0:02

back. If

0:32

you're hearing this, well done. You found a

0:34

way to connect to the internet. Welcome

0:37

to the QAA Podcast Episode 281. Lock him up. As

0:39

always, we are your host, Jake

0:43

Brockatansky. Julian Fields. And Travis

0:46

View. Folks,

0:48

they finally got him. A jury

0:50

of Donald Trump's peers determined that

0:52

he violated New York penal law

0:54

175-10 in the first degree.

0:56

What does that mean? Why do I

0:59

still feel empty inside? How are conspiracists

1:01

reacting to the news? We'll answer one

1:03

or more of those questions on today's

1:05

episodes, and we'll also talk about two

1:07

more stories of conspiracists getting nabbed by

1:10

Johnny Law. The producers of the election

1:12

conspiracy film 2000 mules pulled

1:14

it in response to a lawsuit, plus

1:16

the very weird media outlet Epic Times

1:19

is actually just a money laundering according

1:21

to the DOJ. After that,

1:23

we'll tone down the celebrations to speak

1:25

with Ali Breland about his recent Mother

1:28

Jones article exploring the current state of

1:30

QAnon. Wow,

1:51

you sound like a radical left podcaster type.

2:00

If you're a liberal and

2:02

you are really wanting extra

2:05

schadenfreude You should subscribe to

2:07

Donald Trump's campaign emails because

2:09

I've been getting The

2:12

funniest shit just emails from him It's and it

2:14

just you know It shows up as the header

2:16

like in your inbox and it says from President

2:18

Donald Trump and the subject line is I'm guilty

2:24

I'm guilty of wanting a better America

2:26

Travis. I'm excited that you have dressed

2:28

for the occasion You

2:30

are wearing a Hawaiian shirt

2:34

So I guess you're looking forward to

2:36

the Civil War that will result from

2:38

a president being unjustly Persecuted

2:40

in what I can only describe as

2:42

a witch hunt. I disagree the tuft

2:44

of chest hair with the

2:47

absence of tactical vest Signifies

2:49

that Travis is one of the good

2:52

Hawaiian shirt wearers and not a part

2:54

of a pro Second Civil

2:56

War movement Jake tell us more about

2:58

your observations around the tuft of chest

3:00

hair like well He's got his

3:02

top button done. He's looking relaxed. He's looking festive.

3:05

We could put a Miami Vice in his hands

3:07

He would be really enjoying it on a beach

3:10

Somewhere I see no weapons. I see no

3:13

Flack jacket, so I think

3:16

your observations are wrong. He's not wearing

3:18

any pants or underwear either So it's

3:20

a very strange look you know it's

3:22

just it's just a beautiful day here

3:25

in Southern, California It's it's

3:27

in the 80s now I want

3:29

to wear a loose fitting very comfortable

3:31

shirt to enjoy the sunshine while I

3:33

can You're airing out the boys as

3:36

you should with I'm with you I'm

3:38

not with you technically physically But spiritually

3:40

we are brothers and I would love

3:42

to spiritually on a astral plane kiss

3:44

you on the mouth So

3:47

let's get into it so a

3:49

Manhattan jury found President Donald Trump

3:51

guilty of all 34

3:54

counts of falsifying business records the

3:56

jurors said that they unanimously agreed

3:58

Trump falsified those business Yeah,

6:00

he's never done anything wrong before this. That's

6:02

a good point. Well,

6:04

yeah, eyes of the law, he's been

6:06

an angel for all like eight decades

6:08

or so. He's been on Earth. Yeah,

6:11

but let's be real. So this is

6:13

basically optics plus like he's like a

6:15

multiple felon now, but are they gonna

6:17

lock him up? Well, we're gonna find

6:19

out. But I mean,

6:21

like I said, you know. Oh, you're doing a

6:24

teaser like, oh, keep paying attention to the episode

6:26

folks. They might lock him up unless Travis Few

6:28

tells you the opposite later on. That's what you're

6:30

doing? Yeah. Well, each each count carries with it

6:32

a maximum sentence of five years in jail. So

6:36

technically, I mean, technically, I don't think it'll

6:38

happen. But you know, he could get five

6:40

years for every single charge, which would be

6:42

quite a lot of jail time. I don't

6:44

think that that's gonna happen. I imagine he's

6:46

going to get a fine and maybe

6:50

some kind of sort

6:52

of performative jail sentence like

6:54

10 days, which let's be honest would

6:57

be great for his campaign. I

6:59

think if they let if the police

7:01

walked Donald Trump up to the podium

7:03

at the Republican National Convention in handcuffs,

7:05

I think it'd probably be the loudest

7:08

cheer that he would get from his

7:10

supporters. I mean, this is just another

7:12

this is just another feather in the

7:14

cap of, you know, the

7:16

state trying to persecute the best

7:18

president that they've ever had. I

7:21

don't think that this sentence is going to

7:23

change anybody's mind who supports him and really,

7:26

really the main difference is going

7:28

to be that when, you know,

7:30

internet pundits, you know, talk about

7:33

Donald Trump, they will add a 34 time

7:36

convicted felon after twice impeached. You always

7:38

call them pundits. That's what they are.

7:40

They're like pundits. No, they're pundits. I

7:42

punt them down the down the football

7:44

field. I do think that they should

7:46

put him in like a black and

7:48

white striped pajama with like a big

7:50

ball and chain attached to his ankles.

7:52

He's like, I really like hamburgers. Okay.

7:54

They've dressed me up as the hamburgler,

7:56

which is what I am. I stole

7:58

all those hamburgers for the young football.

8:00

You should have the little black mask.

8:02

My favorite is like this MAGA argument

8:04

that like, oh, you think you won?

8:08

You think you beat him? Good

8:10

job, now he has street cred. That's

8:13

so cool. I love that argument, that's

8:15

extremely funny. And I would argue, Jake,

8:17

that it's not just about the base

8:20

when it comes to the election. You're

8:22

gonna need a few extra voters in

8:24

there. So who knows? It's gonna be

8:26

interesting. Has America really given up on

8:28

all this kind of how things look

8:30

or do they care if something is a bad

8:33

look? Are optics a thing

8:35

of the past? One could argue that his

8:37

entire existence is proof that optics are somewhat

8:39

a thing of the past, but who

8:42

knows? I think another, the final thing

8:44

that I think is worth mentioning is

8:46

the fact that a former president committed

8:48

a crime and was charged with it

8:51

and convicted of it. I mean, I

8:53

think that there is some semblance of

8:55

justice there. You left it to the

8:57

jury, they could have acquitted him if

8:59

the evidence didn't look right to them

9:02

or didn't match up or they didn't think

9:04

that the prosecutors made a good case, but

9:06

they did. And he'll have a chance to

9:08

appeal it just like every other citizen. But

9:10

I do think that on some

9:12

level, whether or not it has any

9:14

kind of effect on

9:16

the outcome of the election

9:18

or Donald Trump's supporters, the

9:20

fact that this guy did

9:22

something illegal, especially concerning his

9:24

campaign and

9:27

how he presented these sort of

9:30

payments, I think it's good

9:32

that he got caught. I think it's good

9:34

that he got charged. I think it's good

9:36

that the jury found him guilty. It does

9:38

show on some level whether or not I

9:40

think it's going to make any kind of

9:42

difference, doesn't really matter. It does show that,

9:45

for lack of a better phrase, that no

9:47

one is above the law if you speak

9:49

badly of other politicians and the news at

9:51

large. I would argue that there's one argument

9:53

I've seen made that I do have to

9:55

kind of hand it to. And that is

9:58

that the fact that this is what... an

10:00

American president is being prosecuted successfully

10:02

for is extremely funny considering what

10:04

Bush did to get us into

10:06

the Iraq war. Of course, absolutely.

10:08

Illegal surveillance, like the drone program.

10:10

War crimes. There's a good argument

10:12

that a lot of these guys

10:14

should be in jail. And

10:17

I think, unfortunately, it is kind of

10:19

a decent argument that Trump is being

10:21

kind of not unfairly, but at least

10:23

like maybe targeted a little more than

10:25

others that we'll probably not going to

10:27

see this again much. No.

10:30

And we certainly won't see it

10:32

about larger scale crimes that cost

10:34

millions of lives. No, agreed, because

10:36

this is a safe crime to

10:38

charge a former president with. You

10:40

know what I mean? It doesn't

10:42

highlight any of the other atrocities.

10:44

It seems to be almost kind

10:47

of like isolated in its own

10:49

sort of bubble of Trump and his dealings

10:51

as a businessman. Basically, you can do white

10:53

collar crime, but if you do lower end

10:56

white collar crime, like the kind of white

10:58

collar crime you would do if you were

11:00

like a used car salesman, that will be

11:02

punished. Anything above that, whatever.

11:05

I do think that one result

11:07

of this is that our political

11:09

system will devolve into one party

11:11

just trying to get the other guy

11:13

in jail or girl in jail as

11:16

much as they can. I was even seeing tweets

11:19

from MAGA supporters

11:21

basically being like, all right,

11:23

Republicans, start

11:26

finding crimes. I think that we are about

11:28

to be ushered into an era where instead

11:30

of our politicians and our government sort of

11:32

like trying to make lives better for the

11:35

American citizens, they will just be trying to

11:37

find ways to put each other in jail,

11:39

which is funny, but also we all

11:41

lose. We all lose and we'll

11:43

continue to lose. Joe Biden does

11:45

seem to already be in a

11:47

kind of spiritual solitary where you

11:49

have to slip his meals in

11:51

the little slit to reach him.

11:53

I will spit my

11:56

coffee out. Take

12:00

us away. So let's talk about

12:02

the reactions from the right. So

12:05

among even like mainstream conservative media

12:07

figures, the reaction ranged between like

12:09

promises of retribution, lamenting that America

12:11

has become a banana republic, or

12:13

saying that this is awesome actually

12:15

because it makes Trump look like

12:17

a badass. Fox News host

12:20

Jesse Watters, who has been friendly with

12:22

Q number four, promised revenge. Trump

12:24

was found guilty because he beat Hillary and is

12:26

about to beat Joe Biden. I

12:29

thought I'd be angry, but I

12:31

feel this cool resignation,

12:34

this resoluteness that

12:37

we're wounded as a

12:39

country and we're

12:42

not going to go down, that we're going

12:44

to get back up, we're going to regain

12:46

our strength, and then we're going to vanquish the

12:49

evil forces that are

12:51

destroying this republic. And

12:55

if you look at the American people, how

12:57

are they looking at this? People

13:00

are desperate for help from

13:02

these politicians, for safety, for

13:04

security, and these nitwits consumed

13:07

with hatred are

13:10

trying to destroy a man because

13:12

he threatens their power. These

13:15

are wicked people obsessed

13:17

with a person and we

13:19

will seek justice. We

13:21

guarantee that. God, the fact that anyone

13:23

would be willing to even metaphorically

13:26

take a bullet for this guy

13:28

is so funny to me. Oh

13:31

yeah, we're all under attack. Donald

13:33

Trump is the representative of us,

13:36

incredible. Yeah, and what forces of

13:38

evil are you talking about, dude?

13:40

The current president just used an

13:43

executive order to enact the majority

13:45

of Donald Trump's immigration policies. I

13:49

don't understand. What are you fighting?

13:51

He's got Jesse Waters using DND

13:54

language. Like, ah, we will vanquish

13:56

the evil forces. I

13:58

just don't understand. What

14:00

they're fighting against what are they so unhappy

14:02

about yeah? I mean these people don't care

14:05

about like policies It's all in the world

14:07

of it's it's sports basically It's our guy

14:09

versus their guy and the goal is to

14:12

make their guys look bad and prevent them

14:14

from looking like our guys look bad So

14:16

you made our guy look bad. We're gonna

14:18

make your guy. That's all it is It's

14:21

just that they live in this world of

14:23

representation and aesthetics that substance behind things doesn't

14:25

matter to them You know Charlie Kirk had

14:28

a lot of dramatic things to say about

14:30

the momentous Importance of the conviction of Donald

14:32

Trump yesterday is a day unlike any other

14:34

it will go down in the memory of

14:37

the nation Like the JFK assassination like 9-11.

14:39

It'll go down like the 2008 financial

14:42

crisis like COVID It'll go down like the

14:44

2016 election you will remember where

14:46

you were on May 30 Relief

14:48

Factor calm 100% drug-free relief factor need pain

14:50

back pain joint pain other pain And

14:57

he's already wrong I don't remember where I

14:59

was on May 30 and that was like

15:01

less than a week ago so also I

15:04

would love if this you know went down

15:06

in history as Similarly

15:08

to what happened to JFK that

15:10

would be so much better than

15:12

what we're getting I mean to

15:14

just see like part of a

15:16

fucking blonde toupee on the back

15:18

right are oh boy You are

15:20

getting I really hope the

15:23

for intelligence officers that listen to

15:25

this podcast Know to

15:27

not take Julian seriously. He is he's

15:29

office man's folks He's talking about things

15:31

that he doesn't know what I would

15:34

not be I'd be driving in Mercedes-Benz

15:37

not whatever he had because

15:40

you couldn't think of the

15:42

Mercedes-Benz They do a

15:44

lot better in terms of the

15:47

lights that go under the door,

15:49

okay I

15:53

think that the person you're impersonating. I don't

15:55

know who it is, but I think that

15:57

person should get Well,

16:00

he did he did get domed by Stormy

16:02

Daniels and that's kind of the the where

16:05

this whole thing started really Yeah, he got

16:07

two types of dome. You got dome and

16:09

then he got that Travis is

16:11

giving his two weeks notice All

16:16

right, let's I'm giving him my

16:18

one second notice that everything he says in this episode

16:20

will just be one long beep and

16:22

then it'll be my death threat And

16:24

then it'll continue to beep as he continues

16:26

with his script Please

16:29

continue Laura Loomer will appear on I'm

16:31

sorry what one second sure I would also

16:33

like Charlie Kirk to be Yeah

16:43

continue please Laura Loomer while appearing

16:45

on Tim Pool show suggested that

16:47

Democrats should get the death penalty

16:49

for Treason and this led the

16:51

livestream for Tim Pool show to

16:53

just being immediately shut down Wow

16:55

I would love it if Laura

16:57

Loomer and Tim Pool got domed

16:59

and The

17:02

idea that we decide I'll put it

17:04

this way should Democrats be in jail No question when

17:06

Donald Trump gets elected should he start locking them up?

17:08

No question should there be lists of Democrats that need

17:10

to go to jail 100% the reason for that is

17:12

they they've committed crimes We need to

17:15

make sure that when Donald Trump wins We've

17:17

got an attorney general a deputy attorney general

17:19

ahead of the CIA and the FBI Cash

17:22

Patel would be fantastic. We can have

17:24

for attorney general There's some names floating

17:26

around and then they can start having

17:28

their investigators and the feds issuing subpoenas

17:30

Pulling up evidence and with real evidence

17:32

bring them to judges for warrants Then

17:34

these people can spend three three years of their

17:37

lives Fighting tooth and nail for

17:39

the crime against the government for crimes they

17:41

committed and we can prove and the reason

17:43

why we put them On trial is that

17:45

we can show the whole world. We will

17:47

uncover what you've done We will make sure

17:49

everyone knows and you will be held accountable

17:51

for it. Not just jail They should get the

17:53

death penalty, you know, we actually used to have the

17:56

punishment for treason in this country. Yo, okay

17:59

Okay what you wish for. That's

18:02

cool man. Yeah. All right guys. They

18:04

do realize that the that the defense

18:06

got to be a part of picking

18:08

the jury too right. It's not like

18:11

you know it's not like Hillary Clinton like went

18:13

down to the courthouse it was like one two

18:15

three well you you you you you you you

18:17

you know there was a whole process to select

18:19

the jury and and I would imagine that you

18:22

know the defense was you know they wouldn't really

18:24

let the trial go on if they felt like

18:26

they had 12 you

18:28

know MSNBC you

18:30

know stands you know deciding

18:32

the fate of President Trump. They don't care about

18:35

the process again what matters is that is the

18:37

end result and it makes them mad. There was

18:39

something that happened that to made their guy look

18:41

bad and they have to deal with legal consequences

18:44

and so they want to strike back. I mean

18:46

is again this is just this Hatfield McCoy vision

18:48

of politics like you get our guy we'll get

18:50

your guy. Totally and if he had been acquitted

18:53

they would have gone see the you can't pull

18:55

the wool over the eyes of the American people.

18:57

12 heroic jurors did what was right for the

18:59

country you know hats off to this judge hats

19:02

off to this jury I mean it would have

19:04

been you know you know. I think

19:06

it is something we're gonna

19:08

be discussing later in the episode but

19:10

we have gotten to like peak kind

19:12

of QAnon just being everywhere and everything

19:14

where you just have people being like

19:17

yeah they should fucking execute that entire

19:19

political party when something doesn't go their

19:21

way. That is incredible I mean you

19:23

used to have to tune into some

19:25

weird rumble channel to hear that kind

19:27

of shit. We're still on a weird

19:30

rumble channel. No we're not

19:32

the rumble channel is all the channels

19:34

now. The

19:36

world is buffering. The world is buffering the

19:38

world is bit shoot. Michael Flynn

19:40

fresh off of his nationwide tour promoting

19:42

his movie had this melodramatic response in

19:44

a post on Twitter. Wherever you are

19:47

remember this moment for the rest of

19:49

your life. Again I don't think people

19:51

are gonna remember that. No people weren't

19:53

even following the trial mostly. It wasn't

19:55

like the Mueller investigation got just caused

19:57

to cover. People get these like, there's

19:59

like, there's more Trump stuff happening. Yeah.

20:01

People are more interested in seeing stories.

20:03

People are following generally. He has an

20:05

upside down American flag as his AVI,

20:08

uh, which is extremely funny, but I

20:10

don't know about that Travis. I don't

20:12

know if you read the front page

20:14

of like CNN or tune into the

20:16

24 hour news networks. They definitely were

20:18

following this thing. I've

20:21

seen a lot of court drawings of

20:24

Donald Donald Trump's deformed dome. So yeah,

20:26

yeah, he, he changed his, his Twitter

20:28

profile image to an upside down American

20:30

flag. So he wasn't the only one

20:32

to do this. Uh, representative Marjorie Taylor

20:35

green, uh, Fox news contributor, a guy

20:37

Benson and a far right conspiracist, Ali

20:39

Alexander also posted images of upside down

20:41

American flags. Also this, uh, this follows

20:44

a report from the New York times

20:46

last month, which revealed that an upside

20:48

down American flag flew outside the Virginia

20:50

home of Supreme court justice, Samuel Alito

20:52

in January of 2021. They

20:55

have melted wives one and

20:57

all. It was another man. It was another

20:59

Supreme court. Yeah. We need to do something

21:01

about Supreme court wife. Apparently just makes you

21:03

lose your mind. Being married to a Supreme

21:05

court justice makes you go off the rails.

21:08

The, we gotta, we gotta discuss the Supreme

21:10

court wife to majorly pilled pipeline. I don't

21:12

think we need to discuss it. I think

21:14

it needs to be a reality show that

21:16

follows, uh, the real housewives of orange County,

21:18

you know, the, the housewives of the Supreme

21:20

court. What are they doing? What are they

21:22

drinking? What are they searching on duck duck

21:24

go? I, you know, I think that that

21:27

could be a really interesting show for a

21:29

lot of people. So the

21:31

upside down American flag was originally

21:33

used by naval vessels to indicate

21:35

that their ship was in distress,

21:37

but has taken on a political

21:39

dimensions. Now, interestingly, I read that

21:41

the inverted American flag was at

21:43

times used by American left-wing protesters,

21:45

such as those protesting the Vietnam

21:47

war in the sixties and seventies.

21:49

But in recent years, it's been

21:51

used more frequently by far right

21:53

extremists. For example, the white nationalist

21:55

group, a patriot front has repeatedly

21:57

shown up to protests bearing upside

21:59

down. One of the many

22:01

ways that Trump himself reacted to the news

22:04

was by denying that he said, lock her

22:06

up in reference to Hillary Clinton. He did

22:08

this during an interview on Fox and Friends.

22:11

You famously said regarding Hillary Clinton, lock

22:13

her up. You declined to do that

22:16

as president. I beat her. It's

22:18

easier when you win. And

22:21

they all said, lock her up. And I felt, and I could

22:23

have done it, but I felt it

22:25

would have been a terrible thing. And

22:27

then this happened to me. So

22:30

I may feel differently about it. I can't tell you. I'm

22:32

not sure I can answer the question. Hillary

22:35

Clinton, I didn't say lock her up, but the people don't say,

22:37

lock her up, lock her up. Okay. Then

22:40

we won. And I said pretty openly, I

22:42

say, all right, come on, just relax. Let's go. We

22:45

got to make our country great. And

22:48

it would have been, think of it, you lock

22:50

up the wife of a president of

22:52

the United States. Yeah. That's

22:55

good though. If he becomes president and he's just

22:57

aggravated and no longer even cares about the few

22:59

things that the few

23:01

parts of decorum that he seems, he seemed

23:03

to care about during his term. Who knows?

23:06

I'm just amazed to have like how readily

23:08

he threw his like his most passionate followers

23:10

on the ballot. I didn't say that. The

23:13

fucking people are like, lock her up, lock whatever.

23:15

He's like, he's so contemptuous of everyone, including the

23:17

people who, you know, showed up to his rallies.

23:20

Of course, the claim that he didn't say lock

23:22

her up is as ludicrous. There are many compilations

23:25

of Trump himself saying, lock her up, which were

23:27

posted online. I will say this. Hillary Clinton has

23:29

to go to jail. Okay. She

23:31

has to go to jail for what

23:33

she's done. They should lock her up. So

23:36

it's, it's, I mean, it's weird that he

23:38

would like this, like, this is like one

23:40

of the main things that like people support

23:42

him. This is one of the things that

23:44

birthed QAnon. Remember he said, lock her up.

23:46

And then like several months into his presidency,

23:48

it didn't seem like there was much movement

23:51

on the locker up front. So instead a

23:53

bunch of people online who were out of

23:55

their minds decided actually there's a secret plan

23:57

to lock her up. And also everyone else

23:59

I hate. He wasn't lying. He wasn't just

24:01

bullshitting us to get elected. It's gotta happen.

24:03

What's happening in secret? You know what? I

24:05

actually advised Donald Trump to take the Q

24:07

non stance on this and just start saying

24:10

that he did lock her up No, she's

24:12

locked up. No, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I

24:14

would say like yeah, just say it's like

24:16

that That's just a clone. You see her.

24:18

That's a clone. I've locked Hillary up. I

24:20

win Oh Jake made the

24:22

Trump face that he makes right before he

24:24

does an imitation and then he pulled back

24:27

and he started vaping Wow

24:29

restraint, but I want to

24:31

know how the wider QAnon community was

24:33

handling this news because you know one

24:35

big part of the QAnon Fantasy is

24:38

that the justice system would like crack

24:40

down on Trump's enemies But here Trump

24:42

is the one facing all these problems

24:44

with the criminal courts Common

24:46

theme among QAnon followers is was that

24:49

this is good. Actually, there was this

24:51

comment from the QAnon influencer war clandestine

24:53

The deep state just signed their own

24:55

death warrant Trump's polls are about to

24:58

skyrocket He is still

25:00

going to win and now he has

25:02

the precedent established to bring the full

25:04

letter of the law down on every

25:07

single corrupt bureaucrat and politician in DC

25:09

game on Smiley devil

25:11

face. Yeah, and we have a

25:13

picture of Trump His hair is

25:15

blown from left to right by the

25:17

gales of wind and rain I'm

25:20

assuming the storm but he must have removed

25:23

the roof of the White House or maybe

25:25

a window is open in his 2028

25:28

presidential election acceptance speech. He's gonna be

25:30

like, yeah, they got me on falsifying

25:32

business lots of

25:35

business, but Hillary

25:37

Clinton she's Human

25:40

trafficking. These are two very different

25:42

charges. Okay two very different charges

25:44

They might have gotten me on

25:46

falsifying business, but who doesn't honestly but a

25:48

lot of people are not human

25:50

trafficking But Hillary Clinton is so compare the

25:52

crimes I'm just saying compare the crimes and

25:54

you know You'll see who's different and who's

25:56

not and who's locked up and who paid

25:58

the fine executed and

26:00

who had to rejigger some of

26:03

their business practices. It's a big

26:05

difference, folks, and we're here for

26:07

it. Another common theme in

26:09

the QAnon community was that what is done

26:11

to Trump is going to boomerang back to

26:13

Trump's political enemies. This is reference to a

26:15

QTrump that said boomerang. Now, this is how

26:17

this idea was expressed on the QAnon show

26:19

Eye of the Storm. We just have to

26:21

have to stay on rails, stay focused, friends.

26:23

You know, I understand that everything that's happening

26:25

is for exposure. And thus far, everything that's

26:27

happened to him is boomerang right back on

26:30

them. And I'm not just talking about the

26:32

court stuff. I'm talking about ever since he

26:34

took the oath of office, everything they've tried

26:36

on him is boomerang, boomerang right back on

26:38

them. This will be no different. Okay. We've

26:40

got a guy here who has a blue

26:42

striped punisher skull. So this is like a

26:44

combination of the

26:46

thin blue line and the punisher skull.

26:48

Yeah. And a mounted boomerang behind him

26:50

on the wall. Yeah. So that's good.

26:52

You see and you say it's clear.

26:55

I mean, that's, uh, they, I mean,

26:57

they're just have this endless ability to

26:59

read the news and say, this means

27:01

I'm winning actually every single time. Do

27:03

they know that like the person who

27:05

throws the boomerang just catches it when

27:07

it comes back? I mean, I guess

27:09

they didn't really think through the metaphor.

27:11

No. A lot of QAnon

27:13

followers kept noticing the reappearance of the number

27:16

34. So Trump was found

27:18

guilty on 34 counts. And shortly

27:20

after this happened, uh, the Trump campaign announced that

27:22

they had raised $34.8 million. Trump

27:25

also posted a 34 second video

27:28

on Truth Social. Trump's press conference lasted

27:30

34 minutes. Now what's the relevance

27:32

here? Well, first of all, 34 is 17 times two. So

27:36

we got a 17 in there. Perfect. Okay.

27:38

And then, so in addition to that, according

27:40

to them, it's all pointing to Q drop

27:42

34, which is of course the first Q

27:45

drop where Q clearance is referenced. 34

27:47

charges, 34 raised, 34 second video, 34 seconds, 34 minutes speech

27:49

posted. Also

27:53

in the middle of that speech at the 1134 mark minute

27:55

mark. So

27:57

what is the big deal about 34? Okay.

28:00

As why don't you read for

28:02

the audience this particular cue and

28:04

then you can give your take

28:06

on what? What basically

28:08

is pointing to brother? Sure thing dude Secure

28:11

cue drop 34 came on November 1st 2017

28:16

cue clearance Patriot my fellow Americans over the

28:18

course of the next several days You will

28:20

undoubtedly realize that we are taking back our

28:22

great country the land of the free Yeah,

28:24

then he goes off to read the whole

28:26

cue drop for the show That's that's that's

28:28

basically it wherever anything happens to Trump They

28:30

just you know They just return to the

28:32

pile of entrails and bones to read the

28:34

to divine the future Well good play liberals.

28:36

Have you considered that I am rubber and

28:38

you are glue. I Mean,

28:41

why not just make it 17? Why not

28:43

put out a 17 second video, you know The

28:45

fact that I got to divide the number by

28:47

two to get the code is like yeah, it's

28:49

a little much Who the hell had learned how

28:51

to divide 34? That's crazy That's

28:55

that's what makes it, you know a little bit

28:57

more participatory. You got to take that extra step

28:59

I mean if it just said 17 everywhere any

29:01

did weirdo normie could see what was going on

29:03

there the fact I was 34 you got to

29:05

work for it to figure out where the 17

29:07

is Because Trump knew

29:10

all along all along how many

29:12

charges he was going to get

29:14

convicted of now I also

29:16

want to discuss an update regarding Dinesh

29:18

D'Souza film 2000 mules This

29:21

is the film that falsely claimed that the 2020 election

29:23

was decided thanks to so-called ballot

29:25

mules stuffing votes into these ballot

29:27

drop boxes one of the people

29:29

Accused in this film was a

29:32

man named Mark Andrews who has

29:34

shown putting five ballots into a

29:36

drop box in Lawrenceville, Georgia Now

29:38

it's perfectly legal to drop off

29:40

ballots for other people in Georgia

29:42

So that's not evidence of doing

29:44

anything illegal in the film This

29:46

Sousa falsely claimed that what Andrews

29:48

was doing was criminal describing the

29:50

votes as fraudulent And so mark

29:53

Andrews sued Salem media the organization

29:55

that produced the film and this

29:57

lawsuit was successful in response Salem

29:59

media released statement disowning 2000 mules

30:01

and declared that they will no longer

30:04

distribute it. And here's what that statement

30:06

said. Salem Media Group, Incorporated and its

30:08

former publishing division, Regnary Publishing, published a

30:11

film and book entitled 2000 mules that

30:13

examines allegations of voter fraud related to

30:15

the 2020 presidential election. In

30:17

publishing the film and the book, we

30:20

relied on representations made to us by

30:22

Dinesh D'Souza and True the Vote, Incorporated,

30:24

TTV, that the individuals depicted in the

30:26

videos provided to us by TTV, including

30:28

Mr. Andrews, illegally deposited ballots. We have

30:31

learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation

30:33

has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting

30:35

activity in connection with the event depicted

30:37

in 2000 mules. It

30:39

was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 mules

30:42

film and book would harm Mr. Andrews.

30:44

We apologize for the hurt the inclusion

30:46

of Mr. Andrews' image in the movie,

30:48

book, and promotional materials have caused Mr.

30:50

Andrews and his family. We have removed

30:52

the film from Salem's platforms and there

30:54

will be no future distribution of the

30:56

film or the book by Salem. So

30:58

that ends a long pointless saga.

31:01

I also like the idea. It's like, well, listen,

31:03

fucking Dinesh D'Souza said you committed a crime and

31:05

we just believed them. So we didn't really look

31:07

into it too deeply. Now, perhaps

31:09

you're familiar with Epic Times. We know we

31:12

covered them on this podcast all the way

31:14

back in January of 2020 or than four

31:16

years ago. And they

31:19

were on our radar because they actively

31:21

promoted QAnon. Now, this is a media

31:23

company with a far right conspiracy slant

31:25

that offers these free Epic Times newspapers,

31:27

which are possibly stacked up in the

31:29

corner of your parents' house for some

31:31

reason. You may also know them from

31:33

their weird billboards that just say, number

31:35

one, trusted news next to a picture

31:37

of some dude. Have you seen these?

31:39

I mean, I sometimes see them

31:41

driving on the freeway. Oh yeah. I thought this

31:43

was a picture that I took because I did

31:45

post one on Twitter. That's right. Back in the

31:48

day. I've seen this. I thought the billboard at

31:50

first was for an accident lawyer. And then I

31:52

realized it was Epic Times. Yeah, it's awesome that

31:55

weird Chinese anti-communists

31:58

who've been exiled for being in a... cult

32:00

are, you know, just kind of fooling around

32:02

here in the United States and partaking in

32:04

the culture. Yeah. Well,

32:07

you know, I think, you know, I think the

32:09

Falun Gong cult, they sort of, they noticed the

32:11

success that, you know, the unification church cult had

32:13

in manipulating US politics, really embedding with the Republican

32:15

Party and the right. And they said like, Hey,

32:18

I can do that. And

32:20

they could. Well, according

32:22

to the Justice Department, this media

32:24

company was at the center of

32:26

a fraudulent money laundering and cryptocurrency

32:28

scam involving tens of millions of

32:31

dollars. This information was revealed in

32:33

an indictment of the company's chief

32:35

financial officer, Bill Guan. Now,

32:38

Guan is accused of masterminding a scheme

32:40

in which he managed an overseas team,

32:42

which was called Make Money Online. I

32:46

get this ad in between rounds of words with

32:48

friends, too. It brings us no pleasure to announce

32:51

that Jake is now in the poor house. So

32:54

here's from a statement about that indictment.

32:56

Under Guan's management, members of the team

32:59

and others used cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase

33:01

tens of millions of dollars in crime

33:03

proceeds, including proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment

33:06

insurance benefits that had been loaded onto

33:08

tens of thousands of prepaid debit cards.

33:10

The proceeds were then allegedly laundered through

33:12

a certain cryptocurrency platform and then turned

33:15

into digital currency at 70 to 80

33:17

cents on the dollar. The team members

33:19

then use stolen personal identification information to

33:22

open accounts and funnel the profits there

33:24

and subsequently into accounts held in their own

33:26

names. Now, they got

33:29

caught because investigators noticed that Epic

33:31

Times enjoyed a massive 410%

33:34

increase in annual revenue from about $15 million to

33:37

$62 million. When

33:40

these investigators asked about it, Guan lied about

33:42

the source of the money, claiming it was

33:44

all from donations. So this

33:46

actually, this answers a lot of questions about

33:48

how they were able to grow so quickly.

33:50

How is it like this weird, obscure cult

33:53

owned media company was like on every corner

33:55

and then all of a sudden every sort of

33:57

weird, you know, conservative that you know is. getting

34:00

it delivered to there and then all of a sudden

34:02

there are all these billboards. Well, it was a massive

34:04

money laundering scheme, which, you know, also

34:07

answers the question, like, how do you succeed

34:09

as a media company? Massive money laundering. Oh,

34:11

yeah. So this is illegal now. God damn

34:14

it. This is America. To

34:17

further discuss the state of QAnon,

34:19

we are joined by journalist Ali

34:22

Bredland. He has written for The

34:24

Guardian, The New York Times magazine,

34:26

Bloomberg Businessweek, and Vice News. But

34:28

his latest for Mother Jones has

34:30

the provocative headline, How Q Became

34:32

Everything. And they really like the

34:34

sub headline, which is the conspiracy

34:36

group's goal was to convince people

34:38

the world is run by pedophiles

34:40

and well mission accomplished. So,

34:44

Ali, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank

34:46

you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we're doing the

34:48

last episode. Because this is it,

34:50

right? QAnon one, it's over. Yeah. Well, yeah. Congratulations.

34:52

We're closing up shop. Yeah, I've got all

34:54

my five. I've logged out of all my accounts.

34:56

That was our goal. We needed to get it

34:59

there. And now we're done. You should have waited

35:01

to do the name change until I did

35:03

this. Then we could have timed it perfectly. Yeah,

35:05

that's so true. I'm glad you

35:07

wrote this because it articulated something we've

35:10

tried to talk about before on the

35:12

podcast, which is how like essentially QAnon

35:14

style paranoia is in the bloodstream of

35:16

the discourse now. It's not it's not

35:19

some sort of weird fringe thing that

35:21

you have to seek out. It's everywhere.

35:23

And you pointed to specific examples of

35:25

popular conspiracism related to child trafficking. And

35:28

one is the wayfare conspiracy theory. And

35:30

the other was a controversy related to

35:32

the fashion brand Balanciaga. So we've covered

35:34

this on the podcast before, but could

35:37

you like go over what those were

35:39

about? Yeah. In like 2020, I guess

35:41

like everyone's like sitting

35:44

around on their computers like stressed out

35:46

about like COVID or whatever. And this

35:49

like weird conspiracy theory goes like super

35:51

viral about wayfare. And like the short

35:53

of it was that people were saying

35:55

that like kids are being trafficked via

35:57

like armoise or like pieces of furniture.

36:00

and it was like super absurd and like

36:02

in retrospect it's like crazy but it was

36:04

like so I guess like it was so

36:06

powerful that it had this like truly viral

36:08

moment to the point where like the Washington

36:10

Post and other outlets had to write about

36:12

it and like not take it seriously but

36:14

be like all these people believe this and

36:17

it was weird it was this like very

36:19

piercing of the veil moment where like QAnon

36:21

and like this sort of conspiratorial belief became

36:23

super mainstream. The other sort of like analog

36:25

that I actually didn't write about in the

36:27

story but it was like sort of adjacent

36:29

to this was like there was a similar

36:31

panic with the Netflix documentary about QDs called

36:33

QDs which like I forget the specifics but

36:35

basically like right-wingers were sort of accusing it

36:37

of being this like groomer type of movie

36:39

which was like adjacent kind of fears but

36:41

there was like still they were still both

36:43

of these were like very very big moments

36:45

in the sort of like QAnon evolving into

36:47

this other thing and these conspiratorial beliefs about

36:49

children being abused but like they were still

36:51

kind of confined to the right a little

36:53

bit but then like and they also seem

36:55

like too ludicrous to continue it was like

36:57

this is like the apex like it can't

36:59

get any more nutty than this like this

37:02

is going to recede like people will have

37:04

learned their lesson but then Balenciaga is where

37:06

it hits this like weird point that surpasses

37:08

like either of these moments and basically what

37:10

happened was there was these two separate ad

37:12

campaigns one of them depicted children showing bears

37:14

in bondage in like living rooms with like

37:16

stuff like around them and then the other

37:18

ad campaign was this one this campaign that

37:20

featured like adults no children in an office

37:22

setting and then if you like zoomed in

37:24

on one of the documents in the table

37:26

it was like a reference to a Supreme

37:28

Court case that I think like had some

37:30

sort of like relation to the child pornography

37:32

and so this like balloons into like a

37:34

massive scandal people were like whoa Balenciaga is

37:36

like messed up and it's not just like

37:38

the right that is concerned about this it's

37:40

not just like QAnon people it's like everyone

37:42

like Yashir Ali this this journalist who is

37:44

arguably left of center is saying the Balenciaga

37:47

is doing something messed up Kim Kardashian who

37:49

is not a right-winger is saying well this

37:51

is like very I was shaken to my

37:53

core by this even like Julia Fox

37:55

who had a sort of nuanced perspective was still like

37:57

you know I thought it was like disgusting so it's

37:59

like this thing that was like in the zeitgeist that

38:01

hit like way beyond even what Wayfair

38:03

had before. I love that like two

38:05

of those were probably texted by Kanye.

38:08

Check this out. I

38:11

feel like maybe he would have just said

38:14

something, you know, did he? I forget Kanye

38:16

would have wore the same things that the

38:18

bears were wearing. When

38:20

you say bondage, it sounds way more intense.

38:23

It's like they had like little black straps.

38:25

They were just teddy bears like, yeah, you

38:27

know, it's it's BDSM culture and you make

38:29

the argument in your in your article that

38:31

like this has far surpassed the actual BDSM

38:34

scene. It's like in fashion. It's you

38:36

know, it's it's everywhere. I spent time like in Ohio

38:38

in the 2000s as a kid and like I didn't

38:40

realize that there was like a sexual sort of component

38:42

to like leather and like chains in black. I thought

38:44

it was like a mall goth thing and there was

38:46

like mall goth kids at my middle school and there

38:48

was mall goth kids at the mall that my family

38:51

would go to and like they were edgy looking but

38:53

like they were just people like we I didn't think

38:55

and like I don't know I came across it later

38:57

and like raving and like metal and it was like

38:59

I don't know it took me maybe

39:01

I was like a little too old by the time I learned that

39:03

it had like a sort of sexual meaning

39:05

to it. Yeah, to me it was always just

39:07

like oh the guy in the basement in

39:10

Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Well,

39:12

that is sexual. That jig has somewhat of

39:14

a sexual. Yeah, but I didn't put that

39:16

together. I didn't put that together when I

39:18

watched Pulp Fiction. I was like, oh, it's

39:20

a monster. It's a leather monster. That guy

39:22

is a wild. He loves hanging out with

39:24

all of his homies. That is such a

39:27

good insight into your brain. It's funny because

39:29

you know when I tell people even nowadays

39:31

you know if people ask what I do

39:33

and I say oh I do this podcast

39:35

about you know kind of debunking conspiracy theories

39:37

and politics and all this stuff and they'll

39:39

say oh conspiracy theories. What do you think

39:41

about the Wayfair? Like people still ask about

39:43

that. It is it is still part of

39:45

the the collective consciousness. The other one that

39:47

I get all the time is what do

39:49

you think about the moon landing? So

39:52

Wayfair and the moon, two of

39:54

the topics you know at

39:56

the front of the general public's mind.

39:59

Yeah, people who smoke. bowls on couches with Jake's

40:01

mind. Nobody smokes bowls with

40:03

couches on me anymore. I do all

40:05

my, I do all my smoking by

40:07

myself, okay? I will let the audience

40:10

enjoy that last sentence you just provided

40:12

us. Yeah, I remember the, the other

40:14

Wayfair one was, was really bewildering because

40:16

number one, like had the absurdity of

40:18

the premise that like you just go

40:20

to a mainstream website, retail website and

40:23

just purchase children was the idea, it

40:25

was the accusation being made, which has

40:27

these secret names. And then the other

40:30

element that made it very weird and

40:32

scary was how popular it was. It wasn't

40:34

just constrained to even

40:36

like, you know, like, you know,

40:38

boomer Facebook or whatever. It was

40:41

like, it was on TikTok. These

40:43

young people in their twenties were,

40:45

were panicking about this absurd idea

40:47

that somehow Wayfair was a hub

40:49

for human trafficking and led to

40:51

like some young people even

40:53

being harassed because the idea that they

40:55

might have been human trafficking victims is

40:57

like, you're right, very few of those

41:00

people were even aware of QAnon. It was

41:02

just sort of this, this stance, this feeling

41:04

like you are righteous in being very

41:06

panicked about this absurd idea,

41:09

this, this cartoonish false idea

41:11

of how child trafficking works.

41:13

Hey guys, I am currently doing

41:15

this TikTok from inside an armoire.

41:18

There's like a, not to make too much about aggression,

41:20

but like, and I'm not like a big techno determinist,

41:22

but like, there's like something about TikTok that also just

41:24

makes it like really ripe for this. Like I remember

41:26

there was like the car

41:28

seat, like woman abduction conspiracy that

41:31

like ripped through for like two

41:33

days. The Travis Scott, like quasi-satanic

41:35

panic after like that tragic concert,

41:37

Astro World in Houston was like

41:40

doing just numbers on there. I

41:43

don't know, weird platform, but I

41:45

guess maybe that's why they want to ban it. TikTok, everything

41:47

you can point your finger up at. But

41:51

if you had like 20 fingers at once. Yeah.

41:53

I mean, I definitely think it says something about,

41:55

especially during, you know, 2020 when the world seemed

41:58

so... so

42:00

unrecognizable and what

42:04

seemed like kind of an old world problem was

42:06

now front and center and tens

42:09

of thousands of people were dying. I

42:11

think it plays to the fact that

42:13

people are desperate for any kind of

42:15

distraction and conspiracy theories are a great

42:18

distraction and they also develop this sense

42:20

of community. So two things that you're

42:22

kind of lacking during these lockdowns are

42:26

satisfied within these. There's something that's kind of

42:28

apolitical about that which might help to explain

42:31

why some of these theories kind of can

42:33

cross the aisle so to speak. Yeah, absolutely.

42:35

I mean COVID led to a lot of

42:38

weird digital behavior. A lot of people in

42:40

crypto think that crypto did super well because

42:42

people were just sitting at home with extra

42:44

time on their hands. While

42:47

I do think that these things, and we can

42:49

get into this more later, I get into this

42:51

in the essay, but these things are the basis

42:53

of social and political forces. There is also just

42:55

whatever is happening in the moment, both the mediums

42:58

that these things exist on, like social media, but

43:00

then also just other material factors

43:02

can help exacerbate it or flip it in

43:04

the other direction as people find other stuff

43:06

to do. Totally. You have a lot of

43:09

these, especially the influencers who are smarter saying,

43:11

at the end of their video, they're saying,

43:13

comment below, what do you think it is

43:15

or what do you think is really happening?

43:17

And when you get a lot of engagement

43:19

and people doing comments, that lets the algorithm

43:22

know to bring those topics further to the

43:24

top for more eyes to see because it

43:26

sees that they're getting a lot of engagements.

43:28

So in a lot of ways, yeah, it

43:30

is a snake eating itself perpetually. Yeah. Yeah.

43:32

That sounds like TikTok. It's like a constant,

43:34

I'm going to mess up the pronunciation, but

43:37

like an ouroboros of just like stuff, just

43:39

like it goes over and over and over.

43:41

And I don't know, it produces like, I'm

43:43

going to sound like a boomer, but it

43:45

produces like overly, it produces deleterious effects from

43:47

time to time, for sure. Now

43:50

you discuss in your article how

43:52

the most obvious like antecedent to

43:54

QAnon was the satanic panic of

43:56

the eighties. And that was generally

43:58

seen as a response to the

44:01

changing family order in which more

44:03

women were entering the workforce, more

44:05

children were spending time in daycare.

44:07

Your article discusses how this modern

44:09

conspiracist panic is also driven by

44:11

paranoia regarding the family order. And

44:13

what is that as you

44:15

see it? Yeah, not to like, to

44:17

my own horn too much. In fact, I think

44:20

both of us are very prescient in this. So

44:22

like, when we sat down in 2019, me and

44:24

you Travis, like we had this conversation at the

44:26

time, and I was like trying to understand like

44:28

the social and political forces that like it's sort

44:31

of grounded and we're generating QAnon. And I kind

44:33

of had an idea, but I didn't fully understand.

44:35

And like you said this really interesting thing, which

44:37

I cited in this current essay about QAnon winning

44:40

and like it was you talked about like how

44:42

QAnon was very preoccupied with like a return to

44:44

this like economic order of like a prior age.

44:46

And then like you also talked about how it

44:48

had these like weird preoccupations with I guess

44:51

like traditional sexuality and things like that. And

44:54

it seemed like that was like what was

44:56

like, I guess like the actual function of

44:58

QAnon but like and I noted that at

45:00

the time, but like it wasn't 100% clear

45:03

that that was like definitely going to be the

45:05

case. And then by the time we hit like

45:08

Balenciaga, it's like kind of clear that that was

45:10

like, I don't know if it was like the

45:12

end game, but it was like certainly like woven

45:14

into the DNA of like what animated and motivated

45:16

it and then galvanized and like every step of

45:18

the way this sort of like energy around like

45:21

fighting back against like the acceptance of trans people

45:23

this like sort of trad energy and like restoring

45:25

this like Fordist family wage was like always just

45:27

like bubbling underneath the surface and like that's what

45:29

got it. I don't know, like helped I guess

45:31

like Balenciaga Blossom actually, you know, I went off

45:33

so far. I forgot the original question like what

45:36

were we getting at originally? Oh, yeah.

45:38

Yeah. So if the ad

45:40

cetanum panic was driven by a change

45:43

in the family order, what what are

45:45

the modern changes that are driving people

45:47

into QAnon? Like we talked about it

45:49

just ended up being I think like

45:51

this sort of fear of

45:53

I guess like this trans panic that's like sort

45:55

of homophobic impulse that had like it seemed like

45:57

it had already been like litigated out. Like it

45:59

was like, even though there was still like plenty

46:02

of homophobia in the United States in like 2018,

46:04

it seemed like inevitable that the LGBTQ community, at

46:06

least to me, it seemed like they would win.

46:08

It seemed like it had been like kind of

46:10

a lockstep issue that even like Republicans had kind

46:12

of retreated on. They tried the

46:14

bathroom bills and the late teens in North

46:16

Carolina and those were just like failed miserably.

46:19

And it seemed like their assaults on the

46:21

trans and home and gay communities would like

46:23

not work and then QAnon like help them

46:25

establish like a grammar and a vocabulary to

46:27

kind of come back and like fight these

46:30

things. And that was like, what was animating

46:32

this sort of like panic that like metastasized

46:34

into Balenciaga? Well, I think you bring up

46:36

a really interesting point and I definitely, I

46:38

really resonated with this piece of your essay.

46:41

You know, we talked a little bit earlier

46:43

in the episode before you hopped on, you

46:45

know, after the Trump guilty verdict, you know,

46:47

you have all of these right-wing talk show

46:49

hosts and, you know, supporters kind of saying,

46:52

you know, we got to fight back, you

46:54

know, we have to fight back at this,

46:57

you know, these forces of evil, I

46:59

believe is what Jesse Waters was saying.

47:01

And I brought up this point. I

47:03

said, what are you fighting back against?

47:05

You know, and I brought up the

47:07

point that, you know, the current president

47:09

is enacting immigration policy that a lot

47:11

of, you know, right-wingers would agree with,

47:14

in fact, they were championing for Donald

47:16

Trump to do. And yet it was

47:18

done just, just today, I believe with,

47:20

with an executive order. And I think

47:22

what it really boils down to is

47:24

just that it's anti LGBTQ and, you

47:26

know, anti-gay, anti-trans, that's really kind of

47:29

what the forces of evil, I think they're

47:31

talking about because policy wise, in a lot

47:33

of other areas, you know, they're kind of

47:35

getting what they had hoped

47:37

for in a weird way. And so

47:39

what you're left with is this, this

47:42

total inacceptance and total hatred of people

47:44

who are different from them, especially, you

47:46

know, in their sexuality or gender, and,

47:48

you know, it's, it's almost like for

47:50

a while they couldn't just come out

47:52

and say that, right? Because to some

47:54

extent it had kind of been a

47:56

lockstep issue and, and this idea

47:59

that They have this new language

48:01

regarding the nuclear family, which is

48:03

ironic too, because Q clearance

48:06

stands for somebody who has

48:09

clearance at the nuclear level. That didn't make

48:11

any sense, but we're going to keep it

48:13

in. You really do see that it is

48:15

kind of a very simple thing that they

48:17

really are rallying against, and it really is

48:19

this women's position

48:22

and status finally

48:24

at least being acknowledged on a

48:26

grand scale that it still remains

48:28

unequal, but

48:31

that there are people that are fighting to change

48:33

that, as well as visibility of

48:35

gay and especially trans people. Yeah, it's

48:37

something that really bothers a lot of

48:39

people on the right and the far

48:42

right to a very large degree. QAnon

48:44

makes it very easy to, by situating

48:46

these things in a sort of fear

48:48

of pedophiles or a fear of children

48:50

being groomed, which QAnon

48:53

was what started it and

48:55

what was always the vocabulary of it, and

48:57

how it was established, by

48:59

trying to talk about these things instead

49:01

of talking about transphobia or homophobia, it was

49:03

a way in to talk about these issues.

49:06

Lips of TikTok is obviously extremely homophobic and

49:08

transphobic, and the way she gets around this

49:10

is just by talking about grooming and by

49:12

invoking the children. And that's exactly what happened

49:14

in the satanic panic, which I'm sure you

49:16

guys have gotten into, except at that point

49:19

in time the issue was feminism, the issue

49:21

was women in the workplace. And so instead

49:23

of feminism being litigated out, it

49:25

was a thing that was established, it was

49:27

on a path to relative victory. Obviously we

49:29

still have a lot of sexism even now,

49:31

but as a sort of project it was

49:33

doing what it had set out to do,

49:35

and so it was hard to beat that

49:38

back, but what was easier to beat back

49:40

was the idea that children were under threat.

49:42

So by linking feminism and linking the totems

49:44

of feminism, which were daycares, which helped women

49:46

enter the workplace, the kids could be stored

49:48

in a place so that women could have

49:50

jobs and no longer be reliant simply on

49:52

men and be reliant on their husbands, that

49:54

sort of specific totem was attacked via the

49:57

children being in harm's way, and so that's

49:59

just happening again, but this time you're playing.

50:01

place feminism and women with like the LGBTQ

50:03

community, trans people, gay people, it's just like

50:05

a way to, it's a way to like,

50:07

sort of, it's like almost like, uh, there's

50:09

that like famous quote by, I want to

50:11

say it's that Nixon strategist. And he's like,

50:14

yeah, we like lost the battle on talking

50:16

about black people. We can't like be racist,

50:18

but like we can like invoke crime and

50:20

we can like in this sort of like

50:22

thinly built way in public, basically talk about

50:24

black people without talking about black people and

50:26

be racist and like sort of win those

50:28

voters over, this is like a different version

50:31

of that. But instead you get to be

50:33

homophobic without being homophobic. Yeah. How do you

50:35

say Q without saying Q? Yeah, you know,

50:37

exactly. Yeah. Well, and then one more thing

50:39

I think that's worth, worth discussing. And you,

50:41

and you talk about this in your piece,

50:43

which, uh, we encourage everybody to check out

50:45

if you have not, you know, about this,

50:47

this idea of, of some of these, some

50:50

of these tenants of QAnon and right-wing ideology

50:52

kind of seeping into other areas, one thing

50:54

I've noticed that's pretty troubling over the last

50:56

couple of years is liberal, uh, sort of

50:58

not talking heads or whether there are people

51:00

on Twitter. I call them pundits, but Julian

51:02

says that that's not necessarily the right word.

51:04

No, I'm not challenging you saying that, but

51:07

you call them pundits. Oh, instead of pundits,

51:09

is it pundits? Who cares?

51:11

Anyway, I'm sure some, my mom will care. She'll be

51:13

like, no, that's incorrect. You're going to embarrass me in

51:15

front of my media friends. Like

51:18

one thing I've noticed is that

51:20

in an effort to kind of

51:22

own Republicans online or whatever, they

51:24

will call them gay or they

51:26

will use things because it feels

51:28

like they think that if their

51:30

base sees their heroes as potentially

51:32

gay, that they won't like them

51:35

as much anymore, but somehow in

51:37

turn, like use, like

51:39

it's still homophobic. Like, I

51:42

don't know. It's, I've noticed it, you

51:44

know, kind of a lot recently, uh,

51:46

especially with, you know, Mike Johnson being

51:48

elected, uh, the speaker of the house.

51:50

And it's just like, it's, yeah, it's

51:52

very weird to see people who claim

51:54

to be progressives using homophobic, you know,

51:56

rhetoric to essentially own the other side

51:58

while still doing homophobia. I

52:00

feel like that is a relatively

52:02

new thing, you know in the

52:04

last couple years, but maybe I'm maybe I'm off

52:06

Yeah, I think people There's

52:08

like a tendency among like some segments of I

52:10

guess like liberals to like I guess like forget

52:12

about the sort of Symmetry potentially like

52:15

what they're engaging in with like some of the

52:17

critiques I guess like the the defense that some

52:19

people would say is like well We're just like

52:21

attacking them on the terms that they've accepted like

52:23

I'm not homophobic But like if this guy hates

52:25

gay people then like, you know, there is like

52:27

a hypocrisy to it. Yeah It's

52:30

a slippery slow. It's a slippery slope

52:32

though Because you know gay people are

52:34

still seeing that and you know doesn't

52:36

feel good using it as a diss,

52:38

you know Yeah saying you know, oh

52:41

Trump and Putin insert some kind of

52:43

homophobic, you know homophobic slur It's like

52:46

yeah, it's it's not good I think

52:48

people the conversation has been dragged so

52:50

low into the mud that I think

52:53

people don't see and it's happened So

52:55

gradually over time that that some of

52:57

this stuff became so popular and became

53:00

so mainstream that it sort of warmed

53:02

its way into Your

53:04

own rhetoric and it's just something I think for

53:06

people to be conscious of yeah I think it

53:08

also speaks to and this is like a bit

53:10

of a tangent We don't have to go into

53:12

but like the I don't know the lack of

53:14

like Imagination in the American body

53:17

politic for like what's possible like America has

53:19

always been like a place of extremely Limited

53:21

set of like political possibilities Yeah Like that's

53:23

like widened up a little bit recently and

53:25

like it's like very destabilizing and upsetting to

53:27

a lot of people on the left and

53:30

the Right. So yeah, there's

53:32

one paragraph from the article I

53:34

really liked which ran through the

53:36

instances of casual and Unevident accusations

53:39

of child abuse on the mainstream,

53:41

right? I mean as just it's

53:43

just shocking how you know easily

53:46

and effortlessly people make Accusations of

53:48

one those horrible things you can

53:50

possibly do but yeah this paragraph

53:52

I thought was really interesting public

53:55

figures who embrace the traditional atomic

53:57

family like DeSantis Ray chick and

53:59

Rufo smoothed out the grammar that

54:02

Q established into more palatable versions

54:04

as people wholly unconnected to QAnon

54:06

use this echoing rhetoric. Serial

54:08

plagiarist Benny Johnson likes to call President

54:10

Joe Biden a groomer. Fox News' Laura

54:12

Ingraham has claimed public schools are sites

54:14

of grooming. Republican lawmakers introduced

54:17

anti-grooming legislation. Roger Stone recently

54:19

accused 2024 GOP

54:21

Senate candidate Larry Hogan, Maryland's former

54:23

governor, of having a quote, record

54:26

of involvement with pedophiles. Yeah,

54:28

I don't yeah, like I mean, I kind of

54:30

watch these things happen. And like this is this

54:32

like watching this stuff happened in real time. It's

54:34

like the sort of mental genesis of this essay.

54:36

I was like, Oh, like it's just it's gone

54:38

like it's like not just like on eight cone

54:41

and like, I don't know. Yeah, it was just

54:43

like not this like thing at the rally where

54:45

like I'd go and like talk to like robot

54:47

interiors or whoever I was like talking to a

54:49

Trump rallies back like pre 2020. It

54:51

was just like this thing that like fully existed

54:54

everywhere. And like these are like the I guess

54:56

like the biggest cases of it too. But I

54:58

feel like it's like infected so many things beyond

55:00

that. Like I was just kind of thinking earlier

55:02

about how when Elon called that diver a pedophile

55:04

that would still be an insane thing to do

55:06

right now. But at the time

55:08

it had this like in addition to just being

55:10

very shocking. It had this novelty

55:12

to it like I knew it was like floating

55:15

around for chance of thing but it was like

55:17

just so weirdly online and like now it feels

55:19

like it's like totally gone beyond that which is

55:21

part of why I felt like it was like

55:23

useful to write and like acknowledge this like it

55:25

is like a sort of like language that these

55:27

people all kind of speak casually to one another

55:30

and they all understand it to

55:32

be politically and advantageous. I don't think that they're

55:34

just like sort of like unwitting sponges absorbing it

55:36

either. They understand that their base is kind of

55:38

like rabbit around these kinds of issues and if

55:41

they try to connect that and then like redirect

55:43

it, it's politically expedient for them. This

55:45

is a huge victory for Chan culture

55:48

because originally accusing everything of being pedophilia

55:50

or child porn was the joke, right?

55:52

They would say anything with the initial

55:54

CP, Captain Picard, cheese pizza, all of

55:56

that is actually a reference. the child

55:59

pornography and this was just a joke,

56:01

a meme, and now we have it

56:03

in real life. Just everybody's saying, oh

56:05

yeah, I see it there, I see

56:08

it there. You know, innocuous things are

56:10

suddenly child pornography or everyone's

56:12

accusing each other of being pedophiles, you know,

56:14

even in the latest beef that you pointed

56:16

out between Drake and Kendrick, you know. I

56:18

mean, it has become just a way of

56:20

like ending an argument, of basically

56:23

claiming that your enemy is ontologically evil.

56:25

Right, right. Have you guys read Charles

56:27

Portis' Master of Atlantis? It's

56:29

a novel by Charles Portis, like of true grave

56:31

fame or whatever, and I like just drew this

56:33

connection now, but like that, as

56:35

you were just talking Julian about this, like

56:38

you, the book basically starts off and is

56:40

about this like society of these like very

56:42

goofy sort of like quasi religious people that

56:44

build this like kind of cult society thing

56:46

akin to the Freemasons. It's like very loopy

56:48

and the entire book is about that. And

56:50

it's all built out of like one guy

56:53

at the beginning getting scammed by someone who

56:55

makes up the cult, but like it's just

56:57

purely a fiction that is like, they're scamming

56:59

the protagonist into like giving them money and

57:01

then they disappear, but this guy just takes

57:03

it seriously. And he takes the joke for

57:05

real and builds an entire secret society out

57:07

of it, which is like the plot of

57:10

the novel for the next like several hundred

57:12

pages. And yeah, like QAnon and like this

57:14

whole grammar is like the same thing. It's

57:16

like these jokes from 4chan ended up like

57:18

building out this novel on accident. And obviously

57:20

it like tapped into real things in the

57:22

culture, tapped into real social and political forces,

57:24

which like galvanized and pushed it further, but

57:26

it is unendingly like goofy and funny that

57:28

it just came out of some people doing

57:30

a larp as a bit. They did

57:33

not expect like these other things to

57:35

happen. Yeah, I mean, what really strikes

57:37

me is we talked about this on

57:39

the show is the way this rhetoric

57:41

absolutely fails to address the underlying problem,

57:44

but also at the same time trivializes

57:46

it. Because, you know, I would argue

57:48

that society has repeatedly failed to protect

57:50

children from predators and that is a

57:53

horrible thing. And you know, and that

57:55

this deserves to be acknowledged

57:57

and corrected, but instead of doing anything...

57:59

thing that's actually helpful, they turn this

58:02

accusation of pedophilia into a just a

58:04

punch line, just an insult, like, you

58:06

know, as casual as calling someone stupid

58:09

or soft on crime or something. It's,

58:11

it's really, I mean, it's really, really

58:13

outrageous, because it just it

58:15

just waters down an accusation of something

58:18

that used to be considered, you know,

58:20

a textbook case of libel if it's

58:22

false. Yeah, both directly to that

58:24

point, and more broadly, like the problem with

58:26

QAnon two, or one of the sort of

58:28

secondary problems that has always been like this

58:31

tool of misdirection, like it's gotten these people

58:33

who are like aggrieved for like sometimes like

58:35

kind of legitimate reasons, sometimes not, and it

58:37

like completely distracts them away from like material

58:39

considerations for things that could actually make their

58:41

lives better could actually like reduce the suffering

58:43

of like themselves in their communities, and like

58:45

refocuses it onto this like a weird fictitious

58:47

like thing. And then like also, it has

58:49

this other effect to like redirecting actual energy

58:52

from resolving like the abuse of children in

58:54

like all these different ways and communities onto

58:56

this like absurd thing. I mean, I've heard

58:58

you guys talk about this like a million

59:00

times, you don't need to hear it from

59:02

me, but like, yeah, it's well, yeah, I

59:04

mean, you even you I mean, you note

59:06

in the in your article that, you know,

59:08

during the whole Wayfair scandal, you know, the

59:11

actual human trafficking resources basically had to put

59:13

out a statement saying, Hey, we are like

59:15

inundated with calls about this. And

59:17

it is hindering us from investigating and you

59:19

know, potentially helping real victims. And you know,

59:21

we've talked about that before on the show,

59:23

but but it, you know, it's worth bringing

59:25

up again that, you know, it seems

59:28

like for all that, you know, for all

59:30

that these people care about the safety of

59:32

children, they are actually getting in the way

59:35

of real in that, you know, of real

59:37

investigations and real groups that, you

59:39

know, that are tracking this down. Unfortunately, for

59:41

the for the the groups, it's just

59:44

that they don't also believe in QAnon.

59:46

If they also believed in QAnon, it

59:48

would be great, they would leave them

59:50

alone. But but that's not the case.

59:52

It's just a rhetorical and a debate

59:54

technique for reactionaries, you know, you point

59:56

to children or you point to pedophilia

59:58

and that closes the the

1:00:00

kind of conversation because there's a

1:00:02

moral imperative to condemn violence done

1:00:05

to children and the actions of

1:00:07

pedophiles, which, you know, that is

1:00:09

true, but it is just a

1:00:11

bludgeon. This sort of thing happened

1:00:13

to like, with the

1:00:15

hospitals, like when hospitals were inundated by

1:00:17

like QAnon people calling them up to

1:00:19

oppose like, I guess, like, gender

1:00:21

for me care care for trans children, which is also

1:00:23

like, some of the specifics of like, what, like, I

1:00:26

think QAnon people were getting their facts wrong. But like,

1:00:28

by calling these hospitals to save children, they were like

1:00:30

getting in the way of the hospitals resources and time

1:00:32

to like, treat kids and we're getting in the way

1:00:34

of people who like needed help calling in about their

1:00:36

kids. So yeah, it's not, I don't

1:00:38

know, it's like certainly more self serving than it ends

1:00:40

up being about like, the children that they profess to

1:00:42

want to care about. We'll be

1:00:44

talking to Ali Brehland. That article on Mother

1:00:46

Jones is how Q became everything. We'll link

1:00:48

to it in the show notes. Ali, thank

1:00:50

you so much for joining us today. Thank

1:00:53

you for having me obviously been a big

1:00:55

fan since even before the show. And so

1:00:57

yeah, super great to be on. And where

1:00:59

can people find more of your

1:01:01

work? I have Twitter, which

1:01:03

is my name, Ali Brehland. That's,

1:01:06

that's probably the best place I

1:01:09

write for The Atlantic. Now, even though this story

1:01:11

is from Mother Jones, she's got a new job.

1:01:13

So if you want to follow my work, follow

1:01:16

me on Twitter, or you can go to my page at The

1:01:18

Atlantic. Thank you, Ali. And

1:01:20

thank you, listener, for tuning into another

1:01:22

episode of the QA podcast, you can

1:01:25

go to patreon.com and

1:01:27

subscribe for five bucks a month to

1:01:29

get a whole second episode every week

1:01:31

plus access to our entire archive of

1:01:33

premium episodes. It's a good deal. Go

1:01:35

do it. For everything else, we've got

1:01:37

a website qaapodcast.com. Listen, until next week,

1:01:39

may the deep dish bless you and

1:01:42

keep you. We

1:01:48

have all take heed content based on

1:01:50

your preferences. This

1:01:52

was a disgrace. This was a

1:01:54

rigged trial by a conflicted judge

1:01:57

who was corrupt. rigged

1:02:00

trial and disgrace. It

1:02:03

wouldn't give us a venue change. We were

1:02:06

at 5% or 6% in

1:02:09

this district, in this area. This

1:02:12

was a rigged, disgraceful trial.

1:02:15

The real verdict is going to be November

1:02:18

5th by the people. And

1:02:21

they know what happened here, and everybody knows what

1:02:23

happened here. You

1:02:25

have a Soros-backed DA,

1:02:28

and the whole thing. We didn't do a thing

1:02:30

wrong. I'm a very

1:02:32

innocent man. And

1:02:34

it's OK. I'm fighting for our country. I'm

1:02:37

fighting for our Constitution. Our

1:02:39

whole country is being rigged right now.

1:02:41

This was done by the Biden administration

1:02:45

in order to move, to hurt an

1:02:47

opponent, a political opponent. And

1:02:50

I think it's just a disgrace. And

1:02:52

we'll keep fighting. We'll fight till the end, and we'll

1:02:54

win. Because our country's gone to

1:02:56

hell. We don't have the

1:02:59

same country anymore. We have a divided mess.

1:03:02

We're nation in decline, serious decline, millions

1:03:04

and millions of people pouring into our

1:03:06

country right now, from

1:03:09

prisons and from mental

1:03:11

institutions, terrorists. And

1:03:14

they're taking over our country. We have a

1:03:16

country that's in big trouble. But

1:03:18

this was a rigged decision right from day

1:03:20

one with a conflicted judge

1:03:22

who should have never been allowed to try

1:03:24

this case, never. And

1:03:26

we will fight for our Constitution. This

1:03:28

is Lord from Auburn. Thank you very much.