How the Donald Trump Phenomenon is Changing America—seemingly entirely as an appeal to the then-presidential candidate. He opened another Las Vegas rally for Trump in 2015, and offered to be Trump’s “Karl Rove” were he elected (an offer that someone in the administration must have known enough to turn down). Root is probably the only person alive or dead to ever describe an evening with Trump as “magical.” It’s obvious why Trump likes him.

It’s also apparent that the dude is totally and completely nuts. His love of conspiracy theories gained some national attention after he repeatedly alleged that the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 58 people was the work of ISIS. Despite widespread criticism of these claims, Root has still not backed down.

But Root’s baseless claims about the Vegas shooting are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his uh, eccentric, beliefs. He has claimed that the white supremacist who killed Heather Heyer during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was probably paid by George Soros, since no conservative he knows “commits violence. EVER.”

Root is also a fan of the popular far-right theory that top Democrats including Hillary Clinton conspired to murder Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. He’s discussed the theory at length on his radio show.

“He was murdered because he was the guy that gave all the DNC files to Julian Assange and Wikileaks,” Root said on his show this June, according to Right Wing Watch. “They just killed him for no reason and nobody seems to be interested in finding the killer. And it sure seems to me to point to leading Democrats—Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC, the Clintons, Hillary Clinton, all the above, Donna Brazile, all the above, seem to be mixed up in this, they all had a motive to kill this guy.”

Unsurprisingly, Root was an early supporter of Obama birtherism who once suggested that the former president went to Columbia University as a “foreign exchange student.” Another time he wrote that Obama was the “first Muslim president.”

But wait, that’s not all! Root also has some fascinating opinions about human sexuality and relationships.

From The Daily Beast:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating President Trump’s ties to Russia, Root posited earlier this year, because he has “penis envy.” The radio host declared: “Mueller’s is smaller than Trump’s.” According to Right Wing Watch, Root has claimed that “all liberal men are gay” and “all liberal women are ugly.”

He has lamented how HBO host John Oliver married a “STUNNING. GORGEOUS… Trophy Wife” instead of “plain liberal women.” And he has suggested that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough only became critical of Trump so he could have “sex w/hot blonde” Mika Brzezinski, his fiancée and co-host.

During one bonkers radio segment, Root expressed dismay that some of his social-media critics have referred to him as an old man. “There’s no difference in when you call someone ‘old’ versus when you call someone the ‘N-word,’” the radio-host claimed. “There’s no difference. It’s a lack of respect. It’s filthy. It’s disgusting.”

In 2018, Trump’s association with a man like this is unsurprising. As the rest of the GOP stood by, Trump’s political star rose on the back of his racist claims about Obama’s nationality and religion. This strategy has worked fabulously for him. Why would he give up? Whatever Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio want to believe, these are the issues that speak to GOP voters today: Pizzagate, QAnon, false flags, George Soros, “globalists,” and gay frogs. There’s no going back.