Why won't Trump denounce QAnon?

Because 21% of Republicans who know of the conspiracy theory say it's "very accurate." Another 17% say it's "somewhat accurate" morningconsult.com/2020/10/14/soc…
And for clarity, 44% of Republicans have heard of QAnon, 56% say they have not. So it's a pretty sizable number that believe it.
Cross tabs for the survey are in link below. The approval of QAnon question was asked thusly: "As you may know, QAnon is a term referring to multiple far-right conspiracy theories. Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of QAnon?" assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/202…
The Pew Research Center polled on QAnon last month and had similar findings to Morning Consult. 41% of GOP respondents who knew of it said it was either "somewhat good" or "very good" for the country: journalism.org/2020/09/16/mos…
In the Morning Consult survey, 21% of all Republican men said that they had posted positively on social media about QAnon. 11% of GOP women said the same. Interestingly, 18% of Dem men said this also. 7% of Dem women agreed.
Many political journalists still don't understand the importance of QAnon. The specific, ludicrous ideas of the movement are not yet believed by a majority of Republican base voters. But the idea that only the current GOP leader can be trusted is highly dangerous.
Because no current high-profile GOP figures espouse QAnon, many editors don't realize that conspiracism is beginning to supplant conservatism.

Even those journos who do discuss this trend often do so only to damage Trump. But it's far bigger than him.
Politico's @tina_nguyen had a great look at how GOP politicians are making peace with QAnon in particular but the phenomenon of conspiracism becoming ascendant is happening in other ways as well politico.com/news/2020/10/1…
It is also worth noting that QAnon is not a uniquely conservative phenomenon either. It has appeal among lefty "wellness" devotees and "alternative medicine" adherents. Common denominator is a willingness to believe elites are suppressing hidden truth motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
The worst thing about the internet is that people who believe stupid nonsense can now talk to each other about it. Unfortunately, the best cure for this is national curricula requirements on critical thinking and philosophy. It may be too late for those not in school though.
One last thought: In a 2017 YouGov poll, 57% of self-identified Donald Trump voters said that Barack Obama was "definitely" or "probably" born in Kenya. d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_upload…
I lied, here's one more tweet. This article is a great inside look at how GOP campaign operatives value QAnon believers and see them as a net positive for Trump's re-election bid businessinsider.com/how-qanon-infi…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Matthew Sheffield

Matthew Sheffield Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @mattsheffield

29 May
Trump's phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is an unattributed quote of Walter Headley, Miami's police chief in 1967. It was a threat to citizens who were upset that police had terrorized a black teenager by holding him over a bridge: washingtonpost.com/news/retropoli…
Trump is very clearly settling on a Nixon re-election strategy now. While Nixon was far more intelligent than Trump, he was personally unpopular like Trump. Where he succeeded was that he leveraged white fear of race riots to garner votes from reluctant citizens.
White nationalists, meanwhile, are actively working to subvert peaceful protests of police brutality by injecting violent rhetoric and action in the hopes of sparking a race war--or as they call it "boogaloo" rawstory.com/2020/05/they-w…
Read 17 tweets
27 Mar
If you wondered how Trump intimidated Ukraine, he just provided a demonstration on live TV when discussing how he won't help Washington and Michigan unless their governors kiss his ample behind.
Trump just said that he's unwilling to prevent American citizens' deaths unless he gets the ring kisses he desperately craves.

Why wouldn't he withhold some missiles from some random country that he doesn't care about?
This was not Trump just being sarcastic either in his comments about Washington and Michigan.

In an interview today, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said that medical supply vendors have told her they've been instructed not to send items to her state. crainsdetroit.com/coronavirus/wh…
Read 7 tweets
25 Mar
The Federalist is a menace to public health that has regularly supported racists. @CBSNews and @FoxNews should be ashamed of giving its employees regular platforms.
Here's a background thread on who they are for those who are only seeing their ignorant and dangerous advice for handling #COVID19
It's a factory of bad takes that was founded by a serial plagiarist named Ben Domenech. He also for years was on the payroll of an authoritarian govt of Malaysia. Naturally, he never disclosed to editors who published his stuff.
Read 31 tweets
20 Mar
The SARS2 / COVID19 / new coronavirus crisis is the result of failures by many people. If you can't admit the following things are true, you're stuck in blind fandom:
✔️ China lied repeatedly and suppressed internal warnings and failed to quarantine the infection
✔️ US and other countries foolishly outsourced vital manufacturing to China
✔️ Trump refused to listen to the many people who warned him this was serious
✔️ CDC inexcusably delayed testing as they bickered over it. They should have put out multiple tests instead of insisting on one standard. Vital time was lost
✔️ Trump administration seems to have learned nothing from govt epidemic drills
Read 5 tweets
19 Mar
All the focus on "China virus" from Trump is actually helping him distract from his undeniable failure to respond to it appropriately. It's literally what he wants his voters to focus on.
The core animating principle of American conservatism is that educated, secular elites are mean to religious people. This is exactly the debate that Trump wants to have.
Political science research shows that the number one indicator in whether someone voted for Trump is whether they believed "America is a Christian nation." politicalresearch.org/2018/04/06/chr…
Read 18 tweets
13 Mar
NEW: Paula White, a top official in the White House Office of Public Liaison, is scheduled to be the featured speaker at a fraudulent April conference promising "supernatural protection from the #coronavirus now" #Covid_19 rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-and…
The conference organizer claims that Christians aren't true to their faith unless they believe they can have magical protection from #Covid_19

They are endangering the lives of the elderly people who listen to their messages, beyond trying to make money fraudulently.
David Herzog, the minister who is planning the event, has claimed all sorts of magical powers, including that he has helped people increase their height, cure baldness, and even made their tattoos disappear
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!