Donald Trump “re-truths” a ludicrous claim about the former President, while being attacked by former bestie Elon Musk. Travis explores historical body doubles that got away with it… kind of. Jake wonders if movies are to blame.
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, episode 327, Body Doubles.
As always, we are your hosts, Travis View, Julian Field, and Jake Rokotansky.
Pee-pee, poo-poo.
Elon Musk is doing pee-pee on himself from taking too much ketamine and has gotten into a big fight with Donald Trump, who, while he was doing poo-poo, re-truthed.
A very questionable QAnon-flavored post about body doubles.
So here we are, once again, trying to be mature and failing about a topic that has no inherent maturity in a country where everything is melting and everything has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
We are in the hollow ghost world.
We are in the aftermath of a world that has already ended.
I, of course, am Jake Rokitansky, your favorite podcast host.
Actually, that's not, I'm just reading on my phone.
Nope, it's Julian Field.
That's disappointing to me, Jake Rokitansky.
Well, we haven't sorted out some of the memory issues with the clones yet, so you'll have to forgive Jake here.
He's stumbling a little bit, laughing maniacally in Julian.
Shut up, Travis.
So, we're going to be covering a series of things.
The tiff between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
The body double post that Trump made.
And then we'll be looking at what that account has been posting.
Guess what?
It's insane.
And then we are also going to be covering some historic body doubles.
One of which got away with being an actual fake guy for about 11 months.
Yeah.
And got a lot from it.
And then the other one, an accusation that a pope was just not himself, which involves the same kind of baking that Jake and I once partook on Jeffrey Epstein's nose.
Do they know that we did that?
Did we mention that we did it on an episode, or is that being revealed for the first time?
If we haven't already talked about it, I don't want people to know.
Not only did we talk about it, but we've brought it up before.
That was a heated time.
First of all, Travis, stop talking like you're Jake.
This is trouble.
And Jake, did we talk about that?
No!
Wait, Travis has to answer.
I have a couple family friends who, like, have tried to listen to this podcast, and they told their family members, they were like, I couldn't even tell which one was Jake talking!
So, I think we're already here, and if those family friends are still listening, now we've really gussed them.
Fuck yeah, Travis does not want to pretend to be Jake.
He doesn't like the bit.
He's already put his head in his hands.
I think part of what makes this show so great is Travis hating the bit.
Yeah, that's true.
That's so true.
But yeah, first of all, you know, before we kind of start this off, I just want to say that I am finally getting my green card.
So I just want to say that I am now a Republican.
I believe in QAnon.
I believe in Flat Earth, the reptilian conspiracy theory.
And also, now that I am a permanent resident, I would just like to say that I want to take a gun and s***.
The president of the United States.
This is an actionable threat.
And that's all bleeped.
So, listener, you can use your imagination who Julian threatened violently, and you probably already know who it is.
My real name is Julian Peverelli.
I have a green card.
I support Palestine.
I think Israel is very bad.
And also, I want to kill the f*** with a g***.
All right.
Alright, what are we gonna do with this guy?
What are we gonna do?
Six months into the year, this guy's broken like a fucking top.
Alright, Jake, you can take your first segment here.
Okay.
Okay, gotcha.
Alright.
So, I mean, we gotta talk about this, because this happened a few hours before we recorded.
So, in the week since Elon Musk formally stepped down as head of President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the alliance between the two men has collapsed into a public feud.
Four and a half months.
You know what?
This is a big dubs for the libs.
They must all be very excited.
Well, they, I mean, they orchestrated this.
This is one of the few, you know, this is one of the few instances where tweeting incessantly that these two were going to have a falling out and just...
I mean, this is spectacular.
I mean, it's not just a feud.
I mean, you have Elon Musk saying that Trump will not release the Epstein files because he's in them.
We are going to have a whole new political wing of Epstein truthers now.
But from the other perspective...
I think Jake is going to cover this in his, in his segment.
Um, but I will say that, Julian, not me, but Julian relates a lot to taking too much ketamine and pissing down your legs.
And also, I would like to say that Donald Trump has done two good things, one of which is taking, or at least threatening to take away, the contracts of one Elon Musk.
The second good thing he did was pissing off all of capital by doing the dumbest tariffs ever and basically fucking up free market capitalism, which was his only thing.
Just really quick.
Sorry, Travis.
Yeah, go ahead, Travis.
Sorry, Jake.
Sorry, Jake.
I was at a horror convention over the weekend.
A horror convention?
A horror.
Oh, yeah.
You'd really want to pronounce those two parts.
And I was in the market for a 12-inch Ghostbuster doll.
I've been looking for them.
They're hard to find.
They get marked up online.
And one of the vendors there had a 12-inch race dance figure.
And it ended, and I tried to use my, like, American picker's knowledge to negotiate with him, and I was using all the catchphrases, like, I was trying to bundle, I was trying to do all this stuff.
Even the guy was like, oh, a negotiator.
And I was like, well...
And so he couldn't, he was unable to cut me a deal because he had to account for the tariffs.
So first they came for my video games, now they're coming for my dolls.
Okay.
Well, does the 12-inch Ray Stance figurine have a button that makes it vibrate?
No, but you can make the pack light up.
Okay.
Good enough.
But no, there's no vibration in it.
But real cloth, real cloth jumpsuit, I mean, it's really quite impressive.
Yeah, well-designed.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay.
You sound afraid.
What's going on?
I forgot who I am in the body double joke.
See, this is why I oppose it.
I'm actually confusing myself.
It would collapse sooner or later.
This bit is bad for everybody's mental health.
Okay, we're back.
The bit is over.
From now on, we are ourselves against.
We're who we are.
Travis, continue now with the segment that we've ruined by saying all the parts of an event.
Mm-hmm.
So the rift all started with Elon criticizing Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which Elon objects to because it doesn't ratify Doge's supposed savings and it will continue to balloon the deficit.
So this objection caused Trump to shoot back.
Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here.
Better than you people.
He knew everything about it.
He had no problem with it.
All of a sudden, he had a problem.
And he only developed the problem when he found out that we're going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that's billions and billions of dollars.
And it really is unfair.
We want to have cars of all types.
Electric, we want to have electric, but we want to have gasoline, combustion.
We want to have different.
We want to have hybrids.
We want to have all.
We want to be able to sell everything.
And when that was cut, and Congress wanted to cut it, He became a little bit different, and I can understand that, but he knew every aspect of this bill.
He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left.
And if you saw the statements he made about me, which I'm sure you can get very easily, it's very fresh on tape, he said the most beautiful things about me.
And he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next.
But I'm very disappointed in Elon.
I've helped Elon a lot.
Okay, new Trump, absolute classic.
Gasoline.
We've got a couple classics in here.
We've got gasoline, and then we've also got, we want to sell different, we want to sell hybrid, we want to sell a little bit of everything.
I like different, I like hybrid, a little bit of everything.
Like, is Trump just talking as if he were like a rat king composed of all the corporations in America?
I feel like he's got one of those plastic rings on the back of him, and somebody is sticking their finger in, pulling the cord out, and then def- Gasoline.
Gasoline.
We've got to talk to Immortan Joe, who's a pretty good guy.
Immortan Joe controls all the gasoline.
Well, actually, no.
No, no.
I've got the lore wrong.
It gets cut out.
It gets cut out.
I'm cutting this.
I know.
So after Trump responded to Elon's objections to the bill, Musk really upped the ante with this tweet.
Time to drop the really big bomb.
That real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
That is the real reason they haven't been made public.
Have a nice day, DJT.
God, he's such a catty bitch.
I mean, they both are, but it's like everyone fucking knew that already.
I mean, if you pay any attention to the Epstein stuff, you know that he had multiple numbers for both Donald Trump and, like, Ivanka, right?
It's devastating because this is a right-wing hero now.
You know, somebody who is in the camp who's cool.
We've got him on our team.
We agree with everything he says.
And now it's like, and?
Oh, no.
Like, ah, you couldn't plan it better if this were, like, some sort of, like, PR situation.
which, you know, in a free market, you can fucking suck it.
But, you know, of course, the man doesn't care about anything.
I mean, he's not even a good representative.
Right.
That's true.
That's true.
I guess I feel like, oh, but isn't that going to be uncomfortable when he then has to talk to Trump about being like, I accused you of being a pedophile on Twitter or I accused you of being in the Epstein files.
And then I'm like, well, I guess Elon is like much richer than Trump is.
I guess if I'm Elon, if I'm putting myself into his mind and his – I would be like, well, Trump's like nothing to me.
Like, I'm way richer than this guy.
Interesting body?
Why did you say that?
And also, Travis made the weirdest face when you said his interesting body.
Travis, what's going on in your mind right now?
I don't know.
I'm not interested in his body, I'll say.
It doesn't interest me.
Okay, well, that's really close-minded of you.
Yeah, I just think that his body kind of looks like a genie lamp, and if you were to rub it in the right way, some kind of spirit would exit from it.
I would prefer not to rub it, but I am interested in it.
But you are interested in the spirit exiting from it?
Would you say, would you say, without bleep?
I'm interested in, um, using a good to shoot him in the head and then dissecting his body on an open table.
Dude, this motherfucker just got his green card.
Alright, let's, Travis, please.
So, after, you know, this is also, I think, really funny.
So, after, essentially, that, uh, Elon accused Trump of being a pedophile and covering him up, which is, you know, entirely plausible.
This is really Elon's apparently go-to move.
He's done this before when he's felt slighted.
just accuse people of being a pedophile.
This one has a little bit more teeth, though, because of Trump's associations with Epstein.
And so Trump shot back by threatening to end Elon's government contracts.
God, this is where I think I disagree with you, Jake.
I think that Elon is actually less powerful than Trump because Trump can gut what Elon relies on, which is no regulation.
So he could like reinstall regulation that specifically fucks over Elon Musk.
And he could also take away all his subsidies and without his subsidies.
This could be one good thing that Trump does.
If their feud bubbles over into all of Elon's subsidies getting cut and effectively gutting all of his—and hopefully his buddies, too.
You know, everybody in this sort of privatized military space, place.
That would be real.
And we'd owe it to the libs.
We would owe it to I don't think we would owe it to anyone.
We would owe it to them because they made this happen.
I think that actually that Twitter is the source code for our reality.
And if you post...
And post something enough, you can effectively shape reality like this massive feud between Elon and Trump.
We have spent hundreds and hundreds of episodes proving that posting isn't politics.
But now you're with the libs.
I'm going to give this one to them.
It happened exactly as they said.
You just said that like a sports guy who's been following the game.
I mean, I don't really feel smug about this because it's a pathetic situation when you have so little power and influence.
The best you can hope for is that the people who do have power hate each other and fight each other and they degrade their level of power because of that.
I mean, that's not a win in my book.
No, no.
But it is a win.
It is a win for what little we have.
Yeah, plus your book is boring.
So Trump fired back at Elon saying this.
The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts.
Yes, correct.
Why did you even let him do Doge?
Actually, fuck it.
If Doge leads to this, maybe Doge was good.
I mean, I think it's interesting that, like, he's accused of being a pedophile, and then in retaliation, Trump does, like, I mean, this probably, like, he doesn't care about what he's called by Elon Musk so much.
It's like, in retaliation, he's going to cut Musk off from the government teat, you know?
Which is, like, much more harmful to Musk than being accused of being associated with Epstein is for Trump.
I mean, yes.
It's like, you don't just get to call the president a pedophile and expect the government to keep, like, paying for your entire fucking wealth.
Well, yeah, and Elon can't necessarily—like, Trump can be like, Epstein, well, I knew him very little, and I thought he was—we had no idea that he was doing such horrible things.
Just slain, I wish her well.
But Elon can't be like, I had no idea the government was doing any of this stuff, paying me these subsidiaries.
It doesn't mean anything will continue as normal.
Like, Elon can't kind of, like, piff away, you know, what Trump is threatening, where I do think that Trump can piff away what— Elon is trying to sort of get him.
I mean, this is how it's always been.
I mean, ever since Trump first came on the scene politically, people, they had horrible audio of him saying horrible things on tape.
He had done horrible things already by the time he had become president.
People didn't care.
You know, his supporters didn't care.
Man, there were so many things I wanted to put a pin in there.
First of all, Elon speaking in Trump's voice.
Second, subsidiaries.
And the third is piffing.
What about subs?
What did I say?
Nothing.
What about piffing?
Piffing.
You know, piffing.
Travis, do you know about this?
Piffing?
I don't.
You say it as you kind of wave your hand sharply away from your...
It's like, he's like the buzzing of flies to me.
You know what?
I probably made a mistake because every time I try to challenge you on something like this, like a hundred people write in and go, oh yeah, piffing is obviously a thing.
Obviously.
You haven't heard of piff in subsidiaries?
Yeah, we're piffing around.
What's the real word?
Just so I know for next time.
Subsidies.
Subsidies.
That's what I said.
Fuck you.
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
Too late.
It's too late.
It's too late.
We're taking away your money.
We're taking away your dignity.
You're going to be naked in front of the whole country.
And you've got an interesting body.
Very interesting.
I'm curious about your body.
I want to pour gasoline all over your body.
QAnon promoter X-22 Report actually tried to claim that this rift was actually all part of the plan.
Oh, sure, yeah.
Dude, these guys are always opening the curtains.
Is there going to be a show or not?
Because for me, from my perspective, you have a bunch of people sitting down.
And the curtains are opening and then closing again.
Then opening and then closing again.
And nobody's coming out on stage.
Popcorn is being handed out and taken away.
Yeah, like everybody has like completely OD'd on popcorn.
They're rolling around in the aisles.
Now I want to talk about other sort of conspiracy theories that Trump has been promoting recently.
Shortly after 10 p.m. on the evening of May 31st, President Trump was feeling a little restless, it seems like.
And so he did what he usually does.
He took to social media to post and repost messages on Truth Social.
In the midst of retruthing posts, praising his steal tariff policy, he made an announcement that he was withdrawing his nominee for the head of NASA.
He reposted a video by Fox News host Mark Levin.
He also posted an endorsement for a new book by playwright David Mamet.
Amidst all this, he boosted a conspiracy theory.
Now, as we've covered here before, this is a pretty mundane occurrence.
Trump boosting a wild conspiracy theory on true social is a very dog-bites-man story, or, as the kids today say, a fork found in kitchen story.
Okay.
Awesome that the kids are saying that.
Can we just go back for one second to, he's promoting David Mamet?
What is happening?
I love that he goes back to being a kind of New York Queen impresario type guy.
Is Mamet in any way a MAGA guy?
Yeah, he's always been kind of a right-wing guy.
Okay, but full MAGA, really?
Yeah.
He writes some good plays.
Okay.
Mamet.
David Mamet.
But this time, the conspiracy theory that Trump amplified startled some people because it seems to promote ideas from the realm of, like, science fiction as opposed to merely wild speculation.
So the post, which was from true social user LLIJ, reads this.
There is no hashtag Joe Biden executed in 2020.
Hashtag Biden clones doubles and robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see.
Hashtag Democrats don't know the difference.
God, it's written so poorly that it has like a little fucking, a little closing of brackets before hashtag Democrats for no reason.
And then beneath the truth post social, there are probably 50 hashtags, one of which is hashtag mom, hashtag moms, hashtag grandparents.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
So many.
Tags and hashtags is crazy.
Oh my god, wow.
Hashtag Jews, at evangelicals, at Life News.
I deleted my Twitter account for reasons that I cannot mention, but maybe I'll be going to this platform.
This one seems to be doing great.
Hashtag black women for Trump, hashtag black pastors.
They are using, you know, a lot of other social media sites have given up hashtags.
They're not necessary anymore.
But I like the truth social.
You actually, you have to.
If you don't include at least 15 hashtags in your post, you kind of get shadow banned and sort of pushed to the bottom.
The more hashtags you have on there, it seems like the more visible, even to the point of the president re-truthing what you have.
I'm sure that Trump was searching for hashtag grandparents and came across this gem.
Favorite series of hashtags in this insanely long list is students, school, teacher, money, education, college, business, farmers, and then truth social, black men, black women, shopping, healthcare, law.
Don't forget, hashtag God, hashtag Jesus, hashtag Jesus Christ.
So, I mean...
And hashtag sports is in there for some reason.
I don't...
Is this...
Is this...
I don't...
What?
Oh man, this rules actually.
We gotta go to this.
Fuck Blue Sky and fuck Twitter.
This is the real shit.
And then, Travis, I see that there's a quoted another post.
Yeah.
So what has not been reported elsewhere about this post when sort of like news agencies talk about it is that the post that Trump re-truth was actually quote posting another post and that came from the truth social group called Q. Okay.
And it's a Babylon Bee thing?
Yes, right.
So yes, specifically it was a Babylon Bee headline that was being reposted.
And someone posted in this Q group, Babylon Bee, Biden family worried they may be running out of time to exploit Joe Biden's health.
So there's like a conservative right-leaning kind of like onion.
First of all, confusing and also not funny.
And I'm, you know, it's not like, oh, I'm offended by what they said.
No, I just don't really get it.
Firstly, that Biden recently announced that he was diagnosed with a prostate cancer that spread to his bones.
Yeah, I'm aware, Travis.
I'm aware.
And then secondly, that Biden in the last year of his presidency suffered from very serious and noticeable physical and mental declines, which was effectively managed and covered up by people around him.
So the headline here is basically accusing Biden's family of merely exploiting Joe Biden like, you know, sort of like Weekend at Bernie style.
I was curious what other posts that this poster had made on their true social account.
And just to see what kind of people are being elevated and amplified by the president.
And it appears that this individual posts like some of the most deranged conspiracy theories we've ever talked about.
For example, one post from this individual claims that Obama was busted for trafficking andrenochrome.
Obama named an adrenochrome trafficking ring.
Official docs expose government-level horror.
The veil is ripped off.
The lies are dead.
Obama's fingerprints are all over federal adrenochrome trafficking ops.
Oh, okay, so...
So he's absolutely in outer space.
Believes the craziest shit, and then also, they've been caught, and it's all happening.
Just, there's no limit.
There's another post which promotes belief in Gassara.
So this is a variation of the, like the Nasara online cult which believes that there is a secret law will soon fix the entire financial system and make everyone rich.
The world is about to witness the birth of a new, fair, and gold-backed financial system under Gasara.
The quantum internet is a new infrastructure immune to hacking censorship.
Military units are now overseeing the logistics, security, and data coordination of the revaluation rollout.
Secure transport of physical currency, protection of financial institutions, and quantum-level fraud prevention systems are already in motion.
This feels like the opening to an Indiana Jones movie where the military is transporting an ark filled with gold.
Yeah, you know, I can't imagine it would be like to read this person's feed and just believe all of it.
Oh man, Obama got busted, and I'm about to be rich.
Oh man, this is only good news.
Is this just like a new iteration of real chief police?
Yeah.
I mean, it sounds like what this person does a lot, it seems like they find conspiracy theories from Telegram, and they kind of repost it.
But they sort of favor towards the craziest shit, like real chief police.
The post continues.
The old system is disintegrating as banks collapse.
Payment giants are stripped of power, and corrupt financial elites are being dragged to military tribunals at Gitmo.
Executives are being removed, their wealth seized, their crimes archived as evidence for tribunals that are already underway.
Well, the last sentence is pretty cool.
This account actually has posted about the clone theory since he was amplified by Trump.
And some other posts offer more details, like this one.
Joe Biden's clone just got caught walking just fine.
*Loud laugh*
Despite, quote, the real Biden supposedly being half dead.
The mask is slipping.
The script is failing.
The curtain is being yanked down.
Clones.
Doubles.
Synthetics.
Transgender actors.
Okay.
Yeah.
Holographic puppets.
It's like everything.
They're like, it's the Coachella Tupac technology, but also gay, but also robots, but also like a spiritual clone.
Like, he wants to just cover every single base so that somebody's like, excuse me, I don't think that's a robot.
I think that that's a lookalike.
He's like, yeah, of course, we talked to Nikola Tesla and had him build a one-of-a-kind machine for us.
Sounds like Chief Police just watched Euphoria.
They're not hiding it anymore because the world's too sedated to fight back.
You've been watching a puppet show, not a government.
Start connecting the dots.
Why does Biden's gate change week to week?
Why does Kamala sound different each time she speaks?
Why was Justin Trudeau called, quote, a bad actor on the Ottawa Sun front page?
Because they are not the originals.
They're replacements.
Some tried, sentenced, and executed.
Others vanished in Gitmo black sites.
Now, you might ask.
No, that's Travis's line?
Oh, whoops.
Sorry.
Dude, this is really the good shit.
This is the shit I miss, man.
This is Chief Police stuff.
God, I miss him.
And if you don't know who that is, then thank you for listening to our podcast relatively recently.
Now, you might ask, like, what does this person mean by clones?
Well, fortunately, the post goes on to explain more precisely.
Oh, good.
Hell yes.
Hell yes.
Okay.
Types of clones being used.
Lab-grown clones, fully genetically replicated from the original.
Synthetic flesh puppets.
Okay.
Constructed from animal tissue, artificial, controlled.
Hmm.
Well, if I mean...
But it's constructed from animal tissue.
Wouldn't that be organics and not synthetic?
Yeah, I don't know.
There's a lot going on here.
Organic robodoids.
Biotech hybrids indistinguishable from humans.
So I guess that's like your average cyberpunk character, like a little bit human, a little bit machine.
Doubles.
Lookalikes.
Hired or manufactured to mimic real figures.
CGI plus holographic creations.
Full 3D illusions used in live appearances.
It's like, haven't these people been to like a movie recently?
Like we kind of special effects.
This is the cause of too many movies.
This is when all the movies are just jammed together in your brain.
But like, has anybody been to a movie recently?
Either of you guys?
And the special effects, you were like, this is so good that I can't distinguish it from reality.
Me personally, I feel like VFX are more or less the same looking now as they were when Jurassic Park first came out.
Okay, you must be getting older faster than me because it looks like shit to me.
Yeah, that's what I think.
I think it looks like wax, it looks bad, you know.
I guess all this to say Jurassic Park probably looked better than a lot of the stuff that comes out nowadays.
And so it's like, well, you've seen what movies are capable of.
Do you also believe that the government has, like, one of the best directors?
Like, James Cameron secretly working for the government to create, like, a Joe Biden VFX.
Like, it just doesn't feel believable to me that one could imagine special effects being so good that you could mimic an entire personality and human being.
I like that Jake just chooses to focus on CGI at the end, even though it's fucking synthetic flesh puppets and organic robotoids was before.
He's like, let me debunk this final one.
Using movies I like.
I was just saying, like, you know, a synthetic flesh puppet.
Like, I don't really have a comparison in my brain of what that is.
I mean, a synthetic flesh puppet is literally...
Well, I don't have one of those.
So, like, you know, but if somebody says VFX, I'm like, well, I've seen a lot of visual effects, and, like, I don't really think we've got the tech to pull off a whole, you know, pre-vis Biden.
Could one of our, like, listeners send Jake a fleshlight?
No, no, I don't want it.
I don't want that.
And make sure you use it before you send it.
I don't need, like, a disembodied pussy, like, floating around.
Oh, dear God.
Like, just floating around, just like a torso to fuck, like, ah, feeling...
I guess I'm masturbation shaming.
We're going to cut this out.
I'm the ghost of pussy's past.
We'll cut this out.
No, we won't.
This story made me curious.
Has there ever been a real instance in which an imposter or a fake ruled as if they were a legitimate leader and it fooled the people they were ruling?
And there is one instance from 17th century Russia during a chaotic period called the Time of Troubles.
So apparently what happens is that when Tsar Fyodor I died without a male heir in 1598, it ended the 700-year-old Rurik dynasty.
The only other possible heir at the time was the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, Dmitry Ivanovich, but he had unfortunately died a few years earlier at the age of eight.
A national assembly responded by electing Fyodor's brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, as the new czar, but many in the country still thought that he was illegitimate.
Some believe that Boris was responsible for murdering the young Dmitry Ivanovich, and others believe that he merely attempted to murder the young heir to the throne, but murdered a different boy instead.
This dissatisfaction allowed a defrocked monk to publicly claim in manifestos that he was actually the grown Dimitri.
And by all appearances, he actually believed it, which I guess would make it easier to get other people to believe it.
While living in Lithuania and Poland, he got other people to get on board with this belief, including Polish nobles who knew he was a fraud but believed that they could use this claimant to the throne in order to influence Russia.
So, like, you know, sort of like the ruling class using insane people to destabilize countries, you know, this is a long-standing tradition.
This support allowed the pretender to build up a small army of about 1,500 men who crossed into Russia with the goal of overthrowing the Russian crown.
They suffered several defeats, but then the man historians call False Dmitry I caught a break that allowed him to actually rule as Tsar of Russia.
So this is a passage from A History of Russia published by Oxford University Press.
False Dmitry probably owed his victory to a stroke of luck.
In April 1605, when the military odds against the pretender appeared overwhelming, Boris Godunov suddenly died.
Shortly after his death, his commander, Fedor Bazmanov, went over to False Dmitri's side.
Boris Godunov's wife and his young son and successor, Feodor, were deposed and murdered in Moscow, and on June 20th, 1605, False Dmitri entered the capital in triumph.
The common people rejoiced at what they believed to be the miraculous return of the true Tsar to ascend his ancestral throne.
In July, 1605, Prince Dmitri's mother, who had become a nun under the name of Martha, was brought to identify her alleged long-lost child.
In the course of a tender meeting, she proclaimed him her own.
Followers of false Dmitri succeeded the supporters of Godunov around the throne.
A Greek cleric, Ignatius, who had been among the first to side with the pretender, replaced Boris Godunov's friend as patriarch.
I mean, if you can convince the mom, I feel like, yeah, you're good to go.
I mean, that must have probably cinched it, right?
It's like, well, no, man.
It's like, even his mom says that he's the real one years later.
So he ruled for about 11 months before he was deposed and killed in the violent uprising.
It was a rough time.
And then the new government, according to A History of Russia, made efforts to tarnish the allure of this imposter.
The government tried its best to convince the people that false Dimitri had been an imposter who had won the throne by magic and had forced the nun Martha and others to recognize him as the authentic prince.
The body of false Dimitri was exposed in Red Square and then burned.
Legend has it that ashes were fired from a cannon in the direction of Poland.
The ultimate disrespect.
Oh, dude.
That's so fucking good.
I love that.
I can't believe he actually did it, but, like, is that a nice trade-off?
You're like, eight months of, like, being the king, but then, like, horribly murdered in an uprising.
I mean, probably.
You're like a defrocked priest.
Your life probably sucks.
He has 11 months to just get the most amount of pussy possible.
And then, yeah.
So, yeah, this was a crazy time.
And then it was followed by more people who claimed to be the young Dimitri, called the false Dimitri II, the false Dimitri III.
Third by historians.
Two other guys!
But they were less successful.
They didn't actually rule like False Demetri I did.
Oh, that's good, yeah.
You want the body doubles to be stopped early.
They're all vying to be like the children of one of the worst people of all time.
They're like, no, no, it's me!
It's me!
People are saying that Jake is False Julian.
And that Travis is False Bill Nye.
And what's Julian?
False Straight.
Well, that I could have told ya.
There's also a pretty significant body double conspiracy theory that emerged in Catholic circles in the 1970s.
Some people, mostly conservative Catholics who didn't like even minor reforms, claimed that an imposter had replaced Pope Paul VI, an American Catholic seer named Veronica Lukin of Bayside, New York.
Claimed to receive messages from the Virgin Mary warning that, quote, Pope Paul VI had been kidnapped in 1972 and replaced with a liberal imposter.
This guy doesn't even molest children.
According to the conspiracy book Broken Cross by Pierce Compton, this even led one lay Catholic to hiring a Pinkerton detective to get to the bottom of the matter.
And no, Jake, this has nothing to do with Weezer.
I said nothing.
One of the agency's detectives was sent in 1973 to Rome, and he returned with a story that dwarfed all other speculations, however sensational.
He had determined that there were two popes living in the Vatican, Paul VI, and an imposter who had been made to resemble Montini with the aid of plastic surgery.
Several such operations were necessary, and when color photographs of the false pope were sent to interested circles in Munich, where the impostor is still receiving concentrated study, there were certain noticeable differences in the two sets of features that could not be overcome.
Jake, are you playing...
He took out a guitar somehow.
He has it next to his seat.
This is really fucking out of hand.
Travis, please continue.
So, this resulted in perhaps one of the earliest examples of earlobe analysis in determining who is a clone and who is not.
I thought this was an internet phenomenon, but it predates the internet.
Absolutely.
This is like as soon as photos were.
Yeah, like, you can't really do it on, like, portraits as well, like a painted portrait.
You need reliable photographs.
So, yeah, this is like a staple of people who believe in bodily double conspiracy theories.
Now, here's how this book, which again, believes in the conspiracy theory, goes on to explain it.
But it is differences in the shape and formation of the ears that present the greatest difficulty to those who doubt the existence of an imposter.
Such differences are unique, individual, and they are treated the same as fingerprints in courts of law.
Any comparison of the lobes and build of the ears, as revealed by photographs, becomes not a little impressive.
You have to remember, this is around the time we...
We got some MKUltra going.
Scientology is born.
A lot of really shitty New Age stuff is born.
I mean, this is just, like, a side melt for the main melted dish.
Yeah, it seems like this is the sort of, like, I guess, yeah, a side effect of the more general Cold War paranoia, which was taking over.
Chariots of the gods, like, yeah, you name it.
It was also claimed that when priests performed an exorcism of a woman in Switzerland in 1977, the demon, speaking through the possessed woman, claimed that the Pope was a double.
And this is what the demon allegedly said.
You must say in the name of God that there is a double in Rome.
He has a face which is a little different from that of the true Pope.
His eyes are not so deep-set as the latter's.
The true pope is feeble and sickly.
His eyes are blue.
Those of the false one are green.
The false pope has studied theology.
He is well organized.
He is a good actor.
He is not the only guilty one.
The others who set him up carry the greatest responsibility.
Now, a little comment here on the logic of this.
The demon would probably be against the Pope, so why would he try to debunk the false Pope?
Wouldn't he want the false Pope to reign?
Instead, he's, like, fucking busting him up, he's saying he's well-organized, theology, you know?
That's a good point.
From a demon's perspective, this doesn't make any sense.
And I know because I am one.
One book written at the time even claimed that a voice analysis proved that the supposed Well, they had to do it on vinyl, so the kind of warm crackling makes it hard.
Eventually, the Pope died.
Catholic authorities denounced the conspiracy theories, and most people have forgotten about it.
And now it only survives as laying the groundwork for the beliefs of the most melted people online.
It only survives as fodder for a podcast.
Yeah, even the Biden clone people aren't pointing out these historical citations.
You would think maybe they would want to reach back and provide a little bit of – Yeah.
Yeah, us humans, we want to think that somebody is different than they are.
Go on.
What was that, Teddy?
That's right, Teddy.
Julian's being a little bit mean?
That's right, Teddy.
Your dad didn't know what to do for his segment, so he's just going to talk about movies he likes.
No, that's not true.
Drew is all very plant, wasn't it, Teddy?
Yeah, Teddy goes...
Teddy has spoken.
Unless that's a Teddy clone.
Teddy's looking at me, and he's saying, no, Dad was trying to do something a little bit more editorial and talk about fiction in the water, providing the means and narratives by which conspiracy theories can thrive.
So that's what my segment is.
Okay, that's what Teddy said, okay?
All right.
Teddy said it, okay?
Teddy wrote the segment and he...
He's 14 years old and a great author, great writer.
He does all my work for me.
What is happening?
First, I gotta say, though, before we move into my piece, that it is incredibly alarming to me that Donald Trump retweeted, excuse me, re-truthed a post claiming that Joe Biden passed away some time ago.
Because to me, it can only mean a handful of things.
One, he's not really paying attention to the things that he reposts.
Two, he might believe it himself.
Three, he thinks it's funny and is posting it to stir up some sort of fuss.
And no matter which reason you pick, it's all bad.
But he's been doing this hundreds of times for QAnon shit.
I know, but to go as far as to be like Joe Biden, I mean, is this the first time that Trump has reached a...
Well, but has he said that, like, a major politician is dead?
Like, I don't think he – like, he didn't really get on – I believe he did the body double thing.
Sorry.
Sorry to make you realize everything has always been bad.
Either way...
You know, of course, one of the most popular beliefs within QAnon was, you know, the idea that Hillary Clinton had been replaced with a body double, and while they hoped for public executions within the storied grounds of Guantanamo Bay, many decided that Senator John McCain had been secretly put to death for treason behind the scenes.
The moment that I saw that former President Biden had been diagnosed with cancer, I rolled my eyes and knew in my soul that pilled people online would claim he had been secretly executed.
And anyone we saw from this point on was a clone or a double.
And since I interpret reality primarily through movies, books, and television shows, I was curious to see how pervasive this narrative was in the content us common people have been consuming over the last half century or so.
You know, Travis was kind of looking into other areas of our history where the idea of a double or a swap was embraced by the public.
But where had they gotten the idea that such a thing was even possible?
Well, as it turns out, human beings tend to be somewhat paranoid and untrustworthy creatures, especially when it comes to people with more money and power than them.
We're also obsessed with identity.
Who am I?
Who are they?
Why are we?
As a young boy, I was introduced to this concept via the Mickey Mouse special.
Prince and the Pauper, which of course is based on Mark Twain's first attempt at historical fiction, published in Canada in 1881 and then the next year in the United States.
In Twain's original story, Edward Tudor willingly switches places with the poor Tom Cantor after Edward notices the pair's identical features right as his guards are beating Tom to a pulp outside of the castle gates.
I feel like this story has been done again and again many times over, and although popular additions to the genre like Trading Places, the classic Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy movie, I was more specifically interested in body doubles, clones, drones, and identity swapping.
I'm no scholar, but could the case be made that a precedent set in our fictional stories could give us the idea that similar things happen out in the real world?
And was the amount of fiction out there, particularly in the 80s and 90s, Relevant to which particular conspiracy theories caught on over others.
So I wanted to take a look.
Now, the first movie that I remember seeing as a young person that kind of played with this idea is actually pretty relevant to the whole President Biden passing away because it is the 1993 movie Dave starring Kevin Kline.
Julian, have you ever seen that movie?
I feel like probably not on your radar.
Nope.
Travis, have you seen it?
It was a very popular comedy when it came out.
You know, I remember seeing the trailer.
I thought the concept was interesting.
I have not seen the film itself.
I've seen Greg.
I've seen Jimmy.
You've seen Paul?
You've seen Paul.
You've seen Elizabeth.
Richard, you've seen...
The two Jakes.
I've seen Jake.
Nude, in the shower.
You've seen Dunstan checks in?
I kicked down the door and I saw him, all parts of him.
He tried to cover it, but it was too late.
And you've seen Dunstan checks in about the monkey in the hotel?
Don't know who that is and what's going on anymore.
So Dave is basically about this guy, this guy played by Kevin Kline, who's like an identical lookalike to the president of the United States, who has like suffered a heart attack or something.
He's fallen ill and he's basically, I think he's in a coma in the movie, like, and they basically need to fall.
And what happens is that over the course of the movie, you know, Kevin Kline is actually, like, a better person than the president.
Like, he gets along with people better, and, you know, he comes up with this, like, really great sort of, like, policy to, like, save a homeless encampment.
And so it's like, the moral of the movie is that, like, a common person is actually much better suited.
To, you know, be a leader than the guy who is actually in power and has been elected.
It's an anti-democracy movie, basically.
Exactly.
And, you know, when I was thinking about the movie, it reminded me of the president of Ukraine, Zelensky, who was an actor playing a politician before he became a real politician.
And it's like, why do these characters in the movies feel more real to us than the actual people?
Because as we grow increasingly powerless, we are confusing the image with the actual underlying thing.
I mean, yeah, if you really want to go back to actors becoming world leaders, I think a better example would be Ronald Reagan.
Yeah, but Ronald Reagan didn't play the United States president before.
Whereas with Zelensky, that is the case.
Well, and I think that on a deeper level, the movie sort of taps into this, like, fragile sense of self that we have.
That, like, oh, they're like, oh, well, if anybody can kind of slip into this.
This sort of elite position and actually do it better than the people who rule over us, like, are just dunces themselves.
I think it's all to kind of get us to this place of like, well, I could do that, you know, this idea.
And I've done this in my own life is I'll watch a movie or I'll see a piece of art and I'll be like, I could make that.
I could do that.
I think that that's a very sort of familiar feeling for a lot of people.
I mean, God bless the listener out there that's like, no, I look at everything and I'm like, can't do that.
Yeah, if you believe that, you should definitely upgrade your Patreon or something.
Or just send us cash in an envelope.
Another film that came to mind, which I think is a little bit more in the vein of body horror, is the 1997 film Face-Off, starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.
I'm sure that you both are familiar with this John Woo classic.
Yes, I've seen this one.
Watched it multiple times.
Yeah, definitely.
Love it, love it.
Wow, me and Jake just said love it at the same time.
Gotta have it.
What a beautiful day.
And so, that's a Cold Stone reference, by the way.
And so here we have an example of the kind of like secret surgical procedures that, you know, the wealthy and elite or federal law enforcement agents like, you know, have behind the scenes that they could technically take the face off of somebody and put it on to somebody else.
And specifically in face off, it's one of them is good and one of them is evil.
And what happens when the good guy looks like the evil guy and the evil guy looks like the good guy?
I mean, it's a very sort of literal representation of, you know, what it is to be swapped or be a double or a clone.
My favorite conceit in that movie is that you can essentially tell like who the John Travolta character is because his way of showing affection to his loved ones is just like...
Just kind of caressing the front of their face.
It's such a weird act.
I do that to my nephew still to this day.
So many awful scenes where John Travolta or Nicolas Cage just rubbing the front of a woman or child's face.
Well, and it sort of taps into this idea that does our physical appearance dictate how we are?
Does looking like the villain or looking like the good guy in this case, you know, change either character?
And the question I think the movie basically answers is not really.
If you're a criminal like Nicolas Cage, you're still going to be a criminal.
You're going to be a bad guy.
And that everybody around you is too stupid to tell the difference.
But that's in no way explored in the movie.
No, of course not.
No one's like, hey, what if John Travoltaface makes him nice?
No, no, of course.
No, no, no, of course.
You just want to see the golden guns.
Nicolas Cage and the golden guns.
He's got the two golden guns.
But yes, another early example.
I feel like a lot of these are from like the 90s, but these are early examples where this narrative of identity swapping was sort of, I mean, there's others, obviously.
There's, like, Freaky Friday.
There's Big.
There's so many.
I mean, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that so many movies rely on this trope, and, you know, it's interpreted in all of these, like, different ways, you know, whether it's a comedy or it's a action film, or even if we're leaning into something more dark and conspiratorial, something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which, you know, has been remade a couple times.
The first one was made in 1956 with the more popular remake starring the late great Donald Sutherland.
That was in 1978.
I miss him so much.
I miss you, Clute.
And like, you know, kind of like They Live, you know, this one explored, I think, the conspiratorial angle as if, you know, what if...
You know, I think it speaks to our fears and paranoia about the elite, you know, that they don't have our best interests in mind.
They so don't have our best interests in mind that they're actually aliens.
And I think that, you know, in addition, especially nowadays, stuff like this, it kind of taps into our anxiety about our own identities, especially in this age of social media where we're all watching the same stuff.
We're consuming similar, you know, similar types of content.
We see the same things go viral.
You know, I think more than ever, people are in the midst of having somewhat of an authenticity crisis.
And so I feel like narratives like this, like these swaps or these doubles are easier to believe because we already have these kind of deep seated anxieties about our own identities.
Yes, please.
This is an open discussion.
This is a little more editorial than we like to get, but fuck it.
I don't know.
This is interesting.
Ingmar Bergman's Persona, a 1966 classic.
What's that one about?
I haven't seen that.
The story revolves around a young nurse named Alma and her patient, well-known stage actress Elizabeth Vogler, who has suddenly stopped speaking.
They move to a cottage where Alma cares for Elizabeth, confides in her, and begins having trouble distinguishing herself from her patient.
That's from Wikipedia.
And another movie that I think is really good in the more modern vein is Denis Villeneuve's Enemy with Jake Gyllenhaal, which I honestly think is one of his better movies.
But I do recommend that one.
I think that one is like in the 2000s.
Is that the one that has like the giant s***?
We're spoiling the literally last scene of the movie.
Oh, okay.
Fuck.
Sorry.
Julian, stop ruining everything.
But I think this discussion, you know, it just goes to show that there are so many and, you know, certain people obviously gravitate to different ones.
But I don't know.
It makes me wonder if some of the more mainstay conspiracy theories are the ones that spread a little bit easier than others.
I wonder if that has to do with some kind of narrative already being out in the world that somebody goes, oh, yeah, it's just like that movie.
I mean, you know, when I was driving away from when the fires happened in January, my My neighborhood didn't get evacuated, but there were neighborhoods close to ours that were starting to get evacuated.
So we bounced.
But I had to drive my car over our lawn because my other car that was blocking it in, my old car, had died and wouldn't start.
And we literally couldn't escape.
So I had to, like, drive over the lawn.
And every time I tell the story, I'm like, it was just like a...
It was just like this.
I felt like I was in a movie or, you know, like I felt like I was in 2012 or whatever.
And so, yeah, it's like, well, if I, you know, if I, a very smart, very stable person, you know, sort of define my own reality based on the fiction that I've consumed for fun and entertainment over the years, then certainly there must be others out there, especially if they're conspiratorially kind of inclined like I am, to also use these fictions as kind of markers for things that could be real.
What's up?
I think one thing is generally expressed.
It's just the anxiety over not really knowing who we're ruled by, even with, like, the president, for example.
Trump himself, like, is often deeply influenced by the last person he spoke to, and no one knows who the last person Trump spoke to is.
So even Trump's, you know, most ardent supporters think that he's the one calling the shots or making the decisions, but those decisions are being heavily influenced by whoever he spoke to recently.
So, you know, there's anxiety over that our leaders aren't really who they say they are.
They're really someone else because the decisions that they make as, you know, as world leaders is being influenced by other people constantly.
Yeah, I agree, Jake.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA Podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
For everything else, we have a website, qaapodcast.com.
Listener, until next week.
No, Travis should do the listener until next week.
Listener, until next week, may I, Travis View, bless you and keep you.
