Speaker 1: It's great to have back on the program today.
Will Sommer, who's a politics reporter for The Daily Beast and also co-host of the Fever
Dreams Podcast about conservative media.
He's author of the book Trust The Plan The Rise of Cunanan and the Conspiracy That Unhinged
America.
Will, great to have you back.
Speaker 2: David Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So, you know, we many of us have seen the polls that came out over the last
couple of years, some which will make claims like, you know, a fifth of Americans or of
Republicans or whoever believe some aspect of.
Q And on beliefs.
And then, you know, you look more deeply and sometimes it's the slightly less crazy beliefs.
And so it can be sort of hard to know like what does it really mean when we say this
portion of the population believes this stuff?
And are some of these beliefs unique to QAnon, or are they kind of coincidental?
So let's just maybe start with what is your understanding right now of when we talk about.
Q And on conspiracies, with which conspiracies are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Sure.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it might be helpful there to sort of lay down the fundamental
belief of.
Q And on and then, you know, we can go from there.
Yeah.
So I would say, you know, there's so much crazy stuff involved in this, but I think
kind of the core belief is that the world is run by a cabal of pedophiles, Satanists
who torture children in satanic rituals to bring their blood.
And that this includes people in banking in Hollywood and the Democratic Party.
So that's.
And the second part of that is that this moment is going to come called the storm, where Donald
Trump is going to essentially impose a fascist dictatorship on America.
But they think that's a great idea.
Right.
Execute his enemies.
And so I would say that's sort of the core belief of.
Q And on so when we when people are polled on, do you think that world elites are in
satanic cults and, you know, abusing children, that's in the typically in the teens to the
low 20%.
When you ask people do you believe in Q and on straight up, it's usually and you know,
I like to go with the most conservative estimates here because as you say, I mean, when we make
it really broad, if we say, do you think powerful people abuse children, sometimes, you know,
the answer is that's not an unreasonable thing to believe.
So when you ask people, do you believe in Q And on really kind of flat out, they typically
say 3 to 7%.
And so, you know, I like to go with that kind of stricter definition.
But at the same time, when you say, you know, talk about satanic cults more generally, that's
still a lot of people.
Right?
And that's a pretty crazy belief.
So even on on the lower end, we're talking about millions of Americans.
Speaker 1: A lot of the the way you just laid it out.
There are lots of similar conspiracy theories by substituting just like one word.
Like, for example, the storm sounds surprisingly similar to the Christian rapture that some
believe in, but just with like slightly different details.
And then the premise of these satanic pedophiles are the cabal.
Sounds very similar to sort of like it's Jews who are the ones in control.
How how much is this a recycling of other versions of these tropes and how much of it
is unique?
Speaker 2: Sure.
I mean, I think it's a blend.
I think QAnon plays on these centuries old tropes.
For example, in the book I talk about how so much of QAnon I mean, I mentioned the blood
drinking, right?
You know, that is a direct play on this idea of the Jewish blood libel, this idea dating
back to the 13th century that Jewish people were murdering children to get blood to make
matzo bread for for Passover.
Speaker 1: And that everybody knows it's just wheat and water.
That's the beauty of it.
You know, why would you adulterate it with blood?
Well, who would do that?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
And so, you know, this idea is set off all these pogroms and all these murders.
And so it research is going on where, you know, I think it's not accidental that so
many of the villains are Jewish people in banking or the Democratic Party or Hollywood.
At the same time, I think there are some new elements, such as this idea of this kind of
mysterious clue giver.
Q Yep.
And this way that it it repackages so many old conspiracy theories, but in a way that
it feels fresh to people.
And with, with the concept of the storm gives them something to look forward to.
So it's not just, you know, kind of mulling over all this sad stuff, but it gives them
this kind of twisted utopia that they can help bring about.
Speaker 1: Is there what is your belief now as to whether there is a person that is Q.
Speaker 2: Sure.
So I think it's never been conclusively proven.
But I think the best argument we've seen for who's behind.
Q and I should say all the people I'm going to name have denied it.
Yeah, but that is laid out pretty effectively in the HBO docu series.
Q Into the Storm, laying out that there was sort of a random guy interested in conspiracy
theories who started it, and then it was hijacked from him by the people who ran it, and the
father and son duo, Jim and Ron Watkins.
Yeah.
And you know, in that series, they there's like a quasi confession from Ron Watkins,
but no one has ever come out and said, yes, I'm Q But I think absent any other evidence
that's we can pretty much assume I think it's fair to say that it's those two.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Ron Watkins ran for was it governor of Arizona or was it a member of Congress?
I don't remember.
Speaker 2: It was a much more modest goal.
He only thought he could be a member of the House.
Speaker 1: Member of the House.
Right.
And I mean, one of the creepiest auras surrounding that guy of anyone I can think of.
And I don't think that the Q thing came up during the race, did it?
Or now I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Not in a major way.
I mean, really, when he declared in this primary, it was and, you know, he had been living in
Japan for a while, this very kind of bizarre thing.
You didn't even live in the district at the time or he had just moved there.
And I think he had had this brief, separate career apart from Cuba and not as like an
election fraud expert after Trump lost the right.
I think he thought he thought, you know, maybe I've been on one American news a couple of
times now I can run for the house.
And I talked to all these guys in Arizona, these political operatives, and they said,
you know, no way, this guy's going to get slaughtered.
And as it turned out, he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
When we hear sometimes we'll like, send a correspondent to Trump rallies.
We have this guy, Luke Beasley, who's who has been going and so on, and he'll talk to
people.
And very often people won't bring up anything about Q or QAnon, but they will say things
like the current president is actually Trump who's controlling the military or a JFK is
alive.
And sometimes you can tell they don't know the difference between JFK Senior and Junior,
and they go, Well, one of them would be 100 and but it's all they're all very confused
and you don't know where they got this stuff.
When you hear people say that stuff, is that connected to Q beliefs in some way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think the key thing for people to understand now that we look and we say, Oh,
you know, I don't hear about Cuba on that much.
There aren't too many people like, out and about with Cuban shirts.
At the end of 2020, Q told his followers to stop saying they were part of Q And on.
I think the sense was that the brand had been damaged.
And so instead to spread these.
Q And unlike ideas about the Cabal, JFK Jr, all these different things.
Yeah, but just don't say, Hey, would you like to learn about.
Q And because, you know, and so now even now I have people say, Oh, you know, there is
no.
Cunanan There is.
Q And there are the Anons.
I mean, it's these kind of linguistic tricks they use.
Yeah, but I think even for people who have never seen Q Clues, this kind of stuff, I
think these ideas have become mainstreamed in the excuse me, mainstreamed in the Republican
Party.
And, you know, a great way to see that is going to these Trump rallies and these events
because whether it's y'all, someone like Jordan KLEPPER on The Daily Show, you kind of just
tap a little bit and they say, Well, I don't like the corruption.
And you say, Yeah, I mean by the corruption that they say, Well, let me tell you about
Pizzagate.
Speaker 1: Right?
Right.
No, we've seen that.
We've seen that develop in real time.
It's often under 60 seconds.
You go from some benign comment to really, really wacky, wacky stuff.
Marjorie Taylor GREENE had this moment around the time that Republicans took over the House,
and she made it clear she wants to kind of be on the inside now and sided with Kevin
McCarthy in the speaker battle where she very kind of generically said, I fell for some
stuff on the Internet and it's happened to a lot of us.
And it was interpreted that that was a reference to some of the Q and one type stuff that in
2018 she seemed to be kind of pushing and following.
What what's your sense of that change that we're seeing in people like GREENE and Boebert
and others with relation to their association with QAnon stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
So in the book I get into it.
I mean, I think it there's varying degrees of QAnon devotion.
On one hand, you have Lauren Boebert, who, as far as we know, simply saw it as sort of
a cynical thing to not at and flirt with and say, well, you know, and they got some interesting
points, but maybe it's not for me.
Marjorie Taylor GREENE On the other hand, I would put in like the top one or 2% of Q&A
commitment.
When you read her old posts, I mean, she was she knows more about Q9 than I do.
And I wrote a book about it, right?
I mean, she was like getting into these kind of Talmudic debates about, you know, the origins
of different Q drops and saying, Well, this is a fake one, this is a real one.
I mean, she was deep, deep in it.
And so now when she comes out and says, Oh, I guess I retweeted the wrong YouTube video
or what have you, I mean, that is just not true.
Speaker 1: When it comes to 2024 and we have Trump as a nominee, and I think that there
are some in the media that are overstating the competitiveness of the primary.
If you look at the recent polls, something has to really change for Trump.
To fall out of favor.
And that could happen.
It could happen, but.
But I do think that it's not quite as competitive as some might like it to be.
If we see Trump on the path towards the 2024 nomination, do you expect to see the Q anon
resurgence that we saw in previous years, or does it seem like maybe MAGA has to a degree
move beyond it?
Speaker 2: I think we're going to see I think there's a good chance that we'll see Cuban
art come back in a more visible way.
I mean, it's kind of been bubbling online and and it's gaining a foothold again now
that, you know, Elon's letting that back on Twitter and all these things.
Yeah.
But but I do think I mean, Trump is he's signaling to Cuban on constantly.
I mean, there was one study that said a third of his posts on truth social have been promoting
Cubans and you know either because like he'll just he does it now in a way that he never
did during the campaign where he would he'll just post memes of himself wearing like edited
to have a Cuban on button and stuff.
I mean, he's really out there with that.
And, you know, now he's implying that Ron DeSantis is a pedophile.
He's posting these pictures of him partying with high school students.
Yeah.
Could this be our, you know, our beloved Ron?
And, you know, others say, David, I mean, this is the idea that this is not going to
be a competitive primary.
I'm with you.
I mean, something could change, but people just you got to watch Ron DeSantis talk and
you think, I mean, this guy is going to go up against Trump?
I don't think so.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
You cover these issues as well.
I understand you haven't announced and you've got 30, 40% in some polls that that's pretty
remarkable stuff.
I mean, there's nobody's going to deny that.
The question is, by announcing, do you take any of Trump's support or is it going to be
a consolidation of the existing non-Trump electorate?
And I think it's it's sort of the latter.
And when I think about the complete lack of charisma that DeSantis has, and he's sort
of expressed a desire to go high and not stoop to Trump's level, which is fine in some general,
you know, vague, vague sense.
But practically speaking, I don't think it's going to work the numbers in his favor, if
that's the way the primary goes, I think Trump will just crush him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you see these and these are all anecdotal things, but, you know,
there was recently that clip on Fox News, which we know is trying to favor DeSantis.
Yeah.
Where Brian KILMEADE is in a diner saying, yes, you know, primaries coming up, I need
to say ads here everyone goes, Trump trumps up, you know.
So it's just I think, you know, you know, he's going to have to campaign at some point.
I think he's kind of awkward enough that they're going to try to keep him from doing much retail
campaigning.
But there's going to be some video where he just looks weird.
And I mean, and then Trump's just going to say, you know, look at me, Barron.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
And by the way, not I couldn't care less about this, but it's wild that in the midst of all
of the anti drag stuff, DeSantis seems to regularly wear like high heeled cowboy boots,
which I know is a whole thing.
And like, it doesn't bother me.
It's just interesting how they fall into these weird things where it seems like.
Is that going to help you, knowing what the kind of dialog is right now with some of these
issues among the people who support Trump to begin with?
It all seems awkward.
Speaker 2: It it does seem awkward.
I mean, there's also that picture of, you know, Biden's hugging people and DeSantis
is kind of stumping by.
Yeah, I mean, it is.
I think basically what's going on is I think the conservative intellectuals and media are
smart enough to realize that.
I think that Sanders would be a more effective and potentially more vicious Trump.
Right.
I mean, if we just see the policies he's doing or very or Orban ask, oh, yeah, you know,
he has all these conservative intellectuals and I use that term lightly, like Chris Rufo
already is, you know, he's he's making university trustees and stuff to really like kind of
crack the whip on these liberal institutions.
Whereas Trump, you know, he's president, he'll be stewing over Graydon Carter again, you
know, getting in his own way.
So I think they want to do it.
But it seems there's no evidence.
I think the grassroots wants to move on.
Speaker 1: No, I think that that's that that's absolutely the case.
The book is Trust The Plan The Rise of Cunanan and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America.
We've been speaking with the book's author Will Sommer, who's also a politics reporter
for The Daily Beast and co-hosts The Fever Dreams podcast.
Will, always great speaking to you.
Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: David.
Thanks for having me.