Is JFK Jr. Still Alive?

covering Trump rallies. You're probably familiar with my daily show segments Jordan Clapper Fingers the Pulse Emmy nominated twice, lost twice, where I chat with Trump supporters at rallies. We are not a call. It's an American ideal that we treat women with respect. You gotta give me the back of that show one more time. That's too much fun. Trump, that bitch. We don't even see the irony of it. And if you're into conspiracy theories, then there's nothing that

comes close to a Trump rally. What's on your back? Q flag? One of those crazy people are fine and commulaw are not legitimate. What's a cute whole thing that Trump would be reinstated at President never looked. If you go online, there's a whole list of pedophile symbols. Really, yes, it's like Woodstock, except everyone there thinks Jimmy Hendrix is

a holograph. Normally, when one of these conspiracy theories comes up, I have to respond then moved past it because we're shooting a piece for TV and we have to say somewhat focused. But this is a podcast, we don't have to stay focused at all. So I'm finally diving into some of the most incredible conspiracy theories that have been pitched to me at Trump Rallies by America's most imaginative minds. This is Jordan Clapper Fingers, the Conspiracy and All new

limited series podcast from the Daily Show. So, folks, come on down from your grassy knolls and let's dig in. Let's talk about John F. Kennedy Jr. But to help me do that, I want to bring in our first guest, Will Summer Wills, of politics reporter for The Daily Beast. He's got a book coming out in February called Trust, The Plan, The Rise of Q and On and the Conspiracy that unhinged America. Well, welcome to Jordan clapper fingers

the conspiracy. I'm excited to have you on. You are here to help me walk through an understand what is going on in this world of John F. Kennedy Jr. And I will say this. I I go out on the road and I start hearing people talking about JFK Jr. And initially I'm thinking, you know, they're talking about JFK. There's a long history of conspiracies with JFK. And then I'm putting together that as JFK Jr. And then I

start to see signs up. I start to see bumper stickers that have him as vice presidential Kennedy to Donald Trump. And then a month or so back, I go to a rally in the Midwest and I'm hearing sweet old grandmother's talk about John F. Kennedy Jr. And I can't make head or tails of it? Can you? Can? You set out a little bit of this began? What do we need to know? Sure? So, I mean, this is really bizarre. As you noted, I mean the origins of

this are within Q and on Um. Of course, there was the this figure Q who was giving these anonymous clues. And then at one point in teen Q sort of vanished for a month on the forums where the clues came out, and then someone named Are shows up and starts saying, you know, all of this is really about JFK Jr. And so that's kind of where the where it begins. And eventually Q comes back and kind of says like this JFK JUNI yourself is garbage. You know

what have You've been tricking all my people? Um, But the JFK Junior stuff really starts there with this idea that JFK Jr. Faked his death to take on the deep state and help Donald Trump sort of bring about this sort of Q and on utopia. There's a conspiracy inside the conspiracy, it's a it's a it's a conspiracy

to ducan right now exactly. It's sort of a splinter faction, and you get this situation where, like the kind of the mainline Q and On people will often be like, oh my god, Like, you know, I believe all this Pizza Gate stuff. I believe this about Hillary Clinton, but these JFK Junior people are embarrassing us. They just believe totally stupid stuff. That's the dynamic you want there, and we're like, oh my god, can we just go back to serious things like talking about how the Democrats drink

baby's blood and all this JFK Junior stuff. We're losing credibility. People were losing credibility. Put your tidfoil heads back on and let's march. Yeah. I mean basically they're saying, you know, these JFK Junior people are almost like a government meant to embarrass Q and on. But really this belief has in JFK Jr has persisted ever since. So so what was ours intention in this situation? Like initially that JFK Jr one is alive, so perhaps he faked his death.

And two he's aligning himself with Donald Trump. It feels like there's four steps there that I'm even a hard time connecting why JFK Jr. And let's start with why he's alive and why that should matter? Sure, so the arc that is presented by R, and I want to point out here that R is the letter after Q, and so that's sort of the explanation for them, is

it or is it will? Your mainstream elitist alphabet says it's the letter after Q. But I have I only if you're moving forward through time, But that's a whole another podcast exactly. So, So the the sort of the story that's laid out is that John F. Kennedy, the father is killed by the deep State, you know, in nineteen sixty three. JFK Jr. Sees this and says, oh, man, the Deep State might come for me, and I want

to get revenge on them for murdering my father. And so for years he builds up this relationship with Donald Trump, you know, because they were both sort of these New York socialite figures. There are pictures of them together, and so this is used to suggest that they were like best buddies. Then in this storyline, JFK Jr. Fax his death in this plane crash to sort of go undercover and sort of lay the groundwork for the Q and

On journey and eventually emerge. For a while they thought he was going to replace Mike Pence in on the ticket and that he would sort of kind of helped Trump and sort of get this final revenge on the Deep State. So in this world they see JFK Jr. Is faking his own death to exist undercover and wait for the right time, still maintaining a relationship with Donald Trump throughout all of this, or did or did Donald Trump just come about and become sort of an avatar

for JFK Jr's ascension. Yeah, that that's a great question. I mean a lot of it is a little contradictory and not super thought out. Uh you know that might be surprise you right now. But but basically, the the idea is that, you know, back in the nineties or the eighties, they kind of cut this deal and they said, Donald Trump said, man, this stuff is really messed up, you know. And then and JFK Jr. Said tell me

about it. You know, they shot my dad, and so then they sort of teamed up and JFK Jr. Winning to hide it. Tell me about it. They shot my dad. Oh wow, Yeah, you're right, this is messed up. Let me let me run for president a few decades from now and make this thing happen. You're helping me connect that circle. If it's a circle. What I'm confused about.

I go out there, JFK. Fame Slee not a Republican um John F. Kennedy Jr. At least from my perspective, New York elite, not political, but somebody who is a magazine magnate and Seinfeld character uh doesn't exactly match up as the type of person that this often far right group would would align themselves with. What why Why did they see this potential in in somebody who's so outside of the norm, you know, I think that's a great question.

And what is the emotional residence of JFK Jr. Why is why is the JFK Jr they fixate on rather than another celebrity who died in the nineties. So the I think the answer to it is that when we think about the Q and on believer, and I think in particularly the people who go for the JFK Junior stuff, they're usually baby boomers, and I think the JFK assassination

had a huge sort of emotional impact on them. And I think also JFK Jr. Was sort of seeing those this very like prominent baby boomer um, sort of an avatar of his generation, and so that way, I think there is this kind of this very emotional connection to him in a way that there that there wouldn't be

with another celebrity. I think also the idea of JFK as like the last good Democrat is something that has persisted among Republicans even before Q and On this idea of kind of this popular martyred president UM and Oh, isn't it terrible that you know LBJ in the in the sixties took being a democrat into such an awful direction. So I think JFK himself still has a lot of residents with Republicans and Q and On believers. So I think there's a lot of kind of like emotions tied

up in all that. When you look back on JFK conspiracies, does it seem quaint? Does it seems sort of like the initial modern conspiracy theory that Americans have sort of built a mythos around. I mean, I think obviously we've had conspiracy theories throughout American history, but the Kennedy assassination is such a sort of an epical one that I think gets a lot of people into conspiracy theories, and it is certainly, I think the biggest and the richest

one to dive into in modern history. It also sort of brings everything full circle incorporating Kennedy, Q and On. Is this um it's sort of a super conspiracy theory or a mega conspiracy theory that where you can sort of get whatever you want out of it, and so we see a lot of Kennedy conspiracy theorists drawn into it. I talked to a guy who was a really big Q and On leader, and he had for decades been

just like a f K crank. I mean, he was going to all these conventions stuff like that, and then Q and On arrives and he says, oh, you know, I can sort of incorporate my Kennedy beliefs into Q and On and sort of broad in my worldview and and see more of the world explained to me in that way. Um So I do think that's an aspect of it as well. It's it's interesting. I think what a lot of people miss is just how fun conspiracies are. They They are engaging, especially if you're on a computer.

One of the most fun things you can do is go down that rabbit hole and and also come away with something that empowers you because you feel like you

know something somebody else doesn't. I I did a job down in Dallas a decade ago, and I was walking through the Grassy Knoll multiple times right there there in daily plaza, and people would approach you and they would tell you things that you should know and shouldn't know, And so there was it was like a cottage industry for conspiracy theorists to give small little tours, take you to places that they tell you what what happened and what they're not telling you. And it's easy to get

wrapped up in that. And you see the people starting to develop um uh you know, not only mindsets out of it, but it gives them importance. It gives them in some cases a job, but it makes them important

in that little place. And I start to see that pop up at some of these Trump rallies that I go to, seeing people who now own part of these little conspiracies and they become many celebrities at these rallies that we see and looking at this JFK Jr. Coming back as part of UH, there's been discussions of his reappearance and there's been groups, one group called Negative forty eight who has staged events waiting for his um return.

Can you tell us a little bit about Negative forty eight? Sure? Yeah, So Negative forty eight is a group that is is very convinced that JFK, not only JFK Jr, but but Kennedy at JFK himself UH and all sorts of sort of a bevy of other beloved deceased celebrities are are. It's not that they're gonna come back to life, but they've sort of been in in inclusion, they've been in hiding, and that they're gonna come back and and sort of

usher in this Q and on world. The reason they're called negative forty eight is because they this is kind of hard to explain, dude, to someone who's that really deeven it, but essentially they believe in this thing called jim Atria where they assign numerical values to letters and then they derive meaning from that A equals one, be

equals too, and so on. But essentially they would say, like Jordan Klepper twenty trust the plan twenty uh make America great Again twenty five and they just sort of speak in this language that doesn't really make sense to anyone outside of it, but they they see importance in these numbers and in these these coincidences, and so from there they essentially kind of whipped themselves up into believing these things like JFK Jr. Is coming back. I found

out what Jamatria was real quick. One of the rallies I went to when a woman kind of walked me through this. She brought out a Gematria calculator and started typing in my name, typing in Trump's name, and connecting all sorts of numbers. It was it was wild, It was real fun. You can kind of make anything makes sense. They're type it in the calculator. You get these numbers. And so Michael Jackson's last concert was this is it comes to you know what that means? Do you? I

don't know what that means. So one thirteen means not true. So Michael Jackson that wasn't his last concert, and he's a lie. It's not necessarily conspiratorial thing, although it's used in that sense. It's correct me if I'm wrong. It's essentially a mathematical way of turning letters into numbers, and religions have been using this for centuries just to try to find and try to derive meeting, trying to look

deeper into biblical texts and what have you. And I thought that was a key component when I talked to this woman, because the way she talked about Gematrium, it was beyond this conspiracy. It's fun. I have power because I have knowledge. It was also I'm serving a biblical character.

There's religion attached to this, and I think that's where the real danger comes here, where you have people who are serving UH, serving religion and serving God through this fun, little weird game that they play, and then deciding that Aaliyah is going to appear alongside Michael Jackson and perhaps UH and jfk Jr. All at once Obama clarify who's still alive. J jfk Jr. Still alive. Jfk Jr. Still alive. So I think jfk Jr. Is gonna try and expose

globalist because they killed his father. We're talking about Tupac's coming back, Robin Williams is coming back Aliyah. As you mentioned, sort of pick your favorite dead celebrity, and so what happened was these folks descended on Dallas where they thought there was going to be sort of the dead Celebrities parade, and they're milling around and they're seeing like a homeless guy and they're like, I think that's Robin Williams. And then everyone's like, oh, yeah, that's a Robin Williams and

so on, and a lot of these guys. I mean, look, I'm not sure. These guys are super up on like Tupac for example, and there there's I think that's Tupac. You all these guys, I think that's Biggie. Uh And and it's sort of this. You can see they're sort of going into this world where like nothing bad ever happens. No no one ever dies of a drug overdose or

a suicide. Um. The other thing I would add is that they think a lot of dead celebrities were murdered, uh or went into hiding, like JFK Jr. Faked their deaths because they were gonna blow the lid off the cabal. So like the the late dj of Echi, you know, he faked his death. All these kind of people, uh, just you know, Whitney Houston. But they're all coming back

at this big moment. And you can see these people who have just particularly this when they were kind of million around Dallas for months, just the amount of their own lives and their own like hearts that they've invested into into it. You know, they're just you know, headed for a brick wall when eventually they realized none of it's happening. It's just predominantly white people who live in a bubble walking around Dallas thinking they see Tupac everywhere.

I mean, it's really that's to fuck. Do you really know who Tupac is? And you think that guy's tu fuck and biggie they are. These are diametrically opposed on many levels. But I bet you're seeing it as the same person who's going into a subway. Well, they would do these live streams where they would say, like, didn't y'all see that dead rapper? Like they wouldn't know any names, you know, and they kind of have this game and

telephone to figure it out. I'm not going to be a conspiracist or anything like that, but I just watched the movie last week with Robin Williams in it. It was called Man of Man of the Year. And guess what they had election fraud back then? The machines that are switching to doing electronically and they were counting wrong. Because this is a documentary, No, it's just a movie.

Are there any lessons we can take from Morcan mindy? No, it should be pointed out they've they pointed to people specifically JFK Jr. As there's been a man who's gone to multiple rallies stands behind Donald Trump, and that's JFK Jr. I went to see pack and I saw him there as well, and he's taken selfies because he's also JFK Junior. So some people aren't just abstract apparitions. They are actually humans that they point to and say, you know, this is who you are. Yeah, I'm actually I was just

texting with him. So, so his name is is Vincent Fuska and he is this like Trump super fan. In the lead up to in the election, he had this van kind of festooned with Trump paraphernalia, and so he kind of ends up becoming because he's a big Trump fan. He's behind him at a lot of rallies when the JFK Junior stuff starts happening. And this guy, I should say, looks nothing like JFK Jr. He dresses, uh, he wears like a big fedora. He's very scruffy guy. He wears

like like a big suit coat. And so, to be clear, JFK Jr. Was a stylish man, and yeah, it could only be assumed that that style mixed with privilege and wealth would have led him into the modern era. Not choosing to wear a fedora. Yes, yes, thank you. Yeah, maybe in the nineties, you know, but but now no, I don't think so. And so yeah, earlier, early swing day, big big bad voodoo Daddy would have had a fedor up.

There would have been a lot of college kids who wanted to look like JFK Junior who could pull off a a door off. But modern JFK Jor No, no freaking way, no way. And so so he's standing behind Trump and when the JFK Junior stuff starts happening, people go, oh, my gosh, I think that's JFK Jr. Behind Trump. And then there was like a blonde woman nearby and they said, I think that's JFK Junior's wife, and so they I mean,

they kind of get going. But the wild thing to me about it is this guy doesn't come out and say, hey, guys, I'm not JFK Junior'll leave me alone. He goes, oh, who's to say. And so I've seen this guy maybe seven or eight times, and he'll be out a rally or something and people go, oh, j K Jr. You know,

we want pictures. And then I say to him, Hey, you want to tell me about how everyone thinks you're jfk Jr. Obviously not, and he goes, oh, I'd love to talk to you later, how about in an hour let me catch I'm just so busy today, but I'm in town. You know you have my number. Let's talk later. Obviously never gets back to me. I talked to this one woman who was like, oh, posing for all these selfies with him, and I said, you know that's not jfk Jr. Right, And she's like, haven't you ever heard

of Hollywood? Haven't you heard visual effects? Haven't ever of Medeia. You know it's you know they I mean, they're really deep in Tyler Perry as evidence. It's a it's a smart move. And I give Vincent props. I tell you, if somebody stops me on the street and says, Joel McHale, I love you in community, I don't correct him. Nope, that's let them think that. Let them live their own reality. As Americans, we have every right to live our own reality.

I think it's in the Constitution somewhere somewhere deep. Now, there's there's a dark side to some of this, because I will say what. I talked to the woman who was into Jamatrium, and she was a part of this

Negative forty eight group. They show up in Dallas, they wait in Dallas for JFK Jr. To arrive, and then they stay there for months and months on and and their stories of families who are losing loved ones to this conspiracy mindset, and people are sending money to these The leader pratsman I believe, Um, Like, what are some

of the dark sides of believing in these weird fantasies? Yeah, I'm mean, so you know, Q and I have talked to so many people who have lost family and friends to Q NON And when you talk about something as extreme as Negative forty eight to sort of that faction, I mean you're talking about people who have essentially given up their lives at this point. I mean, it's like they've joined kind of like a traveling commune or something. I mean, you know, they're saying in this hotel room

for months at a time, which is not cheap. They're kind of pooling all their funds. At one point, you know, there were a bunch of like little toddlers, little kids involved, which you know, it's not great for them to be roaming around looking for tupac or whatever. Um and you know, I talked to one guy who whose wife had He thought he had a you know, totally fine, normal marriage, and then she just says, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go

to this Trump rally. Well, as it turned out, she was going to join negative forty eight and then just vanishes. And you know it is he's seeing her in these videos and stuff, and he's like, what is happening in my family? There's no evidence she's ever coming back, you know, all this kind of stuff. I mean, it is really really grim stuff. This is a poor guy. You just you see about homing like my wife she left me for k Jr. It's I get. It's what a successful

man and he's in through a lot. You know, he's died, he's come back. Um, he's living at this man Vincent. He's trying to pull off Fedoras in modern times. It's it's difficult. It's a bold decision. Yeah, Patty's found love, but she's left me alone. We're gonna pause it right there, we'll be right back. Welcome back to Jordan's Clapper Fingers. The conspiracy. I want to bring in Professor Joe Uzinski, political scientists and conspiracy theory expert at the University of

Miami who followed the JFK Junior gathering in Dallas. Joe, welcome, Thanks for having me. So, Joe, we got Will summer here. We've been going down this JFK JR wormhole, rabbit hole, uh, whatever hole you want to call it, we're in it. Um. You've you've looked at what's happening and what continues to happen in Dallas. Uh. From your perspective, what's going on down there? So you have people that probably have a

bunch of psychological issues. Maybe they're pro own to delusions, they're prone to believing things in spite of evidence, and that's what got them to this point. And this is fanciful. It's fun for them. They're probably enjoying it. But it doesn't shock me to hear the things that Will is talking about. I mean, there are families, and I get emails from these families once in a while, you know, the sun disappeared, or you know one family member you

know got into a conspiracy theory. Now they can't even talk to the person. And there isn't much I can say to these families other than I'm not that kind of doctor. I mean, there's nothing I can do for this sort of stuff, and I sympathize and empathize with them, but um, there isn't much you can do. What makes people predisposed to believe conspiracy theories in the first place?

Why why did they go and seek them out? Well, the answer is going to be a little bit unsatisfying, but this is where we are, and that is that some people, more than others, have a worldview in which, you know, they over to the window when they wake up in the morning, they look out and they see stuff and they say, oh, that must be caused by a conspiracy, you know, being driven by people who I already don't like. And the question becomes, well, where does

that come from? And the answer is, we don't know yet. We just know that it exists, and we know that, Um, some people are just really prone to it. So it's not the beliefs themselves, it's not the ideas. It's that it's people that have a very thick set of lenses. So when they come into contact with these ideas, it's just easy for them to say, yeah, that must be true. You know, America, it's not a new thing to believe in conspiracy theories. It's not a new thing to have,

perhaps a warped sense of reality. We are the country that gave you the Salem Witch Trials, were always looking for weird ways of which to perceive what's happening around us. Um, how serious is the situation we're living in now? Is this is this an aberration? Is this is this something that social media has one created or two is just reflecting what's already been happening out there, and we're blown

it into Uh, we're it's it's overblown our perspective on it. Yeah, you know, I mean look, as you said, I mean, conspiracy theories have been with us throughout American history, as going back to the witch Trials. I mean, there's really rich history of it's sort of each kind of big pivot moment in the United States of a conspiracy theory

is really abounding. Um. At the same time, I think what's unique about the moment we're in is number one, Uh, social media, as you mentioned, which I think helps people with this kind of conspiratorial mindset connect with one another. The way I think of it is, if you think of like the Kennedy assassination, in order to find some like minded people, you would have to maybe print a zine, send letters, go to a convention, stuff like that, and then everyone on your block would be saying like if

you're a nut or whatever. Um. Whereas now these people can just go online and and find like minded people, reinforce their beliefs, and find new recruits really really easily. Uh. The other thing I would say is we've at least I think, in modern history, we haven't seen this kind of conspiratorial thinking embraced by so many politicians, to the point where we have members of Congress who believe in Q and on and have supported it. Recently, Donald Trump

is posting really explicit pro q and on videos. So in that way, I think it really helps mainstream these conspiracy theories in a way that we haven't had before. I love thinking that in the old days, you at least had to learn how to produce a zine, Like there's something to the stereotype of like, well you had to cut out letters and you actually had to build a board and connect it with straightly here and there, And it's like no, literally, there's a certain buy in

that that buys you. Now you can do that's all online. You don't even have to go to hobby lobby to buy the ship. You can do it on the internet, the buy and it's so low. Uh, Joe, I wonder where do you see the threat level of something like this. It's it's it's with politicians. So to me, I don't think people have changed all that much over time. If anything, we're believing conspiracy theories as much as we did ten

twenty thirty years ago. Um, what's different now is not just Trump, but particularly Trump and other people who want to do what Trump has done. So when you have people who can act on conspiracy theories with a monopoly of authoritative force, when you have people who already have large audiences because they're politicians, transmitting these things, Um, that's going to reach a lot of people, and it's going

to influence a lot of people. Like any of us could go on to social media and spurred out whatever stupid conspiracy theory we want. Doesn't mean anyone's going to pay attention, right, It doesn't mean anyone's gonna care or even look at it. But if Trump does it, that's a very different ballgame, right, And when you have people who have political power engaging in this, that's incredibly dangerous.

And if you look back through history the times where we have, you know, the worst episodes of conspiracy theorizing, it's usually because of politicians getting involved in acting on it in some way. Is it possible to put these ideas back in the box? Can you roll this back?

You know, I recently was out talking to people about the election and election deniers, and so much is based on this idea of as soon as you have doubt and you see it through a lens of doubt and mistrust everywhere, it almost doesn't matter what's going to happen in the next election, you're going to see it. It's

going to be there. Are we already hardwired these brains to see and distrust so many things that there will not be a turning back that even though somebody like Donald Trump might wield so much power and be able to direct it in certain ways, that we've sort of already infected a generation with this mindset. Well, there's already people who who think that no matter what, right after any election, there's about you know, of the country who

think it was rigged why because they lost? Right? So as in politics is and sports, who complains after the football game? Now it's the losing team, right, So that's sort of normal after every election. What's abnormal right now is that you have the losing candidates saying it was rigged. I was cheated, and going on and on and on about it and pulling in the whole of the conservative media and lots of allies in Congress. So now you have sort of a full court press of people saying

it's rigged, it's rigged, it's rigged. So that's why you have between sixty and of Republicans saying was rigged against them, rather than the normal that might have otherwise said it was rigged just for the fact that they lost. How close are we to having six year and eight of the GOP believe JFK Jr. Is coming back? Is that is that weeks or months away? I think that would

be a tougher one to pull off. I mean, Trump has a lot of influence, so if he got behind a conspiracy theory repeatedly for a long period of time, he could make people buy in. And if it's something like election fraud, he can pull that off because those ideas are always around. But sometimes you'll come out with conspiracy theories that just don't influence anyone. I mean I'm not aware of a lot of Ted Cruz, Dad Kill JFK. Truther's out there, even though he pushed that, you know,

six or seven years ago. I mean, it just didn't take off. But I think if you go after ideas that people are sort of already inclined towards, I mean, he can do a lot of damage that way. Yeah, I mean, I think we are all inclined to the idea of wanting Aaliyah to be back in our lives again. We want another classic album, we want that redemption. I think that's on the cosp if if he if he even nudges us in that direction, I think we all buy tickets immediately to the next concert, whether or not

she appears or not. I mean, we think that Q and on stuff is wacky and crazy and where do people come up with these ideas? But I mean we lived through the eighties. I mean there was massive Satanic panics during that time. Satan was everywhere, and even Oliver Stone's JFK movie, which was you know, a popular movie was about the pedophile deep going after the President the United States. I mean Joe Pesci played the defrac pedophile priest. So even the basic idea behind Q and on is

not new. I mean, all of this stuff is recycled and rehashed, and it's largely the same people believing the same stuff. Sort of a choose your own adventure mad lib book that they're that that they're just replaying over and over again. I think Q and on has a political valance to it as well. Do you look at the pictures in January six, the people all the people who were there who were convinced that this was going to be kind of this big, like kind of fascist

moment where the dreams were gonna come true. Um, and certainly, I mean, I think it's unique in that it has achieved such mainstream prevalence within the Republican Party. I mean, we're talking about election denial stuff like that. And in many ways, I think Q and on is kind of an easy thing to talk about because you can kind of get a handle on it. It's people holding cues

and stuff like that. But a lot of these ideas that are core to Q and on have become are kind of swirling around the GOP and I've become much more successful without the Q label attached. So we think about, for example, this idea that you know, talking about gay people existing in a school is part of a pedophile groomer plot. And so we can see these things really being weaponized into policy in a uh, you know, I think a really ominous way. I want to talk about

how this is covered. What you know, obviously there are elements of conspiracy theories that belong in the news that become news. Um. What think the role of roles should be for journalists and coming some of these fringe beliefs? Is it giving too much air uh to to to follow some of these JFK JR ideas uh and and put them up on a pedestal so people can see those ideas and have that air out or or what

you're talking about right now? Because this is affecting our culture, do they need to be more vigilant and bring this to the forefront so we can engage with them, we can knock them down or at least be aware that they're out there. Sure, I mean, I think it's a complicated one for me. You know, you certainly don't want to just go find a couple of nuts online and say like, oh, yeah, these guys are so crazy. For me, it's when it starts crossing over into the real world.

I mean, we've had q and On believers murdering people. We had a q and On guy murder his wife in q and On guy shut down a bridge near the Hoover Damn. He had a bunch of guns. That was at the point where I was like, this is not just an online thing anymore. This is something where I have to trust my readers enough, both as an audience and as you know, citizens, that they deserve to know what's going on in the world. And you know, I do think that idea of amplication is a relevant one.

But at the point where you have Donald Trump saying like check out this que stuff, you know, I I think the cow is out of the barn. And I would add, in the case of JFK JR, I mean one of these maybe he's kind of the evil JFK Junior impersonator. There's another guy who's put together a coalition that is going that has people running to control elections in battleground states. Who's the JFK Junior impersonator. They're the

Republican nominee. So really, I mean this is stuff that is going to have really, I think, really concrete impact on our lives. Unfortunately, that was one of the details

when I talked to the Jamatria woman. You know what, what the talk of the rally at that point was not that this was just a person who believed the wild thing, but there was a person who was in Dallas who had a strong following in places like telegram Um, and the talk was that they had a relationship with the Trump campaign, that a lot of these people from Negative forty eight were also uh setting up chairs, uh and in you know, the fact that they would show

up and try to help the campaign get set up at the rallies, they would get certain v I P passes. And this is not just a fringe thing that exists outside some of the campaigns in some ways that also working and coordinating within them. It's it's becoming folded into it.

There is sort of this tension with the Trump campaign where they seem to see these people as what they are, which is huge Trump super fans, and Trump is kind of constantly signaling to Q and on believers, but at the same time they don't want the average person to see a bunch of Q stuff at the rallies. So we see the Negative forty eight people doing the Q and on symbols and stuff at the rallies, and they're being told, you know, don't do that, what have you.

But there's kind of this pull, this back and forth, and Trump doesn't understand that it's so complicated, it's it's so above him. There was some Onion headline that I think nailed it that was essentially Trump half asking his support of c and like, yeah, I guess the Democrats eat babies or whatever the hell it is. You guys think like you can you can feel in like I if this makes you like me more sure, But I can't even begin to wrap my head around what you

guys think is going on. Joe, I wonder what you think the proper response from the media would be in covering these types of stories. That's a really tough question. I I'll tell you what. I started studying the topic about fifteen years ago. There was barely any coverage of

conspiracy theories in the mainstream news. So I started a Google alert back then, so every night I would get all the articles that had the term conspiracy theory in it, And back then I was getting four or five articles a day and none on the weekends, and at the end of that had jumped to a hundred a day every day, and just just this is anecdotal, but just for myself, I think I took close to three hundred interviews in alone, so most every journalist was calling me

when they were writing about it, and they were all writing it about it quite a bit. And then I think what happened shortly after is that a lot of major news outlets started getting their own misinformation conspiracy theory social media newsdesk, so they now have dedicated reporters just just covering this topic. So it's going to continue to get a lot of attention. I don't know, you know,

what the what the effect of the coverage is. I mean, I think that some things went wrong in I think there were a lot of journalists that had sort of a panic over conspiracy theories and misinformation, and the headlines sort of gotten to their own echo chamber. Was like Q was taking over the world and it's the biggest thing ever. And you know, as I was pulling on it, I was like, I'm just not getting these these massive numbers.

It's there, it exists, and they have a presence online. Um. But I think Will was one of the few people who was in journalism who was saying, you know, maybe it's not as big as of the fantastic headlines are saying it is. So I think in some ways, you know, some of the sensationalistic report and got ahead of itself. We'll be right back. Will give us a little perspective.

You're not only on the que and on movement as to where it is now, but even looking at something like this JFK JR theory, the negative forty eight group, you know, how big is it actually and how much of an effect doesn't have on the conversation. Yeah. Sure, So I've actually got I've got some polls right in front of me for for just this moment um. So yeah, okay, So and now these polls are a little out of date, and and Joe does some great polling on this, and

I think he has newer numbers. So, but the difficulty of nailing down Q and on belief is there's a couple of things. Number One, A lot of times people are gonna say they may believe some of the tenets of it, but they're not like on the forum saying you know, where we go and we go all stuff like that. At the same time, we have to realize that at the end of Cute basically told the fans the brand had become too damaged into stopped to saying Q Q Q and just to sort of use the

talking points. And so there is gonna be an amount I think of people who are kind of downplaying it. There's a March five thousand people that's found that fifteen percent of them believe Statana Satan worshiping pedophiles run a global child sex operation. We got two thousand people in January one that found fifteen percent believe that Trump was at war with these Hollywood pedophiles. And now when you started asking about Q and on the numbers get a

little lower. You're talking to think three to seven percent. Still, we're talking about millions of people. That's more popular in some religions in the United States. So you know, don't ship on the Quakers. You gotta ship on the Quakers. I know what you're getting at there. I can read between the lines. They're a good, peaceful group of people. Stop shifting on the Quakers. Don't come on my podcast

and make all this anti Quaker attacks. I know they had a hard time getting people into the whatever they call it community room. But they're working hard on this, Okay exactly, retinue believe the Quakers out of a mouth just getting wrecked by Q and on here. Yeah, they're they're getting blown out. So so yeah, when we start talking about that at the same time, I mean the JFK JR people are kind of a faction of that.

And then we get down to the negative forty eight group, which is smaller than that, So I would say negative forty eight. I think UM has tens of thousands of Telegram subscribers. I think when we think about hardcore fans, we're probably talking a couple of thousands. Mhm uh. It's actually interesting to see, Joe, where do you see? They're the hardcore fans, the people who show up at the

events who are posting most of that information. But there's that secondary element too of when it just becomes a brand. I go to some of these events and I see people wearing cue paraphernalia, queues back and there's cute ship everywhere. Yes, the online conspiracy following a mysterious character known as Q was more popular than ever. Is that a cue? Yeah?

Are you a cute supporter CTA? Some people I taught you the way that just because they understand that it's a it's trolling behavior, that it's a brand that they can put on their body, it's gonna piss off the media. It's good to get attention from the people they want to get attention with. And they may not even know the tenets of what Q is, but they do know that it's something that they support in theory because in their mind the support is just trolling. Is that dangerous?

Is that sort of a is it? Is it the evolution of a conspiracy theory that when it just becomes pepsi that we're we're in for a world to hurt? Where do you see that? Well, we're sort of calling everything Q and on now right, and and if you go back to the idea that Q and on adopted a lot of ideas that pre existed Q and on, then it's not quite as disturbing. So between and more recently, we're depending on how you asked the question. If you if you're just doing direct questions, are you a believer

in Q and on? You follow Q and on? We're getting between five and twelve percent, which makes it one of the least believed and followed things that I pull on. I mean to put that in perspective, and we just say, do you think there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy in nineteen sixty three? We're getting between fifty and six.

So Q and On isn't isn't all that huge? But when will is exactly right when we ask on these more general ideas, like our teachers grooming kids to become trans Are there satanic cults doing massive Satanic rituals across the country. Are elites running sex trafficking rings? Um, we're getting between twenty and thirty. Now, I wouldn't call those ideas Q ideas. I mean Q and On adopts them, but they could have existed decades ago. And some of

those ideas sort of have their origin thousands of years ago. Um, So they've been around, and I just don't want to attribute them to Q because then it says like, oh, this guy was able to convince thirty percent of the country that elites are running sex trafficking rings, when in fact, those ideas, you know, might have been around well before that.

It's just we weren't paying attention. You know, even back during the Satanic Panic of the eighties, were very few poles taken of how many people were buying in to this idea of satanic cults running around And I've only found one pole, and it was of Texas, so you have to you have to keep that in mind. But it was eight percent of people at the end of the eighties thought that, you know, one of the major problems in the country was satanic cults going around abusing people.

So I don't know how well that might have been believed in you know, some other state um at the time. But but right now we're trying to poll on all these things, and it's just we don't have good comparisons to the past. You know. One thing I would note there is that there's something unique about Q and On in comparison to some of these other conspiracy theories. If you're talking about, uh, like the thing of the Kennedy assassination was it was it was a conspiracy theory, or

the moon landing was fake. Well, there's kind of not a lot you can personally do about it. In the case of Q and On, there's kind of this there's sort of a fascist utopia at the core of it, and that there are places that we are going to go tear arise these satanic pedophiles. So there is kind of like a way that people can participate about in it that I think it makes it more dangerous than you know, believing that again the moon Laney was fake or something like that. Yeah, I mean it's a game.

There's a group identity, right, So a lot of people believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, but they're not friends, they don't consider themselves to be part of a group or a movement write, but Q and on a lot of those people do like they are doing something together. They're following along, they're solving the clues, they're expecting an outcome in a shared way. And that's something that most

conspiracy theories don't really have. And that's why Q and on has always been very hard to define, right because it's sort of cult ish but not really a cult. It's a group but sort of decentralized. Um. It's got a lot of conspiracy theories in it, so it's not just a conspiracy theory, and it's got sort of activities that people can do to sort of be a part of it and play along that other conspiracy theories just don't have. I do love thinking of it like activities.

It's like, we get to get together, we get to solve white Tom Hanks is drinking baby blood. It's it's like just a bunch of little Encyclopedia Browns running around America. It's funny you say that. I mean, they had a rally in d C and they said, you know, we're gonna kind of go on this excursion if you're interested to go protest a comment ping pong, So they have

the whole itineraries well before I let you go. Part of the reason this podcast is one for me to wrap my head around some of the stuff that I'm seeing out there on the road. But to help me what am I going to see out there on the road a couple of months from now. One in regards to the JFK Junior conspiracy? How does that morph? And too? Am I gonna get a new Robin Williams movie out of all this? Uh? Yeah, you know. I I think

the JFK Junior stuff is going to continue. I mean I saw and in particular, I think if Trump keeps engaging more with Q and On, I think we're gonna see more people getting into Q and On and kind of see some fresh energy behind that. Um. I once went to the kind of the Trumpian July fourth event and all these women at the Trump Hotel were wearing like JFKG in your shirts and this lady had a JFKG in your mask on her face and I said to her, uh, you know what's that about? And she goes,

he's alive, and she kind of flipped flitters away. So I mean, I don't think that energy is going anywhere. Um. And you know, I think we get we get new conspiracy theories all the time, and so I think, you know, you got the big one. I I'm seeing a lot of movement on this idea that the elites want to meet make us all eat bugs. Jordan's so like you, you might want to be on the lookout for that. I think there's gonna be a lot of like what

they say is I will not eat the bugs. And so I think you might get someone you know accosting you about that. So so don't don't make them do it. I hate this. I hate this job so much. Dear Lord, dear Lord, Jordan, you might want to be on the lookout. I guess there's this thing about elite trying to make you eat bugs bugs? Is that what it is? Uh? Joe? What do I have to look out for? H So worse than that, I think the same reporter who was writing a about the bug eating was also writing about

forced anal swabbing. It's not just about testing for COVID. It's about humiliating you in public. So if you walk down the street and they have like a government tent set up where they're sticking people with Q tips up the ass, that's gonna be Um, that's gonna be something come true somebody's dark dream apparently. So this is how I'm writing it down right now. I need to be aware of bug ghazi and bum ghazi. There they're on the horizon. Uh, thank you gentlemen. Well, well, Joe, thanks

for coming on the podcast. Um, I'm gonna go down to a Trump rally and a few do you guys want to come along? Is that it might be a little intense for me, bear up, bear enough. We'll thank you guys for joining me and helped me figure this conspiracy. Thanks, thank you. Listen to Jordan clapper Fingers The Conspiracy on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.