Today is the 4th anniversary of Donald Trump's bizarre comment that casually started the dominant conspiracy theory of his presidency. I chronicle it in THE STORM IS UPON US, and am going to quote from that to tell a brief version of the story.
amazon.com/Storm-Upon-Us-…
"On October 5, 2017, Trump called the White House press corps, who had been dismissed for the day, back to the State Dining Room. The president was holding court with top-ranking military officers and their families, enjoying the pageantry and adoration of the office..."
"And in that muddled, speaking-to-nobody-in-particular tone into which Trump so often dropped when speaking off the cuff, he casually launched a conspiracy theory that would shatter America’s brain.
“You guys know what this represents?” he asked...
“Tell us, sir,” said one reporter, as cameras clicked and generals duly smiled.
“Maybe it’s the calm before the storm,” the president quietly intoned, as if he were the holder of a great secret that he could no longer contain.
“Could be. The calm before the storm.”
"Finally, he spoke again. “We have the world’s great military people in this room, I will tell you that,” he continued, pumping his fist and moving his hand around in a circular motion. “And uh, we’re gonna have a great evening,” he concluded...
Then he thanked everyone for coming and ushered out the reporters he had just ushered in.
But the media wasn’t done. “What storm, Mr. President?”
“You’ll find out,” Trump intoned as aides desperately tried to wrap things up. The whole exchange lasted less than forty seconds...
"Follow-up questions the next day didn’t help, as Trump merely smirked, winked, and repeated, “You’ll find out,” when asked if “the storm” was a new military operation or anti-terror initiative as he took questions before the usual praise-a-thon cabinet meeting...
"The rest of the Trump administration scrambled to make it clear that whatever Trump was talking about, they had nothing to do with it. Vice President Mike Pence, on a trip to Puerto Rico, told reporters to take it up with his boss and changed the subject...
"And then–press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered up this word salad: “As we’ve said many times before, I know the president has, as I have from this podium on quite a few occasions, we’re never going to say in advance what the president’s going to do...
"The “fake news" mainstream media were clueless as well. Vox called it “odd and ominous,” The Washington Post lamented that the “stridently stupid” remark had “put the world on edge,” and The New York Times rhetorically asked “What Did President Trump Mean?” Nobody knew...
"But while the mainstream media was trying to figure out exactly what Trump meant, if he meant anything at all, a few anonymous Trump admirers decided that they knew exactly what it meant.
And they liked it...
"Not only was it a military operation, it was an enormous one, involving the cabal at the top of the food chain being brought to justice in the bloodiest way possible.
It would be just a few weeks before the rest of us began to "find out" what early Q believers already knew."
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