Anti-Trump activist Brian Stelter used his CNN perch this weekend to spread one of the silliest conspiracy theories in recent memory, this one about Fox News controlling President Trump.

According to the far-left Stelter, the only reason Trump deployed troops to the U.S. border last week is because Fox News told him to.

“Why is there so much talk about the U.S./Mexico border all of a sudden? Why are National Guard troops suddenly being deployed?” Stelter asks, before answering his own question. “Well, the answer involves President Trump’s favorite channel.” Meaning Fox News.

Stelter then promises to prove there’s a sinister “line where Fox News ends and Trump begins” and begins the conspiracy outline with the bombshell that Trump dined with Sean Hannity last week.

“The entire week of talk about immigration and the actions at the border seem to be a result of the dinner that he had at Mar-a-Lago, ” Stelter reports ominously.

Now, for those of us who live on a planet called Earth, we know that last week’s talk about “immigration and actions on the border” had zero to do with the Hannitazion of Trump over meatloaf followed by two scoops of ice cream for Trump and just one for poor Sean.

We know in reality that Trump’s “talk” and “action” were due to an actual threat to our sovereignty in the form of a caravan of some 1,500 Central American migrants heading north through Mexico, many of whom are determined to enter America illegally.

To his credit, Stelter does mention the caravan. Stelter even mentions the fact that the caravan story was broken by the far-left BuzzFeed. But in Stelter’s fevered mind, this is a rather small detail, a pesky thing, a nuisance that he is going to go ahead and wrist-flick because, well, that’s what conspiracy theorists do.

Stelter then delivers his aha! moment in the form of a 6:36 a.m. timestamp when Fox news reported on BuzzFeed’s caravan report. “Just 20 minutes later the president tweeted the ‘border is getting more dangerous and the caravans …are heading the U.S.’,” Stelter reports.

In summation:

1) Sometime last week Sean Hannity had dinner with Trump.

2) Fox News reports on the migrant caravan.

3) Trump tweets about our dangerous borders.

See the dots! See the dots! See them! Be one with the my dots that connect into connecting dots!

Of course, Stelter wants to gloss over the somewhat important events that occurred between his neurotic dots. Namely, the launch of a caravan of 1500 people, hundreds of whom (according to some reports) want to enter our country illegally. And let us not forget that BuzzFeed broke this story and that Fox News was merely re-reporting it.

Stelter was far from finished. He found two clips of talking heads on Fox News talking about militarizing the border and then asks sarcastically, “I wonder where the president got that idea, because the next day” Trump announced he would put troops on the border.

Can we back up just a second here…

Keep in mind that we have been told, even by disgraced outlets like CNN, that Trump is a cable news addict — that he obsessively watches all three cable networks. But now we are supposed to believe that out of three 24 hour cable networks, or 72 hours of programming, Trump just happened to catch one or both of these quick references to militarizing the border on Fox.

Stelter obviously think we are all stupid, because I have another idea as to where Trump might have gotten the idea to put troops on the border — from Barack Obama. No, really, back in 2010, Obama put troops on the border. It must be true; CNN reported it. George W. Bush also put troops on the border.

Back to Stelter’s increasingly deranged dots…

4) Fox News said militarize the border.

5) Trump is watching Fox News during these two moments and suddenly shoots his finger into the air to explain, “Eureka, I shall militarize the border!”

6) Trump militarizes the border.

Because this makes so much more sense than, you know, Trump wanting to do everything he can to protect our country, looking at his limited options (because the GOP Congress sucks), which would of course include looking into what his predecessors did — such as, militarizing the border.

Additionally, because Stelter and CNN are utterly without shame when it comes to spreading fake news, not once does Stelter report that Obama and Bush militarized the border.

Stelter concludes his hysterics with this double whopper, “This is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the Trump era. A lack of quality information [and] he’s relying on his Fox friends.”

Read that Stelter quote again. In one short sentence, Stelter says two thing that are simply false. There was no “lack of quality information.” The caravan is real, the fact that people within the caravan are determined to cross our border illegally is real, and CNN knows this because their own reporters embedded in the caravan interviewed migrants who said exactly that.

Stelter’s second brazen is falsehood is that Trump is “relying on his Fox friends” when the reporting originated with Stelter’s fellow left-wing confederates at BuzzFeed.

And this is why CNN is not only in last place in the ratings, not only in last place by a wide margin, but a laughingstock — a national punchline. Stelter’s conspiracy theory is not even interesting or entertaining. It is just stupid, an attempt to treat his residual audience, even Trump-haters, like idiots.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.