Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy Junior was the son of John F. Kennedy, the
Speaker 3: thirty fifth President of the United States. Tragically, JFK. Junior
Speaker 3: was killed in a plane crash in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Or was he? Yes, he was, of course he was.
Speaker 2: But what if he wasn't?
Speaker 3: What if he were about to re emerge as the
Speaker 3: vice president of Donald Trump, who, by the way, is
Speaker 3: still the president.
Speaker 2: Sound crazy?
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's one of the wilder conspiracies I've heard
Speaker 3: in my seven years covering Trump rallies. You're probably familiar
Speaker 3: with my daily show segments Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse
Speaker 3: Emmy nominated twice, lost twice, where I chat with Trump
Speaker 3: supporters at rallies.
Speaker 4: We are not a cult.
Speaker 1: It's an American ideal that we treat women with respect.
Speaker 2: You gotta give me the back of that show one
Speaker 2: more time. That's too much fun. Trump, that bitch. We
Speaker 2: don't even see the irony in it.
Speaker 3: And if you're into conspiracy theories, then there's nothing that
Speaker 3: comes close to a Trump rally.
Speaker 2: What's on your back?
Speaker 5: Q flag?
Speaker 2: What those crazy people are?
Speaker 1: Joseph Biden and commulaw are not legitimate.
Speaker 3: What a cute hole thing that Trump will be reinstated
Speaker 3: as president.
Speaker 6: Never look, if you go online, there's a whole list
Speaker 6: of pedophile symbols.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's like Woodstock, except everyone there thinks Jamie Hendrix
Speaker 3: is a hologram. Normally, when one of these conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: comes up, I have to respond then move past it
Speaker 3: because we're shooting a piece for TV and we have
Speaker 3: to stay somewhat focused. But this is a podcast, we
Speaker 3: don't have to stay focused at all. So I'm finally
Speaker 3: diving into some of the most incredible conspiracy theories that
Speaker 3: have been pitched to me at Trump Rallies by America's
Speaker 3: most imaginative minds. This is Jordan clapper Fingers The Conspiracy,
Speaker 3: an all new limited series podcasts from The Daily Show. So, folks,
Speaker 3: come on down from your grassy knolls and let's dig in.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about f Kennedy Junior. But to help me
Speaker 3: do that, I want to bring in our first guest,
Speaker 3: Will Summer. Will's a politics reporter for The Daily Beast
Speaker 3: and he's got a book coming out in February called
Speaker 3: Trust The Plan, The Rise of QAnon and the conspiracy
Speaker 3: that unhinged America. Well, welcome to Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to have you on. You are here to
Speaker 3: help me walk through and understand what is going on
Speaker 3: in this world of John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy Junior. And I will say this.
Speaker 3: I go out on the road and I start hearing
Speaker 3: people talking about JFK Junior. And initially I'm thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: they're talking about JFK. There's a long history of conspiracies
Speaker 3: with JFK. And then I'm putting together that it's JFK Junior.
Speaker 3: And then I start to see signs up. I start
Speaker 3: to see bumper stickers that have him as vice presidential
Speaker 3: Kennedy to Donald Trump. And then a month or so back,
Speaker 3: I go to a rally in the Midwest and I'm
Speaker 3: hearing sweet old grandmothers talk about John F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3: And I can't make heads or tails of it.
Speaker 2: You can you set out a little bit of where
Speaker 2: this began? What do we need to know?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, this is really bizarre, as you noted,
Speaker 4: I mean, the origins of this are within QAnon. Of course,
Speaker 4: there was this figure q who was giving these anonymous clues,
Speaker 4: and then at one point in twenty eighteen, Q sort
Speaker 4: of vanished for a month on the forums where the
Speaker 4: clues came out, and then someone named R shows up
Speaker 4: and starts saying, you know, all of this is really
Speaker 4: about JFK Junior, and.
Speaker 7: So that's kind of where the where it begins.
Speaker 4: And eventually Q comes back and kind of says, like
Speaker 4: this JFK Junior stuff's garbage. You know what, have you
Speaker 4: been tricking all my people? But the JFK Junior stuff
Speaker 4: really starts there with this idea that JFK Junior faked
Speaker 4: his death to take on the deep state and help
Speaker 4: Donald Trump sort of bring about this sort of Q
Speaker 4: and on utopia.
Speaker 3: There's a conspiracy inside the conspiracy, it's a it's a
Speaker 3: it's a conspiracy tur duckin right now exactly.
Speaker 7: It's sort of interfaction, and you get this situation where.
Speaker 4: Like the kind of the mainline QAnon people will often
Speaker 4: be like, oh my god, like, you know, I believe
Speaker 4: all this Pizzagate stuff. I believe this about Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 4: But these JFK Junior people are embarrassing us. They just
Speaker 4: believe totally stupid stuff.
Speaker 2: That's the dynamic you want there.
Speaker 3: We're like, oh my god, can we just go back
Speaker 3: to serious things like talking about how the Democrats drink
Speaker 3: baby's blood and all this JFK Junior stuff. We're losing credibility.
Speaker 3: People were losing credibility. Put your tipoil hats back on
Speaker 3: and let's march.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, basically they're saying, you know, these JFK Junior
Speaker 4: people are almost like a government meant to embarrass QAnon.
Speaker 4: But really, this belief has JFK Junior has persisted ever since.
Speaker 3: So what was ours intention in this situation? Like initially
Speaker 3: that JFK Junior One is alive, so perhaps he faked
Speaker 3: his death, and two he's aligning himself with Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It feels like there's four steps there that I'm having
Speaker 3: a hard time connecting. Why JFK Jr. And let's start
Speaker 3: with why he's alive and why that matter?
Speaker 4: Sure, So the arc that is presented by R, and
Speaker 4: I want to point out here that R is the
Speaker 4: letter after Q, and so that's sort of the explanation
Speaker 4: for this.
Speaker 2: Is it or is it will?
Speaker 3: Your mainstream elitist alphabet says it's the letter after Q.
Speaker 3: But I have I only if you're moving forward through time.
Speaker 3: But that's a whole other podcast.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 7: The sort of the story that's laid out is that
Speaker 7: John F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy, the father is killed by the Deep State, you know,
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: JFK.
Speaker 4: Junior sees this and says, oh, man, the Deep State
Speaker 4: might come for me, and I want to get revenge
Speaker 4: on them for murdering my father. And so for years
Speaker 4: he builds up this relationship with Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 4: because they were both sort of these New York socialite figures.
Speaker 4: There are pictures of them together, and so this is
Speaker 4: used to suggest that they were like best buddies. Then
Speaker 4: in this storyline, JFK. Junior fakes his death in this
Speaker 4: plane crash to sort of go under cover and sort
Speaker 4: of lay the groundwork for the Q and On journey
Speaker 4: and eventually emerge. For a while they thought he was
Speaker 4: going to replace Mike Pence in twenty twenty on the
Speaker 4: ticket and then he would sort of kind of help
Speaker 4: Trump sort of get this final revenge on the deep State.
Speaker 3: So in this world they see JFK. Junr As faking
Speaker 3: his own death to exist undercover and wait for the
Speaker 3: right time, still maintaining a relationship with Donald Trump throughout
Speaker 3: all of this, or did Donald Trump just come about
Speaker 3: and become sort of an avatar for a JFK Junior's ascension.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of it is a little contradictory
Speaker 4: and not super thought out.
Speaker 7: You know, that might surprise you right now. But basically
Speaker 7: the idea is that.
Speaker 4: You know, back in the nineties or the eighties, they
Speaker 4: kind of cut this deal and they said, Donald Trump said, man,
Speaker 4: this stuff is really messed up, you know. And then
Speaker 4: and JFK Junior said, tell me about it. You know,
Speaker 4: they shot my dad, and so then they sort of
Speaker 4: teamed up and JFK Junior went into hide it.
Speaker 3: Tell me about it. They shot my dad. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, this is messed up. Let me run for
Speaker 3: president a few decades from now and make this thing happen.
Speaker 3: You're helping me connect that circle.
Speaker 2: If it's a circle. What I'm confused about.
Speaker 3: I go out there. JFK famously not a Republican John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy Junior, at least from my perspective, New York elite,
Speaker 3: not political, but somebody who is a magazine magnate and
Speaker 3: Seinfeld character doesn't exactly match up as the type of
Speaker 3: person that this often far right group would would align
Speaker 3: themselves with. Why do they see this potential in somebody
Speaker 3: who's so outside of the norm, you know.
Speaker 4: I think that's a great question. What is the emotional
Speaker 4: resonance of JFK Junior? Why Why is it JFK Junior
Speaker 4: they fixate on rather than another celebrity who died in
Speaker 4: the nineties. So I think the answer to it is
Speaker 4: that when we think about the QAnon believer, and I
Speaker 4: think in particular the people who go for the JFK
Speaker 4: Junior stuff, they're usually baby boomers, and I think the
Speaker 4: JFK assassination had a huge sort of emotional impact on them.
Speaker 4: And I think also JFK Junior was sort of seeing
Speaker 4: there's this very like prominent baby boomer, sort of an
Speaker 4: avatar of his generation, and so in that way, I
Speaker 4: think there is this kind of this very emotional connection
Speaker 4: to him in a way that there wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Be with another celebrity.
Speaker 4: I think also the idea of JFK as like the
Speaker 4: last good Democrat is something that has persisted among Republicans
Speaker 4: even before QAnon. This idea of kind of this popular
Speaker 4: martyred president and alway, isn't it terrible that, you know,
Speaker 4: LBJ the in the sixties took being a democrat into
Speaker 4: such an awful direction. So I think JFK himself still
Speaker 4: has a lot of resonance with Republicans and QAnon believers.
Speaker 4: So I think there's a lot of kind of like
Speaker 4: emotions tied up in all that.
Speaker 3: When you look back on JFK conspiracies, does it seem quaint?
Speaker 3: Does it seem sort of like the initial modern conspiracy
Speaker 3: theory that Americans have sort of built a mythos around.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think obviously we've had conspiracy theories throughout
Speaker 4: American history, but the Kennedy assassination is such a sort
Speaker 4: of an epical one that I think gets a lot
Speaker 4: of people into conspiracy theories, and it is certainly, I
Speaker 4: think the biggest and the richest one to dive into
Speaker 4: in modern history. It also sort of brings everything full
Speaker 4: circle incorporating Kennedy. QAnon is this sort of a super
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory or a mega conspiracy theory that where you
Speaker 4: can sort of get whatever you want out of it.
Speaker 4: And so we see a lot of Kennedy conspiracy theorists
Speaker 4: drawn into it. I talked to a guy who is
Speaker 4: a really big QAnon leader, and he had for decades
Speaker 4: been just like AFK Crank. I mean, he was going
Speaker 4: to all these convention stuff like that, and then QAnon
Speaker 4: arrives and he says, oh, you know, I can sort
Speaker 4: of incorporate my Kennedy beliefs into QAnon and sort of
Speaker 4: broaden my worldview and see more of the world explained.
Speaker 1: To me in that way. So I do think that's
Speaker 1: an aspect of it as well.
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 3: I think what a lot of people miss is just
Speaker 3: how fun conspiracies are. They are engaging, especially if you're
Speaker 3: on a computer. One of the most fun things you
Speaker 3: can do is go down that rabbit hole and also
Speaker 3: come away with something that empowers you because you feel
Speaker 3: like you know something somebody else doesn't. I did a
Speaker 3: job down in Dallas a decade ago, and I was
Speaker 3: walking through the grass knoll multiple times right there in
Speaker 3: de Plaza, and people would approach you and they would
Speaker 3: tell you things that you should know and shouldn't know.
Speaker 3: And so there was it was like a cottage industry
Speaker 3: for conspiracy theorists to give small little tours take you
Speaker 3: to places that they tell you what happened and what
Speaker 3: they're not telling you, and it's easy to get wrapped
Speaker 3: up in that, and you see the people starting to develop,
Speaker 3: you know, not only mindsets out of it, but it
Speaker 3: gives them importance. It gives them in some cases a job,
Speaker 3: but it makes them important in that little place. And
Speaker 3: I start to see that pop up at some of
Speaker 3: these Trump rallies that I go to, seeing people who
Speaker 3: now own part of these little conspiracies and they become
Speaker 3: many celebrities at these rallies that we see and looking
Speaker 3: at this JFK Junior coming back as part of there's
Speaker 3: been discussions of his reappearance, and there's been groups, one
Speaker 3: group called Negative forty eight who has staged events waiting
Speaker 3: for his return. Can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about Negative forty eight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Negative forty eight is a group that is
Speaker 4: very convinced that JFK, not only JFK Junior, but Kennedy,
Speaker 4: JFK himself and all sorts of sort of a bevy
Speaker 4: of other beloved deceased celebrities are It's not that they're
Speaker 4: going to come back to life, but they've sort of
Speaker 4: been in occlusion. They've been in hiding and that they're
Speaker 4: going to come back and sort of usher in this
Speaker 4: QAnon world. The reason they're called negative forty eight is
Speaker 4: because they they this is kind of hard to explain, dude,
Speaker 4: to someone who's not really deepen it, but essentially they
Speaker 4: believe in this thing called Jamatria where they assign numerical
Speaker 4: values to letters and then they derive meaning from that.
Speaker 1: A equals one, B equals two, and so on.
Speaker 4: But essentially they would say, like Jordan Klepper twenty trust
Speaker 4: the Plan twenty make America great again twenty five, and
Speaker 4: they just sort of speak in this language that doesn't
Speaker 4: really make sense to anyone outside of it, but they
Speaker 4: they see importance in these numbers and in these these coincidences,
Speaker 4: and so from there they essentially kind of whipped themselves
Speaker 4: up into believe eating these things like JFK Junior is
Speaker 4: coming back.
Speaker 2: I found out what Jamatria was real quick.
Speaker 3: What are the rallies? I went to when a woman
Speaker 3: kind of walked me through this. She brought out a
Speaker 3: Jamatria calculator and started typing in my name, typing in
Speaker 3: Trump's name, and connecting all sorts of numbers.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was wild.
Speaker 3: It was real fun. You can kind of make anything
Speaker 3: make sense there.
Speaker 2: Type it in the calculator, you get these numbers.
Speaker 5: And so Michael Jackson's last concert was this is it
Speaker 5: comes to one.
Speaker 2: Thirteen an you know what that means?
Speaker 1: Do you?
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means.
Speaker 5: So one thirteen means not true.
Speaker 3: So Michael Jackson that wasn't his last concert, and he's
Speaker 3: a lot. It's not necessarily a conspiratorial thing, although it's
Speaker 3: used in that sense. It's correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: It's essentially a mathematical way of turning letters into numbers,
Speaker 3: and religions have been using this for centuries just to
Speaker 3: try to find and try to derive meeting, trying to
Speaker 3: look deeper into biblical texts and what have you. And
Speaker 3: I thought that was a key component when I talked
Speaker 3: to this woman, because the way she talked about Jamatrium
Speaker 3: was beyond this is a conspiracy. It's fun. I have
Speaker 3: power because I have knowledge. It was also I'm serving
Speaker 3: a biblical character. There's religion attached to this. I think
Speaker 3: that's where the real danger comes here, where you have
Speaker 3: people who are serving serving religion and serving God through
Speaker 3: this fun little weird game that they play and then
Speaker 3: deciding that Aliyah is going to appear alongside Michael Jackson
Speaker 3: and perhaps and JFK Junior all at once, like.
Speaker 2: Ben Laden with Obama clarify whos still alive?
Speaker 5: Kay Junior is, JFK Junior is still alive.
Speaker 2: JFK Junior is still alive. So I think JFK j
Speaker 2: is going to try and expose globalists because they killed
Speaker 2: his father.
Speaker 4: We're talking about Tupac's coming back, Robin Williams is coming
Speaker 4: back Aliyah. As you mentioned, sort of pick your favorite
Speaker 4: dead celebrity, and so what happened was these folks descended
Speaker 4: on Dallas where they thought there was going to be
Speaker 4: sort of the Dead Celebrities Parade, and they're milling around
Speaker 4: and then they're seeing like a homeless guy and they're like,
Speaker 4: I think that's Robin Williams. And then everyone's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a Robin Williams and so on, and a lot
Speaker 4: of these guys, I mean, look, I'm not sure these
Speaker 4: guys are super up on, like Tupac, for example, and
Speaker 4: there's I think that's Supac, you know, all these guys
Speaker 4: I think that's Biggie and it's.
Speaker 7: Sort of this.
Speaker 4: You can see they're sort of going into this world
Speaker 4: where like nothing bad ever happens, No, no one ever
Speaker 4: dies of a drug overdose or a suicide. The other
Speaker 4: thing I would add is that they think a lot
Speaker 4: of dead celebrities were murdered or went into hiding, like JFK.
Speaker 4: Junior faked their deaths because they were gonna blow the
Speaker 4: lid off the cabal. So like the the late dj Avich,
Speaker 4: you know he faked his death. All these kind of
Speaker 4: people just you know, Whitney Houston. Oh, but they're all
Speaker 4: coming back at this big moment. And you can see
Speaker 4: these people who have just particularly in this when they
Speaker 4: were kind of million around Dallas for months, just the
Speaker 4: amount of their own lives and their own like hearts
Speaker 4: that they've invested into into it. You know, they're just
Speaker 4: you know, headed for a brick wall when eventually they
Speaker 4: realize none if it's happening.
Speaker 3: It's just predominantly white people who live in a bubble
Speaker 3: walking around Dallas thinking they see Tupac everywhere.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 3: I mean it's really like Tubuk, do you really know
Speaker 3: who Tupac is?
Speaker 2: And you think that guy's Tupac and biggie. They are.
Speaker 3: These are diametrically opposed on many levels. But I bet
Speaker 3: you're seeing it as the same person who's going into
Speaker 3: a subway.
Speaker 4: Well, they would do these live streams where they would say, like,
Speaker 4: didn't y'all see that dead rapper?
Speaker 1: Like they wouldn't know.
Speaker 4: Any names, you know, and they gotta have this game
Speaker 4: of telephone figure it out.
Speaker 6: I'm not gonna be a conspiracist or anything like that,
Speaker 6: but I just watched a movie last week with Robin
Speaker 6: Williams in it. It was called Man of the Year.
Speaker 6: And guess what they had election fraud back then? The
Speaker 6: machines that are switching to doing electronically and they were
Speaker 6: counting wrong.
Speaker 3: Is this a documentary, No, it's just a movie. Are
Speaker 3: there any lessons we can take from morecan mindy?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: It should be pointed out they've they've pointed to people
Speaker 3: specifically JFK. Junior, as there's been a man who's gone
Speaker 3: to multiple rallies, stands behind Donald Trump, and that's JFK.
Speaker 2: Junior.
Speaker 3: I went to Seapack and I saw him there as well,
Speaker 3: and he's taken selfies because he's also JFK Junior. So
Speaker 3: some people aren't just abstract apparitions. They are actually humans
Speaker 3: that they point to and say, you know, this is
Speaker 3: who you are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've actually I was just texting with him. So
Speaker 4: his name is Vincent Fusca, and he is this like
Speaker 4: Trump super fan. In the lead up to in the
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen election, he had this van kind of festooned
Speaker 4: with Trump paraphernalia, and so he kind of ends up
Speaker 4: becoming because he's a big Trump fan. He's behind him
Speaker 4: at a lot of rallies when the JFK Junior stuff
Speaker 4: starts happening, and this guy, I should say, it looks
Speaker 4: nothing like JFK Junior. He dresses, he wears like a
Speaker 4: big fedora. He's a very scruffy guy. He wears like
Speaker 4: like a big suit coat.
Speaker 3: And so, now, to be clear, JFK Junior was a
Speaker 3: stylish man, and it could only be assumed that that style,
Speaker 3: mixed with privilege and wealth, would have led him into
Speaker 3: the modern era.
Speaker 2: Not choosing to wear a fedora.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, thank you.
Speaker 7: Yeah maybe in the nineties, you know, but now I
Speaker 7: don't think so.
Speaker 1: And so oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, early swing day, big big bad voddha daddy.
Speaker 2: He would have had a Fodora.
Speaker 3: There would have been a lot of college kids who
Speaker 3: wanted to look like JFK Junior who could pull off
Speaker 3: a Fodora, But modern JFK Junior no, no freaking way,
Speaker 3: no way.
Speaker 4: And so so he's standing behind Trump, and when the
Speaker 4: JFK Junior stuff starts happening, people go, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 4: I think that's JFK Junior behind Trump. And then there
Speaker 4: was like a blond woman nearby and they said, I
Speaker 4: think that's JFK Junior's wife. And so, I mean, they
Speaker 4: kind of get going. But the wild thing to me
Speaker 4: about it is this guy doesn't come out and say, hey, guys,
Speaker 4: I'm not JFK Junior.
Speaker 1: Leave me alone.
Speaker 7: He goes, oh, who's to say.
Speaker 4: And so I've seen this guy maybe seven or eight times,
Speaker 4: and he'll be out a rally or something and people go, oh,
Speaker 4: JFK Junior, you know, we want pictures. And then I
Speaker 4: say to him, Hey, you want to tell me about
Speaker 4: how everyone thinks you're JFK Junior obviously not, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 4: I'd love to talk to you later. How about in
Speaker 4: an hour let me catch up. I'm just so busy today,
Speaker 4: but I'm in town. You know, yeah, my number, let's
Speaker 4: talk later. Obviously never gets back to me. I talked
Speaker 4: to this one woman who was like, oh, posing for
Speaker 4: all these selfies with him, and I said, you know
Speaker 4: that's not right, and she's.
Speaker 1: Like, haven't you ever heard of Hollywood? Haven't you heard
Speaker 1: of visual effects? Haven't you ever heard of Medea?
Speaker 7: You know it's you know they I mean, they're really.
Speaker 3: Deepening Tyler Perry as evidence. It's a it's a smart move.
Speaker 3: And I give Vincent props. I tell you, if somebody
Speaker 3: stops me on the street and says Joel McHale, I
Speaker 3: love you in community, I don't correct them. Nope, that's
Speaker 3: let them think that. Let them live their own reality.
Speaker 3: As Americans, we have every right to live our own reality.
Speaker 3: I think it's in the Constitution somewhere somewhere deep. Now,
Speaker 3: there's there's a dark side to some of this, because
Speaker 3: I will say when I talked to the woman who
Speaker 3: was into Jamatrium, and she was a part of this
Speaker 3: negative forty eight group. They show up in Dallas, they
Speaker 3: wait in Dallas for JFK Junior to arrive, and then
Speaker 3: they stay there for months and months on and then
Speaker 3: there's stories of families who are losing loved ones to
Speaker 3: this conspiracy mindset, and people are sending money to these
Speaker 3: the leader pratsmen I believe, Like, what are some of
Speaker 3: the dark sides of believing in these weird fantasies?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so you know Q and I've talked
Speaker 4: to so many people who have lost family and friends
Speaker 4: to Q nine. And when you talk about something as
Speaker 4: extreme as negative forty eight as sort of that faction,
Speaker 4: I mean you're talking about people who have essentially given
Speaker 4: up their lives at this point. I mean, it's like
Speaker 4: they've joined kind of like a traveling commune or something.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, they're saying in this hotel room
Speaker 4: for months at a time, which is not cheap.
Speaker 1: They're kind of pooling all their funds.
Speaker 4: At one point, you know, there were a bunch of
Speaker 4: like little toddlers, little kids involved, which you know, it
Speaker 4: thought great for them to be roaming around looking for
Speaker 4: Tupac or whatever. And you know, I talked to one
Speaker 4: guy who whose wife had he thought he had a
Speaker 4: you know, a totally fine, normal marriage, and then.
Speaker 7: She just says, oh, yeah, I'm going to go to
Speaker 7: this Trump rally.
Speaker 4: Well, as it turned out, she was going to join
Speaker 4: Negative forty eight and then just vanishes, and you know
Speaker 4: he's seeing her in these videos and stuff, and he's like,
Speaker 4: what is happening in my family? There's no evidence she's
Speaker 4: ever coming back, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, it is really really grim stuff.
Speaker 2: This is a poor guy.
Speaker 3: You just you see about homie, like my wife she
Speaker 3: left me for to k JR. I get it's what
Speaker 3: a successful man. And he's been through a lot. You know,
Speaker 3: he's died, he's come back, he's living as this man vincent.
Speaker 3: He's trying to pull off Fedoras and modern times.
Speaker 2: It's it's difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bold decision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad he's found love, but she's left me alone.
Speaker 3: We're gonna posit it right there.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy. I want
Speaker 3: to bring in Professor Joe Yuzinski, political scientists and conspiracy
Speaker 3: theory expert at the University of Miami who followed the
Speaker 3: JFK Junior gathering in Dallas. Joe, welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: So Joe, we got will summer here. We've been going
Speaker 3: down this JFK Junior, wormhole, rabbit hole, whatever hole you
Speaker 3: want to call it, we're in it. You've you've looked
Speaker 3: at what's happening and what continues to happen in Dallas
Speaker 3: from your perspective, what's going on down there.
Speaker 5: So you have people that probably have a bunch of
Speaker 5: psychological issues. Maybe they're prone to delusions, They're prone to
Speaker 5: believing things in spite of evidence, and that's what got
Speaker 5: them to this point. And this is fanciful. It's fun
Speaker 5: for them. They're probably enjoying it. But it doesn't shock
Speaker 5: me to hear the things that Will is talking about.
Speaker 5: I mean, there are families, and I get emails from
Speaker 5: these families once in a while, you know, the sun disappeared,
Speaker 5: or you know, one family member you know got into
Speaker 5: a conspiracy theory. Now they can't even talk to the person.
Speaker 5: And there isn't much I can say to these families
Speaker 5: other than I'm not that kind of doctor. I mean,
Speaker 5: there's nothing I can do for this sort of stuff.
Speaker 5: And I sympathize and empathize with them, but there isn't
Speaker 5: much you can do.
Speaker 3: What makes people predisposed to believe conspiracy theories in the
Speaker 3: first place, why do they go and seek them out?
Speaker 5: Well, the answer is going to be a little bit unsatisfying,
Speaker 5: but this is where we are, and that is that
Speaker 5: some people, more than others, have a worldview in which,
Speaker 5: you know, they go over to the window when they
Speaker 5: wake up in the morning, they look out and they
Speaker 5: see stuff and they say, oh, that must be caused
Speaker 5: by a conspiracy, you know, being driven by people who
Speaker 5: I already don't like. And the question becomes, well, where
Speaker 5: does that come from? And the answer is, we don't
Speaker 5: know yet. We just know that it exists, and we
Speaker 5: know that some people are just really prone to it.
Speaker 5: So it's not the beliefs themselves, it's not the ideas.
Speaker 5: It's that it's people that have a very thick set
Speaker 5: of lenses. So when they come into contact with these ideas,
Speaker 5: it's just easy for them to say, yeah, that must
Speaker 5: be true.
Speaker 3: You know, America, it's not a new thing to believe
Speaker 3: in conspiracy theories. It's not a new thing to have
Speaker 3: perhaps a warped sense of reality. We are the country
Speaker 3: that gave you the Salem witch trials. We're always looking
Speaker 3: for weird ways of which to perceive what's happening around us.
Speaker 2: How serious.
Speaker 3: Is the situation we're living in now? Is this Is
Speaker 3: this an aberration? Is this something that social media has
Speaker 3: one created or two is just reflecting what's already been
Speaker 3: happening out there, and we're blown it into it's overblown
Speaker 3: our perspective on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I mean look, as you said, I mean,
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories have been with us throughout American history, as
Speaker 4: going back to the witch trials. I mean, there's really
Speaker 4: rich history of its sort of each kind of big
Speaker 4: pivot moment in the United States of a conspiracy theory
Speaker 4: is really abounding. At the same time, I think what's
Speaker 4: unique about the moment we're in is number One social media,
Speaker 4: as you mentioned, which I think helps people with this
Speaker 4: kind of conspiratorial mindset connect with one another. The way
Speaker 4: I think of it is, if you think of like
Speaker 4: the Kennedy assassination, in order to find like minded people,
Speaker 4: you would have to maybe print to zine, send letters,
Speaker 4: go to a convention, stuff like that, and then everyone
Speaker 4: on your block would be saying, like, if you're a
Speaker 4: nut or whatever, Whereas now these people can just go
Speaker 4: online and find like minded people, reinforce their beliefs, and
Speaker 4: find new recruits.
Speaker 1: Really, really easily.
Speaker 4: The other thing I would say is we've at least
Speaker 4: I think, in modern history, we haven't seen this kind
Speaker 4: of conspiratorial thinking embraced by so many politicians, to the
Speaker 4: point where we have members of Congress who believe in
Speaker 4: QAnon and have supported it. Recently, Donald Trump is posting
Speaker 4: really explicit pro q and on videos. So in that way,
Speaker 4: I think it really helps mainstream these conspiracy theories in
Speaker 4: a way that we.
Speaker 1: Haven't had before.
Speaker 3: I love thinking that in the old days, you at
Speaker 3: least had to learn how to produce a zine, Like
Speaker 3: there's something to the stereotype of like well you had
Speaker 3: to cut out letters and you actually had to build
Speaker 3: a board and connect it with string there and it's
Speaker 3: like no.
Speaker 2: Literally, there's a certain buy in that that buys you.
Speaker 3: Now you can do this all online. You don't even
Speaker 3: have to go to hobby lobby to buy the shit.
Speaker 3: You can do it on the internet. The buy and
Speaker 3: it's so low, Joe, I wonder where do you see
Speaker 3: the threat level something like this.
Speaker 5: It's it's with politicians. So to me, I don't think
Speaker 5: people have changed all that much over time. If anything,
Speaker 5: we're believing conspiracy theories as much as we did ten
Speaker 5: twenty thirty years ago. Different now is not just Trump,
Speaker 5: but particularly Trump and other people who want to do
Speaker 5: what Trump has done. So when you have people who
Speaker 5: can act on conspiracy theories with a monopoly of authoritative force,
Speaker 5: when you have people who already have large audiences because
Speaker 5: they're politicians transmitting these things, that's going to reach a
Speaker 5: lot of people, and it's going to influence a lot
Speaker 5: of people. Like any of us could go on to
Speaker 5: social media and spurat out whatever stupid conspiracy theory we want.
Speaker 5: Doesn't mean anyone's going to pay attention, right, It doesn't
Speaker 5: mean anyone's going to care or even look at it.
Speaker 5: But if Trump does it, that's a very different ballgame, right.
Speaker 5: And when you have people who have political power engaging
Speaker 5: in this, that's incredibly dangerous. And if you look back
Speaker 5: through history the times where we have, you know, the
Speaker 5: worst episodes of conspiracy theorizing, it's usually because of politicians
Speaker 5: getting involved in acting on it in some way.
Speaker 3: Is it possible to put these ideas back in a box?
Speaker 3: Can you roll this back? You know, I recently was
Speaker 3: out talking to people about the election and election deniers
Speaker 3: and so much is based on this idea of as
Speaker 3: soon as you have doubt and you see it through
Speaker 3: a lens of doubt and mistrust everywhere, it almost doesn't
Speaker 3: matter what's going to happen in the next election, you're
Speaker 3: going to see it. It's going to be there. Are
Speaker 3: we already hardwired these brains to see and distrust so
Speaker 3: many things that there will not be a turning back
Speaker 3: that even though somebody like Donald Trump might wield so
Speaker 3: much power and be able to direct it in certain
Speaker 3: ways that we've sort of already infected a generation with
Speaker 3: this mindset.
Speaker 5: Well, there's already people who think that no matter what,
Speaker 5: Right after any election, there's about you know, twenty to
Speaker 5: thirty percent of the country who think it was rigged.
Speaker 1: Why because they.
Speaker 5: Lost, right So as in politics, as in sports, who
Speaker 5: complains after the football game? Now it's the lose team, right,
Speaker 5: So that's sort of normal after every election. What's abnormal
Speaker 5: right now is that you have the losing candidate saying
Speaker 5: it was rigged, I was cheated, and going on and
Speaker 5: on and on about it and pulling in the whole
Speaker 5: of the conservative media and lots of allies in Congress.
Speaker 5: So now you have sort of a full court press
Speaker 5: of people saying it's rigged, it's rigged, it's rigged. So
Speaker 5: that's why you have between sixty and eighty percent of
Speaker 5: Republicans saying twenty twenty was rigged against them, rather than
Speaker 5: the normal thirty forty fifty percent that might have otherwise
Speaker 5: said it was rigged just for the fact that they lost.
Speaker 3: How close are we to having sixty or eighty percent
Speaker 3: of the GOP believe JFK Junior is coming back?
Speaker 2: Is that weeks or months away?
Speaker 1: I think that would be a tougher one to pull off.
Speaker 5: I mean, Trump has a lot of influence, so if
Speaker 5: he got behind a conspiracy theory repeatedly for a long
Speaker 5: period of time, he could make people buy in. And
Speaker 5: if it's something like election fraud, he can pull that
Speaker 5: off because those ideas are always around. But sometimes you'll
Speaker 5: come out with conspiracy theories that just don't influence anyone.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm not aware of a lot of Ted
Speaker 5: Cruz's dad killed JFK truthers out there, even though he
Speaker 5: pushed that, you know, six or seven years ago. I mean,
Speaker 5: it just didn't take off. But I think if you
Speaker 5: go after ideas that people are sort of already inclined
Speaker 5: towards I mean, he can do a lot of damage
Speaker 5: that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think we are all inclined to
Speaker 3: the idea of wanting Aliyah to be back in our
Speaker 3: lives again. We want another classic album, We want that redemption.
Speaker 3: I think that's on the cusp if he If he
Speaker 3: even nudget us in that direction, I think we all
Speaker 3: buy tickets immediately to the next concert, whether or not
Speaker 3: she appears or not.
Speaker 5: I mean we think that QAnon stuff is wacky and crazy,
Speaker 5: and where do people come up with these ideas? But
Speaker 5: I mean we lived through the eighties. I mean there
Speaker 5: was massive Satanic panics during that time. Satan was everywhere,
Speaker 5: and even Oliver Stone's JFK movie, which was, you know,
Speaker 5: a popular movie was about the pedophile deep state going
Speaker 5: after the President of the United States. I mean Joe
Speaker 5: Peshi played the defrock pedophile priest. So even the basic
Speaker 5: idea behind QAnon is not new. I mean all of
Speaker 5: this stuff is recycled and rehashed, and it's largely the
Speaker 5: same people believing the same stuff. Sort of a choose
Speaker 5: your Own Adventure mad Lib book that they're just replaying
Speaker 5: over and over again.
Speaker 1: I think QAnon has a political valance to it as well.
Speaker 1: If you look at the.
Speaker 4: Pictures from January sixth, the people, all the people who
Speaker 4: were there who were convinced that this was going to
Speaker 4: be kind of this big, like kind of fascist moment
Speaker 4: where the dreams were going to come true. And certainly,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's unique in that it has
Speaker 4: achieved such mainstream prevalence within the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking.
Speaker 4: About election denial stuff like that. And in many ways,
Speaker 4: I think QAnon is kind of an easy thing to
Speaker 4: talk about because you can kind of get a handle
Speaker 4: on it. It's people holding cues and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: But a lot of these ideas that are core to
Speaker 4: QAnon have become are kind of swirling around the GOP,
Speaker 4: and I've become much more successful without the q label attached.
Speaker 4: So we think about, for example, this idea that you know,
Speaker 4: talking about gay people existing in a school is part
Speaker 4: of a pedophile groom or plot, and so we can
Speaker 4: see these things really being weaponized into policy in a
Speaker 4: you know, I think a really ominous way.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about how this is covered.
Speaker 3: What you know, obviously, there are elements of conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: that belong in the news, that become news.
Speaker 2: What I think the role of roles should be.
Speaker 3: For journalists in coming to some of these fringe beliefs.
Speaker 3: Is it giving too much air to follow some of
Speaker 3: these JFK junior ideas and put them up on a
Speaker 3: pedestal so people can see those ideas and have that
Speaker 3: air out or what you're talking about right now, because
Speaker 3: this is effecting our culture, do they need to be
Speaker 3: more vigilant and bring this to the forefront so we
Speaker 3: can engage with them, we can knock them down or
Speaker 3: at least be aware that they're out there.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, I think it's a complicated one for me.
Speaker 4: You know, you certainly don't want to just go find
Speaker 4: and a couple of nuts online and say like, oh,
Speaker 4: these guys are so crazy For me, it's when it
Speaker 4: starts crossing over into the real world. I mean, we've
Speaker 4: had QAnon believers murdering people. We had a q and
Speaker 4: On guy murder his wife. In twenty eighteen, a q
Speaker 4: and On guy shut down a bridge near the Hoover
Speaker 4: Dan He had a bunch of guns. That was at
Speaker 4: the point where I was like, this is not just
Speaker 4: an online thing anymore. This is something where I have
Speaker 4: to trust my readers enough, both as an audience and
Speaker 4: as you know, citizens, that they deserve to know what's
Speaker 4: going on in the world. And you know, I do
Speaker 4: think that idea of amplification is a relevant one. But
Speaker 4: at the point where you have Donald Trump saying like
Speaker 4: check out this cue stuff, you know, I think the
Speaker 4: cow is out of the barn. And I would add,
Speaker 4: in the case of JFK Junior, I mean one of
Speaker 4: these maybe he's kind of the evil.
Speaker 1: JFK Junior impersonator.
Speaker 4: There's another guy who's put together a coalition that is
Speaker 4: going that has people running to control elections and battleground states.
Speaker 4: Who's a JFK Junior impersonator. They're the Republican nominee. So really,
Speaker 4: I mean, this is stuff that is going to have really,
Speaker 4: I think, really concrete impact on our lives.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, that was one of the details when I talked
Speaker 3: to the Jamatria woman. You know what, what the talk
Speaker 3: of the rally at that point was not that this
Speaker 3: was just a person who believed this wild thing, but
Speaker 3: it was a person who was in Dallas who had
Speaker 3: a strong following on places like Telegram, and the talk
Speaker 3: was that they had a relationship with the Trump campaign,
Speaker 3: that a lot of these people from Negative forty eight
Speaker 3: were also setting up chairs and in you know, the
Speaker 3: fact that they would show up and try to help
Speaker 3: the campaign get set up at the rallies, they would
Speaker 3: get certain VIP passes. And this is not just a
Speaker 3: fringe thing that exists outside some of the campaigns in
Speaker 3: some ways that are also working and coordinating within them.
Speaker 2: It's becoming folded into it.
Speaker 4: There is sort of this tension with the Trump campaign
Speaker 4: where they seem to see these people as what they are,
Speaker 4: which is huge Trump super fans, and Trump is kind
Speaker 4: of constantly signaling to the QAnon believers, but at the
Speaker 4: same time they don't want the average person to see
Speaker 4: a bunch of q stuff at the rallies. So we
Speaker 4: see the Negative forty eight people doing the QAnon symbols
Speaker 4: and stuff at the rallies and they're being told, you know,
Speaker 4: don't do that, what have you. But there's kind of
Speaker 4: this pull, this back and forth, and.
Speaker 3: Trump doesn't understand that it's so complicated, it's so above.
Speaker 2: There was some.
Speaker 3: Onion headline that I think nailed it that was essentially
Speaker 3: Trump half assing his support of Q and I like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess the Democrats eat babies or whatever the hell
Speaker 3: it is. You guys think like you can feel in
Speaker 3: like I if this makes you like me more sure,
Speaker 3: But I can't even begin to wrap.
Speaker 2: My head around what you guys think is going on.
Speaker 3: Joe, I'm wondering what you think the proper response from
Speaker 3: the media would be uncovering these types of stories.
Speaker 5: That's a really tough question. I mean, I'll tell you.
Speaker 5: When I started studying the topic about fifteen years ago,
Speaker 5: there was barely any coverage of conspiracy theories in the
Speaker 5: mainstream news. So I started a Google alert back then,
Speaker 5: so every night I would get all the articles that
Speaker 5: had the term conspiracy theory in it. And back then
Speaker 5: I was getting four or five articles a day and
Speaker 5: none on the weekends. And at the end of twenty
Speaker 5: fifteen that had jumped to one hundred.
Speaker 1: A day every day.
Speaker 5: And just this is anecdotal, but just for myself, I
Speaker 5: think I took close to three hundred interviews in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty alone, So almost every journalist was calling me when
Speaker 5: they were writing about it, and they were all writing
Speaker 5: it about it quite a bit. And then I think
Speaker 5: what happened shortly after twenty sixteen is that a lot
Speaker 5: of major news outlets started getting their own misinformation conspiracy
Speaker 5: theory social media newsdesks. So they now have dedicated reporters
Speaker 5: just covering this topic. So it's going to continue to
Speaker 5: get a lot of attention. I don't know, you know
Speaker 5: what the effect of the coverage is. I mean, I
Speaker 5: think that some things went wrong in twenty twenty. I
Speaker 5: think there were a lot of journalists that had sort
Speaker 5: of a panic over conspiracy theories and misinformation, and the
Speaker 5: headlines sort of got into their own echo chamber. It
Speaker 5: was like Q was taking over the world and it's
Speaker 5: the biggest thing ever. And you know, as I was
Speaker 5: polling on it, I was like, I'm just not getting
Speaker 5: these these massive numbers. It's there, it exists, and they
Speaker 5: have a presence online. But I think Will was one
Speaker 5: of the few people who was in journalism who was saying,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe it's not as big as some of
Speaker 5: the fantastic headlines are saying it is. So I think
Speaker 5: in some ways, you know, some of the sensationalistic report
Speaker 5: and got ahead of itself.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Will give us a little perspective here, not only on
Speaker 3: the q andon movement as to where it is now,
Speaker 3: but even looking at something like this JFK junior theory,
Speaker 3: the negative forty eight group. You know, how big is
Speaker 3: it actually and how much of an effect does it
Speaker 3: have on the conversation?
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, so I've actually got I've got some polls
Speaker 4: right in front of me for just this moment. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: So and now these polls are a little out of date,
Speaker 4: and Joe does some great polling on this, and I
Speaker 4: think he has newer numbers. So, but the difficulty of
Speaker 4: nailing down QAnon belief is there's a couple things. Number One,
Speaker 4: a lot of times people are going to say they
Speaker 4: may believe some of the tenets of it, but they're
Speaker 4: not like on the forum saying you know where we
Speaker 4: go when we go all stuff like that. At the
Speaker 4: same time, we have to realize that at the end
Speaker 4: of twenty two, twenty Cute basically told the fans the
Speaker 4: brand had become too damaged and to stop to saying
Speaker 4: QQQ and just to sort of use the talking points.
Speaker 4: And so there is going to be an amount I
Speaker 4: think of people who are kind of downplaying it there's
Speaker 4: a March twenty twenty one pole of five thousand people
Speaker 4: that's found that fifteen percent of them believe Satan worshiping
Speaker 4: pedophiles run a global child sex operation. We got two
Speaker 4: thousand people in January twenty twenty one that found fifteen
Speaker 4: percent believe that Trump was at war with these Hollywood pedophiles.
Speaker 4: And now when you start asking about q Andon, the
Speaker 4: numbers get a little lower. You're talking to think three
Speaker 4: to seven percent. Still, we're talking about millions of people.
Speaker 4: That's more popular than some religions in the United States.
Speaker 3: So you know, don't shit on the Quakers. Why you
Speaker 3: got a shit on the Quakers. I know what you're
Speaker 3: getting at there. I can read between the lines. They're
Speaker 3: a good, peaceful group of people. Stop shitting on the Quakers.
Speaker 3: Don't come on to my podcast and make all this
Speaker 3: anti Quaker attacks. I know they had a hard time
Speaker 3: getting people into the whatever they call it, commune room,
Speaker 3: but they're working hard on this. Okay, exactly, continue, but
Speaker 3: leave the Quakers out of your mouth.
Speaker 4: Just getting wrecked by q and on here, Yeah, they're
Speaker 4: getting blown out. So yeah, we started talking about that
Speaker 4: at the same time. I mean, the JFK junior people
Speaker 4: are kind of a faction of that, and then we
Speaker 4: get down to the negative forty eight group, which is
Speaker 4: smaller than that. So I would say Negative forty eight
Speaker 4: I think has tens of thousands of Telegram subscribers. I
Speaker 4: think when we think about hardcore fans, we're probably talking
Speaker 4: a couple thousand.
Speaker 3: It's actually interesting to see, Joe, where do you see?
Speaker 3: They're the hardcore fans of the people who show up
Speaker 3: at the events who are posting most of that information.
Speaker 3: But there's that secondary element too, of when it just
Speaker 3: becomes a brand. I go to some of these events
Speaker 3: and I see people wearing C paraphernalia.
Speaker 2: Que's back and there's Q shit everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yes, the online conspiracy following a mysterious character known as
Speaker 3: Q was more popular than ever.
Speaker 2: Is that a QUE?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are you a QUE supporter?
Speaker 3: Certainly some people I taught to you, they're worried that
Speaker 3: just because they understand that it's a it's trolling behavior,
Speaker 3: that it's a brand that they can put on their body,
Speaker 3: it's going to piss off the media, it's going to
Speaker 3: get attention from the people they want to get attention with,
Speaker 3: and they may not even know the tenets of what
Speaker 3: q is, but they do know that it's something that
Speaker 3: they support in theory because in their mind the support
Speaker 3: is just trolling. Is that dangerous? Is that sort of
Speaker 3: a is it the evolution of conspiracy theory? Then when
Speaker 3: it just becomes pepsi that we're we're in for a
Speaker 3: world of hurt. Where do you see that job?
Speaker 5: Well, we're sort of calling everything Q and on now right,
Speaker 5: And if you go back to the idea that Q
Speaker 5: and on adopted a lot of ideas that pre existed
Speaker 5: q andon, then it's not quite as disturbing. So between
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen and more recently, we're depending on how you
Speaker 5: ask the question. If if you're just doing direct questions,
Speaker 5: are you a believer in q andon? Do you follow
Speaker 5: q and on? We're getting between five and twelve percent,
Speaker 5: which makes it one of the least believed and followed
Speaker 5: things that I pull on.
Speaker 1: I mean to put that in perspective.
Speaker 5: We just say, do you think there was a conspiracy
Speaker 5: to kill Kennedy in nineteen sixty three, We're getting between
Speaker 5: fifty and sixty percent. So QAnon isn't all that huge.
Speaker 5: But when will's exactly right, when we ask on these
Speaker 5: more general ideas, like our teachers grooming kids to become
Speaker 5: trans Are there satanic cults doing massive Satanic rituals across
Speaker 5: the country. Are elites running sex trafficking rings? We're getting
Speaker 5: between twenty and thirty five percent. Now, I wouldn't call
Speaker 5: those ideas Q ideas. I mean, QAnon adopts them, but
Speaker 5: they could have existed decades ago. And some of those
Speaker 5: ideas sort of have their origin thousands of years ago,
Speaker 5: so they've been around, and I just don't want to
Speaker 5: attribute them to q because then it says like, oh,
Speaker 5: this guy was able to convince thirty percent of the
Speaker 5: country that elites are running sex trafficking rings, when in fact,
Speaker 5: those ideas you know, might have been around.
Speaker 1: Well before that.
Speaker 5: It's just we weren't paying attention.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Even back during the Satanic Panic of the eighties, there
Speaker 5: were very few polls taken of how many people were
Speaker 5: buying in to this idea of Satanic cults running around.
Speaker 5: And I've only found one pole and it was of Texas,
Speaker 5: so you have to you have to keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: But it was eighty.
Speaker 5: Percent of people at the end of the eighties thought that,
Speaker 5: you know, one of the major problems in the country
Speaker 5: was satanic cults going around abusing people. So I don't
Speaker 5: know how well that might have been believed in you know,
Speaker 5: some other state at the time. But right now we're
Speaker 5: trying to poll on all these things, and it's just
Speaker 5: we don't have good comparisons to the past.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: One thing I would note there is that there's something
Speaker 4: unique about QAnon in comparison to some of these other
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories. If you're talking about, like the thing of
Speaker 4: the Kennedy assassination, was it was a conspiracy theory or
Speaker 4: the moon landing was fake, Well, there's kind of not
Speaker 4: a lot you can personally do about it. In the
Speaker 4: case of Quanon, there's kind of this there's sort of
Speaker 4: a utopia at the core of it, and that there
Speaker 4: are places that we are going to go terrorize these
Speaker 4: satanic pedophiles. So there is kind of like a way
Speaker 4: that people can participate in it that I think it
Speaker 4: makes it more dangerous than you know, believing that again
Speaker 4: the moon landing was fake or something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's a game. There's a group identity, right,
Speaker 5: So a lot of people believe Kennedy was killed by
Speaker 5: a conspiracy, but they're not friends. They don't consider themselves
Speaker 5: to be part of a group or a movement, right.
Speaker 5: But QAnon, a lot of those people do like they
Speaker 5: are doing something together. They're following along, they're solving the clues,
Speaker 5: they're expecting an outcome in a shared way. And that's
Speaker 5: something that most conspiracy theories don't really have. And that's
Speaker 5: why QAnon has always been very hard to define, right
Speaker 5: because it's sort of cultish but not really a cult.
Speaker 5: It's a group but sort of decentralized. It's got a
Speaker 5: lot of conspiracy theories in it, so it's not just
Speaker 5: a conspiracy theory, and it's got sort of activities that
Speaker 5: people can do to sort of be a part of
Speaker 5: it and play along that other conspiracy theories just don't have.
Speaker 3: I do love thinking of it like activities. It's like
Speaker 3: we get to get together, we get to solve white
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks is drinking baby blood. It's like just a
Speaker 3: bunch of little Encyclopedia Browns running around America.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that.
Speaker 4: I mean, they had a rally in DC and they said,
Speaker 4: you know, we're gonna kind of go on this excursion.
Speaker 4: If you're interested to go protest and comet ping pong,
Speaker 4: So they have the whole itineraries well before.
Speaker 1: I let you go.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason this podcast is one for me
Speaker 3: to wrap my head around some of the stuff that
Speaker 3: I'm seeing out there on the road. But two help me,
Speaker 3: what am I gonna see out there on the road
Speaker 3: a couple months from now? One in regards to the
Speaker 3: JFK Junior conspiracy? How does that morph?
Speaker 2: And Two?
Speaker 3: Am I gonna get a new Robin Williams movie out
Speaker 3: of all this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: You know, I think the JFK Junior stuff is gonna continue.
Speaker 4: I mean I saw in particularly, I think if Trump
Speaker 4: keeps engaging war with qan On, I think we're gonna
Speaker 4: see more people getting into Q and I and kind
Speaker 4: of see some fresh energy behind that. I once went
Speaker 4: to the kind of the Trumpian July fourth event, and
Speaker 4: all these women at the Trump Hotel were wearing like
Speaker 4: JFKJ and your shirts, And this lady had a JAFKJ
Speaker 4: in your mask on her face and I said to her,
Speaker 4: you know what's that about? And she goes, He's alive,
Speaker 4: and she kind of flit flitters away. So, I mean,
Speaker 4: I don't think that energy is going anywhere. And you know,
Speaker 4: I think we get we get new conspiracy theories all
Speaker 4: the time, and so I think you know you got
Speaker 4: the big one. I'm seeing a lot of movement on
Speaker 4: this idea that the elites want to make us all
Speaker 4: eat bugs.
Speaker 1: Jordan, so like you might want to be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for that.
Speaker 4: I think there's gonna be a lot of like what
Speaker 4: they say is I will not eat the bugs, and
Speaker 4: so I think you might get someone you know a
Speaker 4: cost to you about that.
Speaker 1: So so don't don't make them do it.
Speaker 3: I hate this. I hate this job so much. Dear Lord,
Speaker 3: dear Lord, Jordan, you might want to be on the lookout.
Speaker 3: I guess there's this thing about elites trying to make
Speaker 3: you eat bugs? Bug Gazzi, is that what it is?
Speaker 3: It is, Joe, What do I have to like out for?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 5: So worse than that. I think the same reporter who
Speaker 5: was writing about the bug eating was also writing about
Speaker 5: forced anal swabbing. It's not just about testing for COVID,
Speaker 5: it's about humiliating you in public. So if you walk
Speaker 5: down the street and they have like a government tent
Speaker 5: setup where they're sticking people with Q tips up the ass.
Speaker 2: That's gonna be.
Speaker 5: That's gonna be something come true, somebody's dark dream apparently.
Speaker 3: So this is how I'm writing it down right now.
Speaker 3: I need to be aware of bug Ghazi and Bumgazi.
Speaker 3: They're they're on the horizon. Thank you, gentlemen. Well, well, Joe,
Speaker 3: thanks for coming on the podcast. I'm gonna go down
Speaker 3: to a Trump rally and a few do you guys
Speaker 3: want to come along?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: That might be a little intense for me, fair enough?
Speaker 1: Shair it up?
Speaker 3: Well, Thank you guys for joining me and helping me
Speaker 3: figure this conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Thank you.
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Speaker 1: This has been a Comedy Central podcast now