The QAnon Caucus

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It sounds like the plot of a mediocre political thriller.

A baseless conspiracy theory, promulgated in the outer rings of the internet, begins seeping into college campuses, courtrooms, political campaigns — and finally the highest reaches of American government.

Like so much in our politics these days, the once unbelievable has become real.

More than 50 candidates who have expressed support for the conspiracy theory known as QAnon have run for Congress in 2020, according to Media Matters, a liberal research group. Nearly all are running as Republicans. About half have already lost their primary races. But at least one has a good chance of ending up on Capitol Hill.

Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a wealthy businesswoman who has promoted QAnon, won more than 40 percent of the vote in a Republican primary for a House seat in Georgia. She now enters an August runoff as the favorite to secure her party’s nomination — and the Republican candidate is likely to win the general election in the conservative district.

Most Republicans said nothing about Ms. Greene’s support for the conspiracy theory; on the contrary, she was endorsed by prominent figures like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. But after Politico uncovered hours of Facebook videos in which she made racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, Republican leaders began distancing themselves from her candidacy.

In Oregon last month, Republicans selected a Senate candidate, Jo Rae Perkins, who also promotes QAnon. Although she’s unlikely to beat the incumbent Democrat, Senator Jeff Merkley, her bid has the backing of party leaders.

Neither Ms. Perkins nor Ms. Greene ran explicitly on her QAnon beliefs. But Ms. Perkins believes her candidacy is helping QAnon.

“We are seeing more and more people getting emboldened as we see more and more information get out there,” she told The New York Times. “And as people put together more and more pieces of the puzzle, they can see, yeah, this is real.”

So what, exactly, do QAnon adherents believe? The central theme is that President Trump is a near-messianic figure who is besieged by threats from evil government officials.

The sprawling conspiracy theory started in October 2017, when a user of the online message board 4chan began writing cryptic posts under the name Q Clearance Patriot, claiming to be a high-ranking official privy to top-secret information from Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

Since then, the QAnon universe has expanded to include a series of outlandish claims. Mr. Trump was recruited by the military to run for office in order to break up a global cabal of Democratic pedophiles (remember Pizzagate?). The special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation would end up sending prominent Democrats to be imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and is going to replace Vice President Mike Pence on the 2020 Republican ticket.

While these statements are ridiculous, they can also put real people in danger. Last year, the F.B.I. put out an intelligence bulletin identifying QAnon and other fringe conspiracy theories as a potential domestic terror threat. People said to have been radicalized by QAnon have been charged with crimes including attempted kidnapping and murder.

Still, the president has played right along, at times at times elevating and encouraging QAnon followers. He’s recirculated their posts on Twitter, posed with one for a photograph in the Oval Office, and invited some QAnon believers to a White House “social media summit.”

“I can’t say whether President Trump believes QAnon, but he certainly is willing to use conspiracy rhetoric to his advantage,” said Joanne Miller, who studies the political psychology of conspiracy theories at the University of Delaware. “That could be part of what’s emboldening QAnon believers to come out of the shadows.”

Joseph Uscinski, an expert on conspiracy theories at the University of Miami, has a simple theory: “Conspiracy theories are for losers.” Generally, the party in power doesn’t need to support a theory essentially undermining the government it controls.

That’s not the case with Mr. Trump, who has often claimed that a “deep state” of shadowy government officials is trying to subvert his presidency.

“There’s always been these beliefs that there’s a deep state. Now, it’s more like it’s the deep state that’s really turning on this populist who’s one of us,” Ms. Miller said. “This is the first time we’ve seen the president’s party — people on the winning side — who seem to be more conspiratorial.”

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At the beginning of the Trump era, many mainstream political observers on the center-left and center-right held onto hope that despite his political ruthlessness, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, was still a loyal institutionalist — someone who would be a bulwark against the worst of Trumpism.

For many critics, those hopes have been dashed over the past three years as Mr. McConnell has largely stayed silent while Mr. Trump dismantled norms seen as crucial to American democracy and pushed the boundaries of executive power. The New Yorker, for one, has crowned Mr. McConnell “Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief.”

Mr. McConnell is up for re-election this year, and though he’s more likely than not to keep his seat, Opinion columnist Gail Collins took a moment this week to write about, and daydream of, a post-McConnell United States Senate. She joked: “The idea of him losing is as seductive as — oh, I don’t know. Dinner in a real restaurant?”

Next week, Democrats have a chance to pick who runs against McConnell — most likely either Charles Booker, a 35-year-old state legislator, or Amy McGrath, a more centrist former Marine fighter pilot. Ms. Collins views it as “the classic dilemma” for Democrats: “Who would you want nominated for this difficult race in a purple-to-red state? A) Moderate with a really good résumé. B) Exciting newcomer who might be able to move the public left. C) Anybody who can beat Mitch McConnell and I don’t care if it’s Mr. Pokee the Instagram Hedgehog.”

— Talmon Joseph Smith

… Seriously

The Wall Street Journal captured this moment from Mr. Trump in an interview on Wednesday.

“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” Mr. Trump said, referring to news coverage of the rally date. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

Mr. Trump said he polled many people around him, none of whom had heard of Juneteenth. Mr. Trump paused the interview to ask an aide if she had heard of Juneteenth, and she pointed out that the White House had issued a statement last year commemorating the day. Mr. Trump’s White House has put out statements on Juneteenth during each of his first three years.

“Oh really? We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out a statement?” Mr. Trump said. “OK, OK. Good.”

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