Trish Zornio has out an op-ed on conspiracy mongering in Colorado; she focuses on Lauren Boebert and Randy Corporon.
The AP has a story about Boebert (a Colorado congressional candidate). Here’s the key troublesome remark, which she made in a live interview: “Everything that I’ve heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values.”
Arguably Boebert also “gave a wink and a nod” to a QAnon conspiracy theory about Tom Hanks, says Kyle Clark of 9News. Boebert Tweeted, “Joe Biden is doing a fundraiser with newly minted Greek Citizen Tom Hanks tomorrow. I just. . . no comment.” According to Clark, “Some QAnon followers believe that Hanks’s duel citizenship in Greece is an attempt to escape child-abuses charges, pedophilia charges.” He continues, “Tom Hanks actually received his honorary Greek citizenship for his humanitarian work on behalf of Greek wildfire victims in 2018.” USA Today has more background about this.
The FBI very reasonably counts QAnon as a terror threat.
9News reported August 14, “A Douglas County judge has ruled there’s enough evidence to proceed with the case against a woman accused of plotting a “raid” to kidnap her son from foster care with aid from members of the far-right conspiracy group QAnon.”
CNN’s article about Colorado attorney and political activist Randy Corporon is titled, “Top Colorado RNC official spread conspiracy theories and made Islamophobic and sexist comments.” The Colorado Times Recorder published Corporon’s reply, but his remarks were not very substantive.
Civiqs ran a poll, “”Do you believe that the QAnon theory about a conspiracy among deep state elites is true?” The results: “Fully 33% of Republicans say it is mostly true. 23% think some parts are true. Only 13% say it’s not true at all. In contrast, 72% of Democrats say the QAnon theory isn’t true. Only 14% of Americans have never heard of QAnon.” However, the wording is not very specific. Lots of people who don’t follow QAnon are worried about a “deep state.” “The federal government employs nearly 9.1 million workers”—that seems pretty “deep” to me (whether it’s a problem is another matter). I’m pretty sure that if the pollsters had used Kyle Clark’s more-specific language—”this is the conspiracy theory that President Trump is about to round up and execute his opponents for pedophilia and drinking baby blood”—the results would have been rather different. Still, the results are alarming.