After Graham’s death and McConnell’s absence, conspiracy theories abound

It was Russia. It was Israel. Could it have been Iran? Or maybe it was a Covid-19 booster. What about the Clintons?After US senator Lindsey Graham died suddenly over the weekend from what a preliminary medical examiner report said was an aortic dissection, conspiracy theories spread quickly claiming – without evidence – that any number of foreign adversaries or other frequent conspiracy subjects might have orchestrated the Republican’s death.Trump cast doubt on any foul play on Tuesday, saying he wasn’t sure why the FBI would be at Graham’s house. Graham had had heart problems and said an aortic dissection is difficult to detect in advance, the president noted.“I know there’s all sort of conspiracy theories,” Trump, himself a steady purveyor of conspiracies , from false stolen election claims to birtherism, told reporters on Tuesday. “I think the FBI is wasting their time.”The tactic of spreading rumors – incentivized by social media platforms and creators who make money on them – often comes alongside significant political events, especially high-profile deaths or health issues.Senator Lindsey Graham during an interview in his Capitol Hill office in 2009. Photograph: Evan Vucci/APIn recent days, a collision of online conspiracy theories came for two of the most powerful Republicans in the US Senate, with commentators on the right more strongly questioning Graham’s death while a cross-partisan group probed official narratives around Mitch McConnell’s health.Trust in institutions, including politicians and the media, has fallen steadily, while trust in the government is at one of its lowest points in seven decades, Pew Research found in a 2025 survey. People frequently get their news from sources that confirm their worldviews.Such conspiracies are popular among rightwing influencers, some of whom have called into question the assassination attempts against Trump, including the one in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the president’s ear was injured. Some have also repeatedly cast doubt on the assassination of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed at a university event in Utah. His alleged killer is now on trial.Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories, published a paper in 2022 that found no evidence that conspiracy theories were on the rise. In polling he has done since then, the amount of conspiracies has remained relatively stable, he said.“If we were having these conversations at the water cooler, our words would be here and gone, and nobody would see it,” Uscinski said. “But because social media is sort of there forever, people who want to know what other people are talking about can easily see it and access it. But it doesn’t mean that it’s persuading anyone.”People pay more attention to big events, so they pay more attention to conspiracy theories surrounding them because people are all discussing the same topic, he said. If people are inclined to see things as a conspiracy, they can be persuaded that Graham was assassinated or McConnell is dead, Uscinski said, but that is not most people.“That’s a difference between the online chatter and belief,” he said. “You can get a lot of people buying into something online, but then you go poll on it, and people are like, who’s Lindsey Graham, who’s Mitch McConnell?”For McConnell, conspiracies that he is not actually alive have swirled for weeks after his disappearance from the public eye in mid-June. His office created a weeks-long information vacuum by not addressing the reason for his absence with any depth. A spate of McConnell friends tweeted that they had had long conversations with the 84-year-old former Republican leader, attempting to quell the rumors, but the disclosures only lead to further suspicion – and a fresh round of memes – because the tweets seemed coordinated and shared a common tone.Senator Mitch McConnell is taken into a weekly policy lunch on Capitol Hill on 19 May 2026. Photograph: Tom Brenner/ReutersAfter Graham’s death, his office released a photo of McConnell with his wife, holding a copy of Sunday’s Washington Post sports section in his hand – an attempt to prove definitively that he was alive. But it only led to another round of doubt over whether the image was real. In a statement, McConnell revealed for the first time that he had suffered a fall and was hospitalized, adding he also had a mild case of pneumonia.The Post analyzed the photo and its metadata, finding no evidence that it was fake. But in an era of artificial intelligence, the conspiracy that the image was AI-generated persists. Some users have falsely claimed that it was a recirculated image from 2023.Even McConnell’s colleagues have said they hope he and his office do more to show he is alive while acknowledging the rumors he is not are mere speculation.Republican senator Ron Johnson, who is prone to sharing conspiracy theories, told a rightwing news station: “I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know.” Johnson later said that was a rumor and that he assumed it was false.John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, also said he wished McConnell’s office had been more transparent about the senator’s condition, arguing that more information would have “resolved a lot of questions”.Graham’s travel overseas in the immediate leadup to his death, where he appeared healthy on a trip to Ukraine, helped fuel disbelief over his cause of death – and calls for an investigation. Graham was a prominent Russia hawk who once appeared to call for the assassination of Vladimir Putin.Kash Patel, the FBI director, helped fuel more speculation by saying the agency was “assisting local authorities and has made every necessary resource available” in the wake of the senator’s death.Laura Loomer, a rightwing commentator and Trump ally who has nearly 2 million followers on X, has elevated claims about both Graham and McConnell.“I didn’t realize 20 FBI agents were needed to convince everyone that Lindsey Graham died from an Aortic Dissection,” she wrote on X. “Did the toxicology report come back? 2 things can be true at once.”Marc Thiessen, a political commentator and former George W Bush speechwriter, said it was “entirely possible” that Graham died from a heart attack but it was “not a conspiracy theory to suggest something else might be at play”.“Putin has poisoned and assassinated many of his opponents, and Graham was just in Kyiv where there are certainly FSB agents operating,” Thiessen wrote on X. “There should be a full autopsy and tox screen to rule out foul play.”Graham’s office said in a statement about the cause of death on his death certificate “will be PENDING until all the toxicological and microscopic testing are finalized”.Cornyn told reporters on Monday that he wanted a toxicology report on Graham released to “rule out any foul play”.“Given where he was and the sorts of things he was advocating for, I think we just ought to resolve all those questions by seeing what the toxicology reports show,” he said.