.WHEN DONALD TRUMP uttered the word "Springfield" thirty three mins in to the United States presidential debate on September 10th, David Muir, the co-moderator, was readied. In that little Ohio city, Mr Trump stated, illegal aliens are "eating the dogs, they're eating the felines, they're eating the pets of the people that live there". Mr Muir immediately answered that, according to Springfield's mayor, there were actually no credible files of pet-eating. The former president's claim have to possess struck a lot of visitors as bizarre. Yet great deals of Mr Trump's supporters were keyed for it: the charge had been actually circulating in conservative circles on social networking sites, improved through Elon Musk, the manager of X. Just how did the community come to be at the facility of a conservative conspiracy theory?