On Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and DHS Secretary Chad Wolf echoed President Trump’s statement that he “didn’t know much” about QAnon’s far-right plot even though the FBI labeled him a possible threat of domestic terrorism.
Last week, at a white house briefing, Trump condemned supporters of QAnon, the unfounded far-right conspiracy theory that the president is secretly saving the world from a cult of pedophiles and cannibals, amid a developing trend of Republican applicants who have pledged their adherence to the far-right conspiracy.
“I don’t know much about the motion, I sense they love me very much, what I appreciate,” Trump said last week.
When asked if Trump convicted QAnon, Meadows was inspired by the president by saying he didn’t even know what it was about in a Fox News Sunday interview.
Meadows then criticized the media for his QAnon, which said “he actually had Google.”
“I find it appalling that the media, while we have all the vital things going, a list of the 20 most sensitive, that the first consultation at a press conference is about QAnon, that I had to Google to find out what it is,” Meadows said. “This is not an essential component of what the president is talking about. I don’t know, I don’t even know if it’s believable.”
Meadows added that he would be “happy to talk” about “how the FBI and other FBI members spied on the Trump campaign,” before insisting that if QAnon is a “hate group, I can tell you that the president is in favor of hate. “
– Talking Point Memo (@TPM) August 23, 2020
Wolf also gave the impression of disassociating himself from the QAnon motion in an interview on CNN.
When asked if he agreed with the FBI’s assessment that this was a national terrorist threat, Wolf replied that he had no explanation as to why anything else from the FBI.
Pressed through Trump and Vice President Pence that they knew nothing about QAnon, Wolf downplayed the seriousness of the risk posed through QAnon.
“Again, when I look at all the threats to the homeland, it’s not the one that reaches a significant level,” Wolf said. “There are many other threats here at home, as well as abroad, that we are focusing on. And we’ll keep reading about them. So I can’t comment and not comment on all the marginal elements and marginal groups. There’s a lot of them. There are many of themArrayArrayArray there are many.
After CNN’s Jake Tapper pointed out that QAnon members were about kidnappings, murders, assassination attempts and asked if he convicted them, Wolf replied “well, absolutely.”
“Any individual organization that kidnaps, murders or commits a series of criminal and illegal attacks is undoubtedly … I certainly condemn it, ” said Wolf.
– Talking Point Memo (@TPM) August 23, 2020