- President Donald Trump threw his support behind the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory from the White House podium during a press briefing on Wednesday evening.
- Trump claimed he didn't know much about the movement but said that its followers "like me very much, which I appreciate."
- "These are people who don't like seeing what's going on in places like Portland, in places like Chicago and New York, and other cities and states," he said. "These are people who love our country."
- The FBI warned last year that conspiracy theories may pose a domestic terrorism threat and listed several QAnon-inspired incidents as examples.
- Last year, a QAnon supporter was charged with murdering a New York mafia leader. Another conspiracist was arrested earlier this year after threatening to murder presidential candidate Joe Biden.
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President Donald Trump embraced supporters of the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement on Wednesday during a White House press briefing.
Trump claimed he doesn't know much about the movement but said followers of the conspiracy "like me very much, which I appreciate."
"These are people who don't like seeing what's going on in places like Portland, in places like Chicago and New York and other cities and states," he went on. "These are people who love our country."
A reporter then told Trump that the conspiracy claims he is "secretly saving the world from this Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals."
"Does that sound like something you are behind?" the reporter asked.
"I haven't heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?" Trump replied. "I mean, you know, if I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it, I'm willing to put myself out there."
He went further, saying he is, in fact, saving the country and the world.
"We are, actually. We're saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country. And when this country is gone, the rest of the world would follow," he said. "The rest of the world would follow."
The FBI warned last year that conspiracy theories like QAnon pose a domestic terrorism threat.
Broadly, the QAnon conspiracy claims that the world is run by a Satanic cabal of elites intent on bringing down the Trump presidency.
It alleges, among other things, that the former special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other top Democrats who opposed Trump; and that the so-called American "deep state" tried to shoot down Air Force One before Trump's summit in North Korea last year.
Some of the conspiracy's followers have been arrested and charged with violent crimes.
In one case, a QAnon supporter was charged with murdering a New York mafia leader last year. Another conspiracist was arrested earlier this year after threatening to murder presidential candidate Joe Biden.
In June 2018, a Nevada man used an armored truck to block traffic on the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge and was later arrested after fleeing to Arizona. Authorities found body armor, ammo, rifles, and a flash-bang device inside his vehicle. The FBI said the man directly referenced the QAnon conspiracy theory after his arrest. The media also reported that he sent letters to Trump from jail that featured a QAnon slogan.
The president has shared, retweeted, and otherwise promoted dozens of messages from QAnon supporters but had not directly addressed the conspiracy before Wednesday. The movement is also gaining steam among Republican candidates for public office: at least two Republican congressional candidates who've voiced support for the conspiracy are poised to win House seats in November.
Q "is someone that very much loves his country, and he's on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump," Marjorie Taylor Greene, a gun-toting QAnon supporter who will likely pick up a Georgia House seat this year, said in a 2017 video posted to YouTube. "There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it."
Trump's comments on Wednesday came hours after Facebook cracked down on QAnon conspiracists as part of a larger effort to police "offline anarchist groups that support violent acts amidst protests, US-based militia organizations and QAnon."
Earlier this month, Facebook also removed a QAnon group with 200,000 members from its platform after it violated company policy. The social media giant recently ran an internal audit that showed the conspiracy theory may have reached millions of users, through thousands of groups on the platform.
Other platforms have also taken steps to address the far-right group's influence. Twitter in July announced that it was cracking down on "so-called QAnon activity" and reportedly removed 7,000 accounts associated with posting content related to the conspiracy. Later that month, TikTok disabled two popular hashtags associated with QAnon.
REPORTER: QAnon believes you are secretly saving the world from this cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Are you behind that?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2020
TRUMP: Is that supposed to be a bad thing? We are actually. We are saving the world. pic.twitter.com/rPYFU1B8WB
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