JUDY WOODRUFF: Last night, President Trump
spoke at a rally in Tampa. The crowd was visibly
angry at reporters who were there to cover
the event, and wasn't afraid to show it.
(SHOUTING)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, the president retweeted
some of this video.
Also in the crowd last night, people who believe
in the QAnon conspiracy theory. QAnon claims
that a shadowy cabal within the U.S. government
is at war with President Trump, and that the
president will soon purge the nation of these
enemies.
For more on this conspiracy and how it's spread,
I'm joined by "NewsHour"'s P.J. Tobia, he's
been following this.
P.J., first of all, what is QAnon?
P.J. TOBIA: So, this all started last fall
on 4chan, which is an anonymous online message
board.
And last fall, a user calling himself QAnon
began posting little nuggets of information.
Q is actually a reference to the Q clearance.
It's one of the highest security clearances
in the U.S. government.
Q claims to be highly placed in the government
and has built visibility into a kind of conspiracy
of globalists, a permanent criminal government
that's been running the U.S. government for
decades. This, of course, includes the Clintons,
the Obamas, the financier George Soros, and
many, many others.
The conspiracy goes on to posit that President
Trump will team up with the U.S. military
and crush this -- and crush this cabal by
throwing them all in jail, starting with Hillary
Clinton.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Do they have any evidence that
this is going on, that the Obamas, the Clintons
are trying to overthrow President Trump?
P.J. TOBIA: So what they're claiming as evidence
are Q's posts on 4chan. And then it migrated
to another board called 8chan.
And these are these cryptic little -- he calls
them bread crumbs, because that's really what
they are. And they're -- they're little clues,
watch for this, look for that. And people
take them and unpack these bread crumbs and
read into it kind of what they will.
And things like President Trump's tweets,
where it's well known that he misspells things
occasionally or maybe uses improper grammar.
He says those are actually clues, part of
the -- of the president -- actions that the
president is about to take to crush this cabal.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So who's on board with this?
Who are the people who have -- who are following
this?
We know there were people at this rally last
night in Tampa that were wearing T-shirts
or holding signs saying QAnon. Who are these
folks? Do we have any idea, or how many of
them?
P.J. TOBIA: When it comes to conspiracy theories
or a lot of fringe groups on the right or
the left, it's really hard to quantify and
get numbers.
But YouTube pages where QAnon's bread crumbs
are unpacked and discussed have hundreds of
thousands of hits. Twitter accounts dedicated
to this have tens of thousands of hits. So
there's a lot of folks who are engaging in
this content online.
Now, some folks who -- some people who are
experts who watch conspiracy theories and
conspiracy groups say it's probably not nearly
the number of people who, say, believe that
the moon landing was faked or that they're
-- a conspiracy about the JFK assassination.
But, still, some prominent celebrity Trump
supporters, like former Boston Red Sox pitcher
Curt Schilling and Roseanne Barr, have tweeted
and said things positively about the QAnon
conspiracy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And there was one of the people
who believe in this, you said, who showed
up at the Hoover Dam in June?
P.J. TOBIA: Exactly right. In June, a young
man showed up at the Hoover Dam. Resulted
in an armed standoff with law enforcement.
He had a sign that said "Release the OIG report."
That was -- that was referring to a Department
of Justice Office of Inspector General report
into Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail
server.
Now, interestingly, when this young man did
that, that report had already been released,
but QAnon said in a posting that the real
report hadn't been released yet and that there
were actually other reports, OIG reports,
that were much more critical of Hillary Clinton
and the Democrats and could result in them
getting arrested.
And that's what he wanted released.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, P.J., where does this go
from here? Do authorities watch this kind
of thing? There's nothing illegal about it,
is there?
P.J. TOBIA: No, there's nothing illegal about
it at all.
I mean, they're just talking on social media.
But as these people start appearing in the
real world, I think we're all going to be
watching them much closer.
Look, the bottom line about this conspiracy
theory is that it's a conspiracy to protect
Trump. So things that to the rest of us might
seem like bad news for Trump, like the Mueller
investigation, they look at as actually part
of Trump's grand strategy. You see, he was
colluding with -- he wanted to make it look
like he was colluding with Russia on purpose,
so that Robert Mueller would be hired, and
he could team up with Trump, Mueller and Trump
teaming up together to investigate the Clintons
and the rest of the deep state and their global
pedophile sex ring.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, that is -- that takes a
lot of thinking to get that far.
P.J. TOBIA: And a lot of talking. They spill
a lot of digital ink online about this stuff.
JUDY WOODRUFF: P.J. Tobia, who has been following
this and I know will continue to follow it,
thank you, P.J.
P.J. TOBIA: Thank you, Judy.
