Chapo Trap House - 710 - I Believe Mole Children Are Our Future feat. Will Sommer (2/27/23)

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

We’re joined by friend of the show Will Sommer to discuss his new book “Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America”. We discuss the full shape of the conspiracy/movement now 5 years into its run, its effect on those who follow it, and where it might go from here. As well as all the bizarre cultural references, micro-celebrities & criminals that fill out the movement. Pick up Will’s book here: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/trust-the-plan-will-sommer?variant=40493482541090 And listen to Will’s podcast Fever Dreams here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fever-dreams/id1558716930

Greetings, friends. It's Monday, February 27th, and we've got some choppa coming at you. Felix is off today, so it's me and Matt. But if you're not joining us today for the entire episode, as returning champion, Will Summer. Will, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Welcome back to the show, I should say. But you're here today to discuss, we're talking about your new book, Trust the Plan, about everyone's favorite, I don't know, heuristic dream state that is now altering and shaping our reality. We're talking QAnon on the show with Will Summer, and you just got a book out, covering your many years of immersing

yourself in QAnon lore. I guess what I want to begin with today, taking a sort of a wide angle, the widest possible lens for understanding this phenomenon now, like what three, four, or five years on now, is I was thinking about something my friend, Jacob Baccarac said on Twitter the other day, in response to a New York Times article about the astonishing number of undocumented, like un-parented, like migrant children who are being gang-pressed into working at slaughterhouses and factories. And his point was that QAnon is in the same way, it's a blind man discussing an elephant version of describing the actual contours of exploitation and oppression, particularly

of children in this country, but it's a narrative in which Joe and Jane Suburbia can cast themselves as the victim of this same process of immiseration, evil, and horror that our brains have a hard time computing or wrapping themselves around. So Will, could you just begin there talking about how you view QAnon as a sort of like a folk mythology that describes much of American culture? Sure, yeah. I think you're right that a lot of the appeal is that there are these weird things out there in the world that are undeniably true. And I certainly don't want to be saying that the government is always nice or there's no conspiracies or Jeffrey Epstein's death

wasn't suspicious and all this stuff. And I think you're right that these weird things in the world, people start looking for answers and that some of them are drawn to QAnon. But on a broader level, it is also true that the way society is set up, it favors powerful people to exploit vulnerable people, many of them children. Certainly I've been at these events where someone will bring up the idea of labor trafficking or labor exploitation and everyone's like, oh, who cares? Back to these kind of really intense like childs grabbed off the street sort of stories. And so yeah, I think QAnon makes the victims of this more appealing. It makes them certainly seem whiter. And it also casts the QAnon believer in this

kind of avenging angel. I mean, they call themselves digital soldiers. It sort of gives them this role in this, it is not just like a global struggle, but a sort of like a heaven and hell level struggle. I mean, and like the detail that Jacob was pointing out in this New York Times article is that one of the jobs that child labor, that children are being forced into doing, if it's not like cleaning the slaughterhouse, is literally making frozen pizzas, I think in like food factories. So like his point was that PizzaGate is real, but children are being kidnapped and forced to actually make the pizzas that people eat.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's very fitting. That's, yeah, I mean, it is you often with with talking to QAnon believers and they sort of point to something and they'll say, don't you think that's messed up? And I'll say, well, yeah, but I mean, it's kind of the leap in logic to then, you know, like for example, they look at immigrant exploitation across the border and then they say, so as a result, these people are being trafficked so that, you know, Hillary Clinton can eat their adrenochrome, stuff like that. And so they kind of, they have to jazz it up. But it's boring otherwise. It's just the depressing reality of living under a system

that they are not in any way equipped to genuinely challenge. I mean, they accept and embrace capitalism as a concept and as an organizing principle for a society. They can't really absorb the implications of that and what it means in practice, but they have to acknowledge if for no other reason than their own, screaming psychic pain, that things aren't good and things are messed up. So it has to become a fantasy that allows them to imagine themselves. Yes, as God soldiers against satanic hordes, and it has to be sexual. It has to have that sexual basis to it. Or else, why should I care? Why is it worth me unsheathing my digital blade if it's not going to get me off? Because at the end of the day, online politics of

all stripes is people choosing to entertain themselves. It's not like changing anything. I mean, that would be nice, but it's really more about spending time that would otherwise be watching Family Feud or something. And also maybe make some friends at the rallies. That's it. And if that's the motive, if it's going to be about enjoyment, then why wouldn't you choose the most luridly, narratively sexual and violent tapestry that you could weave? And you're not going to get jazzed up by looking at tables full of lists of child exploitation in factories or something. What's the point of that? Yeah. I mean, you still want frozen pizza. A 12-year-old being kidnapped and forced

to clean a slaughterhouse is, I don't know, it doesn't have it. But like I said, the way QAnon has evolved into a kind of, I think it's become a catch-all for a 21st century neosex panic. And I think it's very much led to this current situation of the demonization of teachers, trans teenagers, trans people in general. But yeah, the sexualization of children and child abuse is such a load-bearing part of this whole mythology. But I can go into a couple of examples, but Will, I mean, you made a lot of friends on the road studying this, but it does seem to be like a lot of, not a lot of, but I will say several prominent QAnon promoters have been recently arrested for child pornography

and the abuse of children. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one guy I've covered a lot is this guy named Phil Godluski, who is a, I think a former assistant volleyball coach or something, and sort of turned QAnon emperor. I mean, this is a guy who, through his selling silver and stuff like this, has just sort of emerged from nothing to be buying multi-million-dollar houses for everyone in his family or his dad. But this is a guy who also, as soon as you look briefly at his record, had a corrupting a minor charge that he pleaded down on after, as working as a teacher or as a coach, basically there was a teenage girl whose boyfriend had killed himself and

then he kind of swooped in there and was sleeping with her all across Pennsylvania because he was a realtor, had access to all these houses. And then all of these kind of gruesome details that have come out now, of course, he claimed this is all sort of planted by the deep state to stitch him up. But, you know, and his fans are really like, wow, Phil, they're really, you know, the cabal is that to get you, man? There's a lot of evidence on this case. Yeah. Yeah. The more open and shut it is the more dangerous I am to the deep state. They wouldn't put in the efforts to frame me so well if I wasn't a threat to them.

Well, it's a lot of these classic, you know, driving, you know, driving with the front face and camera videos where he's like, Oh God, they got me again. Manufactured to more evidence. But I don't know. I mean, I just think about this in terms of like that. I guess like the the libs of tiktok panic and like the woman who runs that account comes from the Chabad community, which is, you know, has a long history of sexually abusing kids. I mean, this is not like made up. It's been a problem in this community for a while. So I just wonder like, if you grew up like that in around things like that, or you've come into like, you know, accept certain things as like just normal and natural. Like then

you then you think about what your political enemies might be doing with kids and you're like, Oh, well, then if this is what I know is happening among good people or like people like me, then to extrapolate out what my political opponents are doing is like, then you can really let the let the fantasy drive kick into kick into gear. Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think QAnon has provided the right even for people who don't say like, you know, where we go when we go all or I love Q, it's helped normalize this idea of saying that your opponents are all pedophiles or that there's this larger kind of conspiracy theory of grooming and trying to corrupt children. And so in that way, I

think it's really sort of been integrated into into the rights larger ecosystem and you know, it's policies from Ron DeSantis stuff like that. Well, let's let's go back to the beginning, though, because like it's in October, 2017 is when someone using the name Q post the first of their their many drops on 4chan. And the post itself, like the thing that kicked this all off was the following. Hillary Clinton will be arrested between 745 a.m. and 830 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday, the Monday morning, October 30th, 2017. If that's the first thing that's kicking this all off, I mean, like, is that is I mean, to use the parlance of Q and honor is this

a clue here to what's going on here because Hillary Clinton still at large that's a hologram. Right. Well, Matt, you know, I think that you might be a great Q and on promoter because I haven't heard the hologram yet. But as you said, I mean, you know, OK, if a guy pops on and he says Hillary Clinton is going to be arrested by the end of the week, I think maybe let's see if he's right. You know, we'll see if she's arrested by the end of the week. And in that case, she wasn't. And instead, and in sort of a hint of where it was all headed, they decided, you know, she's wearing an ankle bracelet, and that's why her her pant leg is baggy or that's a clone, all this kind of stuff. And so they really pretty

quickly adapted to the idea of sort of dealing with the cognitive dissonance by making up new things. Well, yeah, like if your first drop, if your first proof is something that is like very is stating something very clearly and is very and is falsifiable, either either she'll be arrested Monday morning or she won't. And by all accounts, it doesn't seem like she's been arrested. So like as Q evolved and as it caught on, I mean, like, do you see in that a reason for why the drops began to begin to get more and more cryptic and like Nostradamus like in that they were very open to interpretation as to like actual things happening in reality. Yeah, I mean, I was just about to bring up that that from these

very hard deadlines, it then gets to saying, you know, everyone get ready for D five and people assume, oh, that's going to be December 5 or and then that comes out. Oh, I guess we were wrong about December 5 or it gets even vaguer than that. And they say, you know, watch the water. So every time it rains, Q and on people are saying, Oh, damn, you know, they're trying to drown the pedophiles in the tunnel stuff like that. And so you kind of you broaden it that widely. And people can get whatever they want out of it, you know, it can be if you're into yoga, it's about yoga or natural oils and all this kind of stuff. And you can sort of, you know, it's a sort of a choose your own adventure with

it, you know, and you can lead you all the way to January 6. Well, we can get there. But like, how did how did you get like on the QB to begin with? Because, you know, we've had you on the show a couple times before covering like sort of the online right. But when did you first notice Q and on and start thinking about it as something that would like maybe worth covering as a curiosity, if not like a national phenomenon, then it'd be him. Sure. So I was covering, I was just checking 4chan for sort of things to things to cover and seeing if anything was bubbling up. And I started to notice these threads in the fall

of 2017, where they would have a big lion and it would say the calm before the storm. And I ignored it for a while and they kept doing it. And then I Q and on people announced that there would be a march in DC and in the summer spring of 2018. And so I thought, I don't know, maybe like a dozen people are going to come to this. And so I went and it was shortly after a pizza gate rally, I'd been to that sort of give me a sense that things were popping off. I mean, there were these kids with shirts that said, I'm not pizza. So it's like, you know, John Podesta, don't eat me. And so just imagine explaining that to you, I like the idea of that. That's actually kind

of giving a Podesta and the sickos a little bit of credit there. They're like, maybe they don't realize that they're eating children. Maybe they just aren't busy, you know, they got all these important jobs to do in DC and they just are picking up something. Oh, that's a kid. I'm sorry. You've only they've been properly labeled. So so I went to this queue and I marched early after that, and it was hundreds of people chanting, you know, where we go on, we go all and saying they were going to get the sickos out of the out of office. And I thought, well, this is going to be the high water mark for this. I'll never hear of this again. And, you know, it only got bigger. And so, you

know, at one point, a guy with the armored truck shut down a bridge near the Hoover Dam. It was for like, yeah, well, yeah, he was saying, you know, Trump, you got to release the real report. Q said you would. And eventually he refused to talk to his lawyer. He said he would only talk to Laura Loomer and all this stuff. And that was that was really when I thought this is getting a little, little out of hand. I want to you mentioned it briefly, but can we go back to where we go one, we go all, which is like the Q and on tagline. How did a throwaway line from like a totally forgotten Ridley Scott sailboat movie starring Jeff Bridges, but there was only one way to survive

on his ship. I will challenge them. And they will come together, become a team. We go one, we go all. I remember, I got, I swear to God, I remember seeing this movie in the theater and I thought it was great. And when I was a kid, I remember crying at the end of the movie. It's about a fucking like, it's about like these rich kids who go on like a sailboat trip and then they go into a hurricane or something and one of them dies. But I don't remember that line of that movie at all. Like how the fuck did this line from this movie? Like was this, is this movie popular among Q and on people? Like how did this get started? Well, so whoever runs Q is obsessed with movies and really weird movies. And so like you say,

I mean, movies that really are very forgettable. And so this, this movie you mentioned, as you said, it's kind of like a kind of like a dead poet society vibe, you know, some bad kids are getting reformed. It really is like, you know, the, when the substitute wheels in the TV feels like that one of those movies. And so as you said, I mean, they said a couple times in that movie where we go on, we go all and then Q resurrects this and says, this is our slogan. And you know, we're all in this together. Now, a funny thing is once people track it down to this movie and it looks a little ridiculous to be picking this movie up as your big, your big rallying cry. They said, well, no, actually it was that it said

that on the, that was the inscription on the bell on JFK's boat. It was just completely made up, you know, and they sort of retconned this, this much more noble backstory. What are some other movies that play big into the Q and on Lord? Because, you know, White Squall, the, that's how bad that movie is. They let Ridley Scott direct their movie, the title of which was White Squall. What a fucking terrible name for a movie. But I guess that, you know, a storm is a big part of it. But what, what are some other like lesser known films that have worked their way into the Q and on Canon? Yeah, you know, I'm trying to think about it. Definitely some of the more famous ones

are, I believe they're really into the Wizard of Oz right off the bat. A couple others, nothing is super strange to mind, but this is the thing. It's these very forgettable nineties movies. It would be like, they were into like The Siege or something, you know, just these sort of random action movies. The Siege, that's the Denzel Washington one where terrorists blow up New York and it's like Edward Zwick directed Bruce Willis is like the, the, the torture general in that movie. Exactly. I mean, these are the kind of, it's that sort of movie. I mean, another one that

they love is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because in that movie, they love it. Lizard people. Lizard people. Well, at one point Hunter, as Thompson, he gets, he gets a vial of Adrena Chrome. Where'd you get this? Nevermind. It's absolutely pure. What kind of monster clan have you hooked up with this time? Satanism freak. I think there's only one source for this stuff. The Adrenaline gland from a living human body.

I know the guy didn't have any cash to pay me. And, and, and the other guy says, you know, I got this, you can only get this from a pedophile. Yes, sir. They nail this guy for charm, Alastor. Right. What could I say? Even a goddamn werewolf is entitled to legal counsel. And so. Hunter's question made that up for the novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Like he is the source of all this Adrena Chrome shit. He like, I mean, this guy's like famous for making like the whole thing about Ed Muskie being on Ibogaine. Like he loved making up

fake drug stories. And I mean, he said as much about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So I guess I never put you in two together that, yeah, Hunter Ashton said was the guy who invented the Adrena Chrome mythology. Exactly. And they, I mean, they cite that. And so now if you pull up that scene on YouTube, you know, it's all just, you know, Q, you know, the storm is coming in the comments. What did they, because I remember that the Adrena Chrome scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and like Benicio Del Toro turns into like a fucking demon. And it's presented like the world's most powerful hallucinogen. It's just like a drug beyond all others. How

do, how do Q believers who actually believe Adrena Chrome is a real thing? I mean, like the lurid detail about how you have to harvest it from like a suffering child's pineal gland is especially lurid. But what do they think that like Adrena Chrome does for the people who ingest it? Yeah, I mean, they think it's like the fountain of youth. You know, it keeps you alive forever. It keeps you looking young. And so, for example, when, you know, these, but as you said, it can only be harvested through like true detective style rituals, you know, you can't just, you know, tap a kid and take it out. And so they, they, so for example,

Just write their forehead, just put on, all right, tip them over. I'm like, you can just, you can just put them in front of an iPad and put on, throw on blues clues or something. They'll be, they'll be loving that. So you need, you need the real shit. And so, you know, then this plays into these, these other aspects of the lore. So when, you know, celebrities started getting COVID, they would say, Oh, Tom Hanks, of course he, he came down number one, you know, they, they, the, maybe they tainted the Adrena Chrome supply with COVID. Or when, you know, they had to do these, when like Ellen was hosting her show

from home, you know, she's looking a little haggard. She doesn't have a makeup artist. They were saying, Oh, she ran out of Adrena Chrome, you know, the supplies got disrupted. Well, well, well, well, had they, I don't, I mean, obviously the Clintons are very central to this. Have any of them seen Bill Clinton? He looks like a walking corpse. Like before COVID, well before COVID, he looked like death. The Adrena Chrome clearly not working on him. You know, that's a great point, man. I mean, that's a guy who, who is looking rough, you know, you even, you know, just kind of for his age in general. And so you would think,

you know, he's kind of, you know, King Adrena Chrome in the, in the mythos. Um, I mean, I mean, back to the, I love, I love the detail about Ellen hosting her show from home. Like she, she looks a rough, you know, Ellen is looking terrible. Adrena Chrome supply has been cut off. But I guess like the Q obsession with celebrities and the idea of like Hollywood clones and like, you know, Tom Hanks has been compromised to a permanent end. The fixation on celebrities is like, I just always think that like, that makes it like, it's so perfect for the Trump era because Trump himself is a creation of like, he's a media guy, he's a media bitch. He loves gossing about celebs. And now there's

this whole lore in which it's not just gossip about celebs, you're engaging in like the battle of Armageddon against celebrities. Oh yeah. And, and you know, you're pitting celebrities against each other so that every time a celebrity dies, it's because they were really about to blow the lid on the cabal. You know, Avicii, uh, you know, Robin Williams were all murdered by the cabal, or maybe they faked their deaths when they're still alive. So you can kind of, you, you can have play with it like you like, um, they have, uh, you know, they have whistleblowers. There was a guy, a bit player on Vanderpump rules who, you know, said that all these guys were

big time pedos. And so, you know, it, it is, Tom Sandoval briefly had a, a funk rock group together on that show called the get it up your ass and dance or something. I think it was the name of the song. I think it was, uh, I will say I've been watching the show for the first time and suddenly I was like, Oh, it's the Q and on guy. Uh, it's a touch in public. Touch in public. Okay. Um, and, and so yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're making a good point here about the,

the way it lets you kind of valorize as America's, uh, celebrity obsession. Whereas before maybe you're feeling a little dirty reading us weekly, stuff like that. Um, but instead, and you, you know, you can also, there's kind of a masculine coding to this, which is now you're, you're, you're watching all these videos and looking for the clues and you know, you're, you're, you're hunting, you're a digital soldier. Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, like normally I'd just be like a movie obsessed weirdo reading the trades being like, you know, ooh, lines gate to announce three picture deal with Harrison Ford or something like that. But no, now I am, like you said, I'm Russ Cole. I'm fucking

connecting the dots. I'm fucking, yeah, this is, this is hard. This is hard boiled detective work I'm doing here. But, uh, yeah, well, I wanted to ask you like, uh, QAnon, it cropped up very shortly after the election of Donald Trump. And like, I'm wondering if like, do you have any thoughts of like, do you see QAnon as related in any way or like, uh, a sort of, uh, the next iteration of like, for instance, what the Tea Party was in reaction to a democratic administration? Because the odd thing here is I would expect QAnon to happen if Hillary Clinton became president, because there always does seem to be like at least starting with the Tea Party or like the moral majority before that. These kind

of, uh, slightly astroturfed, but like, you know, but in some sense genuine, like conservative populist political movements that arise usually in response to a democratic president presidency. How do you view like, do you view this as connected to that? And what do you make of the fact that it took place during Trump's first term in office, as opposed to a reaction to a democratic president? Yeah, I mean, it is very weird. Like, like you said, I mean, you would think that this would be the time to, uh, you know, when Trump won office, you know, they won. And so now it's time to celebrate. Uh, and there's no need for a real like backlash or, or something that's going to paint, uh, moderate Republicans as, as villains in league

with a cabal as well. Um, but I think with QAnon, it, it emerges when Trump was sort of bogged down in things, the Mueller investigation was starting. Um, he had gotten the tax cuts done, which, you know, if you're a rich guy is great, but I think for the rank and file Trump believer, it didn't do a lot for them. Uh, and so it sort of emerges at the time where the sheen is coming off the Trump presidency. If you had really placed a lot of hope in it and suddenly you're thinking, well, geez, this guy, he hasn't built the wall. He hasn't done the kind of the big wins we wanted. So instead this thing emerges that says, Oh man, it's so much harder for Trump than you realize. It may look like he's this feckless loser

who can't get anything done. But in fact, uh, you know, you don't know about the cabal that he's secretly fighting. I mean, he, that's what he's so busy with. Well, this sounds identical to like everything I heard from people who were like really into Obama over the two year, two terms that he had in the White House. Yeah. I mean, you know, Farid, oh, you're a promoter of the green lantern theory, I think was. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, way more boring. Not interesting. No, no cabals, no underground tunnels, no cannibals, no secret trials at Guantanamo. Just don't worry. He's taking care of it in a way that I can't best buy. He said he's doing West Wing shit in

the background. I mean, I think what was the first Q drop? Hillary Clinton has been arrested. What was one of Trump's main slogans during the campaign? Lock up. We're going to throw her in jail. Trump was not going to be like every other Republican and his, he wasn't like any other Republican. He wasn't a Republican. Like Trump was never a Republican. He did not emerge from the Republican Party. He was a celebrity who used the Republican Party as a vehicle for his own self-aggrandizement. And the people who came to him came to him through his celebrity. They were and what his celebrity told them is that things were going to be different. Like politics as they understood it was going to be over and it

was going to become this in much more intense spectacle of retribution and satisfying redemptive violence. And then they didn't get that. They got tax cuts and gridlock. And they needed some way to metabolize that. And then this guy, whoever the hell he was, pops up and says, Hillary Clinton is in prison, but she's going to be in jail. And it, it provided this new node and it didn't matter that didn't happen. In fact, it's better that didn't happen because then it provides you another, another thing. It provides you this trail of bread crumbs to follow and a way to live in this world that isn't tolerable in a parallel imaginative world where everything is coming together. And it has to be more lurid and more intense

than anything that the Obama bots had, because the people coming to it are not coming to it from the point of view of traditional political subjects. This is a new type of political subjectivity created by this fucking game show host as president, like the degree to which that brought people into the political process who would otherwise have never been political can't be really overstated. And that that's why you and I has been this magnet for people who were not political had no partisan preferences before this. And we're, you know, like weird, crunchy health nuts or yoga people or, or crystal people who didn't really have any politics because politics didn't speak to them because it was inert and dead. This

is, this is a live imagine fantasy imagination world premised on the idea of being entertaining, of being fun to absorb as opposed to the spinach eating of traditional politics, which is why I got to ask, I'm sure Will has this question on his list, but I really got to ask, where are the Q people now with Trump versus DeSantis? Oh, man. Because DeSantis is the guy who's trying to turn the Trump phenomenon into bare politics into a collection of policy proposals, and then he just gets to represent them. Whereas Trump is still politics as, you know, explosive personal spectacle. Well, how are the Q people responding to that? Well, so far, I mean, I think they're, they're still lining up behind Trump. I mean, we've, we started to see Trump

lay the groundwork for DeSantis as a pedophile, right? Like he's, you know, he had this picture of, he had this picture of, you know, DeSantis with some high school kids when he was a teacher and he- That's weird. I'm sorry. That's a weird thing to do. That's a weird thing to want to do, to hang out with high school kids when you're their fucking teacher. And I mean, yeah, that's only a party people are drinking. And the, you know, and Trump is the classic, you know, he's maybe not all the way there. He's not saying, you know, this guy's a pedo. He's saying, oh no, not Ron. Could this be true? Well, I mean, like Matt, you bring up the example of like Ron DeSantis trying to like,

um, create, take the Q phenomenon and bring it into the realm of policy. I think we're seeing an example of that today where he just announced that he was revoking Disney World's like special economic zone status and the greater Orlando area. So yeah, like we are now occupying Disney World. We're going in there. We're going to the Magic Kingdom. We're finding those mold children. We're going to get them out. We're going to find Walt Disney's head and all the mold children who were, it was like, all the mold children in the freezer along with Walt. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, but yeah, so far, I mean, I, I think also I think the, the kind of like

the leaders of QAnon and I think these kind of MAGA Twitter people more broadly realized that if DeSantis is in charge, it's not going to be fun for them. It's going to be, you know, all these sort of random apparatchiks getting appointed to destroy universities, stuff like that. It's not going to be this kind of wildly woolly zoo where, um, you know, random people are getting White House press briefings to, you know, scream it at, uh, you know, official stuff like that. Um, well, can we talk about the mold children for a second? Yes.

The mold children, they, they, they come up quite a bit in, in your reporting. Could you just give us like the executive summary, like what, who, what are the mold children and how do they figure into the QAnon lore? Because I remember in the early days of COVID in New York City, like the U S Navy sent one of their like hospital ships to like a dock in New York Harbor to like take over some of the excess overflow of like there were not enough beds being available in New York City for all the sick people. And I remember reading like, like, like a QAnon thing about like, Oh, like this is all cover. The hospital ship is for the mold children. The mold children have been liberated and they've been taken

to the hospital ship where they're receiving medical treatment and being debriefed. And I remember just thinking at that time, like, just like, I'm, I'm, I'm out of reality. It's like no longer for me. I'm just watching movies from now on. But, uh, well, like, what are the, who are the mold children? Where are they being kept? Like, what is up with all these tunnels? Yeah. Well, the multi we got to free them is the, is the bottom line. I mean, the, the gist is these are supposed, you know, the QAnon people say 600,000 kids go missing a year, which would be this enormous number. Well, where do they go? They end up in the

tunnels is the thinking. And that's where they're getting drained for their adrenochrome. And you know, they, they call them DUMs. They think they live in DUMs, which are deep underground military base. That's one of my favorite pieces of conspiracy lore. And DUMs do exist, by the way. They definitely, there are, there are tunnels connecting some of them. Oh yeah, absolutely. And so you have these things where, you know, like I said, every time it rains, you know, maybe they're drowning out the tunnels or every time there's an earthquake, it means, you know, the good guys are in a pitched battle in the tunnels. And so, as you said, during COVID, the tunnel stuff got really big. They set up, you know, hospitals

in Central Park, and that was thought to be rescuing the mold children or the hospital ships as well. In fact, a guy in LA, this train engineer derailed a train near the hospital ship because he wanted to reveal the truth about what was going down. So, I mean, people really believe in the tunnels. The one thing I'd add about the tunnels is they have, they believe they have maps of the tunnels, you know, it's not just, you know, metaphorical. So there are all these shirts that say, save the kids on the front. And I saw that and I thought, okay, it's kind of a crypto QAnon thing. And then on the back is just the map of the tunnel. So I mean, it's much more explicit about their QAnon beliefs.

We were talking a little bit about, like, what policy would look like and the QAnon being a sort of response to, like, or an answer for why the wall hasn't been built yet, why Hillary Clinton hasn't been arrested yet, why Trump is mostly just governing, like, a regular Republican president. Well, I found the most gut-wrenching parts of your book were for people, were for, were when you profiled people who for them QAnon with, like, was not something that they were looking to explain a political reality or to, like, achieve something concrete, like, building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. It's the people who believe that when the, you know, when this great awakening happens or when Trump finally takes over, they will

get a cure for the cancer that's killing them or for, like, the autism that their child has. Like, I mean, you profile a number of people who just basically are, like, weren't even treating their disease because they feel like, well, the storm's going to happen any day now and Trump will just release the cancer cure for the tumor that's killing me. And these are people without health insurance, too. Yeah. I mean, this is, as you said, I think this is, you know, one of the, one of the sadder parts and also one of the ones that really hits, really hits about how much of QAnon belief and conspiracy theories in general is just driven by this economic desperation.

And so, you know, I heard from a woman who, you know, whose kid is, you know, mentally disabled and is getting bullied in school. You know, he can't get the right educational treatment, but, you know, the cabal is about to be defeated and they'll really secure for autism or, as you said, a guy who had cancer but, you know, was feeling pretty good about it and felt he didn't need treatment because soon this would all be resolved. You know, there's this real, like, financial and medical aspect to QAnon that I think is often underplayed. They think that Trump would sign into law this bill that would sort of usher in a, you know, there's an Iraqi dinar aspect to it. All this free money stuff would, it would

come flowing in. And so, you know, if you rent a house, you'll own the house. And if you have debt, it'll be... And student debt was a big one of them. They thought student debt was going to be eliminated by Trump as well. Or once, you know, the, the prophecy is fulfilled. Exactly. Like all this, you know, in this utopian world where Barack Obama is in Guantanamo Bay and stuff, the good news is that, you know, debt will be abolished and everyone will have all this free stuff. We'll have, you know, med beds that'll, sort of like a tanning bed that'll cure any ailments, stuff like this.

Like the movie Elysium. QAnon people should get into that movie. But yeah, like, I mean, like, when I'm reading your book, Will, like, I was just struck by, like, how deeply spiritual and, like, metaphysical this yearning is. To, like, really, like, to create, like, I don't know, peace on earth, harmony among all men, the lion laid down with the lamb, like, war will end, disease will end, poverty and suffering will go away. And I guess it's just the idea is, like, is it that, like, the, the, the, the sicko-demonic elites already availed themselves of all of this great medicine and things? And then, like, as soon as they're defeated, like, the cancer

cure that they're all been taking advantage of will now become, I don't know, there's a cancer cure that exists and is going to be in the public domain as soon as we can get rid of the pharmaceutical lobby. Yeah, that, I mean, the idea really is that sort of everything bad in the world is due to this cabal. And if only, you know, we could keep Trump in office long enough and, you know, really crack down on his opponents, then we would live in heaven. You know, one of the most popular QAnon promotional videos, which was embraced by, among others, Kurt Schilling, was, you know, imagine a world with no war, you know, this cabal is behind

all the wars that have happened in thousands of years, all this kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean, I think the point about metaphysical yearning is right. This idea of, you know, politics is about more than, you know, am I going to get a tax cut or is my school district going to be better? But it's about, you know, if it's even about that at all. But, you know, it's about, you know, we can really achieve something, you know, on a utopian level. Returning to, like, examples of people for whom belief in this has led to, like, truly dramatic and horrible things in their lives. Could you talk about the story of, this is the story of Cynthia Abkug and her belief that her child had been kidnapped?

Yeah, this is really crazy story. You know, there's kind of this true crime aspect to a couple of the chapters in the book. So this is a woman who, again, lived on the margins of society in many ways. She had run into, she had a couple of kids and had run into trouble in Florida with, they were getting suspicious that she was, she had a munch housings by proxy situation where they suspected she was like dosing her, her infant child with marijuana, all this stuff. So she moves to Colorado and eventually, you know, the authorities there aren't thrilled with her either. And they take her, you know, I think maybe three or four year old son away, put him in a foster home. And rather than, you

know, it's a pretty dire situation, rather than maybe get a lawyer or try to improve her life, get some mental health treatment, if that was even possible, she, she becomes kind of a Q and on cause celeb. And they start saying, well, they kidnapped Cynthia's kid and, you know, you know, this kid's going to Comet Ping Pong effectively. And, you know, we got to get him out of this foster home. And so they start raising money, they send a guy who is kind of a hazy background as an ex sniper, possibly, you know, it's very unclear. He's got some guns. And they start plotting an attack, like an armed attack on the foster home. Fortunately, her daughter tips off the police. But by the time they

get there, they've kind of begun this, this sort of country, countrywide odyssey to escape the FBI, hanging out with really weird characters. They run into a JFK and junior impersonator at one point. Then it kind of, you know, once the danger's gone from the story, it kind of becomes like a co-unbrother sort of situation. And you had another anecdote about another, another story you reported on about this is a guy who was promising to help people get their kids back from like, I don't know, some sort of cabal engineered court, ordered foster home or something like that. And then he ended up getting murdered by one of the people that he was helping.

Yeah, this was another crazy one. Yeah, she, he's kind of part of this whole larger kidnapping movement. And this is a guy who said, you know, Trump has empowered me to create my own court system. So don't worry, we'll get your kid back because you don't have to deal with family courts. And so these women, you know, there are a lot of women all across the country doing this who would be sort of duped into this. And they had these recruiters on Facebook and they would send all this money to this guy who was like a random guy in northern Florida. And he ultimately, he had sort of one of his acolytes becomes convinced that he is working for the cabal because what other reason would there be that she couldn't get

her kid back? Because, you know, he claims to have all the answers. And so then, you know, this, she hasn't been convicted yet, but essentially what happened is allegedly is that she went to see him and, you know, said, Hey, pal, you know, where's my kid? Boom, boom, boom. And, and lit him up. And so he was ultimately murdered, sort of by the these delusions that he had fed. See, that's, see, that's an amateur hour right there. If you're going to, if you're going to get these people's hopes up like that, you got to have some sort of plan, like you hire a kid to come and say that they're their kid and that they did like a plastic surgery on them or changing situations, genetic mutations

or something, whatever, you got to have something. Just draw a hand on your fucking fist like senior wensis or something. You don't just don't just go like, sorry, because I don't think they'll take no for an answer. I mean, this guy was like, I mean, the dangers of like believing your own hype. I mean, like you said, well, he invented his own legal system based on the emulments, emulments clause. Has that are you say that? Yeah. Yeah, the emulments clause. The emulments, yeah, it called e clause. And he was just like, and had been laughed out of every court that he was in, but he was promising these people that like, oh, like I have the legal authority to return your child who's been taken away

by the state to you. And then they believed it. And then when the court cases are, you know, failing, this woman was like, well, obviously he's in on it and his kid not my child as well, brought a gun to his house and allegedly killed him with it. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, go ahead. No, no, I want to talk about like there's a lot of great Q characters in this book. But I want to get now, I want to talk about my favorite, a guy that I learned about reading this book. I'd never heard of him before. But well, could you, could you hip our listeners to Austin Steinbart and his like, a guy who has come up with, I think like, honestly, I have my, it's just a screenplay idea for me. Like he has a very interesting

sci fi concept that explains how he is actually Q. Like he's claiming Q for himself, but he has a very interesting, like a sci fi concept that I'd like to explore here. Yeah, so this is a guy who in reality was like an IT guy in, in his twenties in Arizona. And then in 2020, he emerges after getting laughed out of some previous Q and on vigilante groups. He's a very, I would say unnerving guy, like he comes across as very slick, but in a very practiced way. And so he, he emerges and with a YouTube video and he says, Hey, guess what? I'm Q. And his argument is that he, that the guy writing the Q messages is him 30 or 40 years in the future. And he's using a time machine, effectively a time,

time computer to send the messages back to present day Austin. And so he's going to be Q in the future. And so his followers call him baby Q. And so he claims that he has used these clues and other messages. So he said, let's say old Q in 2005 or 2009 said, Hey, Austin, buy a ton of Bitcoin. So now Austin's a billionaire and they're going to use this to fund the space force and all this kind of stuff. This sounds like the kind of like frequency that, that film with Jim Caviesal, who honestly, if you got him on the right day, might believe this guy. Oh, well, I mean, we know Jim Caviesal is a Q and on guy. So yeah, it wouldn't be too

much further. But like in, in the Steinbart story, like eventually the FBI comes in visits him and he's like, Oh, finally, great fellow agents of the government. Nice to meet you, Mulder and Scully. And like they, they, they begin to interrogate him. And then you describe it as like every defense lawyer is a worst nightmare where he's like, well, obviously I traffic drugs across a Mexican border. Duh. And like just started copying to all these crimes. But then curiously, the FBI didn't arrest him then. They didn't keep doing this shit.

And he, he loved boasting about crimes because his point was he claimed to be an agent for the defense intelligence agency, which, you know, as far as we know, isn't true. But he was, he would say, he would kind of commit these crimes flagrantly to say, look, I'm untouchable. And so for example, he went to this brain clinic and got like Terry Bradshaw. Terry Bradshaw is okay. Like that is that like this, this story is when I was really, really digging it. Like he is in a medical clinic taking photos of like the fucking the Lincoln tunnel sized holes and Terry Bradshaw is brained from CTE and then posting it on

the internet. And he's like, look, I can do it. I'm with the defense intelligence agency. Yeah. And he would say like, this is pretty messed up, right? That I'm doing this, but I can do it. And so, And you know, Terry Bradshaw sued this asshole. I mean, right. I mean, he did like 30 NFL players. So he, he did that. He threatened to murder the queen of Denmark. He said, oh, I smuggled drugs. You know, we all know intel agencies smuggle drugs all the time. He said, there was this guy who had actually in real life killed himself, set himself on fire, a prominent

figure in Phoenix. And he said, oh, that was me. I murdered that guy. So he did like some real crimes, seemingly some fake ones. And the FBI comes to the door and he answers it with a desert eagle. And he says, yo, what's up? Oh, I'm glad you avoid all the landmines I drew across my property. And so the FBI talks to him and he says, oh, yeah, I do this. I do that. And then he, they leave and they don't charge him for a while. And at this point, like you, like you will, my editor was like, I don't, is there a missing paragraph here? How could they not charge him? And I said, I don't know. They just let him go. Maybe, maybe he's actually a government agent. Have you thought about that?

Well, basically, I thank you, Austin Steinbart, because I basically, without even knowing it, I stole your whole idea of messages being sent from the future into the past for my understanding of how to watch movies, movie months of the podcast coming in April. No, but I do like at the end of it, though, like eventually he is now he had violated bail restrictions against drinking and smoking weed. And the police discovered a whizinator prosthetic penis in his house meant to cheat drug tests. So he has been caught breaking rules. He's on pretrial release and judges just ordered him held until his trial. So I guess his security clearance in the future hasn't come through yet, but that was a great

story. Well, the one thing I'd add about that, Will, when I was hanging out with his followers, they said, you wrote about the whizinator thing. That's fake news. That's not true. And I said, okay, well, what is it? And they said, well, it was a kind of a cheaper brand of fake penis that we were using store brand whizinator. You're paying for branding. I'm not an idiot. Look, I paid for a regular flesh light. Lisa and flesh light is an extra $30. It's all, but it's all just synthetic closing to me. All right. Well, and then none of my other bite that my favorite Q character of a guy

that I was already aware of before reading the book, you've been around him. Let's talk about the God JFK Jr. AKA Vincent Fuchsia. This guy, the will, the thing that was insane to me from reading your book about this guy is apparently he has not made any money off of being the JFK junior guy for Q people. I mean, so he claims, and as far as I can tell, there isn't a sort of an obvious way he could have made money unless he's getting donations from someone. But as you said, I mean, I hope he got laid at least. Well, I, I suspect he did because having seen him having, so, you know, he gets a lot of

attention from the fairer sex at these Q and all the dollars. This is noted in the book or a lot of, you know, very lovely middle-aged women who say, oh my gosh, she's here. They come up and, and I said to this one woman, I said, I mean, he doesn't look anything like JFK Jr. And she said, haven't you heard of Hollywood? Haven't you heard of Medea? Well, I lost it when I read that part. When I read that, he's like, haven't you seen the Grinch and Medea? So is the idea that, is the idea that the JFK junior is going out in Medea, like prosthetic makeup every time he leaves the house or, or is it the original

JFK junior was in prosthetic makeup? The idea that Vincent Fusca, yeah, he's wearing a fat suit. I mean, no, he's not a fat guy, he's not even fat. Like, yes. Haven't you seen the Crumps? But, but he, but what I find maddening about this guy is, I mean, this is a guy who really was sort of plucked because he was mega Trump supporter, was always behind Trump at these rallies. And people said, I think that's JFK junior. So this is a guy who has stumbled into this and he knows what's going on. He wears George magazine shirts and stuff like this. But every time I run into him, he's a super nice guy, but he just won't, I'll say, so can we talk about why

all these people are obsessed with you and say, Oh, why don't we talk in an hour? Here's my number. Well, that's what I thought was so cool about him is cause like, he has all these women coming up to him and being like, Oh my God, you're JFK junior. And he never like, he never agrees with them. He like, he always does it unsaid. He just sort of nods, smiles and takes the photo with, with these ladies who were like, you know, going nuts for him. So like he, I mean, he knows what he's doing. But man, man, oh man, what a fucking niche that that guy's found for himself because I mean, but going back to the thing, like

the very first Q drop, uh, didn't fucking happen. And it didn't happen like very quickly after it said it was the most famous, like one of the most famous Q guys looks nothing like fucking JFK junior. He looks nothing like him. Not even close. Like he's like, he's like a foot shorter than him too. Like what, what is going on here? He soaks it up. I mean, there's one there. I was at this one, uh, one of these kind of pre January 6th events and all these kind of this rabble of people were walking by and he was just singing karaoke. He had a little speaker set up and he was just like, look,

JFK junior, he was like singing to you. Oh, I can't remember. We didn't start the fire, but, uh, well, I mean, you talk about like covering these Q and non events and like, uh, talking to Q believers or having people approach you and like, you know, like most Americans, they're polite to a fault. You know, they're like, they're not like, they're, they're not just coming up to you and talking to you about the mold children or all the Hollywood pedophiles they're going to execute if their plan ever exceeds. But like, how do you, how do you relate to like, uh, the, the true believers when you interview them, when they, when they approach you, often they will think that like

you're on their side because you're talking about Q and non. Like what is your perception about like, not, not the media celebrities and like the, the YouTube internet people, but like the actual Q and non believers when you just like try to interview them or, or see them or they interact with you. What's your read on them? Yeah. I mean, they're often very, very nice. I mean, I think they, you know, they, they tend to be, um, you know, older and are often very, at least the nice ones are the older ones, sort of the ones in their twenties you have to watch out for. Cause that's often someone who is, you know, some kind of failed actor type or something like that. But, but

the ones who are just like, I'm just out to help the kids, you know, at least to me, they're usually very nice, um, except when, you know, some of them have like Tomahawks and stuff that are threatening to kill me. But, but the, I mean, in aggregate, they're nice and they're very vague and they say, well, I got into Q and on cause of the corruption. And then you say, well, what do you mean by the corruption? They say, Oh, it's the tunnels. You know, once you kind of poke them a little, you know, one woman I talked to is the opening of the book. This woman who was just extremely into Q and on is kind of this ranting about the tunnels on January 6th. And then I thought, well, you know, that was pretty nice lady.

And then, you know, when I was writing the book, I looked her up and, you know, she caught a charge for January 6th for just, you know, dismantling barricades and all this. But in terms of, I mean, they're, they can be a very difficult group to deal with. Sometimes they're pretty nice. Um, when I was at a rally and I kind of wear a little, I wear a hat, some sunglasses, kind of look a little, so no one really clocks me across the room. Um, but in one guy goes, well, summer. And I was like, oh, shit. Um, and he just wanted to selfie. So sometimes, as you said, sometimes they think I'm kind of their buddy, you know, and, uh, and, and working to spread the good word about Q and on.

Um, like, what was your, like, well, what is your take on the sort of like the demographic makeup of the average Q believer? Because, you know, like similar to Donald Trump, like we're often told that like, you know, he is the voice of like working class America. But you know, like, I, I don't know how true that is. Like, I think that, you know, there's a lot of things you could divide up. I mean, like it's certainly true that the Democratic Party is certainly becoming the party of rich people in this country. But what is it about? I mean, sort of back to my original question, what is it about Q and on that like, uh, seems to resonate among people with, if not a blue collar lifestyle, that at least a blue collar

aesthetic kind of like, whether they're middle class, working class, I don't know who knows anymore in America, but like, you know, this is an anti elite kind of populist ideology. And I'm wondering what you read on the sort of like the class and demographic makeup of Q believers. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great point. I think often the kind of the classic Q and on believer is someone at a Trump rally. So they're older, maybe evangelical Christian white, pretty white. And then, you know, during the pandemic, we started to see that change a lot. We started to see more people of color, more women, younger people get into it because

they were, they were seeing this, this kind of save the children stuff there. It was spreading on it was very yoga, Instagram and kind of wellness communities. Um, and so, so the demo changed a little bit, but I think you're right that it is a lot of, um, often working class people who, you know, I think conspiracy theories and Q and on in particular, give people a sense of agency. And you know, it's often people who rightly or wrongly feel marginalized in their lives. And you know, instead you have someone who says, you know, Hey, I'm going to give you the secret keys to the world and you'll see that the rich people you might envy are in fact, uh, big time pedophiles and they're sickos. And, um, you know, one

thing that struck me, there's so many, there's a lot of like failed Hollywood people in Q and on. And I think there's an appeal to saying, well, that guy who beat me, his screenplay got picked up, but that's, he had to do some sicko stuff, uh, you know, at the Playboy mansion or whatever, but I just, I'm pure. And so, you know, success won't come to me, but, uh, you know, I'm right with God. And, you know, I, at least I'm not drinking kids one. Yeah. Um, in terms of, um, how it's evolved and where it's going, do you see Q and online as something that is like holistically, organically, just the natural evolution of all the insane shit that the right wing in this country believes for decades, or, or

has it evolved into something different that has sort of broke containment from the conservative movement proper? Yeah. I think it's, I think it's broken its containment. I mean, I think that the idea of the clues, uh, and this character Q was kind of a genius way to, um, to fold in so many other conspiracy theories and to give people something to look forward to, that they, um, that, you know, the storm is coming, that it's not just, you're not researching some old conspiracy theory that's that who cares, you know, ultimately whatever you find. Um, and, and yeah, I mean, I, I think the idea of this kind of satanic cabal is,

is sort of denatured, um, for, you know, for some legitimate reasons, like Jeffrey Epstein has become sort of more popularized in, in the culture more broadly. Um, and so, you know, I think, yeah, I think it no longer are these conspiracy theories, like stuff in the past, like Jade Helm or Seth Rich, they're really sort of struggled to gain traction. I think QAnon has, uh, has taken off in a, in a, in a much more effective way. And in terms of it breaking containment or like what separates it from the traditional lore and, you know, boogie men that make up right wing mythology and has for decades in this country, like if it's particularly like evangelical Christian or, you know, like just

a right wing Republican frame of mind, do you see like the evidence of it breaking containment in that like, and I'm not saying that this is, um, I don't know, legitimate or heartfelt or whatever, but like, at least in it's, it's, it's lore and it's propaganda that like QB believers have begun to turn on the idea of capitalism or at least corporate capitalism and big corporations because they're now woke and gay and satanic. It doesn't, it's hard to imagine like, for instance, like, uh, the Tea Party or Rush Limbaugh, like that era of like talk radio, Fox news conservatism, uh, selecting for it's like, you know, a demon of the week, corporate America.

Yeah, totally. I mean, the, uh, I was just thinking about this cause, cause really sort of the big QAnon villain of the past year or so is the world economic forum and Davos and the guy who runs a Klaus Schwab and this idea that they're going to do the great reset on us and, you know, make us eat, live in pods and eat bugs. And I think before when you, when these groups were, you know, funded by the Koch brothers or, or you had these kind of mega broadcasters doing it, they wouldn't just be sickening people on these massive corporations. Whereas now who's directing QAnon? Like, uh, you know, Michael Flynn is, is issuing stuff and really even further down, it's just a bunch of guys with telegram channels.

So those guys don't care. I mean, they're happy to, to paint nefarious corporations as the villains. I think it's up with Michael Flynn, by the way, because hasn't he like, uh, hasn't he, um, disowned QAnon recently or say like, don't even tell me about that. It's all made up and I've always said, said as much. He's a very bizarre figure and no fan of mine. He once announced that I was about to be booted from a QAnon convention cause I was sitting there and, and he starts going a bunch of sicko journalists snuck in here today and I was looking around like, Oh, someone's in

trouble, you know, and then they grabbed me. Um, and so, uh, but yeah, Flynn is a guy who, I think, looked at QAnon and said, you know, just getting in his head. I think he said, I got some legal bills to pay. He's also a guy who loves conspiracy theories. And so he started, you know, appearing at these conventions and auctioning off, uh, you know, quilts with big cues on them and he got really into it. He filmed him, him and his family did the QAnon oath and now suddenly that it's getting, I think the heats on a little bit. He's saying, Oh, you know, he's sue it. His family members are suing CNN for saying they took the oath and what you are, they say it's not a QAnon oath. It's a message of family

solidarity. It's a message of fandom for the Ridley Scott film, white squall starring Jeff Bridges. What you're referring to Will is the, um, Lynn Wood, who's kind of another QAnon guy secretly recorded Michael Flynn saying, Oh yeah, I think it's a CIA Psyop. Then he later put out this recording. And so you have this situation where Michael Flynn, it's like, all right, you think it's a Psyop, but one that I, but one that I'm happy to participate in and then presumably earn speakers fees and stuff like that. Uh, well, do you have a, like in all your, in your QAnon Odyssey here and putting together

this book and your research, do you have a favorite QAnon character or like piece of deep lore that even with something that didn't make the book, like you just have a favorite piece, like nugget or personality from the Q universe. Oh man. Um, gosh, you hit so many. I mean, Austin Steinbart, Vincent Fusca, all timers. Um, I think it's kind of, this guy who always sticks with me is this guy named Patriot Street Fighter and this is a guy who he, he, he drives a motorcycle and so, but, but you know, not, not really. It's kind of, he tows it between his convention stops. And so he'll say, he'll say, like, does anyone have a tow jack or like, can someone drive the truck and, and

so then he rolls up and, and, and, and, and, but he wheels a Tomahawk and his, um, he, he, a bunch of people caught COVID on his tour and he was just like, oh, it's got to be a bio attack, you know. Um, but, but, but actually if I could just fit in one more favorite guy, cause I thought of another is this guy named, uh, Wano Savin, who is another JFK junior impersonator and sort of a more malevolent one, I would say. He's a, he, you know, I mean Vincent Fusca, he's kind of out there. No, he seems cool. He seems nice. Like I wouldn't, I would love to meet Vincent Fusca. Exactly. I mean, he's a cool guy. I mean, I'd like to get out of the more, but, but

this guy is, his real name is Wayne Willett. He's like a, a somewhat, uh, controversial private investigator in Washington state doing like, um, like, you know, is a guy who's doing workers comp. Is he, is he mowing the lawn, filming people doing that stuff? And somehow he's become like Roseanne's Q it on guru. And he, he, he's super like, and Jim Covizel, him and Jim Covizel traveled across the country together. It's very bizarre. And he, um, but he organized this coalition of people to run for secretary of state across the country. And they, a bunch of like five or six of them got the Republican nomination in battleground states. Fortunately, they all lost. Um, but this was a guy who was like

weirdly poised to become a power play in the Republican party. Uh, he was at, they were at this convention and he just not they, um, someone was like, uh, want to save and knocked on my door. And he said, you know, we got to save America. And everyone was like, yeah. So a very sinister figure, I would say. Um, so I guess like, uh, going, going to January six, right? Cause like January six is fascinating to me. And as it relates to QAnon, because like the storm happened, right? Like the storm came to Washington. They, they did the thing that they were all fantasizing about. And once again, nothing happened. And like, whether you go back from like the first fucking proof saying Hillary Clinton is going to get arrested

to Donald Trump losing, whether you think it was stolen from him or whatever, but Joe Biden is in the White House right now, not Donald Trump. How do you view QAnon? Like, like, you know, I know the QAnon candidates did not do so hot in this latest midterm election. Is this a, is this a spent force politically or, or is this like a classic when prophecy failed situation in which like, and like, cause there have been so many failures of Q's proofs to come true, right? And now like Donald Trump is not president. I mean, maybe he's running for president again. Maybe the storm just continues. Like, I mean, like, is this, is this, is this, is this a force on the wane? Or is this just prophecy

failing and mutating like every, at every single point of failure, mutating into something different and harder to like understand, but ultimately like even more embedded into American culture? Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's the latter. I think, as you said, January 6th failing was, it was a big setback for them and really bigger than that was, was Biden's inauguration. I mean, I talked to people because it just, Trump had to be in office to make this storm happen. I talked to QAnon believers who said, oh, you know, I'm going to throw up. I feel so sick. What have I done? But I think as Trump returns to prominence and we start, you know, if he runs, particularly if he wins the primary, I think either we could see QAnon in kind of classic form,

revived, or we could see, but you know, I think what's going to happen no matter what is we're going to see this mutate into something else. Maybe it won't be called QAnon, just as with pizza gate. Once the guy shot up the pizza parlor, people said, look, we kind of can't call ourselves. Well, I totally forgotten about that because like, as he was being walking out of comet ping-pong, ping-pong pizza, he says, after failing to find the non-existent basement, he says, my intelligence on this wasn't 100%. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Sort of said, well, you know, I look a little silly right now. And so in that change, you know, there were lawsuits and people stopped calling it pizza gate, and then it reemerged as QAnon. So I think unless something

really radical changes in the American psyche, I think we will see QAnon in some form continuing. And you know, I think enough people have bought into it that it is really only going to continue to grow. I did think we're going to get some sort of some version of the storm eventually somewhere, even if it's like just some state government like hauling a few people in front of Kangaroo Court. But at some point, if people keep getting elected at the grassroots and to these elected offices, they're going to keep getting pushed up till eventually there's somewhere near a lever of power. And, you know, you just have to take as a constant declining the quality of life and increased psychological torment and paranoia. And if the trends continue,

eh. Well, you know, Matt, we're seeing in Utah already, the police investigated a sort of troublesome comparatively liberal DA. They said he was being investigated for involvement in satanic rituals and all this stuff. So I mean, we're already starting to see, you know, become actual prosecutions. And I mean, like another aspect of your book that I thought was fascinating is how much QAnon has spread to foreign countries. I'm talking like Germany, Japan, Australia. And this is a real, like you don't even go here kind of moment. But like how is QAnon relevant to people in, I mean, look, it's not that hard to figure out because America is like the global superpower. Like, you know, like it's hard to, why are people in Germany being like, oh, what the US government

does doesn't affect me. I mean, we just blew up their fucking pipeline that keeps their houses warm in the winter. So it's not hard to like look at the demonology of American politics and adopt it for your own, because like our demons really do affect the rest of the world. But like, how do you view, how do you view like the QAnon going international and like, what are they concerned about? And is it the same shit that they're concerned about in QAnon America? Or is it like tailored to specific like the politics of Germany or Australia or Japan? It's incredibly weird. I mean, you know, in Japan, for example, they have, they've adopted all these things. And so there's two rival QAnon factions there that called like,

you know, Q army Flynn and Q army anti Flynn or something. And I mean, you want to, you know, this is inspired crimes. There was another QAnon kidnapping group in France as well. I mean, Germany, I think is the most interesting one. And as you said, they do adapt these things. And so they say, you know, if there's like a tariff on farmers to try to get them to use gas less, then this becomes part of the cabal's plan. In Germany, they think there's this kind of separate movement called the Reichsberger that thinks essentially that like auto von Bismarck's empire is still in effect. And that the world they live in now is a is a fake one and sort of a fiction of the allies. So it's they're kind of like sovereign

citizens. And they've really latched onto QAnon. And people may remember a few months ago, there was this supposed coup attempt involving some police and soldiers. And those guys were, and you may remember, there was like a former like noble, and he was really swagged out, like he had some great suits. And so that guy was a is a QAnon affiliated guy. Yes, the auto von Bismarck's auto von Bismarck's empire never ended. And look, if look, Germans, if you're if you're not satisfied, if you don't like fake Germany as like a legal and political construct, then I'm sorry, you shouldn't have done World War Two. Yes, like the allies didn't pose a fake Germany on you. But like, it got it got out of hand. Okay, like it proves that

the natural state of Germany is 2000 tiny principality. That's where it should always is they never should have gotten rid. They should have gone back to that. After honestly, after World War One, like Holy Roman Empire is back, people can't handle statehood. We need like mischievous bishops and stuff like that. Yeah. I guess like I didn't get to just ask you this, but real quick, what do you make of the whole Ron Watkins is Q thing until like the HBO QAnon documentary, like that was like that was the reveal that that was the jinx like moment. How do you view the Watkins father and the father and son duo of the Watkins and like the claim that the son Ron, I believe, was Q this entire time,

or at least started out as Q. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think it's been conclusively proven, but I think it's it's Ron and Jim Watkins are the sort of the most compelling arguments I've seen for who's Q. There's a lot of crackpot stuff out there saying, you know, it's all these, you know, it's Michael Flynn, it's all these nefarious characters. But I think that documentary honestly, like I certainly wish I had found my own Q, you know, that I could put in the book. But I think the the documentary pretty much nails it as to being those guys, unless unless something else comes to light. He had that, as you said, that jinx moment where he sort of says, well, that's why I've been doing all this with Q and everything. And then he says, well, do you mean your Q is

that what you're saying? He says, oh, well, oh, you know, and, you know, kind of dancing around it. I met Ron Watkins, the father, and very weird guy, obviously. And he was wearing all this kind of Q paraphernalia. And I said, so like, you want to talk about QAnon? And you'd say, oh, what's QAnon? What are you talking about? Kind of a maddening guy like Vincent Puska. Amazing. His his run for Congress was phenomenal. He tried to run in Arizona and he did like one debate where he was a complete zero charisma creep that no one liked. And then he just kind of stopped campaigning. He I interviewed him and the campaign strategist who was trying to like turn him around. And so he said, oh, QAnon, I'm not associated with that.

And the campaign guy said, oh, yeah, that's true. That's fake. And I said, well, your next week, you're appearing at a QAnon event. Here's the logo. It's a giant Q. And the strategist starts going, oh, God, oh, God. Well, I still get you out of this. You mentioned like the world economic forum being like the new cast member for this season of QAnon. Like, where do you see, like, where are their interests now? And like, as it evolves, like, I mean, like, it's your bread and butter is going to be the mole children and the adrenochrome satanic pedophiles. But like, I mean, it's all under that umbrella. But like, do you see any new new plot lines emerging this year? And certainly, and then also next year, certainly going into a presidential election.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's right now, it's really, really is the woke capital angle. It's, you know, I think they're going to start digging into like who runs Vanguard, who runs BlackRock. And I'll tell you what, those guys better not have any weird art in their houses, because if they do, I mean, that's going to kick this thing off. I mean, like, I would hate it if the boardroom of Black Rock or Blackstone, I would hate it if they had their lives turned upside down by these lunatics. And then, you know, also, I think they're really going to start going after anyone who runs against Trump in the primary. You guys may have seen this Vivek Ramaswamy guy. Oh, yeah, sort of, sort of a go to war against Mexico. Yes. Yes. Yeah, we got it. We got to do a Don Winslow,

the cartel. He's going to get rid of all federal agencies and go to war with Mexico to stop Fenton off from coming into America. And so this guy was a world economic forum young leader in 2021. And so everyone's saying, hey, buddy, you know, you're the anti-woke capital guy. And he's saying, oh, they made me do that. I told them not to, you know, darn it, Klaus Schwab. So it, you know, I think the kind of pizza getting the Q and on of these guys and Ron DeSantis, too, is really revving up. All right, we'll leave it there for today. Will Summer, thanks so much for joining us. The book is Trust the Plan, available in bookstores everywhere. And Will, if people would like more Will Summer coverage, where should they go? What should they do? Sure. Yeah,

so I'm writing for the Daily Beast. I'm on Twitter at Will Summer and I have a podcast covering similar topics called Fever Dreams. So yeah, that's where people can find me. All right. Once again, thank you to Will Summer for joining us. That does it for today. Trust the plan, where we go on, we go all. I've been signing a couple books with the where we go, when we go all. That's only for true homies. Excellent.