There’s a new conspiracy going around that a brief bit of unintentionally picked-up audio shows a CNN conspiracy to coach its own focus group, and it didn’t take long for Donald Trump to embrace the conspiracy.

A bunch of conservative websites picked up the snippet, which shows the clip of Hillary Clinton saying “America’s great ’cause we’re good” followed by a CNN reporter repeating the line to the focus group.

Right after that she asks the focus group what about her argument resonated and one woman mentioned that line.

But even The Daily Caller, which also ran with this, acknowledged this might be nothing:

There are other possible explanations, though; Brown may have been informing focus group members about what clip CNN had just aired (since they couldn’t see the replay themselves), or Brown could have been setting up a semi-staged response after previously finding out what the focus group member wanted to say

(For the record, CNN told the Daily Caller, “Brown described the segment in real time so they would know what was being discussed. It’s absurd to think she was coaching the focus group in anyway [sic].”)

And then, because obviously, Trump immediately gave this conspiracy legitimacy:

CNN is the worst – fortunately they have bad ratings because everyone knows they are biased. https://t.co/oFRfNY2rUY — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2016

Wow, @CNN got caught fixing their "focus group" in order to make Crooked Hillary look better. Really pathetic and totally dishonest! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2016

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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