Lizard people run the world. The moon landing was faked. The senior senator from the state of Indiana only pretended to split logs in his latest television ad.

Two of those are conspiracy theories and one is the awkward truth. Watch Sen. Joe Donnelly heave an axe and talk about “splitting” with the Democratic party.

It isn’t just that the senator may have ripped the idea scene-by-scene from the HBO comedy “Veep.” It’s that the senator didn’t apparently want to risk splitting wood on camera for real. Twitter users accused Donnelly of his false lumberjack exhibitionism. Were they right?