Yea agreed. When shitty science is given as a reference then it becomes much harder to critically judge something but at least it is not a huge amount of work to see that there is conflicting scientific data on a topic. It is a huge effort to try to gauge which one is more credible. And it does not even have to be agenda driven. It can just be bad science, science driven by strong priors. Then you really have to be an expert on the topic to be able to spot the weaknesses in that study. Luckily however most outrageously stupid statements made by politicians/billionaires and a huge body of online disinformation content don't even refer to existing science (if it doesn't give any references to scientific statements, assume it does not exist or ask for links) and are easy to pick apart by realizing the blatant contradictions in their statements.
"Warning: If you unlock your phone, it might explode or you might become a terrorist. Also we won't pay your money back even if there is faulty hardware because there is non zero chance you might have caused it while unlocking"
Sometimes it blows my mind how naive some people have to be to buy into this shit. Almost everyone who speaks of their war against their self described Antichrist is acting like one in major ways. This guy literally conflicts himself by the minute, first calls government control as antichrist and scapegoating as a very dangerous social dynamic and then signs surveillance deals with Trump so that he can blame the immigrants and poor people for USA's problems. For fucks sake, you don't even need the subtly misleading evil anymore, anything goes.
Perhaps it is not naiveness but more like the pleasure of having a powerful billionaire regurgitate a century long propaganda embedded in the centre of your life philosophy back at you, the comfort of being affirmed by someone "deemed successful" and not having to face the many contradictions of the stories in your head.
Or maybe she is using Epstein as some sort of leverage and has taken it too far by gambling big. Or maybe she thinks she can get the majority of the republican base support behind her if she pushes this hard enough, maybe even eventually dethrone Trump.
Are you trying to be daddy's favourite again Elon?