Meet the Americans who believe Trump’s election fraud lies

In the morning, the protest was calm. But in the early afternoon, after Trump addressed the crowd, the event erupted into violence as dozens of Trump supporters stormed into the US Capitol Building.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have no reason to believe that the Danieles participated in the violence.

But speaking to them and other protesters at the “Save America Rally”, it was clear why some of the protesters decided to take events into their own hands.

A significant portion of the Republican base is awash in paranoid conspiracy theories, almost entirely cut off from the mainstream media and convinced they are locked in an existential fight with radical left-wingers for America’s soul.

Asked if he was worried about violence at the event, Daniele replied: “Bring it on … If we don’t fight now we will never have a fair election again.”

He then leans in and urges me to investigate the Bilderberg Group, a secretive group of global elites that conspiracy theorists believe is a shadow world government connected to the Illuminati.

“The deep state,” he says, “is a conspiracy fact.”

Both Daniele and his wife are disdainful of the mainstream media and prefer to rely on obscure right-wing websites for their political news.

“We do our own research,” Michelle Daniele says. She believes the Democrats’ supposed election was planned years in advance.

Diane Landers and Julie Cognac, who travelled from Georgia, are wearing stickers saying “Democrats are evil”.

Cognac recently noticed a large number of New York and California licence plates in her area – evidence, she believes, that people were illegally coming from interstate to participate in this week’s Senate run-off elections.

“We’re not just going to stay home and shut up,” she says.

Lenny Dupere travelled from New Hampshire with wife Linda, who is holding a sign saying: “Media is the real virus”.

“There is no way Biden won legally,” Lenny says. “It was outright fraud.”

Linda says Trump “truly loves America”, before comparing his children to Hunter Biden: “His children are all successful and they’ve made it on their own.”

Biden, she says, “will never be my president”.

As we spoke, a protester nearby waved a sign saying “Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.” Rittenhouse, 18, has been charged with murder after shooting two men dead at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.

Anti-abortion activists are displaying giant pictures of aborted fetuses and there’s a noticeable smattering of paraphernalia promoting the QAnon conspiracy that regards Trump’s opponents as Satan-worshipping paedophiles.

Loading

Among the T-shirts on sale is one that reads: “Jesus is my saviour, Trump is my President”.

Sitting near the National Museum of African American History and Culture are George and Patti Queenan, who drove eight hours from their home in Massachusetts. Patti is clutching a home-made sign saying: “Thou shalt not steal elections”.

“After hours, in the dark, they made sure Biden won,” Patti says as her husband cites discredited claims that election voting machines flipped votes from Trump to Biden.

She says she regards the fight over election fraud as just one front in a broader “spiritual battle” playing out in America. It’s a battle she believes conservative Christians like herself are losing.

“The whole country is falling down,” she says. “You can’t trust the media, public schools are teaching untruths, the liberals are trying to change us into socialists.

“America as we know it is over.”