Share this story

Trump amplifies outlandish robot Biden conspiracy theory

WASHINGTON (NYT) — President Donald Trump shared an outlandish conspiracy theory Saturday night on social media saying former President Joe Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material to his millions of followers.

ADVERTISING

Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Biden, whom Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.

The president has blamed Biden for all manner of societal ills and assailed his mental acuity, including with the specious theory that Biden’s aides used an autopen to enact policies and issue pardons without Biden’s knowledge. (Trump has acknowledged that his administration uses the autopen system on occasion.)

Trump has long had a penchant for sharing debunked or baseless theories online, but his embrace of conspiracies is not limited to social media. He has also elevated false claims inside the White House and surrounded himself with Cabinet officials promoting such theories.

Last month, while sitting next to the president of South Africa in the Oval Office, Trump claimed that white South African farmers were victims of mass killings and displayed an image intended to back up his assertion; the image was actually of the conflict in eastern Congo. Trump has falsely asserted that white South Africans are victims of genocide, even though police statistics do not show that white people in the nation are any more vulnerable than other groups.

355-year-old company that once owned a third of Canada closes

OTTAWA, Ontario (NYT) — Beye Escobar was both delighted and disappointed as she emerged from the Hudson’s Bay Co. store in downtown Ottawa with two new bikinis.

While she was pleased her swimwear had been discounted by 70%, she was not happy about the reason. On Sunday, a month after it marked the 355th anniversary of its founding, the Bay, as it is commonly known, is permanently closing its 80 department stores throughout Canada.

The company was much more than just a retailer and the last traditional, full-line department store chain in Canada. In 1670, Britain, which claimed part of present-day Canada, set up the company as a fur trader and granted it a vast stretch of territory equal to what is about a third of Canada, without asking the Indigenous people whose land it was.

“I honestly don’t know why it’s closing, but I think it’s very unfortunate because they had very good stuff,” Escobar said.

The Bay’s fate was sealed by the large debt it had been carrying. The company filed for bankruptcy in March, but its decline had begun well before and accelerated after the pandemic.

The Hudson’s Bay name (in full: the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay) and all of the company’s other intellectual properties were sold in bankruptcy to Canadian Tire, another large retailer that said it had no plans to revive the department stores.

A relatively small commercial real estate company in British Columbia won the rights to 28 Hudson’s Bay store leases and has a vague plan to start a new department store chain. But those takeovers still need the approval of landlords and a judge.