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It really can’t be underscored how repellent and dangerous Trump’s playing footise with Qanon like this is. It’s not just harmless dingbattery. It is wrecking families and inspiring kidnappings. It is very likely to yield further violence. He could put an end to it overnight. https://twitter.com/jgeltzer/status/1296232173222211584
Maybe not completely—some believers are incorrigible—but the one thing that might actually snap most of them out of it is Trump getting up to say “Q is a fraud, there is no pedophile cabal, you’re all being taken advantage of.”
We’re used to Trump being indifferent to the suffering of Americans who don’t vote for him. But these are his most ardent supporters, and he’s totally indifferent to the fact that many are wrecking their entire lives over this nonsense.
Even if only 10% would come to their senses, that’s thousands of his most fervent fans he’s allowing to ruin their relationships and waste their lives—chasing a lie HE knows more surely than anyone is a lie—rather than take 5 minutes away from watching TV to make a statement.
It’s not even like it’d be much of a political sacrifice. These people are still gonna vote for him. But be likes the adulation, likes being the hero of a fantasy narrative. So instead he winks & lets them pay the harsh costs of their fantasy.
This is a tiny sample of the harm the Qanon cult is doing to families. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwnjx4/people-tell-us-how-qanon-destroyed-their-relationships
Here are some of the ways it inspires serious crimes, harming and endangering both its adherents and innocents around them. https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-incited-her-to-kidnap-her-son-and-then-hid-her-from-the-law
The FBI assess Qanon as a burgeoning domestic terror threat likely to inspire “both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” as indeed it and related delusions already have. https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-warns-against-qanon-pizzagate-in-report-highlighting-dangers-of-fringe-conspiracy-theories
Obviously some people are going to believe no matter what, or find another conspiracy cult to join if this one fades. But Trump could almost certainly save hundreds or thousands of his fans from it, at literally no cost to himself, with a two minute statement.
He does not care enough—about the harm it does to rational political discourse, his party, his base, their families, the country at large—to make *the tiniest imaginable effort* to pop this insane balloon.
