trumps quest to turn spygate into a major mainstream issue may be coming up short oct 20 2020 538 pm etoct 20 2020 538 pm etfor years it was the subject of countless fox news segments talk radio rants and viral rightwing tweets and facebook posts it spawned congressional hearings justice department investigations and investigations of those investigations president trump called it the biggest political crime in the history of our country and suggested that its perpetrators deserved 50year prison sentencesnow weeks before the election spygate a labyrinthine conspiracy theory involving unproven allegations about a clandestine democratic plot to spy on mr trumps 2016 campaign appears to be losing steamthe theory still commands plenty of attention inside the rightwing media sphere but mr trumps quest to turn spygate into a major mainstream issue in this years campaign may be coming up short data from newswhip a firm that tracks social media performance shows that stories about spygate and two related keywords obamagate and unmaskunmaskedunmasking received 15 million interactions on facebook and from influential twitter accounts last month down from about 20 million interactions in mayvideopart of spygates fizzle may be related to the fact that three years on none of mr trumps political enemies have been charged with crimes last year a highly anticipated justice department inspector generals report found no evidence of a politicized plot to spy on the trump campaign angering believers who thought the report would vindicate their belief in a criminal deep state plot against the presidentand this fall the spygate faithful got insult added to injury when a justice department investigation into one of their core concerns whether obamaera officials had acted improperly by unmasking the identities of certain people named in intelligence documents came up emptyhandedfew rightwing narratives have been as durable as spygate which has morphed over time into a kind of catchall theory encompassing various allegations of democratic malfeasance fox news hosts including sean hannity laura ingraham and tucker carlson went all in on it as did republicans in congress including representative devin nunes of california and former representative trey gowdy of south carolina but nobody embraced the theory like mr trump who has returned to it frequently to deflect attention from his own troubles whether it was the mueller investigation or his administrations response to the covid19 pandemicas the election approaches its worth looking back on spygates evolution both because it illustrates the way that partisan misinformation bubbles up through the rightwing media ecosystem and ultimately because it shows how mr trumps obsession with a confusing hardtofollow narrative may have backfired as a campaign strategyhere is a very abridged version of the main waypoints in spygatemarch 2017 rightwing blogs and media outlets began discussing theories they called deepstategate or obamagate a reference to false claims that president obama had tapped mr trumps phonemay 2018 mr trump seized on the news that an fbi informant was sent to meet with members of his campaign staff dubbing it spygate and said that it