Episode 125: Coup Anon feat Elle Reeve & Eleanor Janega
A mob overtook the capitol with MAGA flags and QAnon gear. Five people died. We break down the events of Wednesday January 6th and the fallout in the days following. Correspondent for CNN Elle Reeve speaks to us about her experiences on the ground in Washington DC. Medieval historian Eleanor Janega helps us break down all the tattoos worn by the now-infamous "Q Shaman" (aka Jake Angeli aka Jacob Anthony Chansley).
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Welcome, listener, to Chapter 125 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Coup Shaman episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
My fellow Americans, the storming of the Capitol is upon us.
As you're probably aware, a group of Trump supporters breached our most holy and beautiful Congress on Wednesday, January 6th.
The resulting clashes with police led to multiple deaths, including that of a QAnon-supporting woman who had traveled to Washington D.C.
from Travis' neck of the woods, San Diego.
As a final death blow to our DMs, the Arizona man we covered in multiple Premium Rally episodes, the Q Shaman, aka Jake Angeli, acted as a rallying mascot, going so far as to soil the seat of our beloved Khaleesi Pelosi with his animal pelts and myriad tattoos.
To get to the bottom of this, Travis did what was honorable.
Stayed up all night on Trucker Reds from the 70s to write a segment about the developing situation.
We also have multiple guests this week to help us out.
Elle Reeve is a correspondent for CNN who was on the ground that day, and will also be chatting with Dr. Eleonora Yenega, a medieval historian who will decrypt the Q Shaman's tattoos now that his body is subject to the national, and even international, gaze.
The MAGA Insurrection.
On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the United States Senate, led by Vice President Mike Pence, assembled to count the electoral votes and confirm that Joe Biden would be the next president.
While this procedure has included contentious rhetoric from legislators in the past, it's mostly a formality.
The results were preordained months prior by the votes of citizens and the chosen electors from each state and D.C.
Vice President Pence looked forward to fulfilling his duties as President of the Senate with as little notice and fanfare as possible so he could zip away for a vacation, according to a Washington Post report published two weeks prior on Christmas Eve.
Pence is hoping for a low-key January 6th and is not planning any unnecessary drama, aides said, intending to stick to his perfunctory role.
He is eyeing a trip overseas soon after.
Just incredible.
He's like, uh, I'm retiring.
He's like, all I wanted to do was shock gay people into making them straight.
Like, this is, this is far, this has gone too far.
Yeah, that shaman, that looks like a religion I can't get behind.
Outside of the Capitol building, a sea of Trump supporters gathered, freshly furious from listening to a 70-minute talk from President Trump.
In that talk, he continued to make baseless allegations of election fraud that were rejected repeatedly by the courts.
Shortly after 1pm, hundreds of pro-Trump protesters pushed through the barriers set up along the perimeter of the Capitol.
Where they tussled with officers in full riot gear.
The mob called the officers traitors or oath breakers.
Some even taunted the officers with chants of new world order sellout.
The officers found themselves outnumbered, unprepared, and overwhelmed.
Riders climbed up the Capitol steps, scaled walls and scaffolding, and hoisted themselves up on a maintenance platform.
About 90 minutes after the siege began, the mob, decked in red Make America Great Again hats,
carrying Trump 2020 flags, and in a few cases wearing QAnon gear, charged into the building.
During the push inside, one woman was shot by a Capitol Police officer,
and she immediately died from the injury.
Lawmakers and Vice President Pence were evacuated.
In one of the most iconic images of the incident, a shirtless tattooed man wearing a furry horned headdress and American flag face paint strode into the Senate chamber and posed at the rostrum where Pence was presiding just moments earlier.
That man is Jake Angeli, better known as the Q Shaman.
While he was previously only known to people in the QAnon community and fans of this podcast, his picture would soon be seen all over the world, a global icon of America's fraying democracy.
Among those in the Capitol building was the 33-year-old white supremacist Baked Alaska.
Who is perhaps most famous for screaming, I need milk after being pepper sprayed at the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally in 2017.
He and a crowd of boisterous Trump supporters entered a conference room where Baked Alaska live streamed himself pretending to use the phone to call the Senate.
Let's call Trump, yes!
Dude, let's tell Trump what's up.
Trump would be very upset.
He'd be like, no, just say we love him.
We love you, bro.
No, he'll be happy.
What do you mean?
We're fighting for Trump.
Hey, hold up.
I can call the U.S.
Senate, apparently.
Okay.
Hello?
Hello, U.S.
Senate?
Yes, we have a fraudulent election I would like to report.
Yeah, we need to get our boy Donald J. Trump into office.
Yeah, can we do that real quick?
Oh, yeah?
Oh, thank you!
Thank you!
Let's go!
Over the course of the day, D.C.
police arrested 68 people and Capitol Police arrested 14.
The Justice Department said that one of those arrested was in possession of 11 Molotov cocktails.
Like, that is almost two six-packs worth.
I'm curious how he carried them.
Before order was restored, three more rioters died from a heart attack, a stroke, and a crush injury.
A Capitol Police officer who responded to the scene sustained injuries that took his life the following evening, bringing the day's body count to five.
The shocking scene was incited by Trump's persistent refusal to accept the results of the election, and a mob that understood the world through the lens of online conspiracy theories.
QAnon followers always believe that there is going to be some event that suddenly and brutally grants victory and vindication to Trump.
In the absence of reasonable hope, they've been concocting fantasy scenarios which they imagine will give Trump four more years in office, regardless of the actual election results.
They, for example, thought that legal challenges filed by the Trump campaign, Lin Wood, Sidney Palin, other Trump supporters would somehow expose Biden's win as fraudulent.
But those were universally dismissed for lacking standing or being meritless.
Then they placed hope in a supposedly forthcoming report on election security by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, which they also thought would save the day.
That report failed to materialize.
In December, Trump's most powerful allies abandoned him.
Attorney General Bill Barr defied Trump by stating that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Trump's defeat and congratulated President-elect Joe Biden.
All of Trump's Supreme Court justices agreed to not hear a case brought by Texas seeking to overturn the election results.
After people who no longer had any use for Trump stopped indulging his fantasies, he strengthened his reliance on the QAnon community for fresh conspiracy theories and advice.
Including QAnon hero General Michael Flynn.
Even after every state and D.C.
certified their election results, QAnon followers and Trump supporters continue to imagine that there would be some sort of deus ex machina that would whisk Trump to the winner's podium.
Many of these theories centered on Vice President Mike Pence.
QAnon followers became convinced that Pence had the ability to just hand Trump a second term.
This is obviously not true.
And if it was true, it seems like it would be a big flaw in how democracy functioned.
What's interesting is that there was a portion of the QAnon community that hated Pence, thought he was a serial child killer and molester, and that he had been cloned and replaced.
A lot of them hate him.
So it's interesting that suddenly we have to switch him to hero.
I mean, this is very QAnon to be able to just switch your heroes and villains all the time.
Right, because at the end of the day, there's really no belief structure that they adhere to other than the underpinnings of the blood libel and the New World Order shit that has been, you know, sort of propelling conspiracy theories for generations and generations.
So when they get down to the final thing, you know, the final boss, and there's really only one sort of glimmer of hope in the narrative that they're spinning for themselves and telling their friends, of course it would have to, you know, Pence would have to become a good guy all of a sudden, in the same way that When Biden is sworn in as president on January 20th, I do believe that there will be a good portion of the QAnon community that will think that Biden is good and that he is working alongside Trump and that this was all part of the plan.
We saw the theories that he was JFK Jr.
wearing a mask.
So we're on a great path.
Some QAnon followers dubbed this imaginary power that Pence supposedly had the Pence card.
Play the Pence card.
It's playing the Pence card.
Play the Pence card.
Come on.
Hundreds of years of legal scholarship didn't account for the Pence card.
I want to see that Magic the Gathering card, though.
On December 22nd, the hashtag Pence card trended on Twitter.
It was buoyed by this viral tweet from conservative pundit Melissa Tate.
Emergency alert!
Does VP Pence have the courage to save the nation?
He has the power to do it.
The question is, will he?
According to the U.S.
Code, he must reject the electors from the contested states on the third Wednesday in December.
Tomorrow.
VP must do this tomorrow!
12, 23, 20.
Hashtag PenceCard.
As President of the Senate, at-Mike Pence has sole power to tell the states he will not accept their electors because they violated the Constitution.
Yeah.
Messed up that pretty specific word.
Pretty crucial.
You're all constitutionalists.
At this point the legislatures will either have to select new electors or stand down.
This will put Dems on defense from now till January 6th.
Now this tweet unbelievably got over like 10,000 retweets.
There are many reasons why this is dumb horseshit, but perhaps the biggest one is that it states Pence must reject the electors by the third Wednesday in December, which Melissa identifies as December 23rd.
In reality, the third Wednesday in December had already passed, and the 23rd was the fourth Wednesday in December.
So there's not a lot of hope for a novel legal theory that can be debunked by looking at a calendar.
The Pence Card Theory stems from a misreading of a provision of the U.S.
legal code that deals with how the federal government acquires certificates of the vote, which are also called Certificates of Ascertainment.
These are the documents provided by the states that identify the appointed electors and final vote count for each candidate.
Specifically, the Pence Card Theory references Section 12 of Chapter 3 of the U.S.
Code.
You know what?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I have to go through this, but listen... In a better world, the Pence Card is just a card that you can use to take $2,000 out.
This deals with the failure of certificates of electors to reach the President of the Senate.
This provision explains that if a state fails to deliver a certificate of its vote to the Vice President or the U.S.
Archivist, then the Vice President or Archivist shall request the State Secretary of State to send the certificate of votes by the most expeditious method available.
But this provision only provides instructions on acquiring these certificates if states are late in delivering them.
Like, nothing about it gives the Vice President the ability to accept or reject electors, as thousands and thousands of Trump supporters on social media seem to believe.
By the time this theory was trending on Twitter, this provision was irrelevant because the U.S.
Archivist had already received all of the certificates of votes for the 2020 general election from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
If you were so inclined, you could go to archive.gov and see for yourself all 51 certificates for themselves.
Are you trying to lose all of our listeners?
Listen, this is... Oh, go to archive.org.
Do you have any more boring websites, Dad?
I mean, here's the thing.
Like we say with a lot of QAnon theories, the Pence Card Theory wasn't wrong in some really simple and straightforward way.
It wasn't just, the moon is made of green cheese.
No, it's not.
It's actually, unpacking the Pence Card Theory requires some effort to even understand and appreciate its obvious yet multifaceted wrongness.
Believing in the Pence Card Theory requires a person to ignore the basic meaning of English words and law When nothing came of that theory, QAnon followers and a lot of Trump supporters more generally still hoped that Pence would hand Trump the win.
But the date of his dramatic reversal was simply pushed back to January 6th.
Among those who put their hope in it was QAnon blogger NeonRevolt.
Now, we have not talked about Neon in quite a while.
He seems to be doing good.
He's really into cryptocurrency.
He's reviled.
Recently was called out by both In The Matrix and Pragmatic.
Bucket of Crabs, those lot.
Yeah.
On December 28th, NeonRevolt published a post titled, At VP's Rendezvous With Destiny.
For the past four years, President Trump has been the most powerful man on Earth.
For one day, on January 6th, you, Vice President Pence, will be the most powerful man on Earth.
On that day, you and you alone will have the power to set not just America, but all of humanity free.
Or, you will have the power to sentence us all to slavery.
Which side are you on, Mr. Vice President?
The side of truth?
He would be on slavery, for sure.
The side of the people, or the side of lies, and all those from which they emanate?
I do not envy your position, sir.
He thinks this like this like rigid rock like old Christian who I don't believe has read anything except the Bible in years is going to pay attention to his blog.
This is not how I ever wanted this moment in history to ever play out, and I would give just about anything to have it go any other way.
But it seems to me that you have a rendezvous with destiny, Mr. Vice President.
On that fateful day, Mr. Vice President, I expect you to rise to the occasion.
And I suggest you start by throwing out the entire fraudulent tally from the Chi-Com colony of California and their 55 electoral votes.
And then you can work your way down the line, tossing out every other fraudulent state tally until the liars and thieves are all vanquished and wailing and deposed.
And the rightful leader of this nation, who won without fraud or thievery, and who wants the best for her citizens, sits For another four years.
You have a choice, Mr. Vice President.
Either you will rise up with courage and become the hero who saved the Republic, or you will spend the rest of your days reviled in ignominy as your children and your grandchildren and their descendants end up That's little more than chattel on the global plantation.
I don't think I'm exaggerating the stakes.
Go with God, Mr. Vice President.
Fight for the people on that day.
Strike the giants and cut off all their heads.
If you can be entrusted with this immense and constitutional power to safeguard the Republic on that day when our enemies would snatch it away from us, We the people will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we can trust you in 2024 and beyond.
Steal yourself, Mr. Vice President.
Greatness awaits.
I like to sign off, uh, greatness awaits, because that's, uh, most famously the slogan for PlayStation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Surprised me.
I kind of like took me on for more of a PC gamer, I thought.
Yeah.
However, it wasn't just anonymous QAnon followers who got the idea that Pence somehow had the ability to determine election results unilaterally.
This belief was even promoted in a lawsuit filed by US Congressman Louie Gohmert Gohmert and a group of self-appointed Trump electors sued Vice President Pence, claiming that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is unconstitutional because it overrides the vice president's power to just by himself decide which electoral votes to count.
So we're going to have a Boebert and a Gohmert.
Yeah.
Now, an optimistic person might think that no one, let alone a congressman, would be so stupid as to argue that presidents have been elected via an unconstitutional process for the past 130 years.
They're totally right.
But that's exactly what this lawsuit says.
The Electoral Count Act limits or eliminates the VP's exclusive authority and sole discretion
under the 12th Amendment to determine which slates of electors for a state or neither
may be counted.
That's all wrong.
Nothing about the 12th Amendment endows the vice president with the power to decide which electors to count or not count.
I have no idea where the hell he's... All they're doing, they're fantasizing about things and they're projecting them into what they're looking at.
You might reasonably ask, why exactly was Gohmert suing Pence if he wants to grant Pence this extra power?
Attorneys from the Department of Justice representing Pence actually asked the exact same question.
In a 14-page filing, Pence asked a federal judge to throw out the suit because even if it did have merit, which it doesn't, it's suing the wrong person.
But what if when they delivered this to Pence, where they serve him with the documents, they know that they're going to shoot him with crank and then Pence is going to be on one and he's going to do anything.
It doesn't matter.
That brief from Pence says this in its introduction.
These plaintiffs' suit is not a proper vehicle for addressing those issues because plaintiffs have sued the wrong defendant.
The vice president, the only defendant in this case, is ironically the very person whose power they seek to promote.
I will sue you until you are powerful!
Sue you till you're powerful.
Sue you till you're powerful.
Alexander Hamilton.
Gohmert's attempt to grant Pence the power to reject the will of the voters by suing him did not succeed.
The suit was dismissed on New Year's Day by a U.S.
district judge due to lack of standing, and a panel of three judges on the Fifth Circuit of Appeals later agreed with the dismissal.
This legal abomination was finally put out of its misery on January 7th, when the U.S.
Supreme Court rejected the suit.
Now, all of that sounds as crazy as it gets, but let me tell you something no one out-crazies QAnon lawyer Lin Wood.
On New Year's Day, he amplified his rhetoric against Pence and others, writing this in
a tweet.
When arrests for treason begin, put Chief Justice John Roberts, VP Mike Pence, and Mitch
McConnell at the top of the list.
Oh my god, look how excited Julian is.
He's on board.
He's how Lin Wood put it.
I just can't fucking believe how out of control, like, this guy and Powell are.
It's just, like, it's really like watching something you can't control.
No.
This is not even, like, one of the, like, uh, tricky X-Men.
This is one of their pets or something.
It's like, fucking mutant feral animal.
Totally lashing out in all directions.
What is he... I mean, is this just like a slow spiral to the bottom?
Is this CIA?
Like, what the fuck?
Yeah, I really... I really am curious as to what is his emotional motivation behind... Lin Wood, come on the podcast, but only to talk about your childhood.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I feel like he really is kind of like a charismatic Christian.
He has the spirit sort of coursing through him.
He's probably speaking tongues.
Yeah, he just like, he's like, he just says the first thing that comes to his mind and in his mind's eye, he just sees Pence being arrested and shit.
This could be, yeah, this could be, you know, got Jesus visions and stuff.
Beloved in the evangelical circles. Yes. I mean like he's like me job. He should be
Yes, right exactly I mean, I think I think Pence's main job was to shut his
fucking mouth and then shore up the evangelical support always has been
Yeah, Linwood also wrote this in a reply to a tweet if Pence is arrested
Pompeo will save the election Pence will be in jail awaiting trial for treason
He will face execution by a firing squad.
He is a coward and will sing like a bird and confess all.
Like what are you doing?
This is the Vice President.
You say he's going to be executed.
You are working for his fucking ticket mate.
I don't understand what's happening anymore.
Yeah, he's just firing in all directions.
Yeah, these are all Rogue AIs.
Until I meet a Lin Wood, I don't believe a Lin Wood exists.
As January 6th approached, Republican members of Congress were pressured to object to certification of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral college victory.
140 members obliged, but that wasn't enough to make a difference.
Among the most enthusiastic objectors was recently sworn in QAnon-promoting Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene.
When Representative Greene was sworn in on the 3rd, she wore a Trump 1 mask to just show where she stood on the issue.
I'm surprised it didn't have a hole cut out in the middle or something.
When she went to the House chamber, she took it off and refused requests from aides to put it back on.
After she left the chamber, a shouting match reportedly broke out between Republican and Democratic aides.
So the 117th Congress opened with a battle over mask wearing and shouting.
Oh, there's going to be spit fights in Congress.
Yes.
So, just to provide an update on the status of Marjorie Taylor Greene blocking me on Twitter.
I think this is very... I think people want to hear this.
Doesn't feel like a big, pivotal episode that could have done without your narcissism.
No, no, no.
There's other stuff happening, but I need to provide an update on this.
Thank you, thank you.
So, she still has me blocked, even though she is a member of Congress, and I am currently receiving advice regarding my First Amendment rights from an attorney.
We are currently evaluating options short of legal action.
And honestly, I hope it doesn't come to that.
I hope we can resolve this without getting the courts involved.
I would hate that.
I would hate... This is the first I hear of this, so... Yes, it's true.
But yeah, I've been speaking with a Seattle-based attorney.
I'll fill you in later.
Speaking of Twitter, we just had our accounts suspended because of this QAnon cleanse after the Capitol.
I got my account down.
Travis, did yours go down?
I got locked out of my account temporarily.
Both the accounts, my personal and the QAnon account.
Hey boys, hey boys, ask me if mine got suspended.
Yours didn't get suspended.
Because he's a good boy.
He has a dog for his picture.
No, listen to this.
This is something actually that I've been thinking about.
Yours just says I hunt dragons.
You don't even list your podcast.
That's why.
I list our website.
Something I've been thinking about this entire time when I've been listening to the horrors that Travis is telling us.
Q itself Has not posted since December 8th.
That means that all of this shit that is happening now is happening independent of QAnon and the posts.
Of course.
Of course.
I mean, it's a self-sustaining engine now, baby.
Yeah, I think that is really important for people to understand is that the posts are no longer coming in and yet the movement has gotten more violent.
So with that being said... The posts were always just preparing the tauntauns to be ridden.
They were just like a breaking process.
And now the militia men come, they get their assigned QAnon person, and they ride them into battle.
On the day of the joint session of Congress on the 6th, a stage was set up on the ellipse just south of the White House.
There, perhaps for the last time of his presidency, Trump addressed a massive crowd of supporters.
He rambled about his grievances and how he was cheated in front of rapt admirers.
He, for example, expressed anger that states kept counting votes even after he appeared to be in the lead.
That election, our election, was over at 10 o'clock in the evening.
We're leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, by hundreds of thousands of votes.
And then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of bullshit.
And all of a sudden, it started to happen.
Trump explicitly and repeatedly told the crowd to march to the Capitol after his speech was over.
Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy.
And after this, we're going to walk down and I'll be there with you.
We're going to walk down.
We're going to walk down.
Anyone you want.
But I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol.
And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.
And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you'll never take back our country with weakness.
You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
Despite Trump claiming there that he would join the protesters at the Capitol, he did not.
He, of course, did not join the rabble in the actual protests.
There's video of him watching it all on a TV in like a little fucking room and Gloria is playing while the scenes are kind of being shown.
Jesus Christ.
Just incredible with all his stupid son, idiot daughter.
Comrade Dawn also discussed his belief that direct stimulus payments should have totaled $2,000 per person instead of $600.
We want to give them $600.
And they just wouldn't change.
I said, give them $2,000.
We'll pay it back.
We'll pay it back fast.
You already owe $26 trillion.
Give them a couple of bucks.
Let them live.
Give them a couple of bucks.
Trump nerfs feelings of betrayal regarding former Attorney General Bill Barr and his Supreme Court justices.
I like Bill Barr, but he changed because he didn't want to be considered my personal attorney.
And the Supreme Court, they rule against me so much.
You know why?
Because the story is, I haven't spoken to any of them, any of them, since virtually they got in.
But the story is that they're my puppet, right?
That they're puppets.
And now the only way they can get out of that, because they hate that, it's not good on the social circuit, and the only way they get out is to rule against Trump!
So let's rule against Trump.
And they do that, so I want to congratulate them.
Trump also apparently felt betrayed by Oprah Winfrey.
And then I had to beat Stacey Abrams with this guy.
Brian Kemp.
I had to beat Stacey Abrams.
And I had to beat Oprah.
Used to be a friend of mine.
You know, I was on her last show, her last week.
She picked the five outstanding people.
I don't think she thinks that anymore.
Once I ran for president, I didn't notice there were too many calls coming in from Oprah.
Believe it or not, she used to like me, but I was one of the five outstanding people.
Now before I show you this next clip, I want to share some reporting from the New York Times, which helps it make more sense.
So apparently before Trump left to give this speech, he spoke to Pence in the White House.
Pence reportedly told Trump the same thing that he said the day before.
The vice president does not have the constitutional power to overturn the election as Trump wanted.
Trump responded by chastising Pence as soft.
During Trump's speech, he appeared to recount that conversation, mocking Pence by giving him a nerd voice.
He's doing fucking radio plays.
Boys, he's gonna come on the pod, right?
I mean, I... He's gotta come on the pod.
I'd be willing to have him.
Donnie!
Donnie!
Donnie, one time only offer.
Come on the pod.
It's a very special pod.
People are talking about it.
They want to play so straight.
They want to play so serious.
The United States.
The Constitution doesn't allow me to send them back to the States.
Well, I say yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country, and you have to protect our Constitution.
And you can't vote on fraud.
And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it?
When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules.
So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do.
And I hope he doesn't listen to the rhinos and the stupid people that he's listening to.
Wow.
I love that.
Boy, he is breaking down. I mean, you can hear it. He's like, those stupid motherfuckers.
He keeps saying, oh, America. Oh, he keeps saluting. Oh, he keeps saying there's rules.
I know. I can't do that. It's unconstitutional.
He's just a little bitch.
Yeah.
You're soft, Pence.
At one point, Trump sounded close to threatening the vice president.
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution
and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you, I will tell you
right now.
I'm not hearing good stories.
I hear he's being a real pussy.
Trump ended his speech by instructing those gathered to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, and he was played off with the song YMCA by the village people.
As Trump spoke and the Senate convened, Vice President Pence released a two-page statement about his duties for the day.
Much of Pence's statement attempts to placate Trump supporters who felt cheated.
It makes reference to significant allegations of voting irregularities, concerns about the integrity of the election, and reviewing the evidence and resolving disputes through a democratic process.
Pence's statement finally gets to the point in the eighth paragraph, where he explains that there is no Pence card.
As a student of history who loves the Constitution and reveres its framers, I do not believe that the founders of our country intended to invest the vice president with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the joint session of Congress, and no vice president in American history has ever asserted such authority.
Mr. Vice President Pence, sir, welcome to the resistance.
After Pence posted this letter on Twitter, his mentions were flooded with responses from Trump supporters who were all furious that he was declining to exercise a power that he did not have.
History will not be kind to you, the man who briefly held in his hands the power to change the course of socialism, but instead made the cowardly choice.
The Republican Party is through.
You are complicit in voter fraud.
Words I never thought I would utter, but... Fuck you, Mike Pence.
Maybe Lin Wood was right all along.
That's right.
All these tweets, I should mention, all of these tweets have more likes than anything I have ever posted on Twitter.
They're extremely popular.
The writers' reasons for charging the Capitol are probably diverse.
Many just wanted to assert their power over the powerful.
A 40-year-old construction worker who participated in the siege told the New York Times, We wanted to show these politicians that it's us who's in charge, not them.
But some of the writers blame the chaos on Mike Pence for failing to exercise his imaginary power to reverse the election.
Here's an interview at the scene captured by videographer Ford Fisher.
Vice President Pence, my name is Damon Michael Beckley and I do not appreciate one bit the situation you caused here, sir!
All this violence and everything was 100% unnecessary, okay?
Now we've got a girl that's shot.
She's dead, laying on the ground in there.
We're all crying like we can't save her.
And you!
Her blood is on your hands, Mike Pence!
They shot her right through the neck.
I heard that too, but I thought it was a rumor.
Yeah, it was a service weapon.
We're not putting up with this tyrannical rule.
If we're going to come back here and start a revolution and take all of these traitors out, which is what should be done, then we will!
He is correct about what happened to that woman.
She was shot in the neck.
That is true.
I mean, I don't think Mr. Damon Michael Beckley was very wise to state his full name while committing a felony on federal property.
He's not.
He's standing up for the Constitution.
That's what you don't understand.
The basis of reality not shared.
They're heroes.
It doesn't matter what you think or what we put out on this podcast.
I don't know.
It seems like you'd be angrier less if you stopped getting mad at people for not doing things that they can't do.
Yeah, but that depends who you like.
If you like specific people like Trump, you're gonna do whatever you need because this is America.
So you know to just strap whatever you can together and get it fucking working.
That's the spirit of this country.
But yes, Beckley was also correct that a woman was shot in the neck by Capitol Police and died.
The scene was actually quite complex.
There were several people trying to move through a basically like window and door segment that was inside the building.
And one of the windows had been popped out and this woman was one of the first to climb through.
Now, everybody there was not, you know, armed or pointing anything or in a fight.
And then you see an arm coming out from the left of that woman.
And that arm is the arm of the Capitol Police officer who discharges a shot directly into her neck, like almost point-blank.
Totally unnecessary, and the people around her are surprised that anyone got shot because there's no warning.
It's just a very rapid escalation.
I think probably they lost their cool.
That woman was later identified as Ashley Babbitt, a San Diego native and U.S.
Air Force veteran.
Local news station WKRG interviewed a witness to the shooting.
The witness is visibly shaken and has blood speared on his hand.
Yeah, I'm Thomas Barani from New Jersey.
Can you show us your hand?
Yeah.
How did you get that on your hand?
Well, we had stormed into the chambers inside and there was a young lady who rushed through the windows.
A number of police and Secret Service were saying, get back, get down, get out of the way.
She didn't heed the call and as we kind of raced up to grab people and pull them back, they shot her in the neck and she fell back on me and started saying she was fine, it's cool.
And then she started kind of like moving weird and blood was coming out of her mouth and neck and nose and I don't know if she's alive or dead anymore.
And how did you get back out of the building?
Riot police came in and started ushering us out with their sticks.
Where did you enter the building and where did you exit?
Other side with the scaffolding.
We tore through the scaffolding through flashbangs and tear gas and blitzed our way in through all the chambers just trying to get into Congress or whoever we could get into and tell them that we need some kind of investigation into this and what ends up happening is someone might have ended up dead and that's not the kind of government we can have.
Ashley Babbitt joined the Air Force immediately after high school.
She served for 14 years and in two foreign wars.
According to a report from the New York Times, Babbitt struggled with civilian life after she was discharged.
She briefly worked security at a nuclear power plant, then ran a financially troubled pool company.
Babbitt was also a passionate supporter of Donald Trump, and she was a QAnon follower.
She frequently posted the WhereWeGoOneWeGoAll hashtag, and had previously posted a photograph of herself wearing a WeAreQ shirt while attending a Trump boat parade.
She's with a woman who's wearing a blue line American flag with the where we go on we go all embedded in it.
So clearly they're both celebrating that they're wearing Q shirts.
Yeah, so she apparently was a member of the local San Diego QAnon community.
One of the last tweets from Ashley Babbitt says, nothing will stop us.
They can try and try and try, but the storm is here and is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours.
So this woman who did not listen to the police as they said to like get back was shot.
Yeah.
And she basically did it because she thought she was in the storm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She thought she was like participating in a storm like I like the layer the layer the layers of bullshit that led to her death.
I mean it is insane.
She was summoned to D.C.
Because she was made to believe by QAnon and by Trump that her presence there could make something significant happen, that there would be a dramatic reversal.
This was all bullshit.
This was a lie.
This was a fraudulent promise.
There was no substance to it.
She was in D.C.
because of a lie.
And she was probably part of QAnon because she wanted to feel powerful and significant.
And maybe she had difficulty after spending most of her adult life in the structured military.
Of having this thing that directed her and gave her purpose the same way the military did.
You know, and she wanted to make her voice heard, right?
And she maybe got her new friends, met QAnon followers, you know?
Instead of like, you know, the end of her story with QAnon wasn't, you know, feeling together and powerful and significant.
It was being shot like a fucking dog.
Inside of the US Capitol building and then choking on your own blood like she died 3,000 miles away from home with like a You know a unread text message from her husband on her phone like like It's like it's ruinous.
She was lied This is what makes these people are being fucking lied to and now they're dying because yeah, it's like It's rude to treat people like that Yeah.
Agreed.
And I also think it's very important to note that we always said these beliefs lead to harming yourself and the people you love.
Now we have families devastated because some guy fucking tased himself.
All the deaths are stupid and avoidable.
It's very difficult, I think, to process.
Uh, especially for people around them, like maybe, what does her husband believe, you know, QAnon or not?
I mean, I know that the partner of the woman who was suffocated, as we'll see later, is 100% pro-Trump and, you know, on board with all the rest of the stuff.
They are collapsing in on themselves.
They're committing suicide by cop, they're having a heart attack, getting so excited that they're in the storm.
I mean, it's just... Yeah.
It's borderline deaths of despair, just like, just a weird format.
Yeah.
Babbit was actually one of two QAnon followers who died that day due to injuries.
The second was the police officer who died.
42-year-old Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was struck with a fire hydrant by rioters.
He later went to his office where he collapsed and later died.
Sicknik also had a Parler account and a Gab account, both of which followed several major QAnon followers.
So basically, QAnon people killed a QAnon cop by mistake.
Again, the community cannibalizing itself somehow.
There was not a single possible Deep State death.
It was just all MAGA people, all fucking pilled people.
Killing themselves and each other over like fucking like literally nothing there's the the substance list of of what they're dying over it's like what what gets me like there's no even possible game it's just It's role-playing.
It's not just that.
We have to look at the responsibility of the people who let this happen.
There were fucking three rings of barricades around the White House during certain periods where they knew there was danger.
And these people were, you know, the woman was shot by a panicked guard with a pistol.
It wasn't like some fucking armed like, you know, like, like commando.
And that's because there was nobody there to defend this building.
And we're finding out now from some reporting that that was perhaps purposeful, that there were, you know, certain decisions made to, you know, I mean, if Trump was going to be saying, go there, he's also not going to be encouraging people to build up.
But of course, he sacrifices them.
It really is him pushing them right into the ovens of fucking Moloch.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, like you're worth nothing to this man.
You absolutely.
Listen, listen, listen.
If Ashley Babbitt was a billionaire media mogul, Trump would care about her immensely.
Even if Ashley Babbitt didn't return Trump's calls and ignored Trump and thought Trump was actually kind of a piece of shit, even if that was Babbitt.
But instead, Ashley Babbitt was a broke, working, very confused woman who fucking loved Trump.
Who loved him more than anything, was willing to sacrifice her life.
Because she's just that and not a billionaire media mogul who doesn't give a fuck about Trump, Trump won't even know her fucking name.
He does not give a fuck.
Not to mention she served for 14 years in the military that he claims to respect and love.
I wonder why she was looking for meaning in her life and failing to find it after those two amazing foreign wars that she served in.
All of our wars are trash, too!
There's not even a fucking shred of redemption!
The dead police officer?
Also a veteran.
We got some soul-searching to do.
I don't.
I'm fine.
You're foreign.
Travis and I. We've got some.
I've got some sanctions to come up with for your country.
Depressingly, the woman who was crushed during the clashes was actually wearing a Don't Tread on Me Gadsden flag.
And her partner, who had come with her, stands by President Trump to this day.
Here is from a CBS 46 local report.
Crushed to death, that is how a friend of a Kennesaw woman was killed during the riots at the Capitol yesterday.
Describe her final moments.
34-year-old Roseanne Boylan was one of four people killed in tonight.
CBS 46's Zach Somers, live in Kennesaw, speaking exclusively to the friend who was with Boylan in D.C.
Zach.
Yeah, good evening, Rick.
Those two friends drove to D.C.
to hear President Trump speak at the Save America rally.
When the president urged his supporters to demonstrate outside the Capitol, those two friends followed, ultimately costing Boylan her life.
As Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday, Justin Winchell and his friend Roseanne Boylan found themselves right in the thick of it.
They basically created a panic.
He created a panic.
And then the police, in turn, pushed back on them.
Winchell says the trouble started when a couple of guys started pushing people.
The crowd then clashing, with police trampling over one another, pinning 34-year-old Boylan to the ground.
I got my arm, my arm underneath her, and I was pulling her out, pulling her out, and then another guy fell on top of her, and then another guy was just walking.
I mean, there was people crushed.
Winchell says paramedics tried reviving his friend, but she died.
There are four people dead, including your friend.
Yes.
Does the president, President Trump, have blood on his hands?
Does he have blood on his hands?
No!
And that man went on to claim that he thought the people who incited this were Antifa.
He was a witness to it and a participant.
And he's still saying it was Antifa.
I don't know.
We can't win.
It's like programmed into their brainstem.
It's like at their core.
They would literally sooner die than give up this worldview because it makes so much sense.
Oh, he was horrified that he would bring up Trump.
What?
Blame Trump for this?
Yeah, this is the other thing.
Hypothetically, there might be another scenario in which the supporters felt mad at Trump for misleading them into believing that the election results could be reversed that day.
This is a belief instilled by Trump, and they don't think, like, hey, you misled me, you made me believe this thing and it's false.
You don't maybe have that thought?
The anger, the anger of losing a friend or a loved one isn't enough to dislodge this spider that is attached itself to you.
You can watch someone die in front of you and still be like, no, it actually was different.
And there were bad guys, imaginary bad guys that were there that did it.
It's not the cops or us.
Neither of the factions are at fault here, even though clearly he's describing a pylon by other rioters and cops.
The LARP supersedes their senses, their empirical ability to detect what's going on in the world.
It's just prior to everything.
And it pushes itself to the ultimate irony.
You have a don't tread on me flag and you are trodden to death.
This is one of the stupidest... It's like a bad 90s Darwin death.
It sounds like an urban legend or something.
So stupid.
I hate everything about this.
And obviously I feel bad for this person's family.
Her brother-in-law has spoken out against Trump and is not on board with her beliefs.
But I guess her friend and sometimes referred to his boyfriend in some of these reports.
Yeah, still doesn't care.
While this madness was unfolding, some made it out of the building alive.
One of those people was wearing a giant Q flag and a big red coat with a white Q on it.
That person was, of course, Dr. Tammy Towers Perry.
Here she is striking a very different tone than some of the somber happenings just feet away.
Hi Patriots!
It's Dr. Tammy and Nurse Melissa.
We just stormed the Congress, and I'm going to tell you right now, it was wild.
We just stormed the Capitol, and here's why.
We got in there, they started breaking down the windows.
We're trying to bust in.
And then we got sprayed with, I think it was either, well, the orange, so it was pepper spray.
And then they had some other white stuff, I think it was tear gas.
So that was quite an experience for sure.
We got out of there and we're a little congested and our eyes are burning, but you know what?
Compared to what our founding fathers did, it's the least we can do.
So God bless America.
Joe Biden did not win.
He's hopefully going to.
God bless America.
While all this madness was unfolding in the nation's capital, Trump supporters also gathered at pro-Trump rallies at state capitals across the country.
At these demonstrations, speakers expressed their disappointment with Pence.
At the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, one speaker suggested that since Pence unfollowed Trump on Twitter, that suggested that a coup was going on.
President Trump has ordered us to remain peaceful today.
Okay?
The coup is in full effect.
Vice President Pence just unfollowed President Trump on Twitter and turned on him.
Yep, the coup is on.
It's been on for the last four years.
But it's moving!
Very quickly!
What I really love about that clip is the sort of implication that, like, he can detect when a fucking overthrow of the government is going on based on, like, social media activity.
Like, you know, fucking, like, Pence removed Trump from his top eight on Myspace.
This is, like, the revolution is ongoing.
Isn't that the next step, though?
This stupid, yeah.
Yeah.
I really think so.
We've had governments threaten each other on Twitter.
Yeah, it is.
I really... We had Saudi Arabia say they were going to do a 9-11 to Canada for criticizing them on Twitter.
Since I wasn't able to make it to D.C., I went to the rally at the California State Capitol in Sacramento.
During that rally, an update on the events in D.C.
was provided by Buzz Patterson, a failed QAnon-promoting congressional candidate.
The assembled crowd of hundreds booed Mike Pence and cheered the riots in the Capitol.
Just a quick heads up on what's going on in D.C., guys.
We came out of work and went to a fantastic patreon, so thank you.
The ex let us down.
He declined to challenge the results.
As a result of that, protesters stormed the Capitol.
They're inside.
They're inside the Capitol.
Congress is locked down in place.
They're dispersing with tear gas inside the Capitol.
But I would just like to say, you know, we're not sure.
I'm not sure if we can talk about this anymore or if we're in a team of disguised kind of folks.
So, we have to jump to conclusions here, but that's what's going down right now in the nation's capital.
We'll be right here all year.
So, stuff's getting real.
Again, let's do this the right possible way.
I kind of love, like, the bait and switch that Buzz Patterson does on the crowd.
He says, like, the Capitol has been stormed, and he waits for them to cheer, and he says, like, maybe they're Antifa.
Ah!
He, like, tricks them into possibly cheering for Antifa, and all of a sudden they feel a little silly.
They are not sure whether, you know, yes, it was MAGA, Patriots, and it's good, or It's bad and it was actually Antifa like like they like they haven't been told to like a witch because because they get they can Both they both have their problems, right?
Of course the romanticized sort of revolution So the of course maybe the MAGA Patriots theory is good, but also they hate violence.
So maybe only Antifa is violent Remember this is sort of like it's like they have these these algorithms for discerning what is real and they're kind of like conflicting in this moment The other thing I like about that clip is that Buzz Patterson said that the protesters stormed the Capitol as a result of Pence not challenging the results.
He kind of assumes that there's just sort of like a cause and effect between those two events, like as if Pence had sort of know, you know, he sort of rejected the electors, then this horrible thing wouldn't happen.
Again, they blame Pence for not exercising his imaginary powers instead of blaming Trump for misleading them.
They got false hope because of Trump, and now they're furious not at the person who lied to them.
History is now just the order in which you experience content.
Right, yes.
Back in D.C., police eventually managed to push the rioters out of the building.
the Q shaman warned those still in the capital that the National Guard was approaching.
I'm just giving you guys a heads up. They already secured the White House. I'm just giving you a
heads up. Hold the line, patriots. Hold the line. National Guard is on their way.
All right. He looks excited.
Yeah, he's smiling.
No, he's having a great time.
Listen, listen to all of you people as like the military approaches hold the line.
I'm pretty sure like, I mean, you know, you can't really open carry in DC.
So they're pretty sure the National Guard is going to be better armed.
Or they're so not used to guns that they shoot you with a pistol because they panic.
Like, it's just- it's so fucking sad to bring, like, AR mentality to, like, towns that just have pistol cops and stuff and just- Yeah.
And then it's fucking- he doesn't know how to deal with any of it.
I mean, we've been to Arizona rallies where people are armed to the teeth all around us, and they're circled by armed cops as well.
There's just- everybody has an AR.
And, you know, those places feel way more safe than, like, a flipped-out guy who's been a, like, a donut cop, like, and watched security feeds his whole fucking life, suddenly confronted with, like, what looks like a, you know, a MAGA alpinist who's, like, fucking making her way through the window.
It's awful!
Especially if you consider that that cop might know that the other cop had already been knocked the fuck out and brought to the hospital.
He would later die of those injuries.
So it's like, of course you're fucking panicking.
It's like, well, someone fucking killed one of us with, like, a fire hydrant.
They don't need guns.
Still, they shot an unarmed woman just in the neck.
So every part of it is just gruesome.
Baked Alaska live-streamed himself getting shoved out and yelling at police.
Dude, don't go!
I'm going!
Stop shoving me!
No, you got a fucking problem!
You're a fucking oath-breaker, you piece of shit!
Fuck you!
You piece of shit!
You broke your oath to the Constitution!
Fuck you!
Fucking shoving me and shit?
For no reason?
What the fuck?
This is the other really frustrating thing about this.
Like, if the rioters didn't support Trump's politics, and if they were perhaps a bit more tan, they would still be scrubbing the blood off the streets of D.C.
There would be four fucking barriers.
Like, even if they did like a World War Z swarm, they would never even get close to a window.
Some of the rioters were shaken by the crowd control tactics.
In a video posted on Twitter, a woman named Elizabeth recounted her experience getting maced just moments before at the Capitol.
Ma'am, what happened to you?
I got maced.
You got maced?
I got maced.
And what happened?
You were trying to go inside the Capitol?
Yeah, I made it like a foot inside and they pushed me out and they maced me.
What's your name?
Where are you from?
My name is Elizabeth.
I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee.
Why did you want to go in?
We're storming the Capitol!
It's a revolution!
Thank you.
The customer service in this revolution is shit!
So fucking absurd.
She's trying to overthrow the United States government.
If she thinks she's really doing that, then what the fuck do you think is gonna happen?
She's fucking just shattered because her eyes sting a little.
Like, I didn't think we'd get this far.
One QAnon follower I happen to follow on TikTok also attended the protests in DC.
is horrible. What the fuck?
I like it because she's from Knoxville, a great music town, and her scarf is piano
keys. So just a weird ass moment.
Everything is a hallucination.
One QAnon follower I happen to follow on TikTok also attended the protests in D.C.
She made a big production about how she didn't want war, but she had to fight for her
country. And this is why she was going.
Afterwards, she claimed to have a bad experience with tear gas and flashbangs at the
After I got hit with a couple of flashbang grenades, I started choking on tear gas.
I realized that this wasn't this wasn't what I was there for.
And I got down and I walked away at that point.
Is it a lot of patriots?
This is first-hand experience.
I was right there.
I could have easily been persuaded to go into that Capitol building.
And again, this is just another example of like their fantasies and their rhetoric kind of like slams into actually the most minor of inconveniences.
Like if you if you're like serious about overthrowing the most powerful government in the world, you should be okay with never seeing another birthday.
You should just be at peace with that.
But the right, the right is not used to being genocided.
If you say that to the left, they can like list the countries in which in which it ended in a cleansing.
Right.
But for the right, it's always like, I just got mace.
Fuck.
Yeah.
Some QAnon followers decided that the mob of people storming the Capitol building was, you know, a bad look.
So they did what they always do.
They denied inconvenient facts about reality.
For example, QAnon influencer Jordan Sather suggested that the violence was initiated by agent provocateurs who were disguised as Trump supporters.
Now don't get me wrong, there could have definitely been some honest Trump supporters that got into the mix, that head to the Capitol, that even got into the Capitol and did some of that stuff, but let's be real.
It doesn't take that high of an IQ, it doesn't take that many brain cells in your skull to clearly see that there was some type of black block Or some type of agent provocateur, call them Antifa if you want, maybe some of the people were in Antifa, maybe not, but agent provocateurs, more general, but it's exactly what it is.
And it doesn't take that much brainpower to see that there were clearly provocateurs, agitators in the crowd, dressed up as Trump supporters, kay?
This dipshit has never hit the ground, so the question is not, why does he believe this?
This is classic for him.
The guy who saw his girlfriend die in front of him also believes this, who attended it and saw it with their own eyes.
We're talking about an unraveling of reality that makes it so these people who just sit behind their desks like praying medic and cash in, their thoughts, their vision of the world is so powerful now that people are carrying it with them and projecting it onto their reality in real fucking time.
The idea that it was actually Antifa who instigated the attack wasn't only promoted by QAnon himbos like Sather and people who saw their loved ones die in front of them in D.C.
Congressman Mo Brooks also ran with this shockingly brazen denial of reality.
He said this in a tweet.
Please don't be like hashtag fake news media.
Don't rush to judgment on assault on Capitol.
Wait for investigation.
All may not be and likely is not what appears.
Evidence growing that fascist Antifa orchestrated Capitol attack with clever mob control tactics.
Antifa took over the president's body and then told people to go there.
Like, I feel like I don't need to wait for an investigation for the most extensively recorded sort of siege on the Capitol building in history.
Yeah, everyone had a camera.
Everyone had a camera.
It's like these people were like, oh yeah, do your own research, citizen journalism.
But then, like, the moment that, you know, it looks like that citizen journalism makes it quite obvious that this was a Trump supporter siege, all of a sudden it's like, oh no, let's wait for the FBI to, like, you know, maybe work on this a bit.
Even worse, many QAnon followers, including Jordan Sather, threw the Q-Shaman under the bus.
But the dude still had his, you know, Viking type attire on and his, his buffalo, buffalo
horns on his head.
Who was that guy?
And in fact, he's been seen actually around quite a few places over the last few years.
He's been seen at climate change events, BLM events, some Q events, I think, like Trump rallies and whatnot.
This LL Bean-wearing motherfucker is just jealous of his drip.
Yeah, Jordan, if you actually showed up to any of these events where your followers and supporters are... If you weren't such a human piece of fleece... You and this guy would be good buddies.
Also, I do not believe for a second that Jordan Sather doesn't know who the fucking Q Shaman is.
The Q Shaman, for obvious reasons, quickly became one of the most recognizable participants of the siege.
So, disinformation pushers attempted to link him to left-wing movements and deny that he's a Trump supporter or a QAnon follower.
Lin Wood was among those on Twitter who tried to accuse the Q Shaman of being Antifa or a BLM activist.
The Q Shaman pushed back against those accusations in a tweet.
Mr. Wood, I am not Antifa or BLM.
I'm a QAnon and digital soldier.
My name is Jake, and I marched with police and tonight against BLM and Antifa in Phoenix.
Look up OAN's coverage of July 4th's rally at Phoenix Capitol.
I was standing against the BLM mob, outnumbered but unfazed.
Look it up.
It's weird that this fracturing of reality is even harming the QAnon movement internally.
They can't agree on whether the siege happened and it was Trump supporters and it was good and it makes them look good, or the siege was bad and therefore it couldn't have possibly been Trump supporters because Trump supporters don't do bad things.
Ergo, it was Antifa.
But have you dared look the spectacle directly in its cold diamond eye?
That gleam will erase your memory.
Some QAnon followers linked to the Q Shaman's acting portfolio page to suggest that he was some kind of crisis actor.
I had many QAnon followers tell me that he was being paid by George Soros.
Like they just like asserted like they just picked this this idea out in midair.
And this was a really bizarre thing because we had met the Q Shaman Multiple events, months before, it was never questioned that he was totally a pro-Trump guy.
And then the moment he becomes inconvenient to a certain segment of the QAnon followers, all of a sudden there's debate.
But it's not real debate.
It's just manufactured because they can't decide whether it's good that he's pro-Trump or it's bad that he's pro-Trump.
If it's bad that he's pro-Trump, then it's false that he's pro-Trump.
If it's good, then he is.
Still other QAnon followers tried to discredit the Q-Shaman by pointing to one of his many tattoos.
On the Q-Shaman's upper left chest he has a tattoo that looks like three interlocked triangles.
QAnon followers suggested that it was a pedophile symbol.
Now, it is not.
So to clear that up, this episode is going to close with an interview with Dr. Eleanor Yennega, a medieval historian specializing in social history.
After the siege on the Capitol, journalist Tick Root spoke to the Q
shaman in a phone interview, during which he says that he would have
gone home earlier if he was instructed to by President Trump.
As soon as President Trump said, I want y'all to go home, I started
going around with my megaphone saying, hey, President Trump just said to go home.
Would you have gone home earlier if he had said to go home earlier?
Of course.
I trust the President.
And, you know, being a veteran myself and being part of the Super Soldier program, I obey the orders of the President of the United States.
That's right.
A Super Soldier!
That's right.
Super Soldier.
He always has one more.
He's Peer Gynt.
This man is a magnificent onion.
What the fuck?
He's telling a reporter he was in the Super Soldier program?
Yeah, I'm a vet.
Yeah, I was in the Super Soldier.
And I'm MKUltra.
I'd never heard that from him.
I'm sorry.
I've been with it a lot of time, but that's a new one.
After the incident, by the way, law enforcement agencies circulated photos of the Q shaman, like asking for information about about about him.
I've got a podcast.
But as of this recording, there's no information about whether he has been incarcerated.
In fact, when he when he spoke to that journalist, he claimed that he had not yet even been contacted by the FBI or the Metropolitan Police.
I hear they came to his door, but he did Sovereign Citizen stuff successfully.
Oh, wow.
It worked this time.
He's that good.
He is really charming.
Well, they teach it in the Super Soldier program.
He had the spear, which is also very intimidating.
Quick update.
The day after we recorded this episode, on January 9th, the Feds arrested the Q Shaman.
According to court documents, the Q Shaman, whose real name is apparently Jacob Anthony Chansley, voluntarily called the FBI the day after the Capitol riot.
He confirmed that it was him pictured in the Vice President's chair.
The Q Shaman also told the FBI agent that he came as part of a group of people from Arizona because Trump had requested that all quote-unquote patriots come to DC on January 6th.
No attorney information is available right now, but I'm sure the Q Shaman's eventual lawyer will be thrilled that he said all of that shit to the FBI.
He was busted for entering restricted building grounds and disrupting government business.
So far, the Q Shaman has avoided any weapons charges for that spear he was carrying.
Okay, back to the episode.
In reaction to the chaos, social media platforms clamped down on some accounts that were causing problems.
Lin Wood initially lost the ability to tweet for 12 hours, but then Wood started posting stuff like this from his alternate account at Fightback Law.
Mike Pence is a dark soul.
He is not a man of God.
He uses God for his own self-serving purposes.
He used 13, 14, and 15-year-old boys for his own self-serving purposes, too.
A very special place in hell awaits Pence.
Lin.
After that tweet, both of Lin Wood's Twitter accounts were suspended.
As the rioters ransacked the Capitol, Trump posted a video to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube which told them to go home, but it also repeated the baseless accusations of election fraud that incited the siege in the first place.
That video was deleted by all three platforms.
Facebook responded by suspending Trump's Facebook page until at least the end of his presidency.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.
By the way, famously during the primaries, Facebook bent its policies on hate speech specifically for Trump on the basis they argued for newsworthiness.
So they were inconsistent and allowed Trump more leeway to spread his bullshit simply because he's Trump.
Now, I'm not saying we're looking for aerial maps of different Facebook facilities, but I think I'm beyond the, like, ban them, and I think we should ban Facebook.
Is there any way to ban them?
This is what I'm saying.
Listen, destroy Facebook, imprison Mark Zuckerberg for accessory to war crimes.
Oh my God, I only agree with you sometimes, but when I do, I do.
This is, I think, a bipartisan solution.
I think we can all agree on this.
Whoever did that job on you, like, I've been trying this whole time.
You'd be a genius to get that job.
Normally you have to make him study something from the CIA directly to get him this.
Yeah, you know what I say, ban all internet except for online gaming.
YouTube responded by instituting harsher penalties for spreading election disinformation.
But in the new policy, the video was removed and the YouTube account itself receives a strike, which means it's unable to post for a full week.
Aww.
But I would argue, like, in one of the more disturbing examples of big tech censorship, the streaming service Twitch responded by removing the iconic PogChamp emote.
So this is a highly popular emote, consisting of a picture of fighting game personality Ryan Gutex Gutierrez.
And he looks absolutely as happy as a man could possibly be.
Eyes wide open, mouth agape.
He's kind of doing the soy face.
Kinda, kinda, but he looks like he's having a good time, you know?
But what is the poggers thing about?
It makes me feel old.
Listen, this is, I'm sorry, this is a Gen Z thing.
We are on the way out.
Twitch made this decision after Gootex, the person pictured in the pogchamp emote, tweeted out encouragement for civil unrest for the death of Ashley Babbitt at the Capitol building.
That tweet said this.
Will there be civil unrest for the woman who was executed inside the Capitol today, or will the MAGA martyr die in vain?
MAGA martyr.
MAGA martyr.
I'm so fucking sick.
People want to believe that she is either possibly a martyr who died for a glorious cause, or she's some sort of terrorist, or someone who got what she deserved.
Both of those are bullshit.
You can reject both those.
I mean, again, she was someone who was lied to.
She was deeply defrauded.
And she was so defrauded that it cost her her life.
Twitter's response was perhaps the most dramatic.
They banned all the major QAnon promoters.
And briefly us.
And briefly us, yes.
We got swept up in the storm.
After years of radicalizing people and spreading disinformation, the accounts for praying medic, major patriot, amazing Polly,
Sidney Powell, QAnon 76, Michael Flynn, Ron Watkins, and Jim Watkins were all suspended.
And it was that easy.
You know, it's like fucking like there was there was like a person at Twitter who could snap his fucking fingers and make this stop.
He could have made it stop any time in the past.
He could have made it stop, you know, all the way back, you know, in June of 2018, when the very first QAnon motivated terrorist attack happened.
QAnon's sort of free reign on Twitter was instrumental to its growth in the wider material world.
And then now, after it's too late, after the damage is done, they say, all right, we're not going to deal with that on our platform anymore.
But the rest of us, the rest of us in the real world, we still have to deal with it.
What gets me is how obvious it always was that this was bad.
And if four or five people gave a shit, and if four or five people in 2008 Or why don't we just admit that they're the council ruling over us and we actually should have some control over them?
You're begging the king to do the right thing!
Monarchy's the problem!
I'm agreeing with you.
I think it's bad that four or five people could have prevented the mass radicalization of all these people to the point that American democracy is on the brink and then just have us just fucking have to have to sit here be like, oh, could you please let us just have just I don't even I know it's not great, but just basic functionality, like the baseline level of violence we have now.
Could that not more?
Could you make it so that we don't have more violence than we have that?
Could you?
If you made these two or three choices, you could actually make it so that we don't
have to live with more destroyed families and more violence and more crime.
If you did these things, it would be nice.
But then they said, listen, this level of engagement rate increases our stock growth
by 9% a year.
So really, my hands are tied.
So fuck off.
That's fucking right.
You heard it here first.
Fuck off, double fingers up from Travis View.
Elon Musk just became the richest man in the world.
Fantastic!
Why doesn't he start his own social media company?
All I'm saying is they should at least get together in a visible council so we can address them in some way.
Just admit you're the rulers!
Just fucking get a chamber already.
Get some fucking ominous candles going and a big red flag!
I don't even have to be there.
You can beam yourself in via a fucking 3D hologram like in all the Star Wars movies that I love.
Please.
That would be cool.
Just do it.
I don't care.
That would be so cool, Elon.
Please.
Let me put on a fucking helmet and make my pleas in virtual reality from the comfort of my own home, however you want to do it.
I'll put you in a helmet, but it's a Starship Troopers style situation.
You're being sent out against the bugs.
First line.
Come on, you apes.
You want to live forever?
In another significant development on Twitter, Trump was slapped with a 12-hour ban on posting.
They put him in Twitter jail, and what a peaceful 12 hours it was.
I don't know, I still read your bullshit.
Late on Thursday, Trump marked his return to social media by posting a two-minute, 41-second video in which he said he would support a peaceful transition of power.
Now, Trump never uses the word concede in the video, but it is the closest thing we've gotten to a concession speech so far.
Oh, we'll never get more than this.
This is it.
This is the concession.
Eat what you have.
Eat your crumbs, sir.
Now Congress has certified the results.
A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th.
My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power.
This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.
You have to remember these people were at the Capitol because they believe that their presence somehow would help Trump stay in office longer.
Right.
And then they wanted forever.
They were willing to like apparently a few of them gave their lives for this cause.
And then the problem is that it caused so many problems for Trump.
It actually had the opposite reaction.
It got him to give basically a concession speech.
I don't know what that would mean.
I don't know what that would look like.
Because he was going down be like, oh, I give up.
Fuck off.
I want a part of this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I think if it had been successful, he would have been down.
It's just like he knew it was a failure.
So he knew what his next step was.
Oh yeah.
So he dumped the losers.
I mean, this is the same thing, but it's like really well or something.
Or I don't know what that would mean.
I don't know what that would look like.
Dumb enough to think that it could have gone well.
And then finally, on January 8th, the day we are recording this Twitter
band, Trump's Twitter account.
Just wiped it.
Forever.
They finally plumped Ronald Dump!
Today is a really happy day for the triplets.
Mr. Krasenstein, Mr. Krasenstein, and Mr. Klippenstein.
They're all incredibly happy.
Twitter can look at QAnon, be responsible for motivating terrorism and arson.
And, you know, a couple murders and, you know, destroyed families and a general personal ruination over and over and over again for years.
And they'll maybe like, you know, ban a couple of the accounts, limit the reach.
But as soon as QAnon, you know, destroys American democracy, that's a line too far.
And with that concession speech and with Trump being banned and with becoming increasingly obvious that Joe Biden is going to be president, the QAnon community realized that it's over.
They were mistaken and they moved on with their lives.
At least that's what I wish happened.
In reality, the QAnon community continued to double down.
Dr. Russell McGregor, the Australian psychiatrist who literally lost his ability to practice medicine for QAnon,
tweeted this.
Note, this was a very carefully worded statement.
Once again, hashtag POTUS did not concede.
He will have a smooth transition to a second administration.
He did not say the election was legitimate.
I called it.
They're like he was looking at a mirror when he said this transition words.
I got it. I would love to sort of like really understand what's going on in Russell McGregor's head.
He literally lost his livelihood because he was so certain that QAnon was on the right track.
He seems like a Kramer type.
Disjointed, funny, and then totally cancelled.
Before he was banned, popular QAnon promoter Major Patriot tweeted this.
My thoughts on President Trump's video.
It was not a concession speech.
There was no mention of Biden.
No, I'd like to congratulate him on a hard-fought campaign.
What new administration is he referring to that will be inaugurated on the 20th?
I knew it!
These people are so beautiful.
QAnon promoter 8%Revolt tweeted this.
Reminder, it's not over yet!
There are still 14 days left of Trump's current term.
Anything can happen.
That's true.
They just sort of like, all they do is just like open up their mind to every single hypothetical possibility.
And it's like, possibly one of those is good.
He's making a valid argument against determinism.
And I think that you're being intellectually dishonest.
On TikTok, Trump's true believers continued to assure followers that something good was still going to happen.
Hey, what's up TikTok?
Let me start by saying to all of my patriots out there that believe Trump conceded tonight, he didn't concede.
This is a chess game.
At no time did he say Biden was President.
He only guaranteed a smooth transition of power, which will most likely be Trump and, I don't know, General Flynn?
I don't know.
Different Vice President, of course.
Guys, stay 80 million strong.
Let not your heart be troubled.
This is all gonna go away.
There's gonna be some crazy things coming up in the next seven days, but just relax.
It's gonna be okay.
Our president did not concede.
However, I did spot one QAnon follower on TikTok who started to have some doubts and started asking some very hard questions.
I did not add music to this clip.
What's up, y'all?
Here's the thing, I'll keep it short and sweet.
We keep seeing and being told that things are going to happen and just to wait.
Q tells us that, Sidney Powell tells us about the Kraken, Linwood, dropping bombs, that they're going to release this information.
Where is it?
Where's the information?
We all know shady business went down during the selection.
We know it.
But things keep progressing.
Nothing's happening.
So, what are we to believe?
You know, there's only another less than two weeks before it doesn't matter anymore.
So, are we just all stupid?
Is this whole thing just being a massive psycop?
I don't know.
You tell me.
It's discouraging.
If you're going to release something, Just freaking release it.
If not, let's just move on with our lives.
On one level, that's like, you know, obviously really encouraging that, you know, he's going through the painful process of realizing that he has been living in a fantasy and he's willing to confront that possibility.
And I hope it turns out good for him and he starts detaching from this bizarre belief system.
But there's the other thing is like, maybe I can't necessarily assume that whatever comes after QAnon It's going to be better than it, you know, you know, whatever else fills that cube size hole in his heart.
You know, it might be worse.
It might be more dangerous.
It might be more destructive might be more violent.
I really don't know what's going to happen.
It's like man.
It's like I often get this question like interviews.
Like what was the QAnon community going to do?
Like, how am I?
I appreciate the sentiment, but it's like, how can I possibly predict this incredibly complex, dynamic community is going to behave in the future, especially when its behavior is sort of directly influenced by Trump in the erratic and unpredictable man?
So I don't know.
And it's like, I'm like, here's where we are, basically.
So like, QAnon accounts were just sort of swept off of Twitter and Trump's account himself.
And maybe this will be good.
Maybe they're going to get funneled into even darker social media platforms and get radicalized into worse worldviews that are more dangerous.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know.
But I'm going to find out with everyone else.
A little while ago, I received a DM from Elle Reeve.
She's a correspondent for CNN.
And she was asking me if we were going to be present at the January 6th events and surrounding dates in Washington, D.C.
And at the time, I said, nope, because I'm on vacation.
We're having our first vacation in so long.
And I was like, fuck, man.
And so the bottom line is we didn't go.
We suck.
We're bad journalists.
But that's OK, because Elle is with us and was there.
And I guess we were supposed to interview you, but you were saying that you wanted to clear up some stuff by asking us questions about some of the strange things that you also saw out there.
How, I mean, give us a framework for just your arrival to Washington, D.C., and how things progressed from just, you know, broad daylight crowd, a speech by the president, to what we saw in the Capitol.
Yeah.
And first, I just want to say it's really a pleasure to be on your podcast.
I think it is good and important, which is a very rare combo.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Yes.
How did I end up going?
I like to have sources of people who are not leaders of any movement or organization, but are really into politics to keep tabs on what is going on.
And there's a guy who seemed to be getting increasingly more radical than he was going.
And he was helping other people go.
And as I started checking in with other people, it just seemed like everybody was going, which is one reason why I checked in with you.
I was in the middle of nowhere.
There were bird feeders all around the house that we were staying in, so we could just look out the windows and I identified many beautiful birds of different colors, including a woodpecker, some hummingbirds.
So that was my storming of the Capitol.
But you, you were there, and so like, can you describe the kind of makeup of the crowd and how things got to a boiling point?
Yeah, it was like a Trump rally.
Like a regular Trump rally, except bigger than I had ever seen presence of Q. Like way more people who were into Q, proportionally.
Since I was on the ground, like I don't have the birds-eye view, like I can't actually give numbers.
Just a lot more cute sweatshirts, cute t-shirts, cute signs.
Leading up to the event, the guy I'd been talking to had been talking about Fall of the Cabal and how all the people had seen it, like everyone he was talking to.
So I asked everyone, this is before the rally even started, I asked them all like, oh, have you seen Fall of the Cabal?
And they were like, well, of course, you know?
And then people were just marching down Towards the Capitol, as they had planned.
And then I got a text from my producer, Sam Guff, like they're storming the Capitol.
So we like speed walked down there and it was just a mob already.
I don't know.
Have any of the rallies you guys have been to turned into actual mobs like that?
I mean, it's just this the way the like collective mindset just like flips into this.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's like another it's like a trance.
In Arizona, the night before we arrived, they had a Stop the Steal rally.
It was before they could set up a fence and a free speech zone, quote unquote.
But that was the night where it felt like a siege and you had reporting from inside the building and people were hammering at the front door.
But never did they breach.
They didn't break any windows.
I should say in advance of the rally, I got into like a Telegram channel of a big group of people who are going.
I got in their Zoom calls.
I got in their planning documents.
And it was really interesting to watch them prepare themselves for the idea of violence.
And they weren't talking about storming the Capitol, but they had a huge fear of Antifa.
They just thought that mad masses of Antifa were going to attack them.
So they weren't talking about this in terms of self-defense, but like bringing tasers.
One guy was explaining that you should use a carabiner instead of brass knuckles, because that's lethal.
So like, They, like, talked themselves into the mindset of anticipating violence, you know, like, in a way that's like a little bit more palatable than the idea of, like, we're gonna go charge and, like, commit terrorism on the Capitol.
And that group actually, like, went back to their hotel because they didn't want to be involved with the break-in.
But anyway, when I was there, so, okay, as So there's no service because it was such a huge crowd.
So you couldn't text people.
And so I was talking to my colleagues as we were like screaming to get down the avenues to the Capitol that like, look at these people's faces.
They have no idea what's going on when they get there.
And when you did, there's this huge mob and you can see it and everyone's pushing up, pushing up to see what's going on.
Information is, you know, spreading through the crowd.
There was like a guy who had been maced, this like huge dude who, um, I was like, just went up.
He was talking to someone, a bunch of other guys about what happened.
It's always like, tell us, tell what happened.
And he was like crying and just talking about how they had no choice.
They had no choice.
This was their only choice.
Like no one had their backs.
So then we pushed further and further to the Capitol and it's just like a mob of people, like old people, like people in their fifties, sixties.
I mean, there were younger people too, but it's, Still jarring to me to see my elders like climbing over walls, trying to climb up walls.
I mean, it just like the mob mindset took over and like mob mentality doesn't do it justice.
And do you think that there was, I mean, was Trump a focus for them?
Were they discussing what he had said?
Did they feel like they were defending him?
Or do you think this went in a more like visceral or different direction?
I didn't hear anyone talk about Trump at the Capitol itself.
I mean, about his speech?
Not at all.
I didn't hear that at all.
But there was very much this like idea of like, We are doing this for him because no one else will.
Like, we have to do the right thing.
Right.
Like, it's really, they really believe it in their bones.
They're doing the right thing.
Did anyone, uh, at the event you, you saw at least, did they talk about Pence at all?
Did they express disappointment in Pence?
I only talked to them about Pence in advance of, before the mob happened.
And so people were just talking about how Pence totally had the power to change the results of the election.
You know, and I would say, well, like, why didn't Al Gore do that in 2000?
And they're just like, well, that wasn't a disputed election.
Which, like, come on.
Yeah.
They just kept saying, like, this is our house, like we are here.
Like, it was just like a total living in the moment.
One thing I'm really curious about is simply like motivation.
How did this think this was going to end?
What was that like a content opportunity with a lot of people like, you know, filming, taking selfies?
Did they think that they were that this was the revolution that they were going to like just occupy the capital from now on?
Oh, that is such a good question.
Did they think they were going to destroy the votes, the electoral votes?
I mean, you know, I wonder if there were objectives inside the Capitol building that they, you know, thought they were going to try to reach or achieve?
That's a really good question.
So, first of all, at all of these rallies, people are always filming everything.
I mean, it's incredible how everyone is making content.
But once the mob stuff was happening, It was a lot more of just, like, desperately trying to get up to the upper terrace of the Capitol and then inside.
The only thing close to what you're saying about, like, a plan was I heard a guy say afterwards, like, OK, well, at least we stopped the vote.
But it's like, I don't know.
I think they were surprised that they could do it.
Right.
I think there was an element of that.
And yes, speaking of, why could they?
It just looked like some random beat cop opening like a little fence and like people streaming in.
Yeah, that's that, too, is a good question.
And like there needs to be a lot of reporting about what happened with the police officers.
I can tell you what I saw, which is that night afterwards, all I remembered was the stone faced line of cops lined up because they were about to start clearing.
So, you know, they like make a line.
They throw tear gas, people run, they push forward.
That's how they, like, clear an area.
So that's what I remembered.
But then when we got back, and we started going through our footage, in all of our interviews, people were saying, like, some people said, like, yeah, we tried to push in and cops beat us with batons, pepper spray, but some cops, they were almost okay with it.
That's what, it's in our piece.
This guy's like, it was so weird.
Like, some guys, it was like, they were almost cool with it.
The cops were very cool.
One told us to have a good day.
So I think it's a mix.
There's another video that a witness gave us where people are trying to get in one of the doors and the police are spraying them with a fire extinguisher.
Which I think really speaks to the desperation, right?
Like, they're out of weapons.
But also, why not, like, yeah, why not Mace?
It begs the question.
So little armament.
Yeah, they were so poorly equipped.
They were like a bunch of, like, you know, teenagers defending a drama room or something.
Not to mention there was very literally a young man who's apparently the son of an Orthodox Jewish judge or someone working in, I believe, Brooklyn.
And he was the guy dressed as, like, the sub-shaman.
Like, he was in full animal pelts.
And he has that photo looking depressed behind that, like, shield.
It's like a police shield he stole or something, like a transparent one.
And that guy comes from an Orthodox Jewish family.
How does he end up in fucking furs in the Capitol?
Because MAGA is so colorful and you know there was the Q Shaman up there now we had these accusations of them being Antifa or actors because a lot of these MAGA people are failed actors or people who just do voice acting on the side like the Q Shaman.
So like did you how did that narrative develop.
Did you just see that kind of exploding online or was there any there was nothing I'm assuming on the ground describing you know people who were breaking in as Antifa.
It was a feeling of like we're all in this together right.
No, they were hardcore Trump supporters.
I mean, one way to know is when I told them I was CNN and I would be a little bit dicey.
Oh, we've watched CNN crews get chased up and down a block.
Yeah.
So funny.
Yeah.
Mini mobs.
No, not like Antifa.
Wear masks.
Antifa don't admit committing crimes on camera.
I mean, come on.
These guys were true believers.
I was on the terrace, like there's this guy who would fit in at
like a Mitt Romney rally, right? Like an older gentleman who was actually quite nice to me saying
he'd been a Republican for years, but he was just a little bit disappointed with the
mainstream party recently.
Oh my God.
Just a tad.
Just a tad.
Here I am breaking into a window.
It's because, you know, when you have QAnon as a sort of alternate, you know, an alternate party, let's say, your standard sort of Republican, you know, narratives are disappointing.
I mean, you know, they pale in comparison to what, you know, a QAnon ideology sort of promises, right?
Yeah, well, there were multiple people who either wanted or expected military tribunals for Democrats.
And one thing that I noticed also is it's very short history of, you know, movements like this in the modern era arriving to any kind of results.
I mean, obviously, everybody was kind of surprised and, you know, some were even impressed by the burning down of entire cop stations.
So that was that was something new, I guess, for America.
But storming the Capitol, this is not something that just happens every once in a while.
It's not a thing.
So are we looking at a revolutionary possibility within a completely gridlocked system?
And then on the downside of that, they're all queuing on Trump supporter lunatics who, like, believe in blood libel.
I mean, it seems like a strange conjunction in American history.
Yeah, I think we're in a bad place.
And I think that now we're in new political ground because Trump basically did the closest that we're going to get to a concession, saying there's a new administration and I'm going to be doing peaceful power transfer.
So what do you think of that latest development, Al?
And do you think You know, what does this mean for the Republican Party?
Are we looking at it?
I don't I doubt that they're going to, you know, get on board with 25th amending him, which is, I guess, removing him from power, right?
Yeah.
I mean, people keep talking about the 25th Amendment, but honestly, it's more difficult than impeachment.
It requires more votes.
Folks!
Impeachment comes with the benefit of barring him from ever serving in the office again.
You might as well believe in Nassar, folks, OK?
They're not going to do anything to any of the bad presidents.
They've all been bad and they're already saying we shouldn't fight this guy afterwards.
I mean, didn't Biden say he wasn't going to prosecute already?
Very strange stuff.
So, OK, yeah, what do you think of the next steps for Trump?
Because I see some kind of more shrill, let's say, media being like, he's got the nuclear codes and he's gone full Joker.
I don't know.
I mean, it's funny.
I started the day asking most people, like, do you consider yourself the mainstream of the Republican Party, you know, given the actions of Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and those guys?
A lot of people said yes.
Some people said no, maybe a third of them.
But I also pointed to this meme.
I don't know if you guys have seen.
I wanted to ask you about the Patriot Party.
It's got a lion logo.
Oh, yeah.
We were interviewing those guys on the ground in Arizona.
Yeah.
Very familiar with them.
A lot of people talking about that, using that logo, wearing that T-shirt.
So a lot of people have asked me how this compares to Charlottesville.
And, you know, Q people are not white supremacists, although there is the white libel element.
After Charlottesville, the country was so appalled by that, the blowback really crushed that movement.
There were massive lawsuits against them, prosecutions, tech companies kicked them off, and maybe most important, payment processing companies prevented them from using their services, so they had no way to raise money and couldn't get jobs.
So does some kind of version of that happen now?
to the Trump movement, to QAnon.
Like, maybe it's too big for that to happen.
And we don't understand how the dark money is getting funneled into movements like America First or the Patriot Party.
I know there's a lot of discussions, I saw them on the ground, about the Republicans versus the Patriot Party, accusations of being Republican and name only, etc.
And, oh, are we going to run on our own platform or will the Republicans, like, give us the space to run?
So I do see a kind of schism there, potentially.
But they have been planning this stuff, but it was coordinated with the Stop the Steal stuff.
You know, Ali Alexander and Charlie Kirk, they were all involved.
So until the structure that feeds money into these things, and I'm not saying directly QAnon, but, you know, it certainly helps that Q Shaman when there's four armed guys next to him that are like, you know, like Boogaloo Boys or whatever.
Yeah, but I think that's a really good way to think about it.
Because before Charlottesville, the term alt-right was in flux.
Some of the not-officially Nazi people wanted to take it.
After Charlottesville, no one wanted anything to do with that.
So, will that happen here?
The same way, will people who want to have mainstream jobs, mainstream, be able to have a good salary, lobby, work for non-profits in Washington?
Will they want to be associated with this?
Will they be able to get money that way?
Or is there a new track for them through Newsmax and OAN now?
Yeah.
I don't know.
I can't predict the future.
That's the number one question people ask me.
I don't know.
How could I know?
They ask you, tell us, what does the future tell?
What's going to happen?
Yes!
They're like, what's going to happen next?
What is this trajectory of this incredibly dynamic situation?
Will I find love?
Find out next week.
I would be better.
I would rather predict that.
Will I find love then?
So we'll be having you back on for a non-ironic, non-critical astrology episode where you read us our futures, our disappointing futures.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wanted to also just get to know how you're feeling.
You're still in Washington.
Are you preparing to leave now?
Yes.
Yes.
I have to go on.
Do you feel like you're leaving in the middle of something or has this quieted down?
Oh, the streets were empty last night.
Like tumbleweeds.
Because all those people went home, you know?
They all got on the plane and gave flight attendants a hard time about masks and they're gone for the most part.
Although we did run into a guy on the street corner last night who was like, I mean, at one point he was just like, so what do you guys think about 9-11?
He was like, we're further, you guys, he was calling us liberals, he knew we were CNN.
He was like, we're further left than you now.
Like you guys don't even think 9-11 was an inside job.
We're all, like, so I have an all-girl crew, Deb Brunswick, Sam Gough, like, and we're all still feeling this, like, weird adrenaline hangover where I'm talking to you in the afternoon but it still feels like it's, like, 9, 10 a.m.
I mean, we're just, like, physically, like, TV is just a really physical job and we also have to, like, protect ourselves from getting, you know, Swarmed at these rallies so like yeah, we need recovery time Do you think your version of getting carried away?
Like live on CNN by like a hurricane is is just like a MAGA crowd kind of sweeping sweeping across the street We need to deploy the helicopters and extract L I've got a story for you guys like so a lot of times a lot of times people would Sort of pointed us, be like, this is CNN, and try to gin up like a circle to harass us.
And, you know, it's very unpleasant, and you can't really zing them, usually.
You just gotta keep everything calm and get it to move on.
But there was this one point where this woman had this bullhorn, and she wouldn't stop, just kept going, kept going about how bad we were.
Some men circled up around us, And it was like, guys step forward, like, harassing us, saying how we should be ashamed, what awful people we were.
Um, we should be ashamed.
And I looked at him and I was like, did you pee your pants?
And he was like, why got you gassed?
Was it Liam Neeson by any chance?
God, yeah.
Honestly, any critical points you're making with soiled pants...
That's what I thought!
But think about the mentality of it.
Think about like...
To be in the point...
The end result of this entire stupid thing that multiple people died for was taking photos of the Q Shaman standing
behind Nancy Pelosi's desk, like with both his hands up in victory.
That was the, like, I guess product for most people who went in and out, risking their lives.
Also, these people would never be like, the bread prices are too high, which is like the only reason you should You shouldn't be storming anything, you motherfucker!
Don't do it for a selfie, man!
No, they were stopping a procedural vote that confirmed a Democratic election.
They needed to put an end to that.
They wanted to, and then it was immediately resumed, and the tireless, awful speeches that I had to hear from the Congress people on both sides of the aisle were so pathetic.
All the Republicans groveling, pretending they don't all have a QAnon friend that they've winked to over a fucking beer, and all the Democrats being like, this was exactly like 9-11.
And it's like, well, I just feel so bad for them because they go back up there and they immediately resume their totally alienating discourse, which is why we ended up with their fucking house getting overrun anyways.
Yeah.
So when we were reporting on Portland, one of the things I noticed is people would come up with new and clever ways to provoke the police.
And then they would immediately post on social media.
And I talked to like older activists about that and they said like part of the role of that is to show people what's possible so that other people will join.
But of course, you don't have to be ideologically pure to copy that strategy.
Right.
So yes, like the images of seeing what's possible is a powerful message to extremists.
Yeah.
And I definitely think we haven't heard the end of this.
This is going to be reverberating.
It's certainly absolutely historical for America.
I did not think when we started this podcast or when we started covering someone as marginal as the Q Shaman that we would be looking at a day where that is the center of the conversation nationally.
I think that that shifted faster than we could have imagined.
This peach seems to be rotting at a high speed.
I mean, everyone asks me what's next.
Like, what do you guys think is next?
Yeah, what do we think is next?
Travis, you haven't slept all night.
You seem like a prophet today.
Yeah, you tell us.
You've probably got the best idea of what's going to happen.
Sure.
Listen, I think that it's always a safe bet to assume things are going to get worse.
So, like, don't let this sort of, like, ruin you or fill you with anxiety.
Kind of, like, center yourself and prepare for the horrors to come.
Hell yeah, man.
Very relaxing, and I like it.
We need you for the fight ahead, Patriots, so, you know, rest up, rest up.
Well, part of Q is, like, it, like, ratchets up this, like, narrative to be more and more extreme.
Like, if you're watching, like, you know, the final episodes in, like, the season of, like, a, you know, a murder show, like, how can they take—how can the narrative be any more intense than it actually is?
And if it's not adding that, like, You know, I don't know where you go from, like, cannibalistic pedophile sex cult, right?
I think we're at the peak of the spectacle, and I think the spectacle is maxed out.
So there's like a percent of it that we can actually take in, and it's way past that.
So we can't even contain the spectacle.
And the spectacle, yes, it seems to get even more awful.
And the only way you can really understand it is by pulling back and seeing this bizarre, huge, pointiest painting.
So I think that, yeah, they'll continue to become more extreme in ways that we haven't even fucking imagined.
Of course, what is unique now is that violence is starting to penetrate the spectacle.
And it's going to be— Violence was always the center of the spectacle.
9-11 was one of the most pivotal moments for the spectacle because the terrorists used the system of the spectacle to change the entire country forever with just one image.
And so, interestingly, Debord almost seems to predict a 9-11 in his writing around the spectacle.
But I think that what's important to understand with the extremeness of these beliefs is that it doesn't matter because they're not moored in reality in any way.
I mean, they're not dependent on any fact that might come in to disturb them.
These are just fantasies.
It's a fever dream, right?
So the fever dream, you know, it's just going to continue to get weirder.
I mean, It's like, okay, you could have been like, wow, they're very extreme, but then you're like, oh wait, this person thinks Pence mutilated and sexually abused 50 children, and he's replaced by a clone.
I mean, we can go many places from here.
Watch them.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, Julian, at the very beginning of this interview, you said something interesting.
You said, you know, the militia people are riding the kooks into battle.
And I think that that is something that we should be extremely vigilant looking out towards in the future, that QAnon believers are used by people with better training.
Who are going to get away with it, because they're covering their faces?
Who are going to get away with it.
who have military backgrounds, are armed, have a plan, have blueprints.
They're not the ones getting shot or tasing themselves.
They're not the ones that are... that's a good point.
So if you're a QAnon follower, don't become the Tauntaun of one of these militiamen.
Just don't let them saddle you up.
Because they will take their lightsaber that has the 14 words etched onto it, they will slice open your belly, and they will crawl inside you and spend the night.
You're right.
I mean, that is a real nightmare scenario, where QAnon becomes the cannon fodder of the far right, where they're kind of used to sort of maybe test security vulnerabilities of, say, government buildings, or used to be placed in dangerous situations.
And if QAnon followers get wiped out, then you still have people who can think strategically, who can use more QAnon followers to do more horrible things.
On the plus side, I do want to hear the 14 words in Wookiee.
So, Elle, tell us, like, is there any, like, lasting impressions or things that we didn't get to, any stories?
It's, you know, open platform for you.
You've been closest to the molten core.
Well, at one point, our crew, we had our backs turned.
We were walking back to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, and it's like the crowd was kind of following us, screaming at us.
And this guy threw a glass bottle at us.
And it shattered right at my heels.
Like I felt the glass hit my pants.
I mean, if he had hit it just a little harder he would have hurt us.
But that is a cowardly act because we had our backs turned.
Thank you so much for joining us, Al, and for going out there and capturing that stuff.
When are CNN going to develop a good exoskeleton to load you into so that these bottles are, you know, you could be some sort of RoboCop?
Just really vaporize these people.
I was thinking Ripley from The End of Aliens, but RoboCop works too, I guess.
Just turn them to vapor if you need.
I just imagine Elle with, like, the pulse rifle and the flamethrower, like, duct taped to her chest.
Okay, here we go.
Alright, alright, sorry.
At least it's a good movie this time.
Thank you guys.
I appreciate it.
One particularity of this specific MAGA uprising is that the Q Shaman, previously a marginal figure at best, is now at the center of a national conversation.
And a lot of it is centering around his body.
We've seen very worryingly thirsty posts.
I can neither confirm nor deny if I was the originator of the months ago first thirsty post.
So I have my son and I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna take my shirt off and I'm gonna start yelling and screaming about these pedophile symbols.
Some of which appear to be the same kind of spirals that he detects pedophilia using.
Like at the malls, at the Arrowhead Mall where he was screaming at people.
I'll probably include that here.
So I have my sign and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to take my shirt off
and I'm going to start yelling and screaming about these pedophile symbols.
You watch and see.
Alright, here we go.
This is going to be hilarious.
Ladies and gentlemen of Arizona Arrowhead Mall, I want you to ask yourself, why is Arizona Arrowhead Mall using a pedophile symbol by the bathrooms?
That is right, that triangle, that spiral triangle by the bathrooms is a FBI known pedophile code for boy love!
You can look this up on your phone right now!
FBI pedophile code!
Go to the images and you will see a spiral triangle!
Just like you saw outside of this mall!
Just like you see right by the restrooms!
Anyways, we have a bona fide doctor, a medieval doctor.
She wears a plague mask.
She's wearing one right now.
Her name is Dr. Eleanor Yenega.
Welcome to the show.
Hey guys, thanks for having me.
You were on the sauce and just you were DMing, because we were DMing about doing an episode eventually, but then I just got this series of kind of like furious messages about this man's tattoos.
Yeah, yeah, sounds like me.
I mean, basically what I like to do is get drunk and yell about medievalisms on Twitter, and unfortunately you guys got caught in the crossfire of that.
Isn't that a prerequisite to study any kind of medieval cultures?
You have to drink, like, four grogs of mead?
Oh, grogs of mead!
Wow.
This man clearly is a Disney historian.
I'm like a...
Pirates of the Caribbean historian.
But yeah, I mean, I do think that the medieval illumination that's going to come out of this or maybe even the stained glass windows with the Q Shaman in them are going to be quite interesting.
That'll be really beautiful.
I'm just wondering if they're going to go with his face painted or not.
And now that we've seen his face without the paint, I'm guessing we're going with the paint.
That's all.
A lot of that thirst evaporated the minute that makeup was gone is all I'm saying.
So yeah, it is true that he's the kind of guy you want to fuck with his hat on.
Ha ha!
Oh god.
Yeah it's like it's it's one of these interesting things because um in you know the reason I've been DMing you guys even before I got drunk one fateful coup or whatever is because like there are just an absolute ton of um what what we in the business call medievalisms uh in the QAnon world and like medievalisms is basically like the transposition of medieval history on to you know other stuff so for example like Tolkien stuff that's a medievalism or uh Game of Thrones that's medievalism But QAnon stuff is absolutely rife with it.
And this guy's, as you say, body is this perfect example of it.
And in particular, it's like what I'm talking about is his tattoos.
It's like his whole headgear situation is a whole nother thing.
Because, you know, I can do this is the thing that every medieval historian has to say.
It's like, you know, he's trying to do this Viking thing, but he's got horns on his thing.
And all medieval historians have to point out that Vikings didn't actually have horns on their helmet.
And that's not a thing.
But I think also his whole headdress situation is supposed to be like maybe some kind of like Native American ripoff.
Like it's offensive one way or another.
We're just going to leave it at that.
But his tattoos are really interesting because they're all specifically tied up with this specific white supremacist movement.
But they all have like kind of Viking imagery involved in them.
And so it's like there's this thing I think that they're called like it's like an Odinist white supremacist cult, right, is what they do.
And so kind of like starting with his tattoos like starting on his like left titty and like what do we got here we got the nipple poking through the sun there's a nip through a sun yeah yeah yeah there's like a nip through a sun and it's like you you see there's like these three kind of interconnected triangles there yes yes yes and so this is something that's called it's called a falcnut V-A-L-K-N-U-T.
This shows you just how bullshit this entire thing is.
So white supremacists have it, and they call it the Falconoon, and that's a really modern name.
So we don't have an old Norse word for what that is.
We know that it definitely existed in the Viking period, but it doesn't really come up in any things with a name.
And so the name now in Norwegian kind of means Okay.
of those fallen in battle, which is why, you know, this dickhead has it. Because the way that he's
kind of choosing to interpret it and the way that white supremacists interpret it, they think that
they say that it's like a symbol of their willingness to die in battle for Odin, which is
like, you know, like, as you do just normal stuff. And there's like this whole thing specifically for
the white supremacists around like Norse mythology and around Vikings, because you can sort of kind
of like make up what it is you want about them as far as they're concerned, right?
Because none of them have ever, like, bothered to read any medieval history, you know?
None of them are, like, out here, right, like, reading the Icelandic sagas, which they should because they're bawling.
But they're just kind of, like, taking pictures and, like, making things up and, you know, it's… Yeah.
The Vikings in particular are really enigmatic because it's like, oh yeah, there were big badass men who went everywhere and, oh, white people should just go around the place, like, shoving people.
They're actually proof that we were all once orcs.
Yeah, exactly.
And white people have a right to sort of be getting in ships and going around and, you know, bossing other people around is kind of how they interpret Vikings, I guess.
Oh sure, that's what they did to those villages.
Yeah, just some bossing.
Yeah, just a light bossing, you know.
I've played enough Assassin's Creed Valhalla to know that bossing is the preliminary part of the mission.
I think they see them as king of the white people in the imagined white middle ages.
White supremacists really like the Middle Ages because they think it's this time when white people were cut off from the rest of the world and there were only white people around and blah blah blah and everyone was white, which is completely incorrect.
Can I ask, how does this connect with Ultima Thule, the northernmost point, and the race of giants that inspired the Aryan mythology and some of the Volkish occultism that fed Nazism?
Well, yeah, so a lot of it is all interconnected and we see this in these texts.
G2's on this dude, right?
You see there, there's the Yggdrasil tree.
That's below the folk dude thing.
It's really common across European, basically, folk beliefs, but it goes into Mesopotamia.
It shows up all the time.
We know a little bit more about it from the specific Viking angle, but it also comes up with Germanic tribes.
It shows up, for example, around in early medieval England.
Uh, with the kind of like Danish speakers here.
So it shows up on in various places and it is this tree that is kind of seen as a bringing together the nine different worlds.
And it's like, we know more about the, you know, the Viking beliefs behind this.
And the idea is that there's nine different worlds.
There's the ice giant world and the world of the Aesir where the gods live.
There's the human word world, which is Midgard.
There's hell.
There's regular giant world, not ice giant world.
There's hell, which is the land of the dead.
There's the fire world.
You know, like, there's a bunch of them, right?
And so the tree is kind of like the way that all of those things are brought together.
And that is a feature to be fair of a lot of the Northern European kind of pagan and shamanistic religions.
And we just happen to know way more about the Norse one because it just took Christians a longer time to get up
there.
It's like, you know, if we consider the fact that Christianity is a Mediterranean religion, which it is, you
know, comes from the Middle East, takes a while to like get up to where the guys who are
trying to cut your head off are, right?
So we have really good records of that kind of like period of Christianization.
So we know a lot about the paganism in the first place.
And then we know a lot, even when they go Christian, like if you read again, the Icelandic sagas, they'll be like, Oh, we're all Christians, but Thor showed up or whatever, you know, they'll be this whole thing.
So we know a lot about it.
And so people, especially if they're trying to be racist, they will go specifically to
the Viking things as a touchstone because they're like, oh, and that also connects
to the Germanic tribes and it also connects.
So it's like, it's like the Rosetta Stone, but for white people's bullshit.
And that's so that's like a really, it's a good way of bringing it all together.
But so like with the Yggdrasil tree, with like, so we know about that.
We know what that is.
We definitely know what that symbolizes.
There's some bullshit where like, for example, Odin hangs himself on that tree in order to gain the knowledge of runes.
Um, like, yeah.
What?
You know.
Wait, what?
He kills himself to get the knowledge of runes?
Yeah, like, you know, standard.
Standard shit.
You know, like, so with the Norse mythology in general, the conception is that like, in order to get some knowledge, you have to sacrifice something.
So Odin is like, well, I'll kill myself.
And he hung himself on the tree.
Uh for several days and then like right before he like fell off he was granted the knowledge of runes and so it's like that's a thing um so it's kind of like you know a catch-all that you you and and that could be you know like not particularly racist because you know it does sort of come up as I say in a lot of things but it's just like who uses it and why and in connection with the stupid um Falknut thing the triangle boy your man there it that's like a really telling one because the white supremacist has this whole story that they made up about the falcon we don't know what the fuck the falcon is like to be very clear like we've had like our best guys trying to crack the case for quite some time and medieval historians we don't really know what it symbolizes um we know it has something to do with the cult of the dead because it always shows up in conjunction with the cult of the dead we think it probably has to do with odin because usually every time it shows up there's some either odin's there or like there's horses
Or ravens, which are other symbols of his.
And there's some kind of like best guesses about what it might mean.
Ellis Davison, who's a specific Viking historian, she thinks it might have something to do with like knots.
So knots are a really important bit of Norse mythology.
There's a lot of focus on weaving and strings.
And so she thinks that maybe what it shows is like Odin has the power to like basically befuddle men in battle, like kind of tie their their minds up and scare them.
So she thinks like maybe that's a symbol of like tying people's minds up.
Or maybe it's a symbol of the fact that Odin can also make you brave in battle.
So maybe it's a symbol of like, loosening the bonds that would ordinarily hold you back.
But we but we don't fucking know, right?
We don't actually know what it means.
And they're like, oh, so we are going to go ahead and we're going to take the symbol and we'll tell you what it means.
And it's like, dude, this thing shows up on a handful of like runestones on Gotland Island very specifically, which is off the coast of, it shows up like on one Viking ship, on a couple of things in England, like it's around the joint.
And they're like, oh yeah, that's called Valknut.
And it means that I'm ready to die for Odin in battle.
And it's like, like motherfucker.
Okay.
Simplification.
Like you just you don't get to they just decided to make this up and then like with their weird white supremacist specifically a cap on they're like oh and each of the nine points has a different like powerful meaning for white people and oh this one is about hospitality and this one is about knowledge and it's like man like you were just some dorky white guy in Arizona who like is currently like wearing a hat made out of fur A big part of Viking life is farming, and I don't see your ass out there plowing, actually.
What do you mean?
He's out there farming.
He's farming YouTube every day.
He's putting in his hours as an influencer.
The last thing he's got, the very last thing, is apparently a Mjolnir.
Which is the one that everyone will know because it comes up in Thor, right?
So that's like Thor's hammer.
And it's the big, it looks like a cover-up tat because it's fully filled in with black tattoo ink and like not very well.
Yeah.
I thought it looked like a chest piece.
I referred to it as a chest piece or it looks like a pawn, you know?
But it does.
It does look less detailed and less sort of planned out.
It's a bit messy and it's very big.
None of his tattoos are in that style, kind of.
Maybe that was like his sexy Bugs Bunny.
Or it was his beautiful Tibetan luck symbol, if you know what I'm saying.
And it's like quite funny right because it's like here we go we got Thor stuff and like in his mind clearly we've got like some Odin things going on so he's like I'm the big manly man here's all the masculine things that I do and I mean what I find really ironic too is like especially with like the whole folklore right so there is this idea that maybe it's connected to Odin We also have this competing theory by the historian Welch, who wrote this book, Goddesses of the North, and she works specifically on North mythology.
And she's like, well, I don't know, man.
Triangles tend to show up in religions associated specifically with femininity, and especially in Norse things or Celtic things.
When we see triangle things, it's like with the whole maiden mother crone.
What do you mean?
He can absolutely embody the Divine Feminine.
I think it's within his right.
That's probably the least of his offenses.
I know, right?
So it's like, one of these things where you're like, what's your relationship to this thing, my man?
And like, you know, the thing of it is, it does seem like, well, okay, so this guy's got some terrible ink.
Like, we can all agree there.
Like, there's some terrible, mysterious ink.
But, like, it's really dangerous.
In particular, like, medieval history is the one that white supremacists absolutely love to pick up on.
And what the Q guys do, and what they use kind of their fake Norse mythology to do, is specifically, like, really anti-Semitic.
Like, they do the same stuff with it that Nazis did, essentially.
They're just like, oh yeah, well we're gonna have, you know, some more of that.
And they tell this story about this kind of like imagined world the way it was when it was just like only
populated by like very noble white people who were fighting all the time and everything was fine and it's like
It's allowing them to kind of like create a past which then they're also kind of like, you know saying well
This is what we're setting up for the future Yeah
and so it's really kind of incumbent upon medieval historians such as myself to be like you were fucking
making this up and this Isn't real
I mean, he is.
He is.
Absolutely.
He was up there at the rallies.
We saw him talking about the Rothschilds, you know, and kind of like doing all this pretty straightforward antisemitism.
So that doesn't surprise me.
Yeah, and it's like there's tons of stuff within the whole QAnon universe that is specifically anti-Semitic and has big throwbacks to the kind of medieval way of being anti-Semitic, which is like accusing Jewish people of blood libel, accusing Jewish people specifically of killing children.
It's like saying, actually, banking is a sin, and so you're going to do it.
And also, you're going to live just outside the city walls.
So if people come, you'll be first up.
And also, yeah, just take care of all the money stuff.
Yeah, and it's like, you know, here in England when what we did with Jewish people is that Jewish people didn't kind of live here.
The Normans brought them in specifically and were like, set up banking.
No, not like that.
And then like kicked them out, you know, like a hundred years later when they got to in debt.
So sad, but you know, we used to have the Templars and now we have to rely on the Jews for our money.
Exactly.
It's like, you know, The whole thing.
So like the whole thing, it's just a over and over there are these kind of like tropes of like whiteness and like, you know, I spent a lot of time defending the medieval period because it isn't like this all white Christian fest that everybody wants it to be.
That's really not what it is.
But at the same time, it's like they like the good stuff.
Like what they consider is like the good stuff about the medieval period.
They're like, Oh, yeah, the antisemitism love that.
Let's bring that back.
And I'm like, Well, actually, what about like the pretty Yeah, they didn't believe the king should pass any laws regarding that.
want that bit? Nope. Like, how about the part with no cops?
Do you like the part with no cops?
No.
There was never a better time in history to be bisexual than the medieval times.
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of flexibility there. There's a lot of, you know, it's all
Sotheby, baby. So, you know, there's no such thing as...
Yeah, they didn't believe the king should pass any laws regarding that.
Yeah.
They mostly just made pamphlets accusing him of doing it anyways.
I mean...
They also just love kings.
They just want to be ruled by a king.
I think that there's...
Yeah, that's...
Well, that's...
That's...
Yeah, for sure.
The old gods and stuff.
But it seems to me like he's gonna get some of these gods in a fight or something.
Like Odin is gonna be pissed off at Thor, because it's like this guy's kind of praying
at two altars.
Yeah.
I'm uncomfortable with what he's doing here.
Yeah, it's really weird.
Come on, man.
Like, from a religious standpoint, too, it's all like, how are you gonna have tattoos to
like these competing gods?
It's like, I'm...
You...
Surely, you gotta pick and stick, right?
Like, this is not like...
You can't just be...
Like, he's just glory hunting.
He's not like someone in LA trying to pick a basketball team or something.
He's just like, whoever.
I don't know.
Who's doing better right now?
What's incredible is that his body and this specific getup, and I mean, he does stuff
like he singes the side of his sign.
Like he's 100% making a costume.
He's very aware of that.
That language is...
It's not like he's trying to fake that.
Like he'll show you the singed sign and everyone knows it's a singed sign that he wrote, Q
sent me on.
But also, he's appearing everywhere.
I don't know how he gets money for his travel.
Or how that's working for him, but he's been on the East and West Coast consistently.
I've seen him in Washington, in California.
He was at every fucking thing possible in his home state of Arizona.
Yeah, and that's the thing.
It's very interesting to me, too, that there's this whole, like, shaman thing.
Like, the shaman element is also interesting.
You know, seeing yourself as kind of like this Norse weird representative, it is, you
know, particularly worrying that they want to like dip back into this thing that they've
completely managed to.
They've managed to divorce it from the actual history, but they'll just take like just enough
to pretend that this is real.
And so, yeah, I mean, that's also wonder, like, how different is this guy in the kind
of American psyche than, let's say, like the naked cowboy?
Like, he's just a kind of—it's just a figure or some sort of ornament.
Like, it's just a visual thing, right, in a weird way.
Thank you so much for helping us figure out some of this symbology and kind of framing it in historical terms.
Not so surprising that he's both confused and slightly, you know, and kind of broadly anti-Semitic.
and obsessed with competing ideologies that don't even make sense together.
Well, and Julian, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you interviewed him at the AZQ rally,
I remember that he had said that he had gotten into shamanism and spirituality
before he had gotten into QAnon.
That preceded, which I always think is weird.
His name on YouTube was Starseed Academy.
Oh no.
So that's his original shit is like fucking aliens.
He has connected.
He is kind of amazing in the way that His body is like a weird map for like where America is right now like no one knows what it means but we faintly recognize it from Marvel movies or whatever but but it's also he's become a nexus for all these beliefs like he seems to believe in everything all at once and and watching him speak to a nice Christian blonde woman was one of the most fascinating things ever.
After she was like, well, do you do you believe in Christ though?
And like he had an app, you know, very well.
Hold on Here's what I think about like figure and then he'll talk to you about like the Anunnaki and then he'll go but it's just like a lot of cool stuff Yeah, he's like he's like the preliminary stages of like an Ubisoft game Actually, he's the human embodiment of the entire plot of Assassin's Creed.
It makes no fucking sense!
What are you talking about?!
Well, thanks so much for joining us, Eleanor.
We're gonna do an episode together soon.
Yes, this was fascinating.
I completely regret all of my education choices and wish that I had in fact become a medieval historian because I wish I possessed the kind of knowledge.
You'd be so fucking rich, brother.
Oh man, I love this shit.
Medieval historians are fucking...
They always have two-story mansions and so much cocaine.
I mean, I write fake medieval historian fanfic, minus the anti-semitism and shit.
It'd be cool if I actually had some real knowledge, so it's great to have you on.
Looking forward to working together again.
Yeah, thanks so much for letting me yell, because I was really pissed off.
Hell yeah.
Where can people find you online?
I know you're on Twitter.
Yes, I'm on Twitter at goingmedieval.
I've got a blog where I yell about this shit randomly, which is going-medieval.com because some bastard has the regular goingmedieval.com and they're just sitting on it not using it.
Incredible.
We will slaughter him and feed his brains to the gods.
It's definitely going to be a porn website.
Yeah, 100% at any moment.
The Q Shaman will be the main buck in that...
I've definitely covered Q before there and I also hit a lot of other, you know, pop culture stuff.
So, you know, you want to learn about medieval history, I can hook you up with that.
That's all.
Go follow her and you'll be hearing from Eleanor again soon.
Thanks so much, guys.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
If you want to go support us on Patreon, that's patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous.
You can pay five bucks a month and get access to all of our Premium episodes, there's one coming out a week alongside the free one, and we have an archive of over 100 of them.
You can also go to our website, QAnonAnonymous.com, for anything else you're looking for.
Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's fact.
And now, today's Auto-Q.
Q tells us stuff in all of its lies, is what I'm saying.
You keep, you keep interrupting me.
Because you're lying!
Because you're full of shit!
That's why!
Because every goddamn thing out of your people's mouths doesn't come true!
And it's always, oh there's energy, oh now we're done with Trump!
You said he was the messiah!
You said he was invincible!
You said it was all over!
Then we're all going to Gitmo now!
Oh, he's part of a larger thing of Q!
I will not suffer your Q people after this!
I knew what you were day one!
I know what you are now!
And I'm sick of it!
I'm sick of all these witches and warlocks and pumpkin popsums and everything!
