Replay | Is JFK Still Alive? | Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy

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Speaker 3 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2 John F. Kennedy Jr.
was the son of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States.
Tragically, JFK Jr. was killed in a plane crash in 1999.

Speaker 2 Or was he?

Speaker 2 Yes, he was. Of course he was.
But what if he wasn't? What if he were about to re-emerge as the vice president of Donald Trump? Who, by the way, is still the president? Sound crazy? It is.

Speaker 2 In fact, it's one of the wilder conspiracies I've heard in my seven years covering Trump rallies.

Speaker 2 You're probably familiar with my daily show segments, Jordan Clepper Fingers the Pulse, and me nominated twice, lost twice, where I chat with Trump supporters at rallies.

Speaker 5 We are not a cult.

Speaker 2 It's an American ideal that we treat women with respect. You gotta give me the back of that shirt one more time.
That's too much fun. Trump, that bitch!

Speaker 2 We don't even see the irony in it. And if you're into conspiracy theories, then there's nothing that comes close to a Trump rally.
What's on your back?

Speaker 5 Uh, Q flag.

Speaker 2 Q and I. One of those crazy people.

Speaker 2 Joseph Biden and Kamila are not legitimate. Wasn't Q's whole thing that Trump would be reinstated as president? Never looked.

Speaker 5 If you go online, there's a whole list of pedophile symbols.

Speaker 2 Really? Yes. It's like Woodstock, except everyone there thinks Jimi Hendrix is a hologram.

Speaker 2 Normally, when one of these conspiracy theories comes up, I have to respond, then move past it, because we're shooting a piece for TV and we have to stay somewhat focused.

Speaker 2 But this is a podcast, and we don't have to stay focused at all.

Speaker 2 So, I'm finally diving into some of the most incredible conspiracy theories that have been pitched to me at Trump rallies by America's most imaginative minds.

Speaker 2 This is Jordan Clapper Fingers The Conspiracy, an all-new, limited-series podcast from The Daily Show. So, folks, come on down from your grassy knolls and let's dig dig in.
Let's talk about John F.

Speaker 2 Kennedy Jr. But to help me do that, I want to bring in our first guest, Will Summer.
Will's a politics reporter for the Daily Beast.

Speaker 2 He's got a book coming out in February called Trust the Plan, The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy that Unhinged America. Will, welcome to Jordan Clepper Fingers the Conspiracy.

Speaker 2 I'm excited to have you on. You are here to help me walk through and understand what is going on in this world of John F.
Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 2 And I will say this: I go out on the road and I start hearing people talking about JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 And initially, I'm thinking, oh, they're talking about JFK. There's a long history of conspiracies with JFK.
And then I'm putting together that it's JFK Jr. And then I start to see signs up.

Speaker 2 I start to see bumper stickers that have him as vice presidential candidate to Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And then a month or so back, I go to a rally in the Midwest and I'm hearing sweet old grandmothers talk about John F. Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 2 and I can't make heads or tails of it.

Speaker 2 Can you set out a little bit of where this began? What do we need to know? Sure. So, I mean, this is really bizarre,

Speaker 2 as you noted. I mean, the origins of this are within QAnon.

Speaker 2 Of course, there was this figure, Q, who was giving these anonymous clues. And then at one point in 2018, Q sort of vanished for a month on the forums where the clues came out.

Speaker 2 And then someone named R shows up and starts saying, you know, all of this is really about JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 And so that's kind of where it begins. And eventually Q comes back and kind of says, like, this JFK Jr.
stuff is garbage. You know, what have you, you've been tricking all my people.
But the JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 stuff really starts there with this idea that JFK Jr. faked his death to take on the deep state and help Donald Trump sort of bring about this sort of QAnon utopia.

Speaker 2 There's a conspiracy inside the conspiracy.

Speaker 2 It's a conspiracy turducken right now.

Speaker 2 Exactly. It's sort of a splinter faction.
And you get this situation where like the kind of the mainline QAnon people will often be like, oh my God, like, you know, I believe all this Pizzagate stuff.

Speaker 2 I believe this about Hillary Clinton. But these JFK Jr.
people are embarrassing us. They just believe totally stupid stuff.

Speaker 2 That's the dynamic you want there. We're like, oh my God, can we just go back to serious things like talking about how the Democrats drink baby's blood and all this JFK Jr.
stuff?

Speaker 2 We're losing credibility, people. We're losing credibility.
Put your tinfoil hats back on and let's march. Yeah, I mean, basically, they're saying, you know, these JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 people are almost like a government op meant to embarrass QAnon. But really, this belief has in JFK Jr.
has persisted ever since.

Speaker 2 So, but what was ours intention in this situation? Like, initially, that JFK Jr., one, is alive. So, perhaps he faked his death.
And two, he's aligning himself with Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 It feels like there's four steps there that I'm having a hard time connecting. Why JFK Jr.?

Speaker 2 And let's start with why he's alive and why that should matter. Sure.

Speaker 2 So the arc that is presented by R, and I want to point out here that R is the letter after Q, and so that's sort of the explanation for that. Is it or is it, Will?

Speaker 2 Your mainstream elitist alphabet says it's the letter after Q, but I am

Speaker 2 only if you're moving forward through time, but that's a whole nother podcast. Exactly.
So

Speaker 2 the story that's laid out is that John F. Kennedy, the father, is killed by the deep state, you know, in 1963.
JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 sees this and says, oh man, the deep state might come for me, and I want to get revenge on them for murdering my father.

Speaker 2 And so, for years, he builds up this relationship with Donald Trump, you know, because they were both sort of these New York socialite figures. There are pictures of them together.

Speaker 2 And so, this is used to suggest that they were like best buddies. Then, in this storyline, JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 fakes his death in this plane crash to sort of go undercover and sort of lay the groundwork for the QAnon journey and eventually emerge.

Speaker 2 For a while, they thought he was going to replace Mike Pence in 2020 on the ticket and that he would sort of kind of help Trump and sort of get this final revenge on the deep state.

Speaker 2 So, in this world, they see JFK Jr. as faking his own death to exist undercover and wait for the right time, still maintaining a relationship with Donald Trump throughout all of this?

Speaker 2 Or did Donald Trump just come about and become sort of an avatar for JFK Jr.'s ascension? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, a lot of it is a little contradictory and not super thought out.

Speaker 2 You know, that might surprise you.

Speaker 2 I don't, but basically, the idea is that, you know, back in the 90s or the 80s, they kind of cut this deal and they said, Donald Trump said, man, this stuff is really messed up, you know?

Speaker 2 And then, and JFK Jr. said, tell me about it.
You know, they shot my dad. And so then they sort of teamed up and JFK Jr.
went into hiding.

Speaker 2 Tell me about it. They shot my dad.
Oh, wow. Yeah, you're right.
This is messed up.

Speaker 2 Let me run for president a few decades from now and make this thing happen. You're helping me connect that circle, if it's a circle.
What I'm confused about, I go out there, JFK,

Speaker 2 famously, not a Republican.

Speaker 2 John F. Kennedy Jr., at least from my perspective, New York elite, not political, but somebody who is a magazine magnate and Seinfeld character.

Speaker 2 Doesn't exactly match up as the type of person that this often far-right group would align themselves with.

Speaker 2 Why do they see this potential in somebody who's so outside of the norm? You know, I think that's a great question. What is the emotional resonance of JFK Jr.?

Speaker 2 Why is it JFK Jr. they fixate on rather than another celebrity who died in the 90s?

Speaker 2 So I think the answer to it is that when we think about the QAnon believer, and I think in particular the people who go for the JFK Jr. stuff, they're usually baby boomers.

Speaker 2 And I think the JFK assassination had a huge sort of emotional impact on them. And I think also JFK Jr.
was sort of seen as this very like prominent baby boomer, sort of an avatar of his generation.

Speaker 2 And so in that way, I think there is this kind of this very emotional connection to him in a way that there wouldn't be with another celebrity.

Speaker 2 I think also the idea of JFK as like the last good Democrat is something that has persisted among Republicans even before QAnon. This idea of kind of this popular martyred president.

Speaker 2 And oh, isn't it terrible that, you know, LBJ in the in the 60s took being a Democrat into such an awful direction.

Speaker 2 So I think JFK himself still has a lot of resonance with Republicans and QAnon believers. So I think there's a lot of kind of like emotions tied up in all that.

Speaker 2 When you look back on JFK conspiracies, does it seem quaint? Does it seem sort of like the initial modern conspiracy theory that Americans have sort of built a mythos around?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think obviously we've had conspiracy theories throughout American history, but the Kennedy assassination is such a sort of an epical one that I think gets a lot of people into conspiracy theories and is certainly, I think, the biggest and the richest one to dive into in modern history.

Speaker 2 It also sort of brings everything full circle, incorporating Kennedy.

Speaker 2 QAnon is this, it's sort of a super conspiracy theory or a mega conspiracy theory that where you can sort of get whatever you want out of it.

Speaker 2 And so we see a lot of Kennedy conspiracy theorists drawn into it. I talked to a guy who was a really big QAnon leader, and he had for decades been just like a JFK crank.

Speaker 2 I mean, he was going to all these conventions, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And then QAnon arrives and he says, oh, you know, I can sort of incorporate my Kennedy beliefs into QAnon and sort of broaden my worldview and see more of the world explained to me in that way.

Speaker 2 So I do think that's an aspect of it as well.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. I think what a lot of people miss is just how fun conspiracies are.

Speaker 2 They are engaging, especially if you're on a computer, one of the most fun things you can do is go down that rabbit hole and also come away with something that empowers you because you feel like you know something somebody else doesn't.

Speaker 2 I did a job down in Dallas a decade ago and I was walking through the grassy knoll multiple times right there in Dealey Plaza and people would approach you and they would tell you things that you should know and shouldn't know.

Speaker 2 And so there was it was like a cottage industry for conspiracy theorists to give small little tours, take you to places that they tell you what happened and what they're not telling you.

Speaker 2 And it's easy to get wrapped up in that. And you see the people starting to develop,

Speaker 2 you know, not only mindsets out of it, but it gives them importance. It gives them, in some cases, a job, but it makes them important in that little place.

Speaker 2 And I start to see that pop up at some of these Trump rallies that I go to, seeing people who now own part of these little conspiracies, and they become many celebrities at these rallies that we see.

Speaker 2 And looking at this JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 coming back as part of,

Speaker 2 there's been discussions of his reappearance, and there's been groups, one group called Negative 48, who has staged events waiting for his return. Can you tell us a a little bit about negative 48?

Speaker 2 Sure, yeah. So negative 48 is a group that is very convinced that JFK, not only JFK Jr., but Kennedy, JFK himself, and all sorts of sort of a bevy of other beloved deceased celebrities are...

Speaker 2 It's not that they're going to come back to life, but they've sort of been in occlusion. They've been in hiding and that they're going to come back and sort of usher in this QAnon world.

Speaker 2 The reason they're called negative 48 is because they...

Speaker 2 This is kind of hard to explain to someone who's not really deep in it but essentially they believe in this thing called gematria where they assign numerical values to letters and then they derive meaning from that a equals one b equals two and so on but essentially they would say like uh jordan klepper 20 trust the plan 20 uh make america great again 25 and they they just sort of speak in this language that doesn't really make sense to anyone outside of it uh but they They see importance in these numbers and in these coincidences.

Speaker 2 And so from there, they essentially kind of whipped themselves up into believing these things like JFK Jr. is coming back.

Speaker 2 I found out what Jumatria was real quick. One of the rallies I went to when a woman kind of walked me through this.

Speaker 2 She brought out a Jumatria calculator and started typing in my name, typing in Trump's name, and connecting all sorts of numbers. It was

Speaker 2 wild. It was real fun.
You can kind of make anything make sense there.

Speaker 5 Type it in the calculator, you get these numbers. And so Michael Jackson's last concert was, This is it.
It comes to 113.

Speaker 2 You know what that means?

Speaker 2 Do you? I don't know what that means.

Speaker 5 So 113 means not true.

Speaker 2 So Michael Jackson, that wasn't his last concert. And he's alive.
It's not necessarily a conspiratorial thing, although it's used in that sense. It's correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 2 It's essentially a mathematical way of turning letters into numbers. And religions have been using this for centuries, just to

Speaker 2 try to derive meaning, trying to look deeper into biblical texts and what have you.

Speaker 2 And I thought that was a key component when I talked to this woman because the way she talked about Jumatrium was beyond this is a conspiracy, it's fun, I have power because I have knowledge.

Speaker 2 It was also, I'm serving a biblical character, there's religion attached to this. And I think that's where the real danger comes here: where you have people who are

Speaker 2 serving religion and serving God through this fun, little weird game that they play. And then deciding that Aaliyah is going to appear alongside Michael Jackson and perhaps

Speaker 2 JFK Jr. all at once.
Like bin Laden with Obama. Clarify who's still alive.
Bin Laden. JFK Jr.

Speaker 5 is JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 still alive. JFK Jr.
is still alive. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think JFK Jr.

Speaker 6 is going to try and expose Globalists because they killed his father.

Speaker 2 We're talking about Tupac's coming back. Robin Williams is coming back.
Aaliyah, as you mentioned, sort of pick your favorite dead celebrity.

Speaker 2 And so what happened was these folks descended on Dallas where they thought there was going to be sort of the dead celebrities parade and they're milling around and they're seeing like a homeless guy and they're like, I think that's Robin Williams.

Speaker 2 And then everyone's going, yeah, that's Robin Williams and so on. And a lot of these guys, I mean, look.
I'm not sure these guys are super up on like Tupac, for example.

Speaker 2 And they're, they're saying, I think that's Tupac, you know, all these guys. I think that's Biggie.

Speaker 2 And it's sort of this, you can see they're sort of going into this world where like nothing bad ever happens. No, no one ever dies of a drug overdose or a suicide.

Speaker 2 The other thing I would add is that they think a lot of dead celebrities were murdered or went into hiding, like JFK Jr., faked their deaths because they were going to blow the lid off the cabal.

Speaker 2 So like the late DJ Avici, you know, he faked his death. All these kind of people, just, you know, Whitney Houston, oh, but they're all coming back at this big moment.

Speaker 2 And you can see these people who have...

Speaker 2 Just particularly in this when they were kind of milling around Dallas for months, just the amount of their own lives and their own like hearts that they've invested into it.

Speaker 2 You know, they're just, you know, headed for a brick wall when eventually they realize none of it's happening.

Speaker 2 It's just predominantly white people who live in a bubble walking around Dallas thinking they see Tupac everywhere. It does.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's really like Tupac. Do you really know who Tupac is? And you think that guy's Tupac and Biggie? They are.

Speaker 2 These are diametrically opposed on many levels, but I bet you're seeing it as the same person who's going into a subway.

Speaker 2 Well, they would do these live streams where they would say, like, didn't y'all see that dead rapper?

Speaker 2 Like, they wouldn't know any names, you know, and they'd kind of have this game and telephone figure it out.

Speaker 7 i'm not gonna be a conspiracist or anything like that but i just watched a movie last week with robin williams in it it was called man of the year man of the year and guess what they had elective fraud back then the machines they were switching to doing it electronically and they were counting wrong is this a documentary no it's just a movie are there any lessons we can take from mork and mindy

Speaker 8 no

Speaker 2 it should be pointed out they've they pointed to people specifically jfk jr as there's been a man who's gone to multiple rallies stands behind Donald Trump, and that's JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 I went to CPAC and I saw him there as well, and he's taken selfies because he's also JFK Jr. So some people aren't just abstract apparitions.

Speaker 2 They are actually humans that they point to and say, no, this is who you are. Yeah, I've actually, I was just texting with him.
So his name is Vincent Fusca, and he is this like Trump super fan.

Speaker 2 In the lead up to in the 2016 election, he had this van kind of festooned with Trump paraphernalia.

Speaker 2 And so he kind of ends up becoming, because he's a big Trump fan, he's behind him at a lot of rallies. When the JFK Jr.
stuff starts happening, and this guy, I should say, looks nothing like JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 He dresses, he wears like a big fedora. He's a very scruffy guy.
He wears like a big suit coat. And so now...
To be clear, JFK Jr. was a stylish man.

Speaker 2 And it can only be assumed that that style mixed with privilege and wealth would have led him into the modern era not choosing to wear a fedora. Yes, yes, thank you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe in the the 90s, you know, but but now, no, I don't think so. And so, oh, yeah, early, yeah, early swing day, big, big bad voodoo daddy, he would have had a fedora.

Speaker 2 There would have been a lot of college kids who wanted to look like JFK Jr. who could pull off a fedora.
But modern JFK Jr., no, no freaking way. No way.

Speaker 2 And so so he's standing behind Trump and when the JFK Jr. stuff starts happening people go oh my gosh I I think that's JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 behind Trump and then there was like a blonde woman nearby and they said I think that's JFK Jr.'s wife and so they I mean they kind of get going but the the wild thing to me me about it is this guy doesn't come out and say, hey, guys, I'm not JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 Leave me alone. He goes, oh,

Speaker 2 who's to say? And so I've seen this guy maybe seven or eight times and he'll be at a rally or something. And people go, oh, it's JFK Jr.
You know, we want pictures.

Speaker 2 And then I say to him, hey, you want to tell me about how everyone thinks you're JFK Jr. You're obviously not.
And he goes, oh, I'd love to talk to you later. How about in an hour? Let me catch up.

Speaker 2 I'm just so busy today, but I'm in town. You know, you have my number.
Let's talk later. Obviously never gets back to me.

Speaker 2 I talked to this one woman who was like, oh, posing for all these selfies with him. And I said, you know, that's not JFK Jr., right? And she's like, haven't you ever heard of Hollywood?

Speaker 2 Haven't you heard of Visual Effects? Haven't you ever heard of Medea? You know,

Speaker 2 they're really deep in. Tyler Perry as evidence.
It's a smart move. And I give Vincent props.
I tell you, if somebody stops me on the street and says, Joel McHale, I love you in community.

Speaker 2 I don't correct him. Nope, that's let them think that.
Let them live their own reality. As Americans, we have every right to live our own reality.

Speaker 2 I think it's in the Constitution somewhere, somewhere deep.

Speaker 2 Now, there's a dark side to some of this, because

Speaker 2 I will say when I talked to the woman who was into Gematrium, and she was a part of this negative 48 group, they show up in Dallas, they wait in Dallas for JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 to arrive, and then they stay there for months and months on end. And there's stories of families who are losing loved ones to this conspiracy mindset, and people are sending money to these,

Speaker 2 the leader, protzman i believe um like what are some of the dark sides of believing in these weird fantasies yeah i mean so you know q and i i've talked to so many people who have lost family and friends to q and when you talk about something as extreme as negative 48 is sort of that faction i mean you're talking about people who have essentially given up their lives at this point i mean it's like they've joined kind of like a traveling commune or something i mean you know they're staying in this hotel room for months at a time which is not cheap they're kind of pooling all their funds at one point you know there were a bunch of like little toddlers little kids involved which you know it's not great for them to be roaming around looking for Tupac or whatever.

Speaker 2 Um, and I, you know, I talked to one guy who, whose wife had, he thought he had a, you know, a totally fine, normal marriage.

Speaker 2 And then she just says, oh, yeah, I'm going to go to this Trump rally. Well, as it turned out, she was going to join negative 48 and then just vanishes.

Speaker 2 And, you know, he's seeing her in these videos and stuff. And he's like, what is happening to my family? There's no evidence she's ever coming back.
You know, all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 I mean, it is really, really grim stuff.

Speaker 2 This is that poor guy.

Speaker 2 You just, you see him at home, He's like, my wife, she left me. Brati K Jr.

Speaker 2 I get it. What a successful man.
And he's been through a lot. You know, he's died.
He's come back.

Speaker 2 He's living as this man, Vincent. He's trying to pull off fedoras in modern times.
It's difficult. Well, he's certainly, yeah, it's a bold decision.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm glad he's found love, but she's left me alone. We're going to pause it right there.
We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back to Jordan Clapper Fingers the Conspiracy. I want to bring in Professor Joe Yuzinski, political scientist and conspiracy theory expert at the University of Miami, who followed the JFK Jr.

Speaker 2 gathering in Dallas.

Speaker 4 Joe, welcome. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 So, Joe, we got Will Summer here. We've been going down this JFK Jr.
wormhole, rabbit hole, whatever hole you want to

Speaker 2 call it. We're in it.

Speaker 2 You've looked at what's happening and what continues to happen in Dallas. From your perspective, what's going on down there?

Speaker 4 So you have people that probably have a bunch of psychological issues. Maybe they're prone to delusions.
They're prone to believing things in spite of evidence.

Speaker 4 And that's what got them to this point. And this is fanciful.
It's fun for them. They're probably enjoying it.
But it doesn't shock me to hear.

Speaker 4 the things that Will is talking about. I mean, there are families, and I get emails from these families once in a while.

Speaker 4 You know, the son disappeared or, you know, one family member, you know, got into a conspiracy theory. Now they can't even talk to the person.

Speaker 4 And there isn't much I can say to these families other than I'm not that kind of doctor. I mean, there's nothing I can do

Speaker 4 for this sort of stuff. And I sympathize and empathize with them, but

Speaker 4 there isn't much you can do.

Speaker 2 What makes people predisposed to believe conspiracy theories in the first place?

Speaker 2 Why do they go and seek them out?

Speaker 4 Well, the answer is going to be a little bit unsatisfying, but this is where we are, and that is that some people more than others have a worldview in which, you know, they go over to the window when they wake up in the morning, they look out and they see stuff, and they say, well, that must be caused by a conspiracy, you know, being driven by people who I already don't like.

Speaker 4 And the question becomes, well, where does that come from? And the answer is we don't know yet. We just know that it exists.
And we know that.

Speaker 4 Some people are just really prone to it. So it's not the beliefs themselves.
It's not the ideas. It's that it's people that have a very thick set of lenses.

Speaker 4 So when they come into contact with these ideas, it's just easy for them to say, yeah, that must be true.

Speaker 2 You know, America, it's not a new thing to believe in conspiracy theories. It's not a new thing to have perhaps a warped sense of reality.
We are the country that gave you the Salem witch trials.

Speaker 2 We're always looking for weird ways in which to perceive what's happening around us.

Speaker 2 How serious is the situation we're living in now?

Speaker 2 Is this an aberration?

Speaker 2 Is this something that social media has, one, created, or two, is just reflecting what's already been happening out there and we're blowing it into,

Speaker 2 or

Speaker 2 it's overblown our perspective on it? Yeah, you know, I mean, look, as you said, I mean, conspiracy theories have been with us throughout American history.

Speaker 2 Going back to the witch trials, I mean, there's really rich history of it, sort of each kind of big pivot moment in the United States of a conspiracy theory is really abounding.

Speaker 2 At the same time, I think what's unique about the moment we're in is number one, social media, as you mentioned, which I think helps people with this kind of conspiratorial mindset connect with one another.

Speaker 2 The way I think of it is if you think of like the Kennedy assassination, in order to find like-minded people, you would have to maybe print a zine, send letters, go to a convention, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And then everyone on your block would be saying, like, you're a nut or whatever.

Speaker 2 Whereas now these people can just go online and find like-minded people, reinforce their beliefs, and find new recruits really, really easily.

Speaker 2 The other thing I would say is we've i at least i think in modern history we haven't seen this kind of conspiratorial thinking embraced by so many politicians to the point where we have members of congress who believe in q anon and have supported it recently donald trump is posting really explicit pro-QAnon videos so in that way I think it really helps mainstream these conspiracy theories in a way that we haven't had before

Speaker 2 I love thinking that In the old days, you at least had to learn how to produce a zine.

Speaker 2 Like there's something to the stereotype of like, well, you had to cut out letters and you actually actually had to build a board and connect it with strings here and there.

Speaker 2 And it's like, no, literally, there's a certain buy-in that buys you. Now you can do this all online.
You don't even have to go to Hobby Lobby to buy the shit. You can do it on the internet.

Speaker 2 The buy-in is so low.

Speaker 2 Joe, I wonder, where do you see the threat level of something like this?

Speaker 4 It's with politicians. So to me, I don't think people have changed all that much over time.
If anything, we're believing conspiracy theories as much as we did 10, 20, 30 years ago.

Speaker 4 What's different now is

Speaker 4 not just Trump, but particularly Trump and other people who want to do what Trump has done.

Speaker 4 So when you have people who can act on conspiracy theories with a monopoly of authoritative force, when you have people who already have large audiences because they're politicians transmitting these things,

Speaker 4 that's going to reach a lot of people and it's going to influence a lot of people. Like any of us could go on to social media and spurt out whatever stupid conspiracy theory we want.

Speaker 4 It doesn't mean anyone's going to pay attention, right? It doesn't mean anyone's going to care or even look at it. But if Trump does it, that's a very different ballgame, right?

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 when you have people who have political power engaging in this, that's incredibly dangerous. And if you look back through history, the times where we have,

Speaker 4 you know, the worst episodes of conspiracy theorizing,

Speaker 4 it's usually because of politicians getting involved and acting on it in some way.

Speaker 2 Is it possible to put these ideas back in a box? Can you roll this back?

Speaker 2 I recently was out talking to people about the election and election deniers.

Speaker 2 And so much is based on this idea of as soon as you have doubt and you see it through a lens of doubt and mistrust everywhere, it almost doesn't matter what's going to happen in the next election.

Speaker 2 You're going to see it. It's going to be there.
Are we already hardwired these brains to see and distrust so many things that there will not be a turning back?

Speaker 2 That even though somebody like Donald Trump might wield so much power and be able to direct it in certain ways, that we've sort of already infected a generation with this mindset.

Speaker 4 Well, there's already people who think that no matter what, right? After any election, there's about

Speaker 4 20 to 30% of the country who think it was rigged.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 4 Because they lost, right? So it's as in politics as in sports. Who complains after the football game? No, it's the losing team, right? So that's sort of normal after every election.

Speaker 4 What's abnormal right now is that you have the losing candidate saying it was rigged, I was cheated, and going on and on and on about it, and pulling in the whole of the conservative media and lots of allies in Congress.

Speaker 4 So now you have sort of a full court press of people saying, it's rigged, it's rigged, it's rigged.

Speaker 4 So that's why you have between 60 and 80 percent of Republicans saying 2020 was rigged against them rather than the normal 30, 40, 50 percent that might have otherwise said it was rigged just for the fact that they lost.

Speaker 2 How close are we to having 60 or 80 percent of the GOP believe JFK Jr. is coming back?

Speaker 2 Is that weeks or months away?

Speaker 4 I think that would be a tougher one to pull off. I mean, Trump has a lot of influence, so if he got behind a conspiracy theory repeatedly for a long period of time, he could make people buy in.

Speaker 4 And if if it's something like election fraud, he can pull that off because those ideas are always around. But sometimes you'll come out with conspiracy theories that just don't influence anyone.

Speaker 4 I mean, I'm not aware of a lot of Ted Cruz's dad kill JFK truthers out there, even though he pushed that, you know, six or seven years ago. I mean, it just didn't take off.

Speaker 4 But I think if you go after ideas that people are sort of already inclined towards, I mean, he can do a lot of damage that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, I think we are all inclined to the idea of wanting Aaliyah to be back in our lives again.
We want another classic album. We want that redemption.
I think that's on the cusp.

Speaker 2 If he even nudges us in that direction, I think we all buy tickets immediately to the next concert, whether or not she appears or not.

Speaker 4 I mean, we think that QAnon stuff is wacky and crazy, and where do people come up with these ideas? But I mean, we lived through the 80s. I mean, there was massive satanic panics during that time.

Speaker 4 Satan was everywhere. And even Oliver Stone's JFK movie, which was

Speaker 4 a popular movie, was about the pedophile deep state going after the president of the United States. I mean, Joe Pesci played the defrock pedophile priest.

Speaker 4 So even the basic idea behind QAnon is not new. I mean, all of this stuff is recycled and rehashed.

Speaker 4 And it's largely the same people believing the same stuff, sort of a choose your own adventure Mad Lib book that they're just replaying over and over again.

Speaker 2 I think QAnon has a political valence to it as well.

Speaker 2 You look at the pictures from January 6th, all the people who were there who were convinced that this was going to be kind of this big, like kind of fascist moment where the dreams were going to come true.

Speaker 2 And certainly, I mean, I think it's unique in that it has achieved such mainstream prevalence within the Republican Party. I mean, we're talking about election denial, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 In many ways, I think QAnon is kind of an easy thing to talk about because you can kind of get a handle on it. It's people holding cues and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 But a lot of these ideas that are core to QAnon have become, are kind of swirling around the GOP and have become much more successful without the cue label attached.

Speaker 2 So we think about, for example, this idea that, you know, talking about gay people existing in a school is part of a pedophile groomer plot.

Speaker 2 And so we can see these things really being weaponized into policy in a, you know, I think a really ominous way.

Speaker 2 I want to talk about how this is covered.

Speaker 2 You know, obviously there are elements of conspiracy theories that belong in the news, that become news.

Speaker 2 What do you think the

Speaker 2 role should be for journalists in coming to some of these fringe beliefs? Is it giving too much air

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 follow some of these JFK Jr. ideas and put them up on a pedestal so people can see those ideas and have that air out?

Speaker 2 Or what you're talking about right now, because this is affecting our culture, do they need to be more vigilant and bring this to the forefront so we can engage with them, we can knock them down, or at least be aware that they're out there?

Speaker 2 Sure. I mean, I think it's a complicated one.

Speaker 2 For me, you know you certainly don't want to just go find a couple of nuts online and say like oh yeah these guys are so crazy for me it's when it starts crossing over into the real world i mean we've had q anon believers murdering people we had a q anon guy murder his wife uh in 2018 a q anon guy shut down a bridge near the hoover dam he had a bunch of guns that was at the point where i was like this is not just an online thing anymore this is something where i have to trust my readers enough both as an audience and as you know citizens that they deserve to know what's going on in the world and you know i do think that idea of amplification is a relevant relevant one.

Speaker 2 But at the point where you have Donald Trump saying, like, check out this Q stuff, you know, I think the cow is out of the barn.

Speaker 2 And I would add in the case of JFK Jr., I mean, one of these, maybe he's kind of the evil JFK Jr. impersonator.

Speaker 2 There's another guy who's put together a coalition that is going, that has people running to control elections in Battleground States, who's a JFK Jr. impersonator.
They're the Republican nominee.

Speaker 2 So really, I mean, this is stuff that is going to have really, I think, really concrete impact on our lives, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 That was one of the details when I talked to the Jamatria woman, you know, what the talk of the rally at that point was not that this was just a person who believed this wild thing, but it was a person who was in Dallas, who had a strong following on places like Telegram.

Speaker 2 And the talk was that they had a relationship with the Trump campaign, that a lot of these people from negative 48 were also setting up chairs.

Speaker 2 And in

Speaker 2 the fact that they would show up and try to help the campaign get set up at the rallies, they would get certain VIP passes.

Speaker 2 And this is not just a fringe thing that exists outside some of the campaigns. In some ways, they're also working and coordinating within them.
It's becoming folded into it.

Speaker 2 There is sort of this tension with the Trump campaign where they seem to see these people as what they are, which is huge Trump super fans.

Speaker 2 And Trump is kind of constantly signaling to the QAnon believers, but at the same time, they don't want the average person to see a bunch of Q stuff at the rallies.

Speaker 2 So we see the negative 48 people doing the QAnon symbols and stuff at the rallies, and they're being told, you know, don't do that, what have you. But there's kind of this pull, this back and forth.

Speaker 2 And Trump doesn't understand it. It's so complicated.

Speaker 2 It's so above him.

Speaker 2 There was some onion headline that I think nailed it that was essentially Trump half-assing his support of QAnon.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, I guess the Democrats eat babies or whatever the hell it is you guys think. Like, you could feel him like,

Speaker 2 if this makes you like me more, sure, but I can't even begin to wrap my head around what you guys think is going on.

Speaker 2 Joe, I'm wondering what you think

Speaker 2 the proper response from the media would be in covering these types of stories?

Speaker 4 That's a really tough question. I mean, I'll tell you, when I started studying the topic about 15 years ago, there was barely any coverage of conspiracy theories in the mainstream news.

Speaker 4 So I started a Google alert back then. So every night I would get all the articles that had the term conspiracy theory in it.

Speaker 4 And back then I was getting four or five articles a day and none on the weekends. And at the end of 2015, that had jumped to 100 a day, every day.

Speaker 4 And just

Speaker 4 this is anecdotal but just for myself i think i took close to 300 interviews in 2020 alone so almost every journalist was calling me when they were writing about it and they were all writing it about it quite a bit and then i think what happened shortly after 2016 is that a lot of major news outlets started getting their own misinformation conspiracy theory social media news desks so they now have dedicated reporters just just covering this topic so it's going to continue to get a lot of attention I don't know, you know, what

Speaker 4 the effect of the coverage is. I mean, I think that some things went wrong in 2020.

Speaker 4 I think there were a lot of journalists that had sort of a panic over conspiracy theories and misinformation, and the headlines sort of got into their own echo chamber.

Speaker 2 It was like, Q is taking over the world, and it's the biggest thing ever.

Speaker 4 And, you know, as I was polling on it, I was like, I'm just not getting these massive numbers.

Speaker 4 It's there, it exists, and they have a presence online but i think will was one of the few people who was in journalism who was saying you know maybe it's not as big as some of the fantastic headlines are saying it is so i i think in some ways you know some of the the uh sensationalistic reporting got ahead of itself we'll be right back

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Speaker 2 Will, give us a little perspective here, not only on the QAnon movement as to where it is now, but even looking at something like this JFK Jr. theory, the negative 48 group.

Speaker 2 you know, how big is it actually and how much of an effect does it have on the conversation? Yeah, sure. So I've actually got

Speaker 2 some polls right in front of me for just this moment.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, okay, so now these polls are a little out of date. And Joe does some great polling on this, and I think he has newer numbers.

Speaker 2 So, but the difficulty of nailing down QAnon belief is there's a couple things.

Speaker 2 Number one, a lot of times people are going to say they may believe some of the tenets of it, but they're not like on the forum saying, you know, where we go when we go go all, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 At the same time, we have to realize that at the end of 2020, Q basically told the fans the brand had become too damaged and to stop saying QQQ and just to sort of use the talking points.

Speaker 2 And so there is going to be an amount, I think, of people who are kind of downplaying it. There's a March 2021 poll of 5,000 people that found that 15% of them believe

Speaker 2 Satan-worshiping pedophiles run a global child sex operation.

Speaker 2 We got 2,000 people in January 2021 that found 15% believe that Trump was at war with these Hollywood pedophiles. And now, when you start asking about QAnon, the numbers get a little lower.

Speaker 2 You're talking to like 3% to 7%,

Speaker 2 but still, we're talking about millions of people. That's more popular than some religions in the United States.
So, you know,

Speaker 2 don't shit on the Quakers. Why do you got to shit on the Quakers? I know what you're getting at there.
I can read between the lines. They're a good, peaceful group of people.

Speaker 2 Stop shitting on the Quakers. Don't come on my podcast and make all this anti-Quaker attacks.

Speaker 2 I know they had a hard time getting people into the, whatever they call it, community room, but they're working hard on this, okay? Exactly, right? Continue, believe the Quakers out of your mouth.

Speaker 2 Just getting wrecked by QAnon here. Yeah, they're getting blown out.

Speaker 2 So, so yeah, we start talking about that. At the same time, I mean, the JFK Jr.
people are kind of a fraction of that. And then we get down to the negative 48 group, which is smaller than that.

Speaker 2 So I would say negative 48, I think, has tens of thousands of Telegram subscribers. I think when we think about hardcore fans, we're probably talking a couple thousand.

Speaker 2 It's actually interesting to see, Joe, where do you see they're the hardcore fans, the people who show up at the events, who are posting most of that information.

Speaker 2 But there's that secondary element, too, of when it just becomes a brand. I go to some of these events and I see people wearing Q paraphernalia.
Q's back!

Speaker 2 And there's Q shit everywhere. Yes, the online conspiracy following a mysterious character known as Q was more popular than ever.
Is that a Q? Yeah. Are you a Q supporter? Certainly.

Speaker 2 Some people I talk to, they're wearing that just because they understand that it's a, it's trolling behavior, that it's a brand that they can put on their body. It's going to piss off the media.

Speaker 2 It's going to get attention from the people they want to get attention with.

Speaker 2 And they may not even know the tenets of what Q is, but they do know that it's something that they support in theory because in their mind, the support is just trolling. Is that dangerous?

Speaker 2 Is that sort of a...

Speaker 2 Is it the evolution of a conspiracy theory that when it just becomes Pepsi, that

Speaker 2 we're in for a world of hurt? Where do you see, Joe?

Speaker 4 Well, we're sort of calling everything QAnon now, right? And if you go back to the idea that QAnon adopted a lot of ideas that pre-existed QAnon, then it's not quite as disturbing.

Speaker 4 So between 2019 and more recently,

Speaker 4 depending on how you ask the question, if you're just doing direct questions, are you a believer in QAnon?

Speaker 4 Do you follow QAnon? We're getting between 5 and 12%,

Speaker 4 which makes it one of the least believed and followed things that I pull on. I mean, to put that in perspective, if we just say, do you think there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy in 1963?

Speaker 4 We're getting between 50 and 60 percent. So, QAnon isn't all that huge.

Speaker 4 But when Will's exactly right, when we ask on these more general ideas, like are teachers grooming kids to become trans? Are there satanic cults doing massive satanic rituals across the country?

Speaker 4 Are elites running sex trafficking rings?

Speaker 4 we're getting between 20 and 35%.

Speaker 4 Now, I wouldn't call those ideas Q ideas. I mean, QAnon adopts them, but they could have existed decades ago.
And some of those ideas sort of have their origin thousands of years ago.

Speaker 2 So they've been around.

Speaker 4 And I just don't want to attribute them to Q because then it says like, oh, this guy was able to convince 30% of the country that elites are running sex trafficking rings when, in fact, those ideas, you know, might have been around well before that it's just we weren't paying attention you know even back during the satanic panic of the 80s there were very few polls taken of how many people were buying in to this idea of satanic cults running around and i've only found one poll and and it was of Texas.

Speaker 4 So you have to you have to keep that in mind, but it was 80% of people at the end of the 80s thought that, you know, one of the major problems in the country was satanic cults going around abusing people.

Speaker 4 So So I don't know how well that might have been believed in, you know, some other state at the time, but right now we're trying to pull on all these things, and it's just we don't have good comparisons to the past.

Speaker 2 You know, one thing I would note there is that there's something unique about QAnon in comparison to some of these other conspiracy theories. If you're talking about

Speaker 2 like the thingy, the Kennedy assassination

Speaker 2 was a conspiracy theory or

Speaker 2 the moon landing was fake. Well, there's kind of not a lot you can personally do about about it.
In the case of QAnon, there's kind of this, there's sort of a fascist utopia at the core of it.

Speaker 2 And that there are places that we are going to go terrorize these satanic pedopiles.

Speaker 2 So there is kind of like a way that people can participate in it that I think it makes it more dangerous than, you know, believing that, again, the moon landing was fake or something like that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, it's a game. There's a group identity, right? So a lot of people believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, but they're not friends.

Speaker 4 They don't consider themselves to be part of a group or a movement, right but q anon a lot of those people do like they are doing something together they're following along they're solving the clues they're expecting an outcome in a shared way and that's something that most conspiracy theories don't really have and that's why q anon has always been very hard to define right because it's sort of cultish, but not really a cult.

Speaker 4 It's a group, but sort of decentralized.

Speaker 4 It's got a lot of conspiracy theories in it.

Speaker 4 So it's not just a conspiracy theory, and it's got sort of activities that people can do to sort of be a part of it and play along that other conspiracy theories just don't have.

Speaker 2 I do love thinking of it like activities. It's like we get to get together, we get to solve why Tom Hanks is drinking baby blood.

Speaker 2 It's like just a bunch of little encyclopedia browns running around America. It's funny you say that.
I mean, they had a rally in D.C.

Speaker 2 and they said, you know, we're going to kind of go on this excursion if you're interested to go protest at Comet Ping Pong. So they have the whole itineraries.

Speaker 2 Well, before I let you go, part of the reason of this podcast is, one, for me to wrap my head around some of the stuff that I'm seeing out there on the road. But two, help me.

Speaker 2 What am I going to see out there on the road a couple months from now? One, in regards to the JFK Jr. conspiracy.
How does that morph?

Speaker 2 And two, am I going to get a new Robin Williams movie out of all this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, I think the JFK Jr. stuff is going to continue.

Speaker 2 I mean, I saw, and in particular, I think if Trump keeps engaging more with QAnon, I think we're going to see more people getting into QAnon and kind of see some fresh energy behind that.

Speaker 2 I once went to the kind of the Trumpian July 4th event, and all these women at the Trump Hotel were wearing like JFK Jr. shirts, and this lady had a JFK Jr.
mask on her face, and I said to her,

Speaker 2 you know, what's that about? And she goes, he's alive. And she kind of flitters away.
So, I mean, I don't think that energy is going anywhere.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I think we get new conspiracy theories all the time. And so I think, you know, you got the big one,

Speaker 2 I'm seeing a lot of movement on this idea that the elites want to make us all eat bugs, Jordan. So like you might want to be on the lookout for that.

Speaker 2 I think there's going to be a lot of like, what they say is, I will not eat the bugs. And so I think you might get someone, you know, accosting you about that.
So don't, don't make them do it.

Speaker 2 I hate this. I hate this job so much.
Dear Lord. Dear Lord, Jordan, you might want to be on the lookout.
I guess there's this thing about elites trying to make you eat bugs. Bungazi.

Speaker 2 Is that what it is? It's

Speaker 2 Joe, what do I have to look out for?

Speaker 4 So, worse than that, I think the same reporter who was writing about the bug eating was also writing about forced anal swabbing.

Speaker 4 It's not just about testing for COVID, it's about humiliating you in public.

Speaker 4 So, if you walk down the street and they have like a government tent set up where they're sticking people with Q-tips up the ass, that's going to be

Speaker 4 something come true, somebody's dark dream, apparently.

Speaker 2 So, this is how I'm writing it down right now. I need to be aware of Bugghazzi and Bumghazzi.

Speaker 2 They're on the horizon.

Speaker 2 Thank you, gentlemen. Well, Will, Joe, thanks for coming on the podcast.
I'm going to go down to a Trump rally in a few dude. You guys want to come along?

Speaker 2 Might be a little intense for me. Fair enough.
Fair enough. Well, thank you guys for joining me and helping me finger this conspiracy.
Thanks, Rally. Thank you.

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