Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) over the weekend drew widespread condemnation for baselessly claiming that President Joe Biden "gave the orders" to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
Collins' conspiratorial rant caught the attention of the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, which took him to task for peddling inflammatory charges during a politically fraught moment in American politics.
"You’d like to think Members of Congress know enough not to indulge conspiracy theories without evidence, but then democracy doesn’t always produce the brightest bulbs," the editors began. "The latest to meet the public’s lowest expectations for our supposed leaders is Rep. Mike Collins, Republican from Georgia’s 10th district, who sent a tweet on Saturday that 'Joe Biden sent the orders.'"
Collins based his claim about Biden sending "orders" to kill Trump on a quote that Biden made in a call with donors in which he insisted that Democrats' campaign needed to put Trump "in the bullseye" again after so much attention had been paid to Biden's poor debate performance two weeks ago.
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As the Journal noted, Biden was clearly using a metaphor and was not making a literal call to have Trump shot.
Additionally, they noted that it's highly unlikely that Biden would actually describe an assassination plot out loud to donors, and that's not even considering the high unlikelihood that the president would outsource such an operation to a 20-year-old Pennsylvanian rather than a trained professional.
"It’s embarrassing even to feel obliged to write this, but this is the political world we live in," the editors added. "Social media amplifies falsehoods, which is bad enough when they’re spread by the village idiot. When the village idiot is in Congress, it gives conspiracies a credibility that more people might believe."
