Nov. 11, 2020
Denial and Rage, Conspiracy Theorists Win Elected Office, Bannon Bounced
That River in Egypt
If there’s anything of which we’re sure, it’s that the present occupant of the White House will not go quietly into the night, and neither will his followers. Like him, they do not accept the election’s results, and have latched on to the false narrative of an election stolen from them. And while the antics of such Trump acolytes as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani — who convened a Pennsylvania press conference on Nov. 7 in the parking lot of a Philadelphia landscaping company that is wedged between a crematorium and a pornography shop — may seem comical, they managed to muster followers in red baseball caps at state capitol buildings across the country the weekend following the election. In open-carry states, such as Arizona, pro-Trump protesters came heavily armed.
Now far-right political operatives, as well as hosts of Fox News Channel prime-time programs, are rallying those aggrieved Trump activists to march on Washington on Nov. 14. Emboldened by Attorney General William Barr’s endorsement of Justice Department investigations of voter-fraud allegations made by right-wing leaders and the president himself, the weekend rally may reveal just how deep the president’s support runs — or doesn’t.
QAnon in Congress
The House of Representatives will welcome three new members in January who have, at one time or another, embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits the all of the president’s political opponents are part of a Satanic child-sex-trafficking cabal, and that the president is working in secret to defeat the cabal, round up major Democratic and Hollywood figures and execute them. The social-media network built by QAnon adherents was a tool that proved useful to the Trump campaign, as prominent campaign surrogates retweeted and shared posts from QAnon-related accounts.
Marjorie Taylor Greene will represent Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. Not only has Greene referred to “Q,” the anonymous figure at the center of the conspiracy theory, as “a patriot,” she also appeared to compare Black Lives Matter to the Ku Klux Klan in videos obtained by the news site Politico.
Lauren Boebert, who won the seat from Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, appeared on the YouTube program hosted by QAnon influencer Ann Vandersteel, where she said that if the QAnon theory “is real, then it can be really great for our country.” The New York Times reports that under the scrutiny that comes with running a political campaign, Boebert has since disavowed the conspiracy theory.
At 25, Madison Cawthorn is the youngest person ever to be seated in Congress. And though he reportedly has disavowed QAnon, he does support its claims about child-sex-trafficking. He also raised some eyebrows after posting on his Instagram page photographs of his 2017 visit to Adolf Hitler’s summer home in Germany.
Head Case
Considering the fact that former presidential adviser Steve Bannon is currently awaiting trial on charges of wire fraud for allegedly soaking donors to a fund that was supposed to finance the building of a section of a wall on the Southern U.S. border (instead the donations are said to have gone into the pockets of Bannon and a couple of associates), you’d think that Bannon would be on his best behavior. But after it became known that the former Breitbart News executive had called for the beheadings of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, his lawyer quit representing him, and Twitter suspended his account. Facing a sad future behind bars, Bannon is left hoping that his execution scenario has pleased the president enough to grant poor Bannon a pardon.
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