President Trump on Saturday evening retweeted an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory by conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams suggesting that the apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein was somehow tied to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Why it matters: This is not the first time the president has amplified baseless conspiracy theories, having risen to political prominence in part thanks to the "birther" campaign that claimed President Obama was not born in the United States. Trump also suggested during the 2016 presidential campaign that Sen. Ted Cruz's father was somehow involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Dictionary.com has selected "misinformation" as its 2018 word of the year, defining it as “false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead,” reports AP.

The big picture: Search results on Dictionary.com suggested that society's "relationship with truth" has become a common theme, with words like "mainstream," "white lie" and "Orwellian" among those that spiked at various points this year, per AP. Social media platforms have come under intense scrutiny in 2018 for their role in spreading misinformation that incites violence — as in Myanmar, for example, where investigators say Facebook played "a determining role" in disseminating hateful rhetoric about Rohingya Muslims.