I really don't see the need to try to see some dark unilateral control, when it's across the board the exact same thing we've identified for literal centuries: The shifting alliances of powers whose interests are aligned.
The sad irony of conspiracy theorists is that it's not paranoia (alone) that leads them into those rabbit holes, it's naivety. They think that there are dark forces that hijacked their otherwise fine institutions, but refuse to recognize that those institutions were never meant to serve them in the first place. Trump and his entourage aren't a cancer on a previously healthy organ, they are a healthy part of a parasite.