McCain conspiracists say his brain cancer was a hoax
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Trump displayed his innate grace and decency Saturday by spiking a White House statement honoring the late Sen. John McCain’s life. Monday morning, the flag over the White House was ( until criticism poured in ) back to full staff, six days before protocol says it should have been.
Even for Trump, this seemed churlish. Unless there is another explanation: John McCain is not dead.
When McCain’s family put out the news Friday that he had discontinued treatment for his terminal brain cancer, this was done “to take media attention” from Senate candidate Kelli Ward, and, according to Ward herself, replace it with a “narrative that they hope is negative to me.”
Ward had unsuccessfully challenged McCain in the 2016 Republican primary in Arizona, so it makes complete sense that, two years later, McCain would arrange his death to divert attention from Ward’s bus tour.
Furthermore, according to a conspiracy theory network popular among some Trump boosters, when McCain supposedly died on Saturday, he did not succumb to cancer but took his own life to avoid being hauled off to Guantanamo Bay and put before a military tribunal for his longtime work helping Islamic State terrorists and others. (And before he died, he concealed his criminal ankle bracelet by wearing a medical boot on his leg.)
Unless, of course, the suicide, like the cancer, was just a ruse. In that case, McCain will continue to work secretly for the deep state and for the Clinton Foundation.
So many lies. Heck, he’s even lying in state!
In death, as in life, McCain has a way of bringing out the loons. Undoubtedly the posthumous conspiracy theories would have amused him as much as anybody. He took particular delight in debunking “propaganda and crackpot conspiracy theories,” as he put it to Naval Academy midshipmen 10 months ago.
No matter the evidence, “still the conspiracy theorists hock their wares,” he wrote in 2009, introducing a book refuting 9/11 conspiracy notions. “They ignore the methods of science, the protocols of investigation and the dictates of logic. The conspiracy theorists chase any bit of information, no matter how flimsy, and use it to fit their preordained conclusions. They ascribe to the government, or to some secretive group, powers wholly out of proportion to what the evidence suggests. And they ignore the facts that are present in plain sight. We cannot let these tales go unanswered.”
Answering those tales is even more important at a time when the president amplifies and echoes them. In his love of truth, McCain was the anti-Trump. Trump rose to power with his “birther” conspiracy theory and the support of the Alex Jones crowd, and he has literally thrown open the doors of the White House to conspiracy theorists.
Last Thursday, as the Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer reported, Trump hosted Lionel Lebron, a prominent conspiracy theorist, and posed with him in the Oval Office. Lebron is a 9/11 truther who believes Trump is fighting the deep state and globalist pedophiles and is a leading promoter of the very online network floating the notion McCain is alive or a suicide. Three days after his White House visit, Lebron tweeted an image of Trump crossing a swamp of Democrats, featuring racist images of Barack and Michelle Obama and the words “fire at will.”
With the exception of Hillary Clinton, perhaps nobody stoked the conspiracy crowd’s fevers like McCain. He was “songbird” McCain, a secret agent of the North Vietnamese who threw the 2008 election to Obama, covertly met with the leaders of Islamic State in Syria, secretively started the Robert S. Mueller III “witch hunt” against Trump, and was “in bed with the Clinton Foundation” but turned against Clinton shortly before his death.
A post on Sunday from the leader of a prominent conspiracy forum wrestled with whether McCain killed himself or surrendered: “Suicide weekend? Hands up? . . . We are in control. BIG week ahead.”
One wacky participant speculated: “National Dog Day happens to be the day McCain’s death announced. Coincidence?” (Sorry, no. McCain died Saturday. National Dog Day was Sunday.)
Weirdly, conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones accepted at face value McCain’s death from brain cancer. “I’m gonna take the high road because I think McCain was actually a twisted, compromised, tortured individual,” Jones said, calling McCain “leader of the deep state.”
McCain would have had a ready rejoinder for these “deathers” — just as he did when he took the microphone in 2008 from the supporter who called Barack Obama an “Arab”; ridiculed “chemtrail Kelli Ward” in 2016 for promoting the belief that jet contrails spread biological weapons and change weather; and denounced the “nutty conspiracy theory” in 2015 that accused him of staging Islamic State beheadings.
McCain answered these nuts with calm reason. In memory of him, let’s continue his fight until they, and their leader in the Oval Office, return to the crevices whence they came.
Tags
Who is online
99 visitors
Any way we can get these nutjobs in front of a firing squad?
I think the chem trails got him.
I think the chem trails go these "theorists" LOL
Sounds a little excessive, besides the internet wouldn't be near as fun without conspiracy nutjobs
Funny thing? This is the first I've heard about this particular 'conspiracy theory'. I see it's from the WaPo Opinion page. Let's see, they aren't slanted.....oh wait, yes they are.
Could it be just more stupidity on an opinion page on a slow news day?
BW, Protocol is not 7 days for the flag, it's 2 days, which the President has extended. Who knew so many Democrats loved Senator McCain so deeply......I seem to remember that you felt differently when he was running for president.......
That's probably because McCain just died the other day. Give it another day or two and it'll be on Faux News and Breitbart.
We do not agree very often, but on this one I'm with you 100%!
Deporables=gullible=brain dead
WTF????? TBH I did think that he succumbed to cancer quite quickly after the announcement that he had halted his tx. But he could have stopped tx a week ago, two weeks ago and the family just announced it. No, I don't think he is still alive, no I don't think he "planned" his death for todays election, I also don't think it's too far fetched that he may have done an assisted suicide, but if he did, it's no ones business (I'm not sure what the laws are in AZ, but hell, if he wanted to, I'm sure it would have been possible, laws be damned)
It did seem a little quick, but in my experience with family members and friends who have had cancer, it is not unusual for them to die shortly after stopping treatment. That is why McCain's announcement was viewed so grimly.
It also could have been halted a week or so ago like I said. The family chose when to let the public know. I'm not too familiar with brain cancer, but if you stop tx, does it usually take you a day later?
McCain has not been seen in public for months. I'm sure the cancer had spread to other organs. That is what happens.
It depends on the cancer, where it specifically is, and how far it has spread. A glioma cancer grows and spreads very fast and is difficult to treat. Treatments may delay its spread, but the end result is the same. Mr. McCain may have stopped treatment because the prognosis might have been poor despite treatments. Factor in his age and any other physical frailties, and treatment may be ineffective.
Very true, even if it didn't, it totally consumed his brain, but you are right, more than likely it had metastasized. I'm familiar with breast cancer, since my sister had it at a young age, and I have familiarized myself with lymphoma because my grandfather died from it before I was born (he was a doctor and did experimental drugs on himself for research purposes, I'm not sure what came of it, I guess I could go look at his notes LOL, but I know he ended up with diabetes because of the experimental drugs).
Very true, I always thought that the tx were just prolonging and helping him live out his life. I never would have thought that it would have been a day later though, but like I said earlier, he may have stopped tx a week or so ago. I also can't believe his mom is still alive! I thought for some reason that she had died a couple years ago, but nope, she is still going at 106 years old.
For some cancers, that's all treatment will do-prolong things.
Who knows when he stopped exactly. Even if it was a day, it just shows treatments were no longer effective.
I did not know that.
Yea, I was walking by the tv on Sunday and Fox was doing a tribute on Tuckers show, It said he was survived by his wife, 7 children, and his mother who was 106 years old. I had no idea she was still alive, I know she was in her 90s when he was running in 08 but (God forgive me), I thought she had died, and now I realize it, it was Obamas grandmother who died while he was running for president. How many children did he have with Cindy? I know Megan (and I love her), but I am not sure of the others. 3 with his first wife? and 4 with Cindy?
I honestly believe that some tx can prolong the cancer, and just hold it "steady", if you will. Isn't that what Elizabeth Edwards had going on? They did that big news conference a few years back (before the whole "extra kid", and adultery came out) and she said the tx were just holding the cancer at bay and she was going to be fine as long as she kept up the tx. IDK, cancer is a tricky little asshole, seriously, one day you can be fine and the next, on deaths doorstep.
The problem is, cancer tx also take a toll on the body. The longer therapies continue, the more harm they can cause.
I friggen hate cancer, I watched my sister go through stage 4 breast cancer at 32 and her tx and multiple surgeries, and what those tx have done to her body. She is on a life long supply of Tramadol, and other pain meds like Lyrica, along with Xanax. If you have or had cancer, no doc is going to tell you no to xanax.... just saying. Cancer screwed her body up, but it also screwed her brain up (mentally), and she has huge anxiety from it.
exactly..... see my post below. My sister cannot raise her arm above her head because of the radiation and surgery to remove a lymph node. Both of those have cause permanent nerve damage
oops 3.1.10
I don't know anyone who is a fan of it. F--- cancer!
I am sorry to hear that. That's terrible. The thing about cancer is, it doesn't harm just you the patient, it also harms those close to you.
Cancer is a terrible condition. And sometimes, the treatments are just as bad.
It really is. Shes my little sister, so watching her go through something like this at such a young age (hell, any age) killed me, her daughter, my niece, was 6 at the time, I would go pick her up every Friday after school, because my sister had just had chemo and I knew she would feel like shit over the weekend and couldn't do anything with her. My BIL was amazing during this, he's an asshole in general, but he loves my sister and was there for her during all this. He got major points from me
. My sisters breast doc is actually the doc from "Atlanta Plastics", that show on Lifetime? Has anyone seen it? He is one fine black man!!!! 
An amazing doctor, Dr. Crawford is! I actually just put my resume in at his practice! Anyhow, he has done wonders with her, not only physically, because she is young, but mentally as well. She also had a fantastic Oncologist! She said he looked just like Antonio Banderas 
(swooooooon)
Thank you, Gordy for your kind words
My father died from brain cancer two years ago, the same kind Mccain had, and once the doctors said the treatments weren't really helping and just keeping him in pain, he asked to die and quit the treatments, he died within two days. I think it has almost more to do with the patients will to live being exhausted. When my great grandmother died at 92, she had hung in there and been in the hospital and in pain for months, then my grandmother and my mother sat with her and told her it was okay to move on and she died within hours. The power of the mind is really amazing and sometimes it's by sheer will that people keep living even when their bodies and brains have failed, and that point of excepting fate and having loved ones let you know it's okay is all it takes.
I am so sorry DP. I lost my dad 3 years ago to pneumonia, he was my favorite person in the whole wide world. I watched him get better, then worse for 6 weeks in the hospital. I still have not gotten over his death. I think if he had something that was incurable, maybe it would have been easier on me, but how the hell do you get better, give loved ones hope, and then all of a sudden take a turn? Death is also a funny asshole, along with cancer. It just goes to show you, no one is immune.....
Thank you for your sympathy, though I have to be honest, I was only informed about his last days as he had refused to see me and was a bitter angry religious bigot to the very end. For the first 15 years of my life I was whipped almost daily by a man who couldn't handle any shame or embarrassment, so anything I did as the son of a Pentecostal minister was a reflection on him and thus required "using the rod" (leather belts or half inch thick switches from the tree next to our house in my case) in heated anger. I did speak with him on the phone about a month before his passing, but as much as I tried to keep things civil he couldn't let the fact that I'd left the Pentecostal faith so he spent the last 20 minutes of our conversation detailing all the mistakes he felt I'd made in my life. I let him speak and told him I loved him, but let him know in no uncertain terms that I was never coming back to the faith. He was the classic religious hypocrite, had cheated on my mother at least a half dozen times before she finally left him after 40 years of marriage, but he never accepted responsibility, it was always "Satan" and his demons that were attacking him, it was never his fault, failure or weakness.
But the point remains, I think it was his will to live that had him clinging to life up till the end, and once he accepted his fate, he passed within 48 hours. So I don't think it's that unusual for people who finally stop fighting to pass quickly thereafter.
I am glad you seem to have had a great relationship with your father and I feel similarly about my mother who was always kind and cheerful, even when she had no reason to be, just to keep her four kids from falling into despair.
I'm so very sorry, it sounds a lot like my relationship with my step father.... he's an asshole. I'm in therapy now trying to deal with his death and my parents divorce due to my step father.... another story for another thread. I use to be very close to my mom as well, shes a great person and was a wonderful mom. As time went on and my girls got older, she became a lot more vacant in my life, I guess is how you would put it. My dad was always there for me, always answered his phone no matter what time it was, and if I needed him, he was always there. He always made it a point to come see my girls and do stuff with them. I miss him terribly
I'm glad things are going well. best wishes to her and you (and the family) as well.
you're welcome.
My condolences for your loss. Pneumonia can be a tricky thing, especially if the patient is elderly.
This is true.
other nuttery
Far-right media misidentifies Jacksonville shooter as Trump-bashing Reddit user — The person who was misidentified as the Jacksonville shooter told NBC News, “My takeaway on this is there are a lot of idiots on the internet ... ” — A day after a competitive video gamer shot and killed two people …
You off-topic yourself. Are you suddenly under a daily seed quantity limit?
It's all about ME! ME! ME!
How did his announcement take media attention away from Ward?
If her dad fucked a crocodile, and they had a kid....
I see her as more horse faced.
If you say so. You're welcome for the bump.
She looks like a whore.
[deleted]
Real nice ..... keep keeping it classy there MrF
Another example of Trump laughing at his supporters and calling them stupid, just like the 'shoot someone on 5th Avenue' comment.
Oh FFS. I am no fan of McCain, never made that a secret, but the mother fucker did die a pretty shitty death thanks to brain cancer. It is not a conspiracy.