MILWAUKEE (AP) — President Donald Trump was more than halfway through his speech at a rally in Milwaukee when one of his hand gestures caught the eye of a supporter standing in the packed arena.
The 51-year-old woman believed the president had traced the shape of the letter “Q” with his fingers as a covert signal to followers of QAnon, a right-wing, pro-Trump conspiracy theory. She turned to the couple on her right and excitedly asked, “Did you see the ‘Q’?”
“He just did it?” asked Diane Jacobson, 63, of Racine, Wisconsin.
“Was that a ‘Q’?” added Jacobson’s husband, Randy, 64.
“I think it was,” replied their new friend, Chrisy. The Geneva, Illinois, resident declined to give her last name in part because she said she wanted to avoid negative “attention.”
The Jacobsons met Chrisy and her husband, Paul, hours earlier in the line to get into the Jan 14 rally. The couples bonded over their shared interest in QAnon, which centers on the baseless belief that Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the “deep state” and a child sex trafficking ring run by satanic pedophiles and cannibals.
What started as an online obsession for the far-right fringe has grown beyond its origins in a dark corner of the internet. QAnon has been creeping into the mainstream political arena for more than a year. The trend shows no sign of abating as Trump fires up his reelection campaign operation, attracting a loyal audience of conspiracy theorists and other fringe groups to his raucous rallies.
Trump has retweeted QAnon-promoting accounts. Followers flock to Trump’s rallies wearing clothes and hats with QAnon symbols and slogans. At least 23 current or former congressional candidates in the 2020 election cycle have endorsed or promoted QAnon, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America, which compiled online evidence to support its running tally.
Conspiracy theorists aren’t the only fringe characters drawn to Trump rallies. The Oath Keepers, an anti-government group formed in 2009 after President Barack Obama’s election, has been sending “security volunteers” to escort Trump supporters at rallies across the country.
University of California, Davis history professor Kathryn Olmsted, author of a book called “Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11,” said it’s unclear whether QAnon has attracted more believers than other conspiracy theories that have intersected with U.S. politics.
“What’s different now is that there are people in power who are spreading this conspiracy theory,” she said, adding that Trump’s conspiracy-minded rhetoric seems to fire up part of his base. “Finally, there is someone saying they’re not crazy.”
Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but experts fear the powerful engine of social media and a volatile political climate have ramped up the threat of violence. An FBI bulletin in May warned that conspiracy theory-driven extremists have become a domestic terrorism threat. The bulletin specifically mentions QAnon.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman and a White House spokesman didn’t respond to emails seeking comment. Asked about QAnon in 2018, then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump “condemns and denounces any group that would incite violence against another individual.” Some major Trump supporters, including former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, have denounced QAnon.
For more than two years, followers have pored over a tangled set of clues purportedly posted online by a high-ranking government official known only as “Q.” Many followers believe the late John F. Kennedy Jr. is a Trump supporter who faked his death in a 1999 plane crash. Another core belief is that thousands of deep state operatives and top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Obama, will be rounded up and sent to Guantanamo Bay during an event called “The Storm.”
The first Q “drop” appeared on the 4chan imageboard in October 2017. The messages migrated to 8chan until a string of mass shootings by gunmen who posted manifestos on the site led to it getting forced offline in August. The disruption, which ended when the imageboard relaunched in November under the new name 8kun, hardly spelled the end of QAnon.
Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher who co-hosts The QAnon Anonymous Podcast and has written about QAnon for the Washington Post under his pseudonym, said the sense of community forged by QAnon believers has helped it endure beyond the life span of other conspiracy theories.
“People in the QAnon community feel like they are banding together to uncover the real truth behind the scenes,” said View, who works as a marketer for a San Diego company and says he uses the pseudonym to protect himself. His acerbic comments about what he calls an “apocalyptic political cult” have earned him more than 20,000 followers on Twitter and vitriol from QAnon believers.
Before Trump’s rally in Milwaukee, thousands waited in line for hours to enter the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panther Arena. Some wore apparel adorned with a “Q” or “WWG1WGA,” which stands for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”
The frigid, gloomy weather didn’t dampen the spirits of QAnon follower Donna Shank, 50, of Burlington, Wisconsin. Shank, who said she voted for Obama in 2008, was ambivalent about politics before she stumbled across QAnon online and joined Facebook groups to learn more.
“I just woke up,” she said. “I was a sheep. I followed anything and everything.”
Diane Jacobson attached a pink “Q” and a blue “Q” to the back of her black “Make America Great Again” hat. She and her husband were eager to attend their first Trump rally.
“Trump is trying to tell us, to the best he can without compromising intelligence, what’s really going on,” she said.
Jacobson knows many people, including some of her relatives, scoff at QAnon.
“You really can’t argue with them,” she said.
Jacobson celebrated with her new friend, Chrisy, when the doors to the downtown arena opened.
“All these people believe me! I’m not crazy here!” Chrisy shouted.
Hours later, during Trump’s speech, Chrisy’s husband, Paul, grinned when the president said “the whole world is watching” what’s happening with protesters in Iran.
“That’s a Q reference,” Paul said, noting the phrase “the world is watching” has appeared several times in Q drops.
The May 30 bulletin sent by the FBI’s Phoenix field office warned of conspiracy theories inspiring violence by groups and “individual extremists,” according to an October court filing for a QAnon-related criminal investigation in Colorado. Police in the Denver suburb of Parker said Cynthia Abcug was accused of conspiring with QAnon supporters to kidnap her son from foster care. Abcug was arrested in Montana on Dec. 30 and awaits extradition to Colorado.
Internet-fueled conspiracies already have been linked to acts of real-world violence. A man charged with killing the reputed boss of the Gambino crime family last March showed off a QAnon symbol scrawled on his left hand during a court appearance. In 2017, a North Carolina man was sentenced to prison for firing a rifle in a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant at the center of the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that high-profile Democrats run a child sex trafficking ring out of the restaurant’s (nonexistent) basement.
Nancy Rosenblum, a Harvard University professor emeritus of ethics in politics and government, said the apocalyptic nature of the QAnon narrative resonates with those who want to believe that their political enemies will be vanquished and a better future will rise from the ashes.
“What makes it unique is that Trump is the chosen one,” said Rosenblum, co-author of the book “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.”
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Associated Press reporter Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.
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Follow Michael Kunzelman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Kunzelman75
VANCOUVER – Predictions of a close election were holding true in British Columbia on Saturday, with early returns showing the New Democrats and the B.C. Conservatives locked in a tight battle.
Both NDP Leader David Eby and Conservative Leader John Rustad retained their seats, while Green Leader Sonia Furstenau lost to the NDP’s Grace Lore after switching ridings to Victoria-Beacon Hill.
However, the Greens retained their place in the legislature after Rob Botterell won in Saanich North and the Islands, previously occupied by party colleague Adam Olsen, who did not seek re-election.
It was a rain-drenched election day in much of the province.
Voters braved high winds and torrential downpours brought by an atmospheric river weather system that forced closures of several polling stations due to power outages.
Residents faced a choice for the next government that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago, between the incumbent New Democrats led by Eby and Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives, who received less than two per cent of the vote last election
Among the winners were the NDP’s Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon in Delta North and Attorney General Niki Sharma in Vancouver-Hastings, as well as the Conservatives Bruce Banman in Abbotsford South and Brent Chapman in Surrey South.
Chapman had been heavily criticized during the campaign for an old social media post that called Palestinian children “inbred” and “time bombs.”
Results came in quickly, as promised by Elections BC, with electronic vote tabulation being used provincewide for the first time.
The election authority expected the count would be “substantially complete” by 9 p.m., one hour after the close of polls.
Six new seats have been added since the last provincial election, and to win a majority, a party must secure 47 seats in the 93-seat legislature.
There had already been a big turnout before election day on Saturday, with more than a million advance votes cast, representing more than 28 per cent of valid voters and smashing the previous record for early polling.
The wild weather on election day was appropriate for such a tumultuous campaign.
Once considered a fringe player in provincial politics, the B.C. Conservatives stand on the brink of forming government or becoming the official Opposition.
Rustad’s unlikely rise came after he was thrown out of the Opposition, then known as the BC Liberals, joined the Conservatives as leader, and steered them to a level of popularity that led to the collapse of his old party, now called BC United — all in just two years.
Rustad shared a photo on social media Saturday showing himself smiling and walking with his wife at a voting station, with a message saying, “This is the first time Kim and I have voted for the Conservative Party of BC!”
Eby, who voted earlier in the week, posted a message on social media Saturday telling voters to “grab an umbrella and stay safe.”
Two voting sites in Cariboo-Chilcotin in the B.C. Interior and one in Maple Ridge in the Lower Mainland were closed due to power cuts, Elections BC said, while several sites in Kamloops, Langley and Port Moody, as well as on Hornby, Denman and Mayne islands, were temporarily shut but reopened by mid-afternoon.
Some former BC United MLAs running as Independents were defeated, with Karin Kirkpatrick, Dan Davies, Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka all losing to Conservatives.
Kirkpatrick had said in a statement before the results came in that her campaign had been in touch with Elections BC about the risk of weather-related disruptions, and was told that voting tabulation machines have battery power for four hours in the event of an outage.
— With files from Brenna Owen
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2024.
Rustad was kicked out of the Opposition BC United Party for his support on social media of an outspoken climate change critic in 2022, and last year was acclaimed as the B.C. Conservative leader.
Buoyed by the BC United party suspending its campaign, and the popularity of Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives, Rustad led his party into contention in the provincial election.
VANCOUVER – Predictions of a close election were holding true in British Columbia on Saturday, with early returns showing the New Democrats and the B.C. Conservatives neck and neck.
Conservative Leader John Rustad was elected in Nechako Lakes, and 20 minutes after polls closed, his party was elected or leading in 46 ridings, with the NDP elected or leading in 45.
Among the early winners were the NDP’s Ravi Kahlon in Delta North and Niki Sharma in Vancouver-Hastings, as well as the Conservatives’ Bruce Banman in Abbotsford South.
It was a rain-drenched election day in much of the province.
Voters braved high winds and torrential downpours brought by an atmospheric river weather system that forced closures of several polling stations due to power outages.
Residents faced a choice for the next government that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago, between the incumbent New Democrats led by David Eby and Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives, who received less than two per cent of the vote last election
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has acknowledged her party won’t win, but she’s hoping to retain a presence in the legislature, where the party currently has two members.
Elections BC has said results are expected quickly, with electronic vote tabulation being used provincewide for the first time.
The election authority expected most votes to be counted by about 8:30 p.m., and that the count would be “substantially complete” within another half-hour.
Six new seats have been added since the last provincial election, and to win a majority, a party must secure 47 seats in the 93-seat legislature.
There had already been a big turnout before election day on Saturday, with more than a million advance votes cast, representing more than 28 per cent of valid voters and smashing the previous record for early polling.
The wild weather on election day was appropriate for such a tumultuous campaign.
Once considered a fringe player in provincial politics, the B.C. Conservatives stand on the brink of forming government or becoming the official Opposition.
Rustad’s unlikely rise came after he was thrown out of the Opposition, then known as the BC Liberals, joined the Conservatives as leader, and steered them to a level of popularity that led to the collapse of his old party, now called BC United — all in just two years.
Rustad shared a photo on social media Saturday showing himself smiling and walking with his wife at a voting station, with a message saying, “This is the first time Kim and I have voted for the Conservative Party of BC!”
Eby, who voted earlier in the week, posted a message on social media Saturday telling voters to “grab an umbrella and stay safe.”
Two voting sites in Cariboo-Chilcotin in the B.C. Interior and one in Maple Ridge in the Lower Mainland were closed due to power cuts, Elections BC said, while several sites in Kamloops, Langley and Port Moody, as well as on Hornby, Denman and Mayne islands, were temporarily shut but reopened by mid-afternoon.
Karin Kirkpatrick, who is running for re-election as an Independent in West Vancouver-Capilano, said in a statement that her campaign had been in touch with Elections BC about the risk of weather-related disruptions, and was told that voting tabulation machines have battery power for four hours in the event of an outage.
West Vancouver was one of the hardest hit areas for flooding, and Kirkpatrick later said on social media that her campaign had been told that voters who couldn’t get to a location to cast their ballot because of the extreme weather could vote through Elections BC by phone.
— With files from Brenna Owen
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2024.
