MSNBC and CNN are now both on record doing their part to spread a fringe conspiracy theory attacking Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

The original marching orders for this sexual McCarthyism came from two sources on the fringes of the far-left.

Last week Thursday, while criticizing Graham for his support of Trump, unemployed comedienne Chelsea Handler tweeted: “Hey, @LindseyGrahamSC what kind of dick sucking video do they have on you for you 2 be acting like this?”

Holy, fuck fuck. I just the video of trumps bipartisan “meeting” yesterday. Hey, @LindseyGrahamSC what kind of dick sucking video do they have on you for you 2 be acting like this? Wouldn’t coming out be more honorable? — Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) January 11, 2018

Three days later, Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition, took the Twitter baton and, without evidence, claimed Graham is being blackmailed by Trump over “some pretty serious sexual kink.”

A Republican just told me that he doubts @LindseyGrahamSC is kowtowing to Trump (and indirectly Putin) because he’s being blackmailed over his sexual orientation (an open secret) or even financial corruption. Rather, he thinks it probably involves some pretty serious sexual kink. — Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) January 13, 2019

The following day, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle (pictured, bottom left) took this conspiracy mainstream when she closed a segment about Graham’s support for Trump with this unsubtle innuendo: “It could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham. We’re gonna leave it there.”

On Tuesday, this coordinated homophobic smear went nuclear when a sitting congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), tweeted her belief that the conspiracy is true, that Graham is indeed “compromised.”

On Thursday, the far-left anti-Trump outlet CNN further legitimized all of this by allowing, without any pushback, Omar (pictured, right) to address those critics who say there is no evidence for her homophobic attack on Graham.

Watch below as CNN brings on Omar, the point person spreading the conspiracy, and allows her to answer her critics, and then drops it as though her word salad of an explanation is satisfactory. Were she a Republican, she would not be given the chance to defend herself on-air. They would assemble a panel to talk about her, not to her — holding her up for public shaming. Left-wing pundits would viciously attack the network for giving her hate a “platform” if CNN asked a Rep. Ilhan Omar (R-MN) to “explain” what she meant by “compromised,” then Jim Sciutto (pictured, top left) just calling it “a remarkable comment” rather than “a lie.”

As CNN has devolved more and more into a conspiracy network, this tactic has become commonplace.

Rep. Omar: "Lots of Americans" agree with me that Trump is blackmailing Sen. Graham over his homosexuality pic.twitter.com/xPMAUHSLYE — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 17, 2019

And this is how the media legitimize a smear/conspiracy.

This is also textbook McCarthyism and homophobia. CNN, MSNBC, and the rest are openly weaponizing rumors about sexual orientation as a negative, as a smear. Several of them are going much farther than the shameless tactic of “outing,” suggesting without a shred of evidence that Graham is a sexual deviant. This is all about punishing him for being an effective defender of President Trump’s, for his vital work in adding Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court late last year, and his commitment as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm conservative judges.

This is what it all boils down to. Graham is up for re-election in 2020, and within their bigoted, provincial, elite bubble, the far-left, the media, and Democrats (but I repeat myself) sincerely believe they can use this innuendo to terrorize Graham into behaving “correctly” because they actually believe the “backwards rubes” in South Carolina will care.

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