Touting conspiracy theories, Trump welcomes fringe views into the political mainstream

By Toluse Olorunnipa and Isaac Stanley-Becker,

President Trump has increasingly embraced, amplified or equivocated about a number of conspiracy theories in recent weeks, adding to the sense of chaos and uncertainty caused by a pandemic and social unrest.

From the baseless QAnon movement to a racist theory about the citizenship of Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, Trump has given a nod to fringe groups and welcomed them into the mainstream of his party. Beyond being unfounded, many of the ideas Trump is bolstering are dangerous, according to intelligence officials, political scientists and, increasingly, members of the president’s own party.

“QAnon is dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a statement Thursday, becoming the highest-ranking Republican to denounce a movement that Trump explicitly embraced this week.

Cheney’s comment came a day after Trump gave a major boost to QAnon followers, saying he appreciated their support and declining two opportunities to denounce them.

“I don’t know much about the movement; I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” Trump said Wednesday during a White House news briefing. “I heard these are people that love our country.”

While Cheney, who chairs the House GOP conference, was joined by a few other Republicans in condemning QAnon, the party has been largely reluctant to break from Trump as he has backed that movement and other conspiracy theories.

Trump publicly celebrated QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene after she won a congressional primary race earlier this month, calling the Georgia candidate a “a future Republican Star” and “a real WINNER!”

Greene — who has also floated the false claim that the Pentagon was not struck by a plane during the 9/11 attacks — is almost assuredly heading to Congress after winning in a deeply conservative congressional district.

Despite her views, her win was welcomed by Republican Party brass, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). The Trump campaign publicly attacked Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) when he tacitly criticized Greene’s support for QAnon.

The developments represent a foray into the mainstream for a movement that has existed on the fringe of public discourse in recent years and has drawn the attention of the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat.

White House aides defended Trump and blamed the media, while not addressing the QAnon phenomenon.

“The media routinely manipulates the President’s words and takes him totally out of context,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said in a statement. “Friendly reminder that journalists and outlets peddled the baseless and ridiculous ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ conspiracy theory against President Trump for years only to be proven completely wrong.”

While special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence panel found that members of Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign and welcomed Moscow’s support, they did not establish that a criminal scheme existed between Trump and the Kremlin.

Just as investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia were heating up in the fall of 2017, QAnon took root on Internet message boards with posts from a self-proclaimed government insider identified as “Q.” The pseudonymous figure posted cryptic clues about Trump’s impending conquest over the “deep state,” spawning an elaborate far-right worldview that came to absorb many other debunked ideas.

Experts said Trump’s embrace of QAnon supporters, whose core principle is their fealty to him, is the logical conclusion of a political movement powered from the beginning by conspiracy theories.

Trump rose to political prominence pitching the racist and false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the presidency. He sought to associate the father of one of his primary opponents, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, with the assassin who shot John F. Kennedy. And once in office, he peddled the debunked idea that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote.

“These folks — QAnon supporters and other conspiracy-minded people — brought him to the prom,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami and co-author of “American Conspiracy Theories.” “Now he has to dance with them.”

The president’s willingness to embrace fringe conspiracy theories has only increased as he has spent more time in office, despite his access to top-notch intelligence assessments that debunk many of his views. Trump has increasingly turned to conspiracy theories as his presidency has faced its greatest head winds yet, amid a pandemic, economic downturn and racial unrest.

The proliferation of social media, and the ability to create and disseminate conspiracy theories based on “sheer assertion without any evidence,” makes the current trend toward conspiratorial politics especially dangerous, said Nancy Rosenblum, a professor of ethics in politics and government at Harvard University.

“We have a president in the Oval Office who is himself naturally a conspiracist in his mind-set, and who is capable of imposing his compromised sense of reality on the nation,” said Rosenblum, co-author of “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.”

Without evidence — and often in direct contradiction to overwhelming evidence — Trump has recently claimed that mail-in voting is plagued by fraud, that Twitter is manipulating its “Trending Topics” to ridicule him, that an explosion in Beirut was an “attack” and that Obama directed a spying operation against his campaign in 2016.

He has also falsely accused certain peaceful protesters — including a 75-year-old man knocked to the ground by police in Buffalo — of being anarchists belonging to the anti-fascist movement known as “antifa.”

Although the FBI in 2019 listed QAnon among the “anti-government, identity-based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” that “very likely motivate some domestic extremists to commit criminal, sometimes violent activity,” the group could be having a more widespread impact on public health amid a pandemic, experts said.

QAnon supporters have used the significant platform its adherents have established to oppose public health precautions and spread misinformation about the virus as well as about a potential vaccine.

Democrats, who have used their national convention this week to portray Trump as an unserious and ignorant president, seized on his positive comments about the fringe movement.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign has often responded to Trump by referring back to his handling of the coronavirus, which continues to be a top issue for voters just 75 days before the election.

“We’re in a moment of dire crisis that Trump has severely mismanaged for over seven straight months,” Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden, said in a statement. “But not only is our president refusing to take responsibility for his failed leadership that has cost over 170,000 American lives and tens of millions of jobs — he is again giving voice to violence.”

Trump has given his critics plenty of material to work with as he has boosted untested miracle cures, contradicted public health experts and downplayed the severity of the pandemic.

The president has said his government is studying oleandrin as a potential coronavirus treatment after the CEO of MyPillow pitched the botanical extract despite having no background in medicine.

Previously, Trump boosted the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer” cure, even as his own administration’s scientists said it was not effective in treating the coronavirus.

Last month, Twitter took down a video that had been retweeted by Trump because it included false claims that hydroxychloroquine was a coronavirus cure and that Americans did not need to wear masks. Asked about the doctor featured in the video, Trump said that he knew little about her but that she seemed “very impressive.”

The president used the same approach when asked about a conspiracy theory questioning the Democratic vice-presidential nominee’s eligibility for office.

Trump appeared to lend credence to a baseless op-ed in Newsweek that posited Harris might not be a natural-born citizen, praising its author while also saying he had not personally studied the issue.

“The lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer,” Trump said. “I have no idea if that’s right.”

The pattern of amplifying conspiracy theories without giving them a full embrace is strategic, said Nicole Hemmer, a scholar at Columbia University and author of “Messengers of the Right,” about right-wing media.

“He uses this very elliptical language to both support these fringe groups but also to allow himself some plausible deniability,” she said.

Although White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and other aides said Trump’s comments about QAnon indicated he was not a supporter of the group, the group’s supporters came away with a different conclusion.

Facebook on Wednesday took steps to crack down on QAnon, deleting nearly 900 pages and groups and restricting the spread of content from thousands more. But in the groups that remained, users devoted to the conspiracy theory hailed Trump’s comments as a major victory.

In one, a user posted a photo of Trump’s briefing, carried live on Fox News, which added the headline, “Trump: QAnon people ‘love our country.’ ” Iconography associated with the baseless philosophy spilled forth in comments on the post, with users suggesting falsely that his comments signaled an escalation of his crusade against the deep state.

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.