As America approaches the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, one of the more striking changes in our politics is not what happened on that terrible morning, but what has happened to the politics surrounding it. On the September 9, 2026 edition of MSNOW’s All In with Chris Hayes, Hayes examined what he portrayed as a remarkable Republican metamorphosis: ideas once treated on the right as career-ending “9/11 truther” conspiracies are now being entertained publicly by prominent Republicans. The episode itself advertised a report on “the 9/11 truther sitting in the United States Senate,” making the contrast between then and now the centerpiece of the segment.
The most illuminating historical example is Van Jones. In 2009, Jones was serving in the Obama administration as a special adviser on green jobs when conservative media—most prominently Glenn Beck—hammered him over his name appearing on a 2004 petition associated with the 9/11 Truth movement. Beck went considerably further, claiming Jones believed the Bush administration had “blew up the World Trade Center and covered it up.” PolitiFact later rated that characterization only Half True: Jones’s name did appear on the petition, but the document called for further investigation and raised questions about whether officials might have allowed the attacks to happen; it did not say Bush officials blew up the towers. Jones repudiated the petition’s implications, saying they did not represent his views, and his name was subsequently removed. The controversy was not the only issue dogging Jones—his past political activism and other inflammatory remarks were also under fire—but amid that broader conservative campaign, he resigned from the White House.
That history makes Sen. Ron Johnson’s more recent rhetoric remarkable. In April 2025, the Wisconsin Republican discussed 9/11 on a podcast, questioned the accepted explanation for the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, suggested it may have been a “controlled demolition,” and spoke of pursuing Senate hearings. Johnson, who chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, also suggested that the government knew more about 9/11 than it had disclosed. These are not fringe comments from an anonymous internet poster; they came from a sitting United States senator with investigative authority. Yet Johnson did not experience anything resembling the immediate political exile that association with the “truther” movement could produce in the post-9/11 political era.
There is an important qualification to Hayes’s comparison. The Van Jones controversy cannot fairly be reduced to only 9/11: conservatives were simultaneously attacking his previous radical politics and controversial remarks, and Jones’s precise connection to the petition was disputed. Likewise, Johnson says he is asking questions and seeking evidence, rather than simply adopting every claim associated with the sprawling 9/11 Truth movement. And questioning government findings is not inherently illegitimate. But the political contrast remains difficult to miss. In 2009, merely being linked to a petition that raised conspiratorial questions about 9/11 helped make a White House official politically radioactive. Sixteen years later, a Republican senator could himself publicly raise one of the movement’s signature theories—controlled demolition of Building 7—and contemplate congressional investigation.
That may be the most fascinating takeaway from Hayes’s segment as September 11, 2026 approaches. The underlying evidence about the attacks has not undergone some comparable revolution; the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s investigation concluded that uncontrolled fires caused the progressive collapse of Building 7, not explosives. What has unmistakably changed is the political ecosystem in which conspiratorial claims circulate. Glenn Beck once wielded the “truther” label as a devastating indictment against Van Jones. Today, Ron Johnson can venture into territory once considered politically toxic and remain a powerful senator. Twenty-five years after 9/11, perhaps the story is not simply that conspiracy theories survived. It is that the political price for entertaining them has changed dramatically—and, depending on who is doing the entertaining, may barely exist at all.
