Lara Trump Spreads Fake News About Clinton and Obama Trying to 'Control the People'

Lara Trump, a senior campaign advisor for the president's 2020 reelection effort, sent an ominous message to her 326,000 followers Sunday morning: "America: Keep your eyes open... there are people in the USA trying to make this a reality...Never stop fighting to save our country...#MAGA."

Her message, littered with eyeballs and American flag emojis, included an image of what appeared to be an article titled "Beware the Useful Idiots." The message links Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to Saul Alinksky, a Chicago-based community organizer who has become a frequent boogeyman for GOP leaders. But Trump, like many Republicans before her, quoted a scary guide to terrorizing the American people with tyranny and poverty that Alinksky never in fact wrote.

The statement reads: "1) Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people 2) Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live. 3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty. 4) Gun Control — Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state. 5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income). 6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children learn in school. 7) Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools. 8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor."

Snopes, the fact-checking site, noted in 2016 that critics of Obama and Clinton have often shared similar lists linked to Alinsky but not written by him. Snopes wrote: "This list is simply a modern variant of the decades-old, apocryphal Communist Rules for Revolution piece that was originally passed along without attribution until Alinsky's name became attached to it (presumably because someone out there thought it sounded like something Alinsky might have written)."

Ben Carson, now the director of the Housing and Urban Development under President Donald Trump, cited Alinsky during the 2016 Republican National Convention while linking Clinton to Satan. "Now, one of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors was Saul Alinsky. And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone she greatly admired and let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky," Carson said at the time, shortly after ending his presidential campaign against Trump. "He wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. It acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom. Now think about that. This is our nation where our founding document, the Declaration of Independence talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our creator, a nation where our Pledge of Allegiance says we are 'One nation under God.' This is a nation where every coin in our pockets and every bill in our wallet says, 'In God We Trust.' So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that."

Alinsky wrote the 1971 book Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, which urges activists to influence public policy by disrupting government meetings and grabbing the media's attention. The opening blurb of the book does in fact reference Satan. It states: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."

Clinton did write her undergraduate thesis on Alinsky when she was a student at Wellesley College. The New York Times reviewed the 92-page thesis: "Ms. Rodham endorsed Mr. Alinsky's central critique of government antipoverty programs — that they tended to be too top-down and removed from the wishes of individuals. But the student leader split with Mr. Alinsky over a central point. He vowed to 'rub raw the sores of discontent' and compel action through agitation. This, she believed, ran counter to the notion of change within the system."

Lara Trump, 34, is married to the president's second oldest son, Eric Trump, who has been helping to run his father's real estate empire while he works in the White House. Lara Trump worked as an associate producer at "Inside Edition" before joining the Trump campaign and helping her father-in-law won her home state of North Carolina. She gave birth to the president's ninth children in September, welcoming Eric "Luke" Trump into the family.