There's a virus in Trumpland
By Philip Bump
August 3 at 7:00 AM
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — It is a truism that the people who attend a rally for President Trump more than two years before he’s on the ballot again are generally strong supporters of President Trump. Especially when those supporters are willing to wait hours in thick humidity in a treeless parking lot here, as thousands did on Thursday night. Make America Great Again hats make a political message, sure, but no one is going to argue with the side benefit of keeping the sun out of one’s eyes.
In dozens of interviews with Trump supporters waiting to get into the rally — several thousand of whom weren’t able to — the broad strokes were generally the same. Red, white and blue. MAGA hats in various iterations. A rainbow of Trump shirts: Farmers for Trump. Praise for Trump’s agenda. Trump-Pence 2016. Rating him 10, 11 out of 10. Trump-Pence 2020. Various disparagements of Hillary Clinton. Shirts with Trump’s head on a muscular body. Shirts with Trump standing in front of explosions. A shirt with Trump holding a drink and saying, “Dilly dilly.” And then there were the Qs.
There’s this theory out there that Trump’s real focus in the White House is uprooting a sex trafficking ring that involves the assistance of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and targets prominent Democrats. The theory originates from random, cryptic posts from someone called “Q,” who shares his insights to anonymous websites. His or her insights. His or her or their insights. Depending on whom you talk to, Q is one person or dozens of people, some in the military, some in the White House. Q, one man at the Trump rally told me, is 50 million people in the United States alone.
It’s easy to exaggerate the presence of QAnon supporters at the rally here in the same way it’s easy to overestimate the presence of anything you’re actively noticing. Since QAnon sprang into the public’s consciousness during a Trump rally in Florida earlier this week, it has been a focus of curiosity. Now QAnon supporters stand out in a way they might not have before and QAnon supporters may be revealing themselves more eagerly than they would have a week ago.
At Thursday’s rally, though, it’s certainly the case that there were more overt supporters of QAnon than there were of Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner or Senate candidate Lou Barletta — who was ostensibly the reason for Trump’s visit. One guy with a “Lou” sticker didn’t want to talk; one woman in a Scott Wagner shirt explained that it was her only political shirt. She also called him “Scott Walker.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/03/theres-a-virus-in-trumpland
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Q is a fictional character as well as the name of a race in Star Trek appearing in the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager series, as well as in related media. The most familiar Q is portrayed by John de Lancie. He is an extra-dimensional being of unknown origin who possesses immeasurable power over normal human notions of time, space, the laws of physics, and reality itself, being capable of violating or altering them in unpredictable ways with a casual thought or hand gesture. Despite his vast knowledge and experience spanning untold eons (and much to the exasperation of the object(s) of his obsession), he is not above practical jokes for his own personal amusement, for a Machiavellian and manipulative purpose, or to prove a point. He is said to be nigh-omnipotent, and he is continually evasive regarding his true motivations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(Star_Trek)
