In 2022, Alex Soros, son of progressive billionaire philanthropist George Soros, took over control of his father's empire. As a result, the younger Soros has now become the focus of the same sorts of baseless conspiracy theories that right-wing activists have been spreading about his father for decades.
Over the weekend, Alex Soros tweeted out a link to an article in The Atlantic about how experts had expected to see rising crime and inflation rates in 2023, but those predications failed to manifest and "the twin crises largely evaporated, and no one is totally sure why."
The featured image for the article consisted of two stock photos: one of a piece of glass shattered by a bullet and the other of a hand holding cash. When links to articles are posted on Twitter, the platform automatically imports the article's featured image, which is exactly what happened with Soros shared this article and its tagline with his followers.
Last year, the crime and inflation crises largely evaporated. So did the leading theories about what had caused them. https://t.co/WguJQkj1PG
— Alex Soros (@AlexanderSoros) January 22, 2024
Soros' post was entirely innocuous, but the far-right conspiracy theorists on the Christian nationalist "FlashPoint" program are demanding an FBI investigation into Soros for supposedly issuing an assassination threat against former President Donald Trump.
During last night's broadcast, "FlashPoint" host Gene Bailey showed Soros' tweet and suggested that it represented some sort of threat.
"This is not a good thing," Bailey said, before asking Christian nationalist Trump cultist MAGA pastor Mark Burns to weigh in.
"I think that's very dangerous dog whistle messaging that Alex Soros was sending," Burns said. "We already know that the Soros family, based off of the acts that they've been doing, are evil people. To put this dog whistle [that] many are interpreting as an assassination attempt of President Donald Trump; this is very a dangerous time. And I really hope that the FBI would really take a look at this, because to me, it's clear messaging."
Burns said that the amount of cash being held in the second photo totaled $47 and was therefore an obvious reference to "the next President of the United States of America," whom Burns, predictably, expects will be Trump.
"So, for [Soros] to put this type of messaging out there knowing who they support, knowing the millions of dollars that they have donated to principals that are unbiblical, to laws that are against the word of God, and to continuously funding these evil policies, it's clear to me that it is a message that many are interpreting as an assassination attempt of Donald J. Trump," Burns asserted.
Serving as a platform for spreading baseless conspiracy theories is par for the course for "Flashpoint," but it is pretty wild to see someone like Burns, of all people, have the gall to level this sort of allegation, given that when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2022, he openly declared that he wanted to see LGBTQ-supporting parents and teachers executed for treason and then tried to pretend that he never said such a thing.
