Democrats score biggest election overperformance yet

26:35No, I wouldn't say that there is a lot of like self-awareness about that. I mean, is there's there's because they they spin these wild stories on the idea that, for example, Trump was somehow like undercover working with Epstein to take him down. They credit Trump with the fact that Epstein was arrested under his last administration, even though he was not watched carefully enough that allowed him to die in his prison cell. And they also credit him with the fact that these files are being released now. So, yeah, no, there's not a lot of acknowledging. Even though Trump was a close associate of Epstein, and so was, as we've discovered in these emails, so was Howard Lutnick, the current Secretary of Commerce, and Steve Bannon was also extremely close with Epstein.

27:31They exchanged hundreds of messages according to this new tranche of documents. Well, it seems like there's just this really blatant cognitive dissonance then, because, you know, I guess the question is, is this more about exposing this cabal of pedophiles, or is it about protecting Trump? because anybody who was acting in good faith, who's legitimately interested in taking down or exposing the people involved in this pedophile ring could easily see, OK, Trump is involved. Lutnick is involved. You know, he named Alex Acosta, who obviously gave Epstein his sweetheart deal in his first term. He was involved.

28:05Trump's new Fed chair pick was implicated in the Epstein files. And so you have all these people. Anybody acting in good faith would just be able to say like, OK, these people are clearly not on the level. They are the very people that we're seeking to expose. And so is QAnon more about exposing pedophiles, this cabal of pedophiles, or is it about just protecting Trump? You know, I think you can see two sort of differing systems of belief here. And it tends to be between the QAnon influencers and your sort of standard on-the-ground believers. I mean, if you go to the most popular sort of QAnon, pro-QAnon accounts on X, they also are combing through the Epstein files and finding things that label people that, you know, kind of match their general area of target.

28:59So they, too, are combing through, you know, and ignoring everything else. And I mean, Travis pointed out to me, we had an episode come out about seven years ago that was called Epstein, the real Pizzagate. This has always been the hardest part of my job is on some level understanding that QAnon directionally is kind of right given everything that we know about Epstein. And I think you have a lot of influencers, at least that I've seen, who are going to do whatever they can to keep reframing the information as it comes out to align with their pro-QAnon beliefs. Now, I do think there is an opportunity for your run-of-the-mill believer to see this.

29:49And if they are – here's the question. Are they more passionate about anti-pedophilia than they are pro-Trump? And I do think that the answer for some is yes. I think this could be a potential exit ramp in the same way that when Trump called Epstein a hoax, you know, think about that now, given everything that's come out. But when he called it a hoax, there were a lot of people who said, wait a minute, absolutely not. You know, and they began to kind of fall away. Well, what are you guys seeing in in online forums and stuff? I mean, you know, you you have to part of your job is that you have to subject yourself to an even an even darker part of the Internet that then even I have to deal with on a daily basis.

30:34And so but, you know, that's your losses are gain. And so what are you seeing, you know, on these online forums from folks? I mean, there's lots of claims of vindication, if you can believe it, from these people. Just because the general narrative about elite corruption and child abuse and cover-ups and elite impunity was generally correct. But like we mentioned, on our podcast, we've been talking about that for like seven plus years. I mean, the fact that that there's, you know, elite abuse and impunity and people who sometimes abuse children and cover up for those who do. That part is has been has been, you know, well, no, we've got a lot more details about what this network looks like.

31:24Thanks to the thanks to these documents. But like, yeah, they do this thing where they sort of like they sort of like retreat into these abstractions where like they feel like, well, they were like generally right. So their wildest nonsense about like, you know, pizza code words are also right, which is just not the case. But they feel vindicated at the fact that they ushered in a Trump administration who are themselves the ones who are implicated in all of this. And so where does the vindication come from? Like, OK, yes, that there there is a cabal of people, but the people who they empowered to expose all of this stuff are the ones who did it.

32:00And so does that part ever register? Well, I mean kind of baked into the theory. There are so many little rules kind of baked into QAnon that allow you to kind of opt out when you run up against a piece of real information that makes the entire – Yeah, yeah. That makes the entire mind pyramid collapse otherwise. And one thing that has been consistent is that Trump is – I remember – what's really interesting about the Epstein stuff is that QAnon and people and conspiracy theorists, they would always use Epstein as like a stepping stone to then launch into another unproven conspiracy to say that that's real.

32:44They never talk about the facts of Epstein itself, but they would always use Epstein to say, well, because Epstein exists, then all of these other conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and all this stuff are real. And they've consistently believed that Trump has infiltrated this circle. All of the stuff about Trump, you know, being a Democrat in a former life, being friends with the Clintons, attending Chelsea's wedding, you know, all of his interactions with Epstein that we've seen up until this point. He was just a double agent this entire time for the last 50 years. Exactly. Now, my brother sent me a video this morning of him audibly shitting his pants during a meeting and ending the meeting.

33:25So the idea of him being like Liam Neeson from Taken and infiltrating the biggest child trafficking ring and he is the sort of hero at the center is becoming less and less plausible. But it was unplausible in 2017 when the first Q drops started happening. So the idea, you know, if they believed it, then it's, you know, they're going to believe it now. Right. Is there, I mean, why do you need, why do you need like Epstein to be a stepping stone into some bigger conspiracy when Epstein's situation in and of itself is already gigantic? I mean, you have you have world leaders, you have princes, you have I'm sure like you have all of these people.

34:13I mean, Elon was planning Elon Musk, who was planning visits to Epstein's islands that we that we found out. Half the half the Trump administration is named in these files. Why do you need this to be just like some little stepping stone to a more vast conspiracy theory when this is pretty damn vast unto itself? Yeah, I share your frustration with the way they interpret things because I always feel like, isn't this enough? What we know, isn't this relevant enough? Isn't this outrageous enough without having to add on all of these extra sort of like wilder theories that have no evidentiary basis at all?

34:57And I think the problem with a lot of conspiracists is that they're really attracted to this idea of secret, esoteric information. And if it's being reported everywhere, if it's provable in documents to the point that just normal, casual news consumers know about it, it's no longer secret and esoteric. Right. It's kind of like embracing conspiracy theory because they want to be in that world of conspiracy theory. Yeah. And they want to feel like they have sort of like they possess a higher level of knowledge of how the world works than everyone else. I feel like this feeling of like specialness, I think, is really more important to them than sort of like adhering to what's known and what's well in evidence.

35:41Do you think that it was a mistake for the Trump orbit? And I don't necessarily say Trump himself, because I don't think he was ever that involved in like the QAnon stuff. But there were plenty of people in Trump's orbit who were. Do you think it was a mistake for them to embrace this, given the fact that, you know, we're now in a situation where all of these people themselves are, you know, either implicated or are part of an administration that's implicated in this? And so it's only reflecting poorly off of them. Like there's no world in which in which the last few releases of the Epstein files do anything but reflect poorly on Trump and Bannon and Lutnik and Warsh and, you know, any Elon Musk, whoever it may be.

36:22So do you think that embracing this whole world from the outset, given what given where we are now was a mistake? Well, I mean, I think I think like politically, maybe their their idea was like, well, they're going to sort of like sort of like encourage this sort of like this very passionate to sort of like but minority base of people who believe that, you know, Trump in a circle can do no wrong. And and anyone who opposes him are are pure evil. Right. And then all of a sudden you don't have to worry about, you know, things like, you know, like like proving your proving your case. I mean, I feel like this was sort of their way of trying to solidify their base and keep them in a bubble and keeping them from ever questioning why, why, why, you know, for example, Epstein called like Trump like is his best friend in a recording in these sorts of things.

37:15I mean, I think it's like it's kind of like a desperate strategy, but I think that was probably what they were trying to do. Yeah, my general opinion is that they they kind of had no choice to a certain degree. I see this happen with Trump just since 2016 as he's constantly kind of left with the bottom of the barrel as he sort of peels away anybody still reasonable that's sort of in his orbit. And like Travis said, I think there must have been some kind of internal data that QAnon was enough of a contingency and enough of a voter block that they eventually had no choice. And who knows? I mean, in the early days, I remember, you know, they were trying to distance themselves from QAnon as much as possible.

38:02And it was Trump who was going, well, I don't know. I think they like me quite a bit. You know, he was the one who who kind of he couldn't stop talking about him because they were you know, they loved him the most. Right. I mean, the crazy thing, like even even with the shooting of Renee Good, who is like the perfect foil for Trump, the fact that her parents were apparently Trump supporters like that gets to him there. It doesn't matter ideology or beliefs or philosophy. He just likes that you like him. That's it. I mean, yeah, I think, I think, yeah, I think he's very strategic in terms of like coalition building where he's like, it's like, it's like, even if he doesn't necessarily agree with people, it's like, so he's like, he said that like one of the, when there, there's only two times he was really asked about QAnon during his first administration.

38:51And one of the times he asked what he knew about it, he said, like, I know they like me very much. And that's really all that's important to him. It's like he knew that these were people who are passionate about them, who support them, and he was not interested in alienating them as a consequence of that. What is the state of the QAnon movement right now? I presume that it probably peaked sometime around, you know, 2016, 2017, 2018, maybe around the time that Marjorie Taylor Greene was getting into Congress. But but I'm just curious whether whether you think that it's that it's hit its peak or whether we're still seeing this movement grow as more people come online, more people get sucked into rabbit holes and conspiracy theories.

39:31And, you know, we have obviously less digital literacy with the with the introduction of more AI and on and on. I feel like just people's general sense of what's real and what's not is kind of getting worse, not better. Well, I mean, I think it kind of just sort of got absorbed into the wider kind of like right wing media sphere. I mean, we saw recently, like with just a few weeks ago, that the that the Department of Labor Twitter account was tweeting out QAnon related slogans. And so, you know, it's like it's like it's like either someone at the Department of Labor social media team is very pilled or they understand that this is still a base that's worth signaling to.

40:14Or they know how much it upsets liberals or even your never-Trump Republicans who hate QAnon more than anything because it – to them, it made the whole conservative movement look like complete idiots, completely disconnected from reality. So that's like the third option is they know that – they know that people know where it's coming from. They know that some journalist is going to go, why is the Department of Labor doing where we go one week? You know, they know it's going to cause a reaction. And that is, unfortunately, a part of politics now is the is this like sort of like antagonistic nature that I that I really think, you know, began, you know, in 2016 with with Donald Trump.

41:04I mean, look, it's rage bait and it's the currency of the Internet. I think that if they have the opportunity to get a bunch of libs mad so they can so they can, you know, own the libs online, then like that's a perfectly acceptable thing for them to do as far as they're concerned. How many people do you think we're talking about here? Because you're talking about this contingent. And I think for for normies like myself, like I cannot grasp a world where there are more than like a handful of them in some, you know, MySpace group or some Facebook group circa like 2013. but roughly what are we talking about here in terms of raw numbers?

41:41It's pretty bad. Travis, the last numbers were really bad. I'll confess. I haven't checked on the polling. People haven't done polling on QAnon belief in a couple of years. But last they checked, it was in the neighborhood of sometimes like 4 or 5%, which is millions and millions of Americans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's that's like that's like 15 or 15 to 17 million people. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. And I mean, people are built. It also happens to be roughly the same level of polling for belief in that that there's a cabal of lizard people who rule the world.

42:22There's lots of people who believe silly things. We're getting close to like the number of people who think that Tylenol is safe. You know, like we're going to have more people who believe in QAnon than believe that like you can take Tylenol and be OK. But like look how powerful QAnon is to a certain degree. I mean if you watch that original Marjorie Taylor Greene Facebook post video where she's going over all the Q stuff, she's not looking great. But her steadfast belief in QAnon propelled her to some of the highest levels of power one can achieve in America only now to have her kind of back away from it.

43:00Now, she's an interesting example of somebody whose true beliefs might put them at odds with the president. Now, I don't want to give Marjorie Taylor Greene that kind of credit. I think it's probably more likely that she kind of just senses where the wind is going and is an opportunist and doesn't actually believe in anything and will go wherever she feels is most advantageous for her. But, you know, there is an example of a very public person who has, you know, gone against Donald Trump in the wake of how he's handled the Epstein files. I'm curious what the reaction has been to her because she was I mean, she was even more bought in.

43:39I mean, she was a better representative, a clear representative of the whole QAnon movement than Trump ever was. and and but but there is a lot of it a lot of kind of allegiance to Donald Trump within the whole QAnon movement too and so now that those two hate each other are in conflict with each other where does the movement more closely align with like is it is it Trump even though he was never really like a QAnon you know true believer like Marjorie Taylor Greene was I mean yeah I mean And Green is interesting because, yeah, she was someone who very sincerely believed a lot of she was on the QAnon bandwagon just a couple months after the first Q drops.

44:21And then and then she somehow got got into Congress. But it was it. But the problem was that she was a true believer. According to reporting, one of the things that caused the rift is that she pushed for release of the Epstein files, which which which Trump was a lot more uncomfortable with. And it was really interesting. If you watch her video in which she announced her resignation, which was it was November of last year. She said that there is no plan to save the world and no 4D chess being played. This seems to be a direct reference to QAnon. The plan to save the world is a very successful, very popular QAnon video.

45:01So she seems to be saying what got her to stop believing some of the wilder claims of QAnon was working with Trump directly. Yeah. But I mean, there's irony in that, in that the whole basis of this thing is that Trump is going to be the salvation, right? Yeah, that's the big fantasy. But like I said, it was like it's like we have the the only example of a QAnon true believer who got the Congress, was able to work with Trump himself, wound up wound up coming to realize that that's not true. He's not he's not the savior. I'd be curious to know how many people lost faith in Trump because you have this one true believer.

45:39You have Margie Taylor Greene, who is now at odds with Trump over this very issue is because he's the one suppressing these files and clearly implicated in these files. if that's not enough for a bunch of these people to say, look, if Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's like the only one in Washington, D.C., who's actually like, you know, on our level, if even she is going to break with Trump because of his involvement in all of this stuff that we claim to condemn, then like, how is that not good enough for these people who've put their faith in Trump? That's a good question. I mean, I'm coming here with logic too.

46:12I mean, a lot of this is you kind of have to suspend that. Yeah, I mean, we are increasingly barreling towards a world where it's of no use to look at time poorly spent and reflect, if that makes any sense. You know, why why go? Because now at this point, if you're still on the QAnon bandwagon, you've now waited through four years of Trump, four years of Biden and a year into this new administration for Hillary Clinton to be perp walked. And it's it's just the opposite. It seems like Hillary Clinton is doing far, far better than than Trump is. so at this point you would have to say you know what wow these last like 10 years almost that I've spent are like wasted that's really hard for people to do you can do it I just right before we jumped on I checked one of the very popular like pro QAnon accounts on X or Twitter whatever and And the post today was taking a break, going to go spend some time with my family.

47:27You know, it's bad when even like the terminally online people are like, hey, I'm going to go touch grass outside right now. And that's the that is, I think, in my opinion, probably the best thing that could come from this for people who are still wrapped up in conspiracy theories, QAnon, all that stuff is if if it makes them upset enough to want to take a break. One thing that we've seen over time is that the less time you spend on the internet and the more time you spend with loved ones, family, something that's grounded in reality, these conspiracies can become – you can become less passionate about them as other things sort of like take their place.

48:08But that's – for a lot of people, it's fun. You know, I was on, you know, I was on Blue Sky and Threads looking at all of the posts about Epstein and all of this stuff. And look, people are baking. It's fun to go online and try to figure out a narrative that makes sense, no matter what, you know, what political aisle you sort of reside on. And, you know, it's tough. As long as the Internet's there, there's going to be people that are going to have a narrative for you that aligns with something that you like. And it's increasingly useless to try to go, well, this is just from this one source. Or who is this from?

48:51Like, let me go. Let me go check. I'm going to see what this other outlet is publishing to get the real ideas. It's way easier to just find something that you go. Yeah, that sounds right to me. And that's reality. You guys said something interesting in our last conversation that stuck with me. And that is that there's always something. There's always going to be a new. You can like if you're in the world of conspiracy theory, there's always going to be another conspiracy theory to explain away conspiracy theories that aren't neatly resolved or that don't make sense. And so I say that as the backdrop for this question.

49:22Will there come a point where Trump will have been in office four years during his first term, four years during his second term? and even now with full control of government, full control of the Department of Justice, he's got as compliant an attorney general as you could possibly ask for. We're still not going to see, you know, Hillary Clinton perp walked because of some, you know, pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza place. It's just not going to happen. And so will there ever be a point where those folks who believed in all of this stuff will say, even under the best conditions possible, all of our people in charge, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, all those people were not getting what we want.

50:03Maybe it was always bullshit. Yeah, I mean, the research really shows that like the like conspiracism is really is a mindset. And that that that does something for people. It aids sort of like, you know, sort of like sometimes like even like social bonds. I mean, like being a conspiracist gives you instant access to a passionate community who are kind of like interested in the same things as you. You know, it's it's a sort of like sometimes it's more of a way to like, you know, ward off uncertainty and fear and anxiety and loneliness more than is an earnest attempt to find the truth. So, yeah, for that reason, of course, there's always going to be people who like who concoct these these elaborate theories, not because they laugh, because they're really interested in uncovering corruption, because it's just it makes them makes them feel connected, makes them feel special in a way that nothing else does.

50:57it's more like this is it's a journey not the destination type deal yeah yeah Jake what do you think when um you know one reason that I started the QAA pod um was because I myself uh a default kind of to conspiratorial thinking um you know I was working in the entertainment industry and um you know I always wanted to be a screenwriter and so I followed conspiracy theories casually because I loved the story. I was always looking for a really interesting story. And I can tell you that when I was at my most vulnerable and susceptible to believing conspiracy theories and even being pulled further right wing, I credit finding more lefty political podcasts like Chapo Trap House and just other people in like the lefty space that were critical of government but not going to such a conspiratorial means, I think in a lot of ways that saved me from going further right.

51:59And I can tell you that at that time in my life, I was struggling financially. I was lonely. A lot of my friends were partnered up and were kind of feeling like they had moved on with their adult lives. I was angry. I was bitter at people who were having more success than I was, and that is when I was the most susceptible. So I think a lot of it has to do with where people are in their lives, which can change. There are times when you can be really susceptible to these kind of things, and there are times when life is so good outside of the internet that these theories hold a lot less weight. So unfortunately, the answer is as long As long as there is this community there to accept people who are lost, who are looking for an answer, who are looking for somebody to blame, there's always going to be these communities online, especially there to to welcome them with open arms.

52:56But that's not to say that there aren't points of exit. And my hope is that, you know, I don't know. You know, part of me is like I hope Trump makes it the four years because if he dies in office, there's going to be a new slew of conspiracy theories about who poisoned him or whatnot. But my hope is that in the decades to come, that maybe we can sort of pull back. I don't know. I mean, the people who have the power to do so, which is the people who run these big social media companies, it doesn't seem – it seems like they're not on our side. So especially given some of the revelations from the Epstein emails.

53:48So I don't know. It's kind of a bad answer. I sort of think people are just going to continue to get more pilled and more segregated unless we can find like some kind of like political figure who can make everybody feel loved and listened to. I don't know. It's a bad answer. Yeah, no, no. I mean, that does make sense. Well, I am curious because you mentioned like moving forward, you know, in time here. Is there something on the horizon that somebody like me, like again, in kind of the more normie space of the Internet doesn't know is coming, but is coming like in very much the same way that I learned about QAnon last?

54:27Like I'm not I'm not in those corners of the Internet. But I'm curious, like what's what's coming down the pike that we should know about? liberal QAnon. Well, I mean, I mean, I think, I mean, people are already kind of like aware of this, but like, I think, I think partly in consequence to the fact that that Trump was reelected a lot of, a lot of social media networks like, like, like Facebook sort of like just took off the guardrails. You know, there was like there, they, before they had some sort of like sort of moderation and fact-checking efforts before but boy those those are all but gone now um that's like that's sort of like that's better for you know that's better for their bottom line because they they have to invest in less moderation and like it is good because they they they you know the clicks from uh the clicks from conspiracists are just as good as the clicks from everyone else and uh so there's lots more uh nonsense just uh that that's going to so you You just have to be more guarded.

55:33You have to be a cautious person. I mean, we saw this with the recent release of the new Epstein documents. There were some fake ones floating around. Like with Elon Musk, it is true that there are a few emails that show him actively trying to get invited to the island. But there's one in particular that says something like, oh, can I go, oh, girls for the win? I think it was said. Yeah. That one is totally fake. And but a lot of people thought it was real. But like it's like it's like one of those things. It's very convincing. I mean, that's that's all. It's like it's like as bad as sort of like misinformation was before the fact the fact that now there's essentially no regulatory pressure on these social media companies now means that, you know, you have to be a conscious consumer of social media in the moving forward.

56:24Yeah, my I was actually just talking to my buddy Dave from college yesterday and he he actually put it really succinctly. And he said that I asked him if something was real or not, because he had sent me one of the files, actually one of the one of the documents from the Epstein files. And I asked, is this real? And he said, I just assume that everything is real and also that everything is AI. And like you just like the line between what's real and what's not is just obliterated these days where we are we are immersed in so much lunacy that if you told me any of this stuff was real, I believe you because look, look at what's happening.

56:56Look at the world we're living in. But at the same time, if you told me it was all fake, I'd believe you if you said that, too. Yeah, I'm at the point where I'm getting videos coming across my feed. And it's like, can you tell the difference between the AI and the real one? And I can't anymore. You know, I think past 40 years old, you lose that ability to detect AI. Maybe it's just me. But I think that's where we're going. That's what to look out for. And the sad truth is that it's already here. I mean, we used to never talk about AI on the podcast. Now I feel like every other episode we have to debunk like some kind of AI image or video or something.

57:38There were so many that came out revolving around the two ICE murders. I mean, the two most recent ICE murders, I should say. It's just, yeah, it's exhausting. And all I can say to folks listening is just to try to have a little bit of patience. There's such a rush for information to come out. And there's this whole ecosystem of influencers and independent journalists who really want to be first on the scene with some kind of narrative. And it's really easy to just kind of take that as fact. But as I've seen, if you wait long enough, usually enough information comes out that you can kind of have some picture of the truth.

58:29And that's okay. Yeah, that is good advice. And that's okay. Maybe a picture is all work we're able to get, but it's better than nothing. Totally. Hey, Jake and Travis, where can folks who are watching right now or listening right now see and hear more from you? Yeah, you can check us out on. Yeah, it was like any any podcasting app. Go to QAA and you can find our free feed if you like what we do. We also have a Patreon, which we offer. We offer premium episodes. We also have a podcast network where we do really fun miniseries about topics like online tradwives. It's called Curse Media. You can find that at CurseMedia.net.

59:11Awesome. I'm going to put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. Jake and Travis, thank you guys for the time. Thanks for navigating the corners of the internet that save us from having to navigate those corners. I appreciate it. Always a pleasure, Brian. Always a pleasure, man. Good to talk to you. Thanks to Tommy, Travis, and Jake. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Wednesday.

59:55Thank you.