Major QAnon Presence At Trump Rally In Michigan
The bizarre, baseless conspiracy theory known as QAnon has a lot of tenets, but one of the main ones has always been (per Vox) that special counsel Robert Mueller was not so much pursuing the Russia investigation but rather secretly working with President Trump to defeat an alleged cabal of pedophiles centered on Hollywood and the Democratic Party.
The completion of the Mueller Report, and the brief summary released by Attorney General William Barr last Sunday, has seemingly disappointed a lot of Trump opponents who were hoping for exposure of wrongdoing by the president. But what’s known so far about the Mueller findings hasn’t exactly vindicated the QAnon worldview, either.
Judging by their presence at President Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Thursday night, this development has not caused the QAnon crowd to lose faith.
According to multiple reporters covering the rally, there was a major QAnon presence both inside and waiting outside to get into Trump’s Grand Rapids rally.
“I’ve been covering Qanon for a year, and the amount of pro-Q people in this video from yesterday’s Trump rally line in Grand Rapids is absolutely shocking,” reporter Ben Collins of NBC News tweeted from the rally Thursday, while sharing a video of dozens of rally attendees in line, many of whom shouted out QAnon-related slogans.
Collins also followed someone at the rally who walked the entire line while holding a “make noise for Q” sign as some cheered.
Lots of QAnon believers in the audience for tonight's Trump rally in Michigan. pic.twitter.com/MyN6zIUzpG
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) March 28, 2019
Reporter Will Sommer of The Daily Beast also shared photos via Twitter from the rally of lots of attendees wearing QAnon shirts and carrying signs.
The QAnon theory centers on an anonymous message board poster who claims to be a high-level Trump administration functionary. In cryptic messages, the QAnon author or authors implies high-level conspiracies among politicians and other famous people, often inviting adherents to interpret the messages as they see fit.
At the core of the theory is an ill-defined “Deep State” conspiring against President Trump and his goals, and that Trump is working to defeat them, possibly through mass arrests at some undetermined point in the future.
The president doesn’t appear to have ever acknowledged QAnon, although adherents of the theory have met with him in the White House, and Trump Thursday night tweeted a photo from the rally that included several “Q” posters.
“So many things in American society had to fail for this many people to believe one party is run by an actual Satanic cabal that eats children, and Trump, Jesus and Bob Mueller are secretly ending it,” Collins, the NBC reporter, tweeted after the rally.
