Chris Hayes on Fetterman Body Double Conspiracy Theory: ‘Truly Stupid, Insidious, Pretty Funny’

EXCERPT:

HAYES: "The extent to which the Republican Party has been consumed by bizarre, deranged, and dangerous conspiracy theories will likely end up as one of the defining political issues of our time. In fact, to a certain degree, democracy and the fate of the planet all depends on how we deal with it. Here’s a small but perfect example. Last night, we had that man, Democratic senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on this program. The guy has really been through the wringer over the past 18 months. He, quite famously, suffered a stroke midway through his campaign for Senate, and then he got back on the trail before even had time to fully recover his speech faculties. Fetterman won that race decisively, anyway, much to the surprise of a lot of observers. And since ascending to the Senate, he’s become the subject of this truly stupid, insidious, honestly pretty funny conspiracy theory that he has been replaced by an identical body double. One post from one of Elon Musk’s favorite accounts implied that it had to be a body double on our program last night, because, get this, the senator's speech processing has improved greatly since the early days of his stroke. Real geniuses working over there. A popular meme used selectively cropped images to make it look like the senator's tattoos were missing in a viral clip of him reacting sarcastically to the news of Republican impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which raises a number of questions, one of which is, why would anybody go through the trouble of hiring a Fetterman lookalike, hard enough as it is, and then forget to add his very prominent tattoos? And how many 6'8'', 300-pound bald dudes with mustaches are there just hanging around anyway? How do you run that casting call?”