From all over the world, likeminded people congregate around the same comforting lies, explanations that validate their ideas. “Things seem a whole lot simpler in the world according to conspiracy theories,” writes Rob Brotherton, in his book, Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. “The prototypical conspiracy theory is an unanswered question; it assumes nothing is as it seems; it portrays the conspirators as preternaturally competent; and as unusually evil.”

But there’s a difference between people talking about outlandish theories and actually believing them to be true. “Those are two very different things,” says Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami and the co-author of the book American Conspiracy Theories. “There’s a lot of elite discussion of conspiracy theories, but that doesn’t mean that anyone’s believing them any more than they did in the past. People understand what conspiracy theories are. They can understand these theories as political signals when they don’t in fact believe them.”

And most people don’t, Uscinski says. His data shows that belief in partisan conspiracy theories maxes out at 25 percent—and rarely reach that point. Imagine a quadrant, he says, with Republicans on the right and Democrats on the left. The top half of the quadrant is the people of either party who are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. The bottom half is the people least likely to believe them. Any partisan conspiracy theory will only resonate with people in one of the two top-half squares—because to be believable, it must affirm the political worldview of a person who is already predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories.

“You aren’t going to believe in theories that denigrate your own side, and you have to have a previous position of buying into conspiracy logic,” Uscinski says.

Since conspiracy theories are often concerned with the most visible concentration of power, the president of the United States is a frequent target. “So when a Republican is president, the accusations are about Republicans, the wealthy, and big business; and when a Democrat is president, the accusations focus on Democrats, communists, and socialists.”

“Right now,” he added, “Things are little different. Because of Donald Trump.”

As it turns out, the most famous conspiracy theorist in the world is the president of the United States. Donald Trump spent years spreading birtherism, a movement founded on the idea that his predecessor was born outside the country and therefore ineligible for the nation’s highest office. (Even when Trump finally admitted in September that he knew Barack Obama was born in the United States, he attempted to spark a new conspiracy.)

Now, Trump’s presidency is the focus of a range of conspiracies and cover-ups—from the very real investigation he’s under to the crackpot ideas about him constantly being floated by some of his detractors on the left. Like the implication that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are involved in a money laundering scheme with the Russians, plus countless more theories about who’s funneling Russian money where and to whom.