Speaking with “Infowars” host Alex Jones last week, Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt acknowledged that the right-wing panic over the Jade Helm 15 military exercise is purely due to a dislike of President Obama.

“If Operation Jade Helm were being conducted under a President Paul or President Cruz or President Walker, three of the conservative frontrunners I guess we could say, we might be watching to see what’s happening, but we wouldn’t have the same inability to accept what the administration is saying,” he said. “This administration has not earned our trust. They have lied repeatedly. So even if what they’re saying happens to be true, who’s to know?”

Jones — who was instrumental in pushing the Jade Helm conspiracy theory before it broke into the Republican mainstream — heartily agreed, saying, “The president is acting as a dictator more and more, Congress is letting him do it, and it might be too little too late, who knows what power grab he may pull. This shows a little of that old American instinct, like Ronald Reagan said, to ‘trust but verify.’”

Jones told Pratt that “everybody knows” that the Obama administration is “training the military to take on vets and gun owners, and saying we’re the threat, not Al Qaeda or ISIS,” to which Pratt added that the administration is trying to fire military officers who believe in the Constitution.