Tuesday's primaries, election conspiracies and Donald Trump's long trail of broken brains

Five states hold primary elections Tuesday, with many races featuring Republican candidates fully invested in former President Donald Trump’s unhinged election conspiracy theories, so it seems like a good time to check in and see how America’s sore-loser-in-chief is doing.

In a message he posted Sunday on his unpopular social media site, which I believe is called “Soon-To-Be Failed Trump Business No. 457," Trump launched an ageist and false attack on actual President Joe Biden, used a racist slur to reference the coronavirus and peddled wildly conspiratorial hogwash about the 2020 presidential election.

It’s great to see that the former president’s brain remains irrevocably broken. But when it comes to Trumpism or the “MAGA movement” – I prefer “The Charge of the Not-Bright Brigade” – what’s remarkable is the long trail of similarly styled brains Trump has left in his wake.

We've all lost someone to Trumpism

Most of us have a friend or loved one who leaped down the rabbit hole of Trump cultism and “rigged election” nonsense. We miss them, and their delusions matter, but when it comes to Tuesday’s primary elections and those who follow, it’s important to see how far certain candidates have drifted from reality. These are people who, if elected, could wield significant power.

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So let’s start in Arizona, where former television anchor and conspiracy admirer Kari Lake is on Tuesday’s ballot as a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

Lake left her TV job and dove headfirst into the swamp of 2020 presidential election conspiracies, steadfastly maintaining that Trump won (he didn’t) and was robbed of victory (he wasn’t) by Biden and a radical left-wing cabal that exists only in the minds of people like Lake, who, I assume, have way too much time on their hands.

Cindy McCain in cahoots with Soros?

Her campaign has stirred up a desert dust storm of debunked detritus. But last weekend, she reached for new lows, appearing on the podcast of former Trump political adviser Steve Bannon, who was recently convicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress.

Lake accused Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., of being "in cahoots" with "Soros types," a sweeping reference to liberal billionaire George Soros.

“I believe they're in cahoots basically with the Soros types on the left,” Lake said. “And this is why they stabbed President Trump in the back on the fourth of November, and we remember that. ... This is the Cindy McCain branch of the Republican Party. They're not Republicans; they're globalists. And they want – I think they want an end to America. They want a globalist agenda, a new world order, whatever you want to call it, and we want America.”

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Aside from winning “Antisemitic Dog Whistle Bingo” with references to Soros, globalists and "a new world order," Lake’s comments are utter hooey, the kind of blah-blah once reserved for muttering loons hunched in the corners of bars.

As Trump would say: Sad!

An Oath Keeper and a pillow salesman

Remaining in Arizona, we have secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, a full-on 2020 election denialist and a man who in a 2014 legislative biography identified himself as a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia. (Why do so many anti-government people want to be in government these days?)

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He has sued to stop the use of electric ballot-counting machines in Arizona, an effort funded by bizarro-world pillow salesman Mike Lindell. And Finchem already made it clear that if he loses, he’ll claim there was fraud: “Ain't gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy. I'm going to demand a 100% hand count if there's the slightest hint that there's an impropriety.”

A New York Times profile of Finchem detailed the candidate’s broken brain: “He argues that Marxists conspired to manipulate the 2020 election, that people voted with ‘software that flips votes,’ that Mr. Biden is ‘a fraudulent president.’ The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol ‘was a setup,’ he said. ‘The whole thing was a setup.’ … He has embraced QAnon theories, saying that ‘a whole lot of elected officials’ are involved in a pedophile network.”

It’s bad when your uncle says those things. It’s REALLY bad when your wannabe secretary of state says those things.

Local white guy all-in for white people

In Washington, Trump-endorsed congressional candidate Joe Kent is running against Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. Kent, of course, believes that the 2020 election was rigged, has downplayed the attack on the U.S. Capitol and has played footsie with right-wing extremist groups, because you can’t get Trump’s seal of approval without selling your soul and letting your brain turn to goo.

Earlier this year, Kent did a livestreamed interview with the American Populist Union, a white nationalist youth group, and said: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being a white-people special interest group.” He also agreed white people are discriminated against and described American culture as “anti-white.”

Hold fast to your brains, people

These are just a few examples.

In Michigan, primary voters will consider Republican secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, an election denier, Trump loyalist and self-described “anti-vaxxer” who has called public schools “government indoctrination camps" and once said, “Evolution is one of the biggest frauds that have been perpetrated on us.”

Hoo boy. Buckle up, folks. And pay attention.

Preposterousness is ascendant. And downright dangerous.

More from Rex Huppke:

Lower gas prices, the PACT Act and other ways Democrats are being mean to Republicans

A speech anti-same-sex-marriage Republicans can give at same-sex weddings: 'I was never here'

Is 'wokeness' responsible for US and European heat waves? Absolutely.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Primary elections Tuesday decide fate of Trump conspiracy theorists