Trump openly embraces, amplifies QAnon conspiracy theories

After winking at QAnon for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world events linked to it grows.

On Tuesday, using his Truth Social platform, the Republican former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.” In QAnon lore, the “storm” refers to Trump’s final victory, when supposedly he will regain power and his opponents will be tried, and potentially executed, on live television.

As Trump contemplates another run for the presidency and has become increasingly assertive in the Republican primary process during the midterm elections, his actions show that far from distancing himself from the political fringe, he is welcoming it.

He’s published dozens of recent Q-related posts, in contrast to 2020, when he claimed that while he didn’t know much about QAnon, he couldn’t disprove its conspiracy theory.

The Democrat machine and the media (but I repeat myself) have obviously decided that given the dismal fundamentals, they really don't have much of a choice other than to try to gin up some way to run against Trump (which does motivate their base of purple-haired cat ladies and soy-infused incels), with maybe a hail-mary dash of Qanon. If Trump takes the bait, it will damage a lot of the good that he's done getting crunchy MAGA Republicans through their primaries. So far, luckily, the evidence for him doing that is thin indeed.

BUT, anyone who's been involved in retail politics on the right, either as a volunteer, candidate, GOP committee member, or party delegate will recognize the Q followers, who have always been among us, but with different names.

Back in the day, at least in southern California, the local JBS filled that role. In their case, it wasn't so much that they were wrong on the merits, on the contrary they were mostly right, the CCP was (and is) evil, communism at home is insideous and needed to be fought etc. The problem was, they were impossible to work with; on the one hand many distained the grubby work of knocking on doors, recruiting candidates, making phone calls etc., and worse as time went on, there was a tendency for their more visible members to demand strict, and enthusiastic adherence to their entire program, and the slightest deviation could result in some fairly nasty name calling. Utterly unproductive.

There may well be some Q followers out in the trenches working on the school board campaigns, the city and county council races etc. But they are thin on the ground, and they aren't ranting about Q. FR is different, it's always been the canary in the coal mine, letting you know what you might encounter on those door knocks and phone calls. Ironically, I do hope that our local group of Q people are indeed out on the hustings, doing the hard work of getting good MAGA candidates elected, and squish RINOs 86'd, mainly because while they might have some, ah, idiosyncratic ideas about a variety of things, when it comes down to it, they're supporting right-populist candidates and causes that very much need to win.

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