‘An perfect example is as soon as ‘pizzagate’ started gaining traction, they sent that idiot with a gun over to the pizza parlor as misdirection.’
That is an *excellent* example. The moment the guy with the gun started (ostensibly) to look for kidnapped children during broad daylight, pizzagate was dead. It became a nut job conspiracy on the spot, and that was pretty much the end of it.
I was actually thinking of the Kenyan birth certificate. There is overwhelming evidence that Obama wasn’t born in HI. However, he wasn’t born in Kenya either. So as soon as legitimate questions began to be raised about HI, the Kenyan BC appeared. People were briefly allowed to believe it was real: then the hoax was revealed. It’s been, ‘Birthers are a gullible bunch of crazy nut jobs,’ ever since.
I’ve always thought that the hoax Kenyan BC was the perfect cover just in case the real one ever gets out. This way the real one is discreditied in advance because no end of people will confuse the hoax with the real thing.
“Oh, that’s already been debunked!”