President Donald Trump said Thursday evening that “people can decide for themselves” if a conspiracy theory he boosted claiming Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had SEAL Team 6 killed is true.
Trump addressed voters in Florida on Thursday during a town hall hosted by NBC News. Anchor Savannah Guthrie moderated the town hall and asked Trump about the conspiracy theory he retweeted earlier in the week.
The conspiracy theory suggested Biden “orchestrated to have SEAL Team 6 … killed to cover up the fake death of [Osama] Bin Laden,” Guthrie noted. She asked why Trump “would send a lie like that” to his followers, and the president immediately went on the defensive.
There is no evidence behind the conspiracy theory, which originated on a QAnon-based website according to Military Times. (RELATED: ‘QAnon Is Nuts’: Republican Ben Sasse Rips Trump For Flirting With Conspiracy Theory)
“That was a retweet!” Trump started off by saying. “That was an opinion of somebody and that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there, people can decide for themselves.”
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Guthrie appeared shocked by Trump’s response and pointed out that he is “the president” and “not … someone’s crazy uncle, who can just retweet whatever.”
“No, no,” Trump said, doubling down. “That was a retweet and I do a lot of retweets and frankly because the media is so fake and so corrupt, if I didn’t have social media – I don’t call it Twitter, I call it social media – I wouldn’t be able to get the word out.”
“The word is false!” Guthrie said as Trump continued on to say that “the word is very simple: we’re building our country stronger and better than it’s ever been before.”
Guthrie moved on from the subject after the president refused to condemn the conspiracy theory.