David Corn: Donald Trump and the Birth of QMaga: The Storm Is Coming

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/09/donald-trump-and-the-birth-of-qmaga-the-storm-is-coming/

5 hours ago
Donald Trump and the Birth of QMaga: The Storm Is Coming
And the GOP is just fine with this madness.
David Corn


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In retrospect, the melding of MAGAism with QAnon—and toss in a helping of Christian nationalism—seemed inevitable. The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that the world is controlled by a cabal of satanic, baby-eating, sex-trafficking pedophiles—which includes, of course, top Democrats, assorted elites, Hollywood celebrities, and the Pope—and that Trump is engaged in titanic combat behind the scenes to crush this evil power and save humanity (and lots of babies). Under assorted variants of this nuttery, Trump is being aided by John F. Kennedy Jr. (who did not die in a 1999 plane crash), and he will be restored to power in a final cataclysmic battle that involves mass arrests of Lucifer’s allies (lock ‘em up in Gitmo!) and televised executions. Trump fully embraced the QAnon insanity last week, and this means that the Republican Party now supports a man who advances a dangerous derangement that exceeds his Big Lie about the 2020 election and that further delegitimizes American democracy and debases political discourse. And this party has a good shot at gaining control of Congress in seven weeks.

For years, Trump had played footsie with QAnon, claiming he didn’t know much about it but praising its adherents’ supposed patriotism, their opposition to pedophilia and, naturally, their cultish love of him. Offered the chance to denounce this perverse craziness, he bobbed and weaved, sending the signal to QAnoners—who are always looking for signals—that they did indeed possess the hidden truth. With nods and winks, he validated their paranoia and detachment from reality, as QAnon conspiracism led to numerous acts of violence.

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No more. He went full QAnon the other day when he posted online a photoshopped image of him wearing a Q pin. To make the message clear, this picture proclaimed, “The Storm Is Coming”—a QAnon catchphrase referring to that ultimate showdown between Trump and the evildoers. And it contained the abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “where we go one, we go all.”

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A few weeks ago, President Joe Biden excoriated MAGA extremism and election denialism as “semi-fascism” and warned the nation of the threat they pose. Republicans and conservatives turned snowflakes and cried foul. Since then, the danger has grown. As every pundit will tell you, the Republicans remain poised to win the House in the November elections and possibly the Senate. That will place in power a party that accepts and supports QMaga (and that backs as its leader a man who now excuses political violence). Without more media attention and more warnings from Biden and the Democrats, QMaga will spread into the halls of Congress not by mob violence but by the ballot box. A storm is indeed coming.