🧩 BND Motif Index · M1435
They got to him
A leader who once fought the powers that be is said to have been turned by them after they came for him, frightened, threatened or bought, so each reversal is read as the price of a deal.
🕵️ Theories🗂️ Hidden Power & Cover-ups🗂️ Betrayal and Loyalty
- 1claim filed under it
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🔗 goes with: 🧩 Live long enough to become the villain
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (0 left-leaning, 0 center, 0 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- crossover
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “why do you think that that was the key to get Trump to flip and completely join the people who were persecuting and prosecuting him, the deep state” “why would you shut down an investigation into your own attempted murder? ... you know exactly who attempted to kill you and you've made some accommodation with them”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Told in the center 1
claims heard only on center or crossover shows
- 2026-11-02 “Trump is said to have shut down the Butler shooting investigation because he made an accommodation with those who tried to kill him.” 1
M1435 · first seen 2026-11-02 · what this is · how the index works