British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has backed the Putin-done-it conspiracy theorists in an article published by The Sunday Times.

“By proxy, Russia is responsible for every civilian death last week,” he wrote in reference to the alleged gas attack in Idlib which killed at least 58 people.

Fallon’s argument rests on one of the two competing conspiracy theories promulgated by MSM outlets about the attack.

The first theory is that Trump was baited by a false flag attack into a foreign war, while the second alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself ordered a chemical weapons attack in Syria to distract from the investigation into Russian ties with the Trump cabinet.

Tillerson just said no evidence. https://t.co/8328BSj0pf — Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) April 9, 2017

Commentators claim that calls for evidence to support such theories is actually part of some intricate geopolitical chess game.

A few notes on what Russia is doing when it demands the U.S. provide evidence for things everyone knows happened. [short thread] https://t.co/TJ5F0rLYSx — Andrew Exum (@ExumAM) April 9, 2017

Russia knows we're not likely to divulge all of what we know and, more importantly, *how* we know it. So on one level, they're trolling us. — Andrew Exum (@ExumAM) April 9, 2017

By applying logic to a lie narratives are created that can then be debated, losing sight that the original statement was a lie to begin with — Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) April 9, 2017

Strong argument by @hxhassan that Assad neither "stupid" in use of CW, nor hoaxed, but trying to preclude RU/US coop https://t.co/zMb7pULnYq — Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) April 9, 2017

Conspiracy theories used to be relegated to tinfoil hat-wearing basement dwellers, but now everyone from politicians of some of the world’s most powerful nations to MSM outlets have drunk the Kool-Aid, it seems.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was impossible to suspect Putin ok'd Assad's gas attack so Trump could fire missiles & change the subject in USA? — Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) April 7, 2017

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell took to Twitter Friday to offer his own unique take on the Syria attack before elaborating further on his network television show later that night.

Tonight @TheLastWord let's see if anyone can convince me that Putin didn't plan all of this to help his fan in the White House. 10pm — Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) April 7, 2017

“Wouldn't it be nice, if it was just completely, totally, absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week — so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all the praises he's picked up over the past 24 hours?” O’Donnell asked the audience of The Last Word Friday.

Lawrence O’Donnell Wonders: What If ‘Vladimir Putin Masterminded the Last Week in Syria’? https://t.co/Bo0A4emRai (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/UAeWyDrgMP — Mediaite (@Mediaite) April 8, 2017

O’Donnell then drew comparisons with a similar false flag narrative that was spun by Republicans during Bill Clinton’s presidency which alleged that the embattled president launched missile attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan in August 1998 to distract from the ongoing Monica Lewinski sex scandal.

Obvious compairsons were drawn with the newly released film Wag the dog in which a White House advisor creates a fictitious war with Albania to distract the American people from an ongoing scandal.

However, in the absence of any evidence to back up his claims, O’Donnell instead deftly retreated to one of two possible logical fallacies: an argument from ignorance or shifting the burden of proof. “You won't hear ... proof that the scenario I've just outlined is impossible,” the host proudly stated, without a hint of self-awareness.

“It changes the conventional wisdom about the dynamic between President Trump and Vladimir Putin,” O'Donnell added.

The blame game also extends to alternative media sources, in a further attempt to muddy the waters rather than focus on fact and evidence when covering or responding to a story.