On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany clarified that President Trump does not support the conspiracy movement QAnon.
During a press conference on Wednesday, the president was asked to give his thoughts about QAnon — a movement that characterizes President Trump as waging a secret war against an elite group of pedophiles from the deep state to Hollywood.
“I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” Trump said. “But I don’t know much about the movement — I have heard that it is gaining in popularity and from what I hear, these are people that, when they watch the streets of Portland, when they watch what happened in New York City in just the last six or seven months … these are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland, and places like Chicago and New York … and I’ve heard that these are people who love our country and they just don’t like seeing it.”
Speaking with Sandra Smith of Fox News, McEnany said that President Trump does not support the conspiracy movement.
“What the president is doing is working for the American people,” said McEnanny. “I’ve never heard the president mention it. I talk to him oftentimes ten times a day. Not once have I heard him mention this group. The media talks about and asks about it, but this president’s focused on the pandemic that he’s navigating a historic response for, a V-shape recovery as the economy gets back to work.”
Regarding the president’s comments about the movement, characterizing them as people who “love our country,” McEnany asserted Trump was “talking about his supporters.”
“He believes his supporters are good, hard-working people that love this country,” she said. “He’s not in the business of ‘basket of deplorable’ politics. He doesn’t talk about QAnon. He doesn’t think about it.”
“He has not at all looked into who QAnon is,” she added, referring to it as “some group on the internet … that the media tends to focus on far more than we believe is merited.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, which has not specifically denounced Antifa – a far-left group of militants waging actual violence in the United States – condemned the president’s comments for “giving voice to violence” and seeking to “legitimize a conspiracy theory.”
“Not only is our president refusing to take responsibility for his failed leadership that has cost over 170,000 American lives and tens of millions of jobs — he is again giving voice to violence,” Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Trump just sought to legitimize a conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a domestic terrorism threat.”
Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary, said the president “would be better off denouncing QAnon. They’re a bunch of whackadoodles. Both parties have nutty fringe groups. The USA does best when leaders in both parties keep the sentiments of those people on the fringes.”
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