"I just think he keeps up the game," a former senior administration official said. "It is much easier to have a conspiracy theory than have to deal with the facts. He and facts have a severe dislike for each other. He and facts don't get along. If you are not going to get along with facts and you have an administration known for lying, then everything becomes a conspiracy theory."
Many Trump allies and former advisers take a more charitable view, saying the president sniffs out intriguing tidbits of information and then highlights them for the American public and media to explore in greater detail.
"I learned to quit worrying a long time ago," said Jason Miller, chief spokesman for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. "He has a pretty uncanny nose for politics. When he has a gut feeling about something, he usually ends up being right." Miller pointed to major news events he said Trump had predicted like Brexit, the alleged political biases of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the Hillary Clinton emails found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner just before the 2016 election.
"I don't think he worries if one or two details are off," Miller added. "The president likes to raise the questions, knowing everyone including the media will then go chasing it."
By leaning so heavily on unsubstantiated musings, critics say the president has converted the Republican Party into a factless operation.
A Republican close to the White House said he would prefer House Republicans take the lead in refuting the impeachment inquiry one allegation at a time rather than have the president do it hour-by-hour with his theories and tweets.
"It has been disconcerting in recent years to see the party rely more and more on outlandish theories of what the 'deep state' is doing," said Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "Where were all of these people, who suddenly seem to have existed inside the government body, when Ronald Reagan was running the government, or when Bush 41 or 43 were there? Where were all of these people?"
"It is just easier to blame it on some nefarious organization and individuals rather than doing the job you are going to do. If I can blame you, why would I take responsibility?" Steele added.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.
As he hits his 1,000th day as president this week, Trump continues to move fluidly between fact and fiction. He has frequently been caught in lies - well over 12,000 since he took office, according to one count - and rarely cleans them up.
During his business career, he was often caught in lies such as saying Princess Diana had taken an apartment in Trump Tower, or he'd call reporters pretending to be a PR spokesman named John Miller.
In his real estate days in New York, Trump was not an aficionado of conspiracy theories, said Barbara Res, a former top executive for the Trump Organization.
It's true he never took responsibility for anything negative that happened to him or his business and viewed mishaps as personal attacks, Res said, "but as far as promoting real conspiracy theories, no."
"His ideas are more advanced and evolved now, but he has got new problems. The conspiracy theories he is spouting are an answer to that," she said.
Trump went deep into conspiracy land in 2011 when he latched on to the discredited notion that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. The state of Hawaii released Obama's original long-form birth certificate in 2011 to prove he was born in the U.S.
Yet the "birther" theory served as a core part of Trump's political ascent, even it was proved false.
Obama poked fun at Trump for fomenting the birther movement during the glitzy 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner as Trump sat stone-faced in the audience.
"No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," Obama told the crowd of journalists, politicians and celebrities. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter - like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"
As president, Trump has promoted conspiracy theories centered on the deep state, the Clinton emails or the alleged wiretapping of his New York campaign office by the Obama administration. He's also promoted the idea Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to help the Democrats, a charge Trump's former top homeland security adviser recently publicly debunked.
Former administration officials say it's futile to try to talk Trump out of these theories with logic, data, common sense or even government intelligence.
Certain White House aides such as senior adviser Stephen Miller or China trade hawk Peter Navarro often help fuel Trump's conspiracy-laden mind - especially with the idea that China is trying to steal all U.S. jobs, or every Chinese exchange student is a spy. The latter is a mantra Miller often has discussed with the president, according to two former officials.
Escaping the Mueller investigation relatively unscathed emboldened Trump and Giuliani, one White House adviser said.
Just a day after former special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress, Trump made the July 25 call to the Ukrainian president and asked him to investigate Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 campaign. This phone call and resulting whistleblower complaint form the basis of the Democrats' impeachment inquiry, with Democrats saying Trump encouraged a foreign government to meddle in a U.S. election.
Trump's not the first president to feel under attack from foreign adversaries, or the media, or the intelligence community. President John F. Kennedy worried about officials leaking information; whereas President Richard Nixon was privately convinced the Johnson administration had bugged his airplane.
The difference between Trump and earlier presidents is that he shares his conspiratorially minded, us-vs.-them worldview publicly and prolifically, said Timothy Naftali, founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Americans did not know Nixon's worldview until his Oval Office tapes surfaced.
"Trump and Nixon share this belief that the structure of government is working against them," Naftali said. "Nixon's conspiracy theories sent him down a rabbit hole that destroyed his presidency. We'll see what happens to President Trump."
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