Roseanne goes full conspiracy theorist on Chelsea Clinton

On Tuesday morning, Roseanne Barr went on a Twitter tirade against liberals, invoking conspiracy theories, lobbing a bizarre slur at Barack Obama’s top adviser Valerie Jarrett, and weirdly claiming Chelsea Clinton is married to a Soros.

So continues the political journey of the television star, whose eponymous ABC show was renewed for a second season after just one episode, and who is also one of the biggest promoters of online far-right conspiracy theories — and a vocal supporter of President Trump. Earlier this year, Trump even called Barr to congratulate her on her show’s success and thank her for her support.

First, Barr accused Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, of being married to a nephew of billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Chelsea Clinton, who is not, in fact, married to a nephew of George Soros, responded, telling Roseanne that her middle name is not “Soros” but “Victoria,” and that she is in no way related to the Soros family:

Barr apologized for the mistake, but then tweeted that Clinton’s husband “is the son of a corrupt senator.” Clinton’s husband’s father, Edward Mezvinsky, was convicted of fraud in 2002 and served five years in prison.

Barr’s laser focus on George Soros is part of her politics, which center on a deep interest in far-right conspiracy theories, from MK Ultra (a real CIA experiment on human test subjects that conspiracy theorists believe is still being used by the government) to the claim that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.

And her interest in conspiracy theories isn’t new. When she ran for president as part of the far-left Peace and Justice Party, she penned a letter to Congress stating that the Obama White House had “contrived” the Boston Marathon bombing in an attempt to “remove the 2nd Amendment.” But her support for Trump, including on her show, raised her political profile significantly.

As National Review explained this spring:

Roseanne is a Trump-supporting populist, but the populist tradition she represents is one born not of canny critique of political and economic stagnation but of paranoid ignorance. Her populism begins from the premise that absolutely anything or anyone exercising power in American society — from Paul Ryan to organized Christianity to the Monsanto Corporation — obtained that authority illegitimately and relies on various forms of black magic to keep it.

George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor who has helped to fund a number of left-leaning causes over the past three decades, has become the unlikely center of much of the far-right conspiracy universe and the topic of many of Barr’s tweets, with accusations that Soros was a member of the Nazi SS (he wasn’t) and that he invented Black Lives Matter and antifa to cause “chaos” (he didn’t). For example, Roseanne retweeted this tweet on Tuesday:

But she wasn’t done with her very busy morning on Twitter. She also tweeted that former White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett was the result of the coupling of an ape and the Muslim Brotherhood.

She later deleted the tweet and apologized:

But that’s probably not the end of Barr’s politicking.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece misstated the year of Barr’s presidential run.