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'Trump Is a Messianic Figure in the QAnon Calls' - POLITICO
Sep 23, 2022 3 mins, 14 secs

In Beirich’s eyes, Trump has made a decision to cozy up further to the QAnon movement in a simple bid to boost his political fortunes — and perhaps partly out of desperation.

“There’s pretty much nothing weirder than QAnon out there in the world, that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are Satanic worshipping pedophiles?” But, she adds, Trump knows these people make up part of his base, so he’s more than eager to rile them up?

“Trump already is the key figure for QAnon, and I think now he’s overtly assuming that role.”.

Joseph Gedeon: At a campaign rally recently, after it appeared that Trump had played a QAnon song, lots of people in the crowd held up a “1” to invoke a QAnon rallying sign?

Heidi Beirich: Well, what I found disheartening, but also incredible, is that Trump seems to be, in recent weeks, intentionally trying to abuse the QAnon movement and move it as close to him as he can get it.

I think there might be a measure of desperation in this move, that Trump is having to align himself with people who literally believe crazy ideas.

He can’t possibly not know that there were a ton of QAnon people during the storming of the Capitol on Jan.

I’ll just add, there’s a lot of people who believe in QAnon — more than we would think?

From a poll earlier this year, I think in February, it’s 1 in 5 Americans are QAnon adherents, and 1 in 4 are Republicans.

Just for context, research on the insurrectionist movement out of the University of Chicago looked at the people who were at the Capitol on Jan.

One is the “great replacement” conspiracy theory — this white supremacist idea that’s often antisemitic, that Jews are replacing white people in their homelands with people of color, immigrants, refugees — but the other thing they tend to believe is QAnon.

I’m assuming people think that QAnon has sort of died down?

Beirich: First of all, we have to recognize that Trump is a messianic figure in the QAnon calls.

A lot of people thought QAnon would fall apart because Trump lost the election, and in their world, he was not supposed to lose?

The thing about conspiracy theories is even if you promote some particular idea — think about people who say the end of the world is going to happen on a particular date, and then it doesn’t happen, sort of similar to QAnon in a way with Trump and the election — they can always just reinvent themselves.

Trump already is the key figure for QAnon and I think now he’s overtly assuming that role.

Gedeon: When we talk about the people who believe in QAnon, we have to remember that they are people, who just really believe what they believe.

And there have been people who’ve come out of the QAnon movement who say they just got completely wrapped up in this thing?

I think a lot of people found that compelling and enticing and it drew more people in to the movement than maybe other kinds of conspiracies.

I don’t know if it’s the largest conspiracy movement ever.

I don’t know how many people believe that JFK wasn’t killed in the way he was, or that we never went to the moon, but it’s millions and millions of people who have fallen into this.

Beirich: I don’t want to make the parallel too tight, but I think that we are facing the biggest threats to democracy in the United States that we ever have.

I can’t think of any time in my lifetime where there were so many people who don’t believe that election results are what they say they are.

There are people running for office right now, some of them are actually QAnon adherents.

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