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Tea’s Weird Week: Demon Sperm, Reptilians, and Alien DNA…Meet Trump’s Latest COVID Expert
In January I attempted an ambitious project called #TrumpConspiracyCounter, which would document every Trump promotion of a conspiracy theory or theorist. I settled into a routine a couple times a week of Google searches and sifting through Trump’s non-stop tweets. However, when the pandemic struck, I found myself feeling a bit like Lucy and Ethel in the I Love Lucy episode where they’re trying to keep up with a chocolate factory conveyor on high speed, shoving candy in their pockets and mouths.
Overwhelmed, I left the conspiracy counter at #236 at the end of April, but had learned a lot about who Trump was promoting and getting information from. I still follow and write about his conspiracy promotion (“Trump’s Joe Scarborough Conspiracy Obsession,” for example).
One of Trump’s most frequently retweeted “news” sites, I observed, was Breitbart News, who have often promoted conspiracies and hate. This week a Breitbart video of a “White Coat Summit” on the stairs of the Supreme Court of a group calling themselves America’s Frontline Doctors went viral, getting roughly 13 million views before social media platforms began to pull it.
The summit was organized by the Tea Party Patriots, and the video featured a group calling themselves America’s Frontline Doctors who spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump retweeted it to his millions of followers and later described it as “very impressive.” In the speech, one of the group’s doctors, Dr. Stella Immanuel, states that hydroxychloroquine cures COVID and that there isn’t a need to wear masks. Immanuel is a registered physician in Houston, where she runs a practice next door to her church, Fire Power Ministries.
Dr. Stella Immanuel surrounded by other members of America’s Frontline Doctors on the steps to the Supreme Court.
Don’t always trust someone wearing a lab coat. You can buy them from American Science & Surplus for $23.65.
Among Dr. Immanuel’s beliefs:
- “Alien DNA” is being used in today’s medical field.
- Dr. Immanuel teaches in her seminars that miscarriages and medical issues like infertility, impotence, and cysts, are a result of “astral sex” from “spirit husbands (or incubus)” or “spirit wives (or succubus),” which are sex demons that seduce you with their powers and bang you in a “sleep world.” Immanuel says that cysts and fibroid tumors are a result of demon sperm, which can also impregnate you to create li’l demons.
- Reptilians or “lizard people” (a group of sinister extra-terrestrials) have infiltrated our government disguised as humans. Please see a chapter of my new book American Madness titled “Reptoid Royalty.”
- Dr. Immanuel says that vaccines are a secret plot to microchip people, a classic anti-vaxxer line.
- Also, the government is developing a vaccine to prevent people from “becoming religious.”
- She believes Dr. Fauci and CNN (the whole organization?) are secretly taking hydroxychloroquine and she has challenged them to deliver urine samples to her to analyze if they dispute her claim.
Reptilians? “Night husbands?” Secret microchip vaccines?
Wowwwwww-wee. Gizmodo reports that the rest of America’s Frontline Doctors include a bitcoin hustler, Tea Party members, and someone who went on a rant about George Soros conspiracies on FOX.
These COVID conspiracies, pushed by groups like QAnon and spread through media like this video and the conspiracy doc Plandemic (which was seen 8 million times in May before being pulled from YouTube and social media sites) show how dangerous conspiracy theory can be. They give people the falsely comforting idea that COVID isn’t a real threat and therefore, they shouldn’t bother socially distancing or wearing a mask.
When the press pushed Trump on Immanuel’s beliefs at the end of a press conference on Tuesday, Trump did as Trump does– he deflected the question, shut down the conference, and booked it the fuck outta there. Trump’s propaganda machine– Rush Limbaugh and FOX’s Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham picked up the defense and were soon hard at work at the sticky situation of trying to spin demon jizz to their viewers–but the stain remains.
This story shows the Trump media ecosystem in full orchestra– trash sites like Breitbart News and InfoWars launch some crazy fake story, QAnon and “patriot” groups help spread it, Trump retweets it himself, then it gets kicked up to the hucksters at FOX who promote it and call legit journalists and fact-checkers who dispute it as “fake news.”
As for Immanuel, she’s not happy that social media is removing the video. In fact, she says God is going to crash Facebook because of it in this tweet (I left original word errors intact):
Hello Facebook put back my profile page and videos up or your computers with start crashing til you do. You are not bigger that God. I promise you. If my page is not back up face book will be down in Jesus name.
Absolutely incredible. Disinformation is killing America.
SEE ALSO: Don’t forget that these type of people aren’t just shooting viral videos, some of them are running for office in the 2020 election: “Trump Inspired QAnon Followers, Proud Boys, Gun Nuts, Racists, all Have 2020 Campaigns”
Please Clap Dept.: I got advance copies of my book American Madness (out Aug. 25, Feral House)! Among the things in this column discussed more in depth in the book: Trump, Reptilians, Anti-vaxxers, extra-terrestrials, InfoWars, and QAnon. You can pre-order: Lion’s Tooth: CLICK HERE Bookshop.org: CLICK HERE Amazon:CLICK HERE
You can enter a Goodreads Giveaway for a FREE COPY here!: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/309615-american-madness-the-story-of-the-phantom-patriot-and-how-conspiracy-th
Tea’s Weird Week: Trump’s Joe Scarborough Conspiracy Obsession
Memorial Day weekend— a chance to enjoy relaxation, grill out, and remember those who have sacrificed their lives fighting for our country. Or if you’re President Trump, a time to spend golfing and then spiraling into a tweetrage hurling insults, threats, and conspiracy theories. Can you imagine Obama or Bush acting like this? They’d be led out of the White House in a straitjacket, but we’re so used to this that it’s just another crazy day, another Trump meltdown.
Trump has been trying to push three big conspiracies this month of May– he’s continued to spin his mail-in ballot fraud theory (which this week prompted Twitter to finally slap warnings on his tweets), as well as continuing to tweet about “Obamagate,” a theory so convoluted that even Trump can’t explain it. Here’s an exchange between him and a reporter after he he went on a tweetfit about it on Mother’s Day (maybe it’s just holidays that get his conspiracy hype pumped up). After a reporter from the Washington Post asked him to explain what “Obamagate” was, Trump responded:
Uh, Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at now, all this information that’s being released — and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning — some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.
Uh, ok, thanks for the clear answer on that. When the reporter tried to follow up and asked again what exactly the crime was that he was referring to, Trump snapped:
You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.
And then there is the “Joe Scarborough Cold Case” conspiracy.
Trump hates Joe Scarborough, the former Florida Republican Congressman turned talk show host (Trump calls him “Psycho Joe”), his wife and co-host Mika Brezinzski, and their show Morning Joe (MSNBC).
Ooh, does he hate them! They show clips of him doing and saying stupid things…They say he isn’t doing a good job responding to this damn pandemic where 100,000 people have died…Fake news! He’s tried bashing their ratings and calling them crazy and making some shitty comment about Mika bleeding from a facelift, but it isn’t enough– he wants to burn them, badly, his heart overflowing with hate.
Then Trump remembers something dirty and disgusting– wasn’t there a conspiracy theory from the early 2000s, something about Scarborough murdering an intern and then resigning? There was (and I’m sad to say it was liberals who originally pushed it). Scarborough had an employee (not an intern) named Lori Klausutis, 28, a constituent services coordinator who worked in Scarborough’s office. In 2001, she was found dead on the floor, near a desk.
But it isn’t, as Trump insists, a “cold case.”
AP Fact Check reports:
An autopsy revealed that Klausutis had an undiagnosed heart condition and a coroner concluded she passed out and hit her head as she fell. The coroner said the head injury caused the death, but she wasn’t struck by another person. The death occurred a month after Scarborough announced he was leaving office. Scarborough was in Washington when Klausutis died.
Source: AP Fact Check: Scarborough staffer death not a “mystery”
Like any conspiracy that grows legs, there are some straws to grasp at. Scarborough was getting a divorce and people whispered that he must have been having an affair with Klausutis (there’s no evidence or even allegations of this) and murdered her (though he was in DC at the time, not Florida, so he would have needed to hire a hit).
Then there was the medical examiner, Michael Berkland. He added fuel to the conspiracy story in 2012 when he stopped paying for a storage facility and a creepy scene at Uncle Bob’s Storage was revealed:
Lungs, hearts, tissue samples and 10 brains were found Aug. 22 in a storage container at Uncle Bob’s Storage that Berkland was renting, according to Pensacola police. There were body parts from more than 100 people found in the air conditioned unit.
They were stored in formaldehyde in plastic containers, specimen cups, trash bags and one part even in a 32-ounce Styrofoam cup from a convenience store, according to police. Some of the containers were cracked and leaking.
Source: “Man Charged After More Than 100 Body Parts Found in Storage Container,” ABC News, 2012.
Yikes! But that doesn’t mean that Berkland’s autopsy report was untrue. The investigation found no reason to dispute it.
Trump can’t pass up an opportunity to smear an enemy, as he has many times before (I write about this in a chapter of my upcoming book American Madness) so he takes this half baked theory and shoots it out via Twitter. A recent article in The Atlantic summed it up well:
When someone holds him accountable—when someone calls him out for his incompetence and ethical wrongdoing—conspiracy theories often become his weapon of choice. At such moments, conspiracy theories are fine, but conspiracy theories with the added element of cruelty are even better.
–Peter Wehner, “The Malignant Cruelty of Donald Trump,” The Atlantic
This is what the real “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is. He tweeted about the conspiracy six different days this month (so far):
May 4:“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
May 12: When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!
May 23: A blow to her head? Body found under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in Florida…and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!
May 24: A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough. So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that? An affair? What about the so-called investigator? Read story!
May 26: The opening of a Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough was not a Donald Trump original thought, this has been going on for years, long before I joined the chorus. In 2016 when Joe & his wacky future ex-wife, Mika, would endlessly interview me, I would always be thinking…
…about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?May 27: Psycho Joe Scarborough is rattled, not only by his bad ratings but all of the things and facts that are coming out on the internet about opening a Cold Case. He knows what is happening!
This is all especially cruel because Lori Klausutis was a real person, with a family. Her husband, Timothy Klausutis, wrote a heartbreaking letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It reads, in part:
I have mourned my wife every day since her passing. I have tried to honor her memory and our marriage. As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life. There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.
You can read the entire letter here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/business/letter-to-twitter-ceo.html
Twitter had a generic response, but they did for the first time flag two of Trump’s tweets (untrue statements about voter fraud). Trump, of course, had a melt down about this and today is signing an executive order against social media companies.
Meanwhile, during all this, thousands more people have died from COVID-19. This is why having a Conspiracy Theorist-in-Chief is dangerous: he will ignore everything else to bring you down. If you criticize him, he will label you an “enemy of the people” and spread any lie he can find to try to smear you. These are dark times.
SEE ALSO: My first column of the year, which was about the Kevin Spacey murder conspiracy; also my column from a couple weeks ago about candidates playing the Trump conspiracy playbook to run for office.
Project COUCHSURF: Last week I wrote about my new hobby of spending a couple hours a week in the CIA Virtual Reading Room. This week I read some interesting files on a wave of UFO sightings in Europe and Africa in 1952 (same year as a well known UFO sighting in Washington DC). They were in the CIA’s UFOS: Fact or Fiction? collection.
#TrumpConspiracyCounter: As you can see from this column, May has been a thick month of Trump spreading conspiracy. I’m working on updating the #TrumpConspiracyCounter for this month and will have a report out next week. Needless to say, the number has seen a huge jump.
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: Bookshop.org: CLICK HERE Amazon:CLICK HERE
It’s on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52486773-american-madness
“Tea Krulos has forged a fascinating collection of work by immersing himself in various sub-cultures that exist on the fringes of society.” —Cult of Weird
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness by Tea Krulos from Feral House on Vimeo.
Tea’s Weird Week: Trump Inspired QAnon Followers, Proud Boys, Gun Nuts, Racists, all Have 2020 Campaigns
THE WORST PEOPLE RUNNING IN 2020, RANKED
I’m taking a break from examining COVID-19 conspiracy theories, which are proliferating stronger than ever with the circulation of a documentary titled Plandemic this week. I want to talk about something approaching on the horizon– the 2020 elections. In addition to deciding whether Trump will be in office another 4 years, there are a number of campaigns that are disturbing. Racists, “men’s rights” activists, hardcore conspiracy believers, and uh…people raffling off AR-15s are all throwing their hat into the ring year. The chance, no matter how thin, that any of these people could be elected into public office is sad and frightening. Personally, it’s inspired me to never miss a local election, no matter how mundane. Here then is a countdown of 8 groups or individuals running for office.
8.) QAnon, conspiracy cult with candidates in 17 states
First, let’s check in on the story of QAnon followers running for office. QAnon is a conspiracy cult that believes there is a satanic-pedophile-Deep State ring of Trump enemies– Democrats, intelligence agencies, “Lamestream media,” etc. and that Trump has a plan called “The Storm” that will round them all up and arrest them.
QAnon has been in the news a lot lately for violent, frightening activity. A mother arming herself and kidnapping her children (she didn’t have custody) and a woman who drove to New York with a dozen knives, ranting about how she was going to kill Joe Biden, are just a couple of the most recent ones. The recent failed coup attempt in Venezuela strangely included a mercenary who was into QAnon. These are strange times.
On February 13, I wrote a column titled “There Are Two Dozen Members of QAnon Running for Congress” about the disturbing news that QAnon followers were running for office across the country.
Bad news: the number of QAnon campaigns jumped from 24 to 39. More bad news: QAnon has created their own super PAC to support these candidates, called “Disarm the Deep State.” Kinda good news: After some of the recent elections, 15 of the candidates have dropped out or lost primaries. That means 24 still remain, including some who have advanced to be on ballots in California (7 out, 3 still in) and Texas (1 out of 5 still in).
You can find a regularly updated list of all QAnon candidates by Media Matters for America here: “Here are the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2020.”
DeAnna Lorraine lost in the California primary but is still retweeted regularly by Trump.
7.) Paul Broun, Gun Nut, Georgia’s 9th District [UPDATE: lost in June 9 primary]
Sign up for e-mail updates, possibly WIN a free AR-15! (must be at least 17 to enter)! ‘Merica! Trying to take advantage of pandemic fears, Paul Broun, running for Congress in Georgia’s 9th district, released a cartoonishly bad fearmongering campaign ad. As New York magazine reports:
That’s right: Dr. Broun’s campaign is giving away an assault rifle (a.k.a. a “Liberty Machine”) to a lucky correspondent eager to repulse “looting hordes from Atlanta” (e.g., black people) or “tyrannical government from Washington” (an epithet that worked better when that Kenyan Muslim was president).
Bonus point: he also believes evolution theories he was taught are “lies straight from hell.” Here is Broun’s “Liberty machine giveaway” ad:
6.) Arthur Jones, Literal Nazi, Illinois’ 3rd District (LOST IN PRIMARY)
Art Jones, I’m sad to say, is a product of my home state of Wisconsin (Beloit). He’s a former American Nazi Party leader, holocaust denier, and perennial attention seeker that has run for office many times since 1976, campaigning as candidate for mayor of Milwaukee, mayor of Chicago, Chicago City Council, and Congress. Jones was a fan of Trump and voted for him in 2016, though he later said he regretted it as Trump “surrounded himself with hordes of Jews.” He was one of several white supremacists who ran for office in 2018 and ran unopposed in the Republican Party in Illinois’ 3rd congressional district. He lost to his Democrat rival, but got almost 58,000 votes.
Embarrassed Republicans put in an effort to squash his candidacy with a “Say No to the Nazi” campaign this year and he came in last in the March 17 primary. Even though he lost, I wanted to mention his campaign to point out that he still managed to get 1,637 votes– that means there are either 1,637 people in Illinois’ 3rd District who have no idea who they are voting for OR are just totally cool with a Nazi representing them.
Arthur Jones, Nazi, at a 2016 rally. Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/weaverphoto/29683766898
5.) Matt Gaetz, gasmask enthusiast, U.S. House of Represenatives, Florida’s 1st District
GQ calls him the “Trumpiest Congressman in Trump’s Washington.” Here’s a quick few things about Matt Gaetz– in 2017 he crowdsourced a house resolution that “primarily used content from /r/The_Donald, ‘a pro-Trump subreddit notorious for both its embrace of conspiracy theories and its gleeful offensiveness.'” In 2018 he invited an Alt-Right holocaust denier to Trump’s State of the Union address. In 2019, he tried to intimidate a witness, Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen. His most recent controversy was wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House as an apparent mockery to “fake news” about COVID-19. Not long after he was placed under quarantine when it was determined he had been in contact with a COVID-positive attendee of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
4.) “Sheriff Joe” Arpaio, Concentration Camp creator, Maricopa County Sheriff
Joe Arpaio’s legacy will be of racially profiling to fill up his “Tent City,” an outdoor detention facility he proudly compared to a “concentration camp,” where immigrants are kept in a furnace-like tent that “could reach up to 141 degrees,” according to the ACLU. Women prisoners were “denied basic sanitary items,” and prisoners were forced into solitary confinement and chain gang work. He’s had dozens of lawsuits related to abuse of power over the years. He lost re-election in 2016. His racial profiling led him to be convicted of criminal contempt of court in 2017, but Trump, a big fan (Sheriff Joe was a huge supporter of the racist Birther conspiracy theory and Trump’s border wall) pardoned him. This year Sheriff Joe is trying to get his old job back. The Phoenix New-Times reports he has so far outraised all other candidates, most of it from out-of-state donors.
“I’m in this to win,” Arpaio saus, according to Phoenix New-Times. “I’m not taking any prisoners. My posse that I started years and years ago is coming back. A lot of things are coming back.”
Joe Arpaio (right) with Ted Nugent.
3.) Enrique Tarrio, Proud Boys chairman, Florida’s 27th District and Nick Ochs, leader of Hawaii Proud Boys, Hawaii’s State Rep for District 22 (Honolulu).
The Proud Boys are an Alt-Right group that are racist, homophobic, sexist, just all around pro-toxic masculinity. Just take a look at the group’s initiation process. From Wikipedia:
The first stage is a loyalty oath, on the order of “I’m a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world”; the second is getting punched until the person recites pop culture trivia, such as the names of five breakfast cereals; the third is getting a tattoo and agreeing to not masturbate; and the fourth is getting into a major fight “for the cause.”
The group has a history of showing up to cause violence at protests, and were present as part of the Alt-Right coalition at Charlottesville. Most recently, they’ve been using the anti-lockdown protests as rallying points.
Enrique Tarrio is the chairman of the Proud Boys and is running for Congress is Florida’s 27th District (Miami area). A second Proud Boy, Nick Ochs, who leads the Proud Boys chapter in Hawaii, is running for State Representative in District 22 (Honolulu).
Enrique Tarrio, front and center, leading a Proud Boys march in Portland, OR. Photo via tarrio2020.com
2.) Laura Loomer, “social media martyr turned Trumptastic tribute*”, Florida’s 21st Congressional District
Laura Loomer is a “political stuntwoman” who got her start working with Project Veritas, and specializes in crashing events to grab attention for herself. Her first famous stunt was disrupting a Shakespeare in the Park performance of Julius Caesar in 2017. The play featured a Caesar that looked like Donald Trump and Loomer got onstage and started shouting about political violence.
She grabbed the mic at a women’s march in 2019 and told the marchers that they were “Nazis,” and filmed herself and others dressed in sombreros and fake mustaches trespassing onto Gov. Newson’s property as some kind of statement on immigration, among many other similar stunts as well as ambush “journalism” confronting targets in public. She calls this “Loomering” someone. She’s supported by InfoWars and has promoted “false flag” theories about mass shootings, suggesting they were orchestrated to produce outrage to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Racist comments led Loomer to be banned on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Medium, Lyft, Uber, and UberEats. The latter ride service bans came from Islamophobic comments about cab drivers. After she was banned from Twitter, she handcuffed herself to the social media giant’s front door.
One reason Loomer ranked so high on this list is that her campaign is picking up steam– she’s already raised over $600,000, more than her eight Republican primary candidates combined, making it likely she’ll be taking on the Democrat incumbent of the district she’s running in. An endorsement of her was retweeted by Trump. Speaking of…
*”Laura Loomer is the Congresswoman Donald Trump Deserves,” The Bulwark
Photograph by Evy Mages/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/05/15/dc-businesses-its-perfectly-legal-to-refuse-to-host-an-alt-right-pool-party/
1.) Donald J. Trump, unhinged conspiracy promoter, President of the United States
Let’s not forget who made all this possible. Trump’s constant entertainment of conspiracy ideas paved the way for most of the people on this list. He retweets QAnon believers and an array of other conspiracy pushers, shares disinformation from sites like Breitbart News, and stokes the fires of racism, hate, and paranoia. Anything that damages his massive ego is attacked as “fake news,” with journalists labelled as “the enemy of the people.” As we’ve seen, he is exactly the type of person you don’t want in the face of a pandemic as COVID conspiracy belief has reached dangerous levels. Don’t let the dystopia continue– vote Trump out and shut down his army of delusional, hate-filled, backward thinking proteges.
Rather than admitting he was wrong about a hurricane trajectory, Trump shows a map modified with a Sharpie. Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock
A couple observations:
-All of the candidates on this list are/were running as Republicans.
-What in the fuck is going on in Florida, especially Districts 21 and 22? Between the two there are 5 QAnon candidates and Laura Loomer. The districts include Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, and most relevant– Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, so perhaps the proximity to Trump?
-Good luck, human race. And don’t forget to vote. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Check your local elections and take a look at who is running– you might be unpleasantly surprised.
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
It’s on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52486773-american-madness
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“Having just returned from the grocery store during an official pandemic, I’m reminded to highly recommend Apocalypse Any Day Now, from Tea Krulos, who went way down the doomsday prepper rabbit hole. Fun and unfortunately highly relevant. Do it.” — Brent Gohde, Cedar Block/ Science Strikes Back
#TrumpConspiracyCounter: 236
Trump’s tweet binges drift between trying to seem “presidential”– a stream of retweets from the CDC or endorsements of fellow Republicans, but he can rarely make it a couple of days without an off the rails blast about enemies not being happy about the number of ventilators being produced or the “lamestream media” and their “Noble Prizes.” In one of his most famous moments this month, he talked about combating coronavirus by UV lights or by injecting disinfectants (seems he might have picked this up from a “church” called Genesis II as a miracle cure.) Here’s the full quote:
TRUMP: So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful, light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it — and then I said suppose you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting.
Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside? Or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors but it sounds interesting to me, so we’ll see but the whole concept of the light. The way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful.
It’s been an intense month for conspiracy theory and Trump has been doing what he does best– trucking along with it.
202.) April 17: As quarantine protests (filled with conspiracy theorists, 2nd Amendment activists, and anti-vaxxers) begin to happen in cities across the country, Trump tweets out “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
203- 214.) April 17: 11 retweets from Charlie Kirk, author of The MAGA Doctrine.
215.) April 18: Retweets an endorsement of Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist running for Congress in Florida. A future Tea’s Weird Week column will be talking about the campaigns of her and other conspiracy theorists.
216-222.) April 20: 7 retweets of Gregg Jarrett, author of The Russia Hoax and Witch Hunt.
223-224.) April 20: 2 retweets by Dawn Michael, a sex therapist and QAnon supporter.
225.) April 26: Retweets John Cardillo. I haven’t looked into who he is yet, but I think he tweet counts: “Three failed coup attempts: 1 – Russia Collusion hoax during campaign 2 – Mueller’s sham 3 – Illegitimate impeachment. Do you really think these lunatics wouldn’t inflate the mortality rates by underreporting the infection rates in an attempt to steal the election?”
226-227.) April 26: Bongino! Two retweets from InfoWars turned FOX talking head Dan Bongino.
228-230.) April 26-28: Three more from Gregg Jarrett.
231.) April 26: Retweets someone calling themselves “Joe Friday” that doesn’t seen to have “just the facts” with references in their twitter bio referencing “Spygate” and “Deepstate actors.”
232.) April 27: Trump cuts funds for EcoHealth Alliance after conspiracy theories circulates. Source:
“Trump cut funding for a group researching bat-to-humanvirus transmissions after unfounded conspiracy theories linked it to the Wuhan lab, report says,” Business Insider
234.) April 28: Retweets Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.
235.) April 28: Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway and Herneitha Rochelle Richardson, aka Diamond & Silk, are two Trump loving sisters who developed a following during the 2016 campaign and quickly became Trump favorites, appearing at campaign rallies and White House appearances. They gained their own air time on FOX Nation, but apparently the platform has severed ties with the duo after their promotion of conspiracy. You know it’s got to be bad if FOX can’t hang with it, and it is. Daily Beast reports:
Among their many wild remarks about the virus, Diamond & Silk at different times suggested that COVID-19 was “engineered” possibly with “a little deep-state action;” that Bill Gates was pushing a vaccine as a means of population control; that 5G technology was being used to deliberately infect people; and that the death toll of the pandemic was being inflated.
Trump, of course, rushed to their defense. After the duo tweeted they were the victim of “haters,” Trump retweeted them and wrote “But I love Diamond & Silk, and so do millions of people!” Maybe they can find a job at InfoWars instead.
“‘I Love Diamond & Silk’: Trump backs Fox News personalities who spread coronavirus conspiracies,” Politico
236.) (backdate April 15): Trump appoints conspiracy theorist Michael Caputo to a top position in the Department of Health and Human Services. Caputo is an ally of Roger Stone, and has spread conspiracies about Ukraine, the Bidens, and George Soros. Before being hired he deleted thousands of tweets.
Source: “The US health department’s new communications chief is a Trump loyalist and Roger Stone associate who spread conspiracies about Ukraine and Hunter Biden,” Business Insider
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
It’s on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52486773-american-madness
Follow me on:
Facebook//Twitter//Instagram//YouTube
“Having just returned from the grocery store during an official pandemic, I’m reminded to highly recommend Apocalypse Any Day Now, from Tea Krulos, who went way down the doomsday prepper rabbit hole. Fun and unfortunately highly relevant. Do it.” — Brent Gohde, Cedar Block/ Science Strikes Back
#TrumpConspiracyCounter hits 200: April 15
I don’t know how I fell behind on this seeing I’m stuck in home, but it’s been a busy, crazy month for conspiracy in general (see my last several “Tea’s Weird Week” columns). I’m going to catch the counter up through April 15 today and will finish catching up a week from today. Wheeew. Well, in the middle of a pandemic, Trump is still retweeting members of QAnon and far right outlets. Here we go!
178.-186.) April 3: Retweets from John Solomon and his site justthenews.com. If you think it’s unlikely Trump follows a site that actually reports “just the news,” you’re right. Solomon helped spread Ukranian conspiracy theories: https://www.mediaite.com/news/john-solomon-who-helped-spread-conspiracy-theories-about-ukraine-launching-a-site-devoted-to-facts/
187.) April 3: Retweets Brandon Straka, a former liberal who leads a campaign called #WalkAway, who once warmed up a Trump rally and ended his speech with QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all.”
188-191.) April 4: I enjoy Joe Rogan as much as the next person, he’s an entertaining interviewer. He’s also promoted conspiracy. Trump flouted Rogan’s recent comment that he’d rather vote for Trump than Biden, retweeting the endorsement 4 times via sources like One America News and The Daily Wire.
192.) April 5: One point here for retweeting gas mask fetishist Matt Gaetz’s retweet of a Breitbart article. Breitbart is a conspiracy site.
193-195.) April 10: Trump retweets three random QAnon supporters in a row: Zeus (American flag, 3 stars) No Collusion, No Obstruction, who shared a Breitbart article and included the hastags #QAnon #QAnon2018 #QAnon2020 #DemocratsHateAmerica right in the post! He also retweeted Red Lily, who had #wwg1wga in her bio and TrumpsSedonaGirl who has several QAnon retweets.
196-197.) April 10: Retweets from fequent #TrumpConspiracyCounter guest Gregg Jarrett, author of Witch Hunt and The Russia Hoax.
198.) April 10: Retweet from frequent #TrumpConspiracyCounter guest Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.
199.)April 11: I’m counting this Trump tweet. Saying anonymous sources don’t exist is conspiracy.
When the Failing New York Times or Amazon Washington Post writes a story saying “unnamed sources said”, or any such phrase where a person’s name is not used, don’t believe them. Most of these unnamed sources don’t exist. They are made up to defame & disparage. They have no “source”..Does anyone ever notice how few quotes from an actual person are given nowadays by the Lamestream Media. Very seldom. The unnamed or anonymous sources are almost always FAKE NEWS.
200.) April 11: Another one from John Solomon of justthenews.com.
201.) April 12, Easter: Retweet of DeAnna Lorraine, who was one of the QAnon candidates running for Congress (she suspended her campaign after getting less than 2% of the primary vote) that included a #FireFauci hashtag. Read my Tea’s Weird Week column from last week for more: “Dr. Fauci vs Trump’s Q Army.”
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
It’s on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52486773-american-madness
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“Having just returned from the grocery store during an official pandemic, I’m reminded to highly recommend Apocalypse Any Day Now, from Tea Krulos, who went way down the doomsday prepper rabbit hole. Fun and unfortunately highly relevant. Do it.” — Brent Gohde, Cedar Block/ Science Strikes Back
#TrumpConspiracyCounter: April 1
Unfortunately, none of the contents of today’s #TrumpConspiracyCounter are an April Fool’s Day joke. In the time of a deadly pandemic, ask yourself– do you want someone who believes, promotes, and incites conspiracy theories and gross misinformation as your leader? Trump brags that his daily coronavirus press conferences are a “ratings hit.” But is his bloviating against the “lamestream media” often dumps practical information for a “hunch” or “theory.”
Meanwhile, conspiracy continues to spread like a brush fire. Conspiracy theorists at first speculated coronavirus was a bioweapon developed by Bill Gates before settling into the idea that the virus is a hoax. The latest theory is that Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force is a Deep State “Democrat plant” being used to discredit Trump. They’ve nicknamed him “Dr.#FearPorn.”
Source: “Right Wing Influencers Are Convinced Dr. Anthony Fauci is Working WIth Hillary Clinton to Undermine Trump,” Buzzfeed News
To be honest, I’ve not been staying on top of the conspiracy counter with everything else going on. But here’s some noteworthy recent hits:
175. March 29: At a press conference, Trump floats his theory that face masks are being sold on a black market and that’s why a huge jump in demand has happened rather than the obvious cause of a rapidly escalating pandemic:
“How do you go from 10-to-20-to-300,000…even though this is different. Something’s going on…Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door?” And at the same press conference: “I don’t think it’s hoarding, I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding, but check it out. Check it out. I don’t know, I don’t know. I think that’s for other people to figure out.”
Source: “Trump Comments About Hospital Mask Thefts Spark Backlash From Doctors,” Newsweek
176. March 31: Bongino! Trump retweets conspiracy monger Dan Bongino.
177. March 31: Retweets Charlie Kirk of Turning Point America.
That’s all I got for this report. #TrumpConspiracyCounter will return in two weeks.
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
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“Having just returned from the grocery store during an official pandemic, I’m reminded to highly recommend Apocalypse Any Day Now, from Tea Krulos, who went way down the doomsday prepper rabbit hole. Fun and unfortunately highly relevant. Do it.” — Brent Gohde, Cedar Block/ Science Strikes Back
#TrumpConspiracyCounter: March 25
I’m still keeping the #TrumpConspiracyCounter rolling. I think it’s important to document. I’ve talked in counter updates before about how Trump’s day-to-day language is steeped in conspiracy theory– “fake news,” “witch hunt,” and “Deep State” being common ones (too common for tallying). The latest– Trump’s move to call coronavirus/ COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” even in a wave of racist attacks against Asians.
After dismissing the virus as being insignificant and pandemic fears as a “hoax,” Trump has tried to turn his act around to be more presidential. But a leopard has trouble changing his spots. Trump can’t resist his manic tweetstorms, blasting out an echo chamber of voices that reinforce him and these often include the far-right Christian conservatives, Alt-Right, and of course, conspiracy mongers. In the midst of this terrible time, when people are afraid of an emergency pandemic and their livelyhood, it’s truly disturbing to know that the President is promoting these conspiracists on almost a daily basis.
138.) March 12: Tweet: “Many Republican Senators want me to Veto the FISA Bill until we find out what led to, and happened with, the illegal attempted “coup” of the duly elected President of the United States, and others!”
139-147.) March 15-16: Tweetstorm! Clicks for retweeting Tom Fitton/Judicial Watch (2) former InfoWars and FOX regular Dan Bongino (1) and Mark Levin of Glenn Back’s network TheBlaze (6).
148.) March 20: During a contentious press conference talking about coronavirus, Trump refers to: “the State Department or as they like to call them the Deep State Department.” We include each mention (that we catch) of the “Deep State” as it’s conspiracy theory language and a stupid and reckless way to address his perceived enemies.
149-174.) March 22-25: TWEET TRAIN! Trump binges long strings of tweets including: Tom Fitton (2) sex therapist and QAnon believer Dawn Michael (1) Lori Hendry (1) Donnie Trump Jr.’s link to Breitbart (1) Tomi Lahren (1) thebradfordfile(4) Breitbart News (7) Greg Jarrett (author of The Russian Hoax and The Witch Hunt) (7) Tom Fitton retweeted by James Woods retweeted by Trump (1) Charlie Kirk (1)
The #TrumpConspiracyCounter is on twitter: https://twitter.com/TrumpConspirac3
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
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“Having just returned from the grocery store during an official pandemic, I’m reminded to highly recommend Apocalypse Any Day Now, from Tea Krulos, who went way down the doomsday prepper rabbit hole. Fun and unfortunately highly relevant. Do it.” — Brent Gohde, Cedar Block/ Science Strikes Back
#TrumpConspiracyCounter: March 11
Coronavirus is the hot topic of the day and source of conspiracy theory spiraling out of control. Trump’s number one media advocate, Sean Hannity hosts a QAnon believer to tell everyone is a “Deep State” fearmongering plot. Trump tried to brush it off initially, claiming the outbreak was hype meant to damage his presidency, though as the virus has turned out to be a pandemic, he’s been trying to show he’s putting forward efforts to combat the coronavirus.
In today’s Tea’s Weird Week column (CLICK HERE) you see examples of scams and conspiracies blowing up over the last week. [For more, I recommend reading “Coronavirus is creating a Fake-News Nighmarescape,” Vanity Fair.]
120.) March 8: Hashtag #NeroTrump trends after Trump posts a bizarre meme, shown in the graphic above. It shows Trump playing a fiddle, with lettering reading “My next piece is called…nothing can stop what’s coming,” retweeting Dan Scavino, Director of Social Media at the White House. Trump commented, “Who knows what it means, but it sounds good to me!”
Um, a couple things. First, the timing, during a coronavirus pandemic and a stock market crash, immediately brought to mind Nero fiddling while Rome burnt.
“Nothing can stop what’s coming” is language frequently used by QAnon to describe their theory of “the Storm,” a day that Trump’s “Deep State” enemies– Democrats, the FBI, Fake News media, etc., will be rounded up for running a pedophile sex trafficking ring and other crimes, according to QAnon lore. This looks like Scavino and/or Trump directly appealing to the Q cult.
121-122.) March 9: Retweets of Lori Hendry, who has promoted Pizzagate and other conspiracies.
123-134.) March 9-10: Blast of retweets and endorsement of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk and his new book, The MAGA Doctrine: The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future.
135.) March 9: Retweets someone named Jose Deynes, I italicized part that warrants an entry here:
The President has a duty to protect the American people from two equally dangerous threats: 1)the coronavirus and 2)the mass hysteria that MSM wants to create with the sole purpose of politically hurting the President.
136.) Counting this tweet for “Deep State” content:
“Trump has outmastered the Deep State. He’s light years ahead of us.” MSDNC. I disagree. We have a long way to go. There are still some very bad, sick people in our government – people who do not love our Country (In fact, they hate our Country!).
137.) March 10: We’re going to count this tweet as it implies Democrats have some secret agenda to eliminate cars.
If you like automobiles, how can you vote for a Democrat who all want to get rid of cars, as quickly as possible, especially if they are powered by gasoline. Remember also, no more than one car per family. I, on the other hand, have new plants being built all over Michigan, Plus!
—
Twitter: #TrumpConspiracyCounter
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
Tea’s Weird Week: The #TrumpConspiracyCounter Zooms Past 100
When Democrats choose their candidate, they’ll have to face the storm of a massive propaganda machine– Russian troll farms, targeted disinformation campaigns, and a tidal wave of vomit spewing forth from the Alt-Right and conspiracy theorists filled with lies, fear-mongering, and every dirty trick in the book. And nobody does this better than Donald Trump himself.
With my book American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness out in August, I thought that I would do a project this year where I try to catalog all of the times Trump promotes conspiracy theory. What I’ve seen in just two months is frightening, but not surprising.
To recap some #TrumpConspiracyCounter rules: In addition to his direct promotion of a conspiracy, I tally every time Trump retweets or endorses a known conspiracy theorist or outlet, even if he is just retweeting them saying “have a nice day” or something. Why? Because Trump is the President of the United States. He has a huge platform of 72 million plus followers on Twitter (though many are bots) and his tweets get retweeted tens and hundreds of thousands of times. That’s introducing these people and their ideas to a huge platform.
I try to keep track of things best I can, but you could have a whole team devoted to this and I’m just one guy. So think of the #TrumpConspiracyCounter as a highlight reel to what I can catch, which is still enough to keep the counter clicking away rapidly. Just over two months into the year and we’re already at 119.
Biggest stories so far: Some of the noteworthy stories from the last couple months include Trump awarding vile gasbag and conspiracy monger Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union address. He also heavily defended his former advisor, 7-time felon, self-described “dirty trickster,” Batman villain, and conspiracist Roger Stone. Over the last week Trump (along with Limbaugh, FOX News, and other outlets) have pushed the narrative that the threat of the coronavirus is a Democrat/ Fake News “hoax” to damage Trump’s reputation. He even suggested in an interview with Sean Hannity that coronavirus was equitable to common influenza and people would be fine going to work with it and in true Trump fashion said his info was based on a “hunch.” (Tea’s Weird Week health tip: don’t go to work if you have the coronavirus.)
The coronavirus conspiracies have spread faster than the virus itself. Anti-vaxxers, QAnon believers, and others are passing around theories that the virus was cooked up by mad scientist Bill Gates and that the government will enforce a mandatory vaccine as part of a mass brainwashing program.
Most under the radar story: A couple weeks ago, I wrote a column about how two dozen people in the 2020 race for Congress are QAnon supporters. Trump has retweeted DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, a QAnon believer running against Nancy Pelosi, several times. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more press on this. My column is here: “There Are Two Dozen Members of QAnon Running for Congress.”
Most frequent: In our fist #TrumpConspiracyCounter entry, we talked about conspiracy in Trump’s daily language as he uses terms like “witch hunt,” “hoax,” and “fake news” (and I admitted I couldn’t tally it all due to the frequency he uses it). He’s also very much still obsessed with “Spygate,” the unfounded theory that Obama (with help from the FBI) wiretapped Trump Tower in 2016. He’s brought it up frequently this year, including at the Milwaukee Trump rally I attended and in January, he tweeted out the image below.
The most frequent theorists he’s retweeted so far include Dan Bongino, an InfoWars favorite and author of a book on Spygate and Tom Fitton, who runs a “watchdog group” called Judicial Watch which has spread conspiracies about voter fraud, climate change, and the “Deep State.”
Conspiracy outlets Trump has retweeted: Trump has retweeted these sources, which frequently pump out conspiracy: The Blaze (a media outlet run by Glenn Beck), Breitbart News, The Epoch Times (run by the Falun Gong, they’ve promoted QAnon and have spent over $9 million on Trump ads and created hundreds of fake accounts to promote them), and Big League Politics (started by a former Breitbart writer who says Alex Jones was “his Walter Cronkite.”) among others. Here’s the counter tallies from Feb. 20-March3.
97-100.) Feb. 20: Quadruple Hit! “… it appears that Trump combined claims of Democratic voter fraud, unfair media bias, intelligence-community misconduct, and the misreporting of his crowd sizes into one big mess of paranoia.” We’re counting that as 4.
Source: “Trump Enters Full Conspiracist Mode at Colorado Rally,” New York magazine
101.) Feb. 20: At the same Colorado rally, Trump brought up a frequent enemy: wind turbines. In the past Trump has bizarrely claimed that the sound of wind turbines causes cancer, that they are a mass bird killer (they do kill birds, but not nearly as much as windows, cats, and electric lines do) and, despite claiming “I know windmills very much,” says that people won’t be able to watch their TVs on a calm day, due to lack of power.
Here’s a line from his Colorado rally: “Blow wind please; please keep the birds away from those windmills, please.”
If you think it’s a little…I dunno…out of character for Trump to have an animal rights activism streak for the birds, you’re right. Trump does not give a flying fuck about golden eagles. In actuality, Trump began his quixotic quest after windfarms were proposed in proximity to his golf course in Scotland. Trump became furious at the idea of “ugly” wind turbines ruining the view of his golf course, saying it was an act of “public vandalism.” His crusade against these “eyesores” has been blowing in the wind ever since. Much like his theory that energy-efficient light bulbs make your skin look orange, this is a Trump conspiracy born of his own vanity.
Sources: “Trump Condemns California Wind Farm as Decrepit Eagle Killer,” Forbes.
“Trump resumes fight against windfarm near Scottish golf course,” The Guardian.
102) Feb. 21: Retweets Charlie Kirk (Turning Point USA).
103-104.) Feb. 24: two retweets from Lori Hendry about the plight of Roger Stone. Has promoted Pizzagate and a number of other anti-Democrat conspiracies/ falsehoods, including one that Chuck Schumer raped his 16-year-old daughter’s friend, who comitted suicide. That’s false. Here Trump was retweeting Hendry’s tweets about Roger Stone.
105-107.) Feb. 25: More Retweets and a tweet claiming Roger Stone got an unfair trial.
108.) Feb. 26: Retweets Eric Bolling of The Blaze conspiracy site.
109.) Feb. 26: Retweets Tom Fitton (Judicial Watch).
110-112.) Feb.26: 3 retweets from Mark Levin (The Blaze), 2 on Roger Stone.
113.) Feb.26: Retweets DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, one of the two dozen QAnon believers running for Congress this year.
114.) Feb.27: Trump met for 45 minutes with the cast of a “low budget conservative play about the Deep State” titled FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers by playwright Phelim McAleer.
Source: “Trump Spends 45 Minutes With ‘Deep State’ Play Actors Amid Coronavirus Mayhem,” Daily Beast.
115.) Feb. 28: Trump joins in with Rush Limbaugh, FOX, and others in saying that concerns about the coronavirus are a “hoax” to make him look bad. Source: “Trump calls coronavirus Democrats’ ‘new hoax,’” NBC News.
116.) Feb.29: We’re giving one point for Trump attending the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It’s a den of Alt-Right characters and conspiracy. Here’s an article about last year’s conference: “The Conspiracy Theory President Finds His Comfort Zone at CPAC,” Washington Monthly. This year, coronavirus conspiracies were a popular topic.
Interesting side note: Owen Shroyer of InfoWars was kicked out of CPAC this year after ambushing pundit Seb Gorka at the conference. That led Alex Jones to do the rational thing– he called CPAC Seb Gorka “a gay whale” and “snakeoil salesman” and challenged him to a bare-knuckle boxing match.
117-118.) March 1 & 3: Tweets endorsement of Charlie Kirk‘s (Turning Point USA) new book The MAGA Doctrine.
119.) March 3: Retweets Dana Loesch, a Blaze, Breitbart, and former NRA-TV personality.
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
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Tea’s Weird Week: There are Two Dozen Members of QAnon Running for Congress
“That being said, I do believe there is a group in Brussels, Belgium, that do eat aborted babies.”– Matthew Lusk, QAnon member and Florida Congressional candidate
L-R: Twitter page of Joanne Wright, California’s 34th district, Danielle Stella (w/ a Q necklace), Minnesota’s 5th district, QAnon supporter at a Trump rally, campaign website (misspelling “where”) of Christine Scott, Florida’s 22nd district.
I wish I were joking with this week’s column title, but I’m not. Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group that monitors right-wing media, has identified 24 candidates (though two have already dropped out) who have launched 2020 campaigns that are promoters of the QAnon theory. Yikes.
QAnon is a cult-like conspiracy following that believes in a Trump Messiah. I wrote about them in a chapter of my upcoming book American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (Aug.25, Feral House) in a chapter titled, simply enough, “Q.”
QAnon beliefs go in a number of crazy directions, but the heart of the belief says that Democrats are running a secret satanic pedophile ring (the Pizzagate theory ties into this) and are practicing cannibalism. They believe Trump is silently plotting a day of reckoning, referred to as “The Storm” when all of these liberal villains– “Crooked Hillary,” Obama, “Nervous Nancy,” members of the Fake News media, and everyone else part of the “Deep State” will be rounded up, given military tribunals and sent to rot in Guantanamo Bay. Cryptic messages about this “Great Awakening” are sent to the initiated by a figure known as “Q.” There is much speculation on who Q is. Some say it is John Kennedy Jr., who faked his death and is secretly helping Trump out, or that it is Trump himself or someone in his inner circle. Spoilers: Q is probably an Internet troll.
There are many times QAnon has pointed to Trump supposedly acknowledging them– most recently I was amused to see that the Associated Press talked to QAnon members at the Milwaukee Trump rally that I attended and said they “believed the president had traced the shape of the letter ‘Q’ as a covert signal to followers of QAnon.” [“‘QAnon’ conspiracy theory creeps into mainstream politics,”Associated Press.]
You can identify QAnon believers by the lingo they use, often signaled as hashtags. “Where we go one, we go all” (abbreviated to wwg1wga) is the QAnon phrase of solidarity. “The Storm,” and “The Great Awakening,” refer to the QAnon revolution and “trust the plan” is another common signature. Q leaves “drops” and “breadcrumbs” as clues.
Some analysis of the QAnon candidates: Twelve states have QAnon candidates. California and Florida are tied with the most QAnon Congress hopefuls at five each. California has two vying for the 36th district (a huge mass of land east of LA in the Joshua Tree State Park), while in Florida, two are also competing for the 22nd district (which includes Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton). Texas follows with three (though one dropped out) and Minnesota with two. The candidates are split almost 50/50 between men and women. All but one (a Libertarian) are running as Republicans.
The most infamous of these contests include Matthew Lusk, running in Florida’s 5th district (which includes Tallahassee, Jacksonville) unopposed, meaning he’ll be running in the general election against Democrat Rep. Al Lawson. Lusk’s website includes a page devoted to Q, which only has three words of information on it:
Danielle Stella of Minnesota is running against Ilhan Omar, a favorite liberal villain. Stella says Omar hired a hitman to kill a woman and was banned from Twitter after tweeting that Omar should be hung for treason. She’s been a guest on InfoWars, and on a QAnon YouTube channel called “Patriot’s Soapbox.” She apparently also has a problem with shoplifting “cat merchandise.”
Another QAnon contender (and InfoWars guest) is DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, running against top Trump enemy Nancy Pelosi in California. As noted in the #TrumpConspiracyCounter, Trump has retweeted Tesoriero.
Here’s the list of known QAnon members running for office in 2020:
- Daniel Wood, Arizona’s 3rd District
- Dan Belcher, Oklahoma’s 5th District
- Matthew Lusk, Florida’s 5th District
- Michael Blumeling Jr., Florida’s 21st District
- Jeremy Brown, Florida’s 14th District
- Christine Scott, Florida’s 22nd District
- Darlene Swaffer, Florida’s 22nd District
- DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero, California’s 12th District
- Erin Cruz, California’s 36th District
- Ignacio Cruz, California’s 39th District
- Rhonda Furin, California’s 45th District
- Patrice Kimbler, California’s 36th District
- Joanne Wright, California’s 34th District
- Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s 14th District
- Steve Von Loor, North Carolina’s 4th District
- Rich Helms, Texas’s 33rd District
- Michael Moates, Texas’s 26th District (dropped out after sending creepy messages to teens)
- Joe Walz, Texas’s 22nd District
- Nichole Williams, Tennessee’s 1st District
- Gary Heyer, Minnesota’s 3rd District
- Danielle Stella, Minnesota’s 5th District
- Bobby Jeffries, Pennyslvania’s 10th District (has reportedly dropped out)
- Jo Rae Perkins, Oregon’s 4th District
- Lauren Witzke, Delaware, candidate for U.S. Senate
Source: “Here are the QAnon Supporters Running for Congress,” Alex Kaplan, Media Matters for America.
This is crazy, damn damn damn crazy. It shows how important local elections can be. Please look into your local elections and VOTE. Don’t let these candidates and their imaginary friend Q get into office.
My upcoming book American Madness features a journey through conspiracy culture, including QAnon. It’s out August 25, 2020 from Feral House. To pre-order: CLICK HERE
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“Journalist Tea Krulos has made a curious and enlightening career out of examining groups of people with odd beliefs.” — Skeptical Inquirer
As noted in today’s column, Trump has already gotten a number of hits on the #TrumpConspiracyCounter by retweeting followers of QAnon, including some this week. Here’s the tallies for Feb.6-12.
64.) Feb.6: Trump, furious at Romney for voting for one of the articles of impeachment, posts a video that promotes Mitt Romney as being a “secret Democrat asset.”
65.-71.) Feb.6-7: Bongino! Dan Bongino has racked up the most #TrumpConspiracyCounter points so far this year. He’s a former InfoWars regular, NRA-TV host, and now a FOX contributor and author of conspiracy book Spygate.
72.) Feb. 6: G’day, mate: Trump retweets Australian conspiracy theorist Miranda Devine, who has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory, as well as climate change hoaxes, including a strange one that suggests Boeing planes crashed because of pressures to make them more eco-friendly. Make your brain hurt here: “NY Post Columnist Miranda Devine Bizarrely Blames Climate Concern for Boeing Disasters,” Daily Kos.
73.) Feb.6: Trump retweets Charlie Kirk, founder of college orientated Alt-Right Turning Point USA, promotor of many conspiracies, most recently Iowa voting theories.
74-75.) Feb.9: Retweets of Big League Politics. Started by a former Breitbart News writer Patrick Howley, who has called Alex Jones “my Walter Cronkite.” Formed in 2017, the site has promoted several conspiracies including QAnon, the Clinton Body Count, and Charlottesville false flag conspiracies.
Source: “Roy Moore Consultants’ New Project: A Conspiracy-Theorizing Pro-Trump News Site,”Daily Beast.
77.) Feb.9: Trump retweets Red Pill Report, sharing a video of House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler being shouted at by a heckler. The video was made by a QAnon YouTuber called “In Pursuit of Truth.”
78.) Feb. 9: Trump goes on an ALL CAPS Tweet freakout, ranting about the Spygate conspiracy. It read, in part:
SIMPLY PUT, THE PARTY IN POWER ILLEGALLY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER THE ELECTION, IN ORDER TO CHANGE OR NULLIFY THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTION. IT CONTINUED ON WITH THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX. Terrible!
79.) Feb.10-12: These could be stretched out to several counts, as over two days Trump tweeted and spoke to the press in defense of his old campaign advisor and conspiracy theorist (and possible Batman villain) Roger Stone.
Stone has a hand in Trump becoming president, being one of the early people to suggest a White House run to him in the 1980s. In 2015, Trump tapped him to unleash the “Stone’s Rules” playbook. Stone has a long career as being a self-described “dirty trickster” as well as being a conspiracy theorist, spreading ideas like the Clinton Body Count, the Deep State, and many others. He teamed up with Alex Jones and had his own InfoWars show.
Although Trump claims “nobody really knows what he did,” the 7 felonies charged against Stone are specific– obstructing an official proceeding, witness tampering, and five counts of making false statements to Congress for his roll in trying to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks and intimidating witnesses to lie from him.
After the Department of Justice announced a 7-9 year reccomended prison term, Trump vigorously defended Stone, saying his sentence was a “miscarriage of justice” and “very unfair” and that the Stone prosecutors were “rogue prosecutors maybe? The Swamp!” Attorney General Bill Barr stepped in to say that the sentence wasn’t reasonable and would not “serve the interests of justice.” The four prosecutors who made the sentencing recommendation all withdrew from the case, with one quitting the Department of Justice completely. Many have speculated Stone will end up being pardoned by Trump, though he wouldn’t provide an answer when the press asked him.
More on Stone’s dirty trickster history: “A Brief History of Roger Stone,” The Atlantic.
80.-82.) Feb.10: Retweets of Tom Fitton/ Judicial Watch. Fitton is president of conservative activist group Judicial Watch, which has spread conspiracies about the Clinton Body Count, voter fraud, Spygate, George Soros, climate change, and others.
You can find the #TrumpConspiracyCounter on Twitter: twitter.com/TrumpConspirac3
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