Since 4chan in 2017 the QAnon conspiracy has been going strong,
Though the theory of a cabal of cannibal pedophiles could be wrong.
But now the facts emerging from the Epstein files
Have us starting to question our wits and wiles,
And beginning to wonder if the QAnon believers were right all along.
“People who question whether the Earth is round — a fact understood by the ancient Greeks and taught to American children in elementary school — might have been political pariahs a decade ago. Now, they’re running local Republican parties in Georgia and Minnesota and seeking public office in Alabama.”
“Some 22% of Americans believe that a ‘storm’ is coming, 18% think violence might be necessary to save the country and 16% hold that the government, media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles.” A new study finds the QAnon conspiracy movement continues to thrive and has even strengthened more than a year after Donald Trump left the White House, The Guardian reports.
— Amount QAnon darling Ron Watkins has raised for his run for Congress in Arizona. Watkins filed his first campaign finance report just before the deadline passed at midnight on Monday, revealing that in the three months to the end of December, he raised just $30,588.22 in small donations from supporters.
Ad for ‘America First Rally’ with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz
The Daily Beast: “At the height of the controversy surrounding Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and the revelations that he’s under investigation for sex trafficking, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) bet big on a nationwide joint fundraising tour with her embattled colleague. But new campaign filings show that not only did the gamble not pay off, but that the much-maligned Republicans actually spent four times as much as they raised.
“Greene, the House GOP’s top fundraiser, is now faced with a decision: She can continue to join forces with her beleaguered ally at the expense of her campaign war chest, or she can cut bait and let Gaetz fend for himself.
“Since Gaetz and Greene kicked off their joint fundraising committee with a May 7 event at The Villages in central Florida, their campaigns and joint fundraising committee have posted a combined loss of $342,000. And according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, that joint fundraising effort, ‘Put America First,’ reported only $59,345.54 in contributions.”
Left: Lahmeyer, center, with Q conspiracists disgraced Gen. Mike Flynn, left, and pillow grifter Mike Lyndell; right: Lahmeyer’s daughter in red shoes
Things have been spinning out of control since the first week in July for Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, a 29-year-old Qanon-courting candidate from Tulsa who’s running to oust Oklahoma’s apostate Republican senator, James Lankford.
After aggressively courting leading Trump/Q propagandists – he’s been photographed with disgraced Gen. Mike Flynn and pillow-grifter Mike Lyndell – Lahmeyer suddenly found himself the target of Q conspiracist madness that has put his once-promising campaign in jeopardy.
It all started when Lahmayer posted a photo of his very young daughter posing in front of a huge campaign photo of himself, proudly showing off her red shoes. What Lahmeyer (and 99.999999 percent of the world) did not know then is that, according to Q fabulism, children who wear red shoes are part of sex trafficking rings.
Since then, Lahmeyer has been on the defensive, fruitlessly attempting to reason with the same hardcore Q cultists whose votes he’d hoped to win. On July 7, he issued this meekly defiant plea for sanity, via Twitter:
The fact is that QAnon is far from gone,
And don’t let its believers put you on.
Their sly denials
And wiley smiles,
Are code that Q’s conspirators doth carry on.
QAnon supporter: “I just listened to it again and I have to agree it doesn’t really sound like him. Whoever it was was very good at imitating him though.”
— Newsweek: “With Trump contradicting QAnon theories that the vaccine is dangerous and the coronavirus is a hoax, many of its supporters came up with ways to cope with the latest cognitive dissonance, including suggesting it was not actually Trump speaking to Fox.”
Image: Yahoo.com
Vox has an interesting piece on the future of QAnon as described by journalists and researchers who have covered and studied the group. While the entire article makes fascinating reading, here is a crystallization of the experts’ thinking:
QAnon should be thought of as a religion, not a political movement.
Its religiosity enables it to survive, despite its prophesies failing to materialize.
To the QAnon devout, Q’s true identity does not matter.
The recent purging of QAnon believers from mainstream social media has reinforced their self-perception as persecuted renegades.
Democratic lawmakers should be careful about framing the GOP as the “QAnon party” because it could drive the GOP deeper into the fringes.
Violent extremists are actively working to radicalize QAnon believers for their own purposes.
Even in the absence of Trump and regular messages from Q, the tagalong theories — 5G, vaccines and alternative medicine — represent significant risks to the public.
The current state of our national political debate is pathetic,
And politicians’ performative stunts make us crave an emetic.
But when the bullets start flying,
Both sides start denying:
Saying MY violent rhetoric is less violent than YOUR violent rhetoric.
“This administration is dripping with corruption from top to bottom, but rushing a settlement to steal $1.7 billion taxpayer dollars for a slush fund before a judge can toss your junk lawsuit would be among the most corrupt acts in American political history. This lawsuit has never been anything more than a shakedown of the American people by a crook president and his crook lawyers.”
— Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), quoted by CNBC, on the reported settlement proposal the Justice Department has with President Trump for his lawsuit against the IRS.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for the country. To the folks at CBS, in the words of the great Ed Murrow: Good night, and good luck, motherf**kers.”
— David Letterman, quoted by CNN, speaking to Stephen Colbert as “The Late Show” ends its 33-year run on CBS.
“They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), speaking at the University of Chicago.
Wall Street Journal: “Consumer prices rose 3.8% in April from a year earlier, a clear impact of higher gas prices since the start of the war with Iran. … The figures, reported Tuesday by the Labor Department, surpassed the previous month’s reported increase of 3.3%. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected inflation of 3.7%.”
A survey of 1,000 Americans conducted by YouGov on behalf of NewsGuard found that 24 percent believe the foiled attack by a gunman on April 25 was not a real attempt to kill Trump, the Daily Beast Reports. When expanded to include those who believe the assassination attempt was staged or are “unsure,” the figure rises significantly to 56 percent. Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) also believe that at least one of the assassination attempts against the president—the WHCD dinner incident, the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, or the foiled attack at one of Trump’s Florida golf courses in September 2024—was staged.
“About 352,000 Russian soldiers had died in the war against Ukraine through the end of 2025, according to a new estimate, underscoring the high cost that President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to bear to pursue his battlefield aims,” the New York Times reports.
America’s employers delivered a surprising 115,000 new jobs last month despite an economic shock from the Iran war, reported the AP. Hiring beat the 65,000 jobs forecasters had expected, though it decelerated from the 185,000 jobs created in March. The unemployment rate remained at a low 4.3%, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Washington Post: “Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.”