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Welcome back to False Flag! It’s been a big week in right-wing media, from confirmation that the Daily Wire blew a whopping $50 million on its Game of Thrones-style flop Pendragon (and is somehow mulling a $2 billion IPO), to MAGA comedian JP Sears blasting the likes of Jack Posobiec and Benny Johnson for being bought off by the White House with proximity to the president.
But the story that may have the biggest ripple effects comes from the Russia-focused publication the Insider. The outlet looked into Tucker Carlson ally Elizabeth Lane, the mysterious right-wing influencer from the Republic of Georgia. Despite having effectively zero audience on her own, Lane somehow landed interviews with Carlson and Candace Owens that massively boosted her profile. Now the Insider reports that Lane has been in a relationship with a Russian special forces officer who works for a spy agency.
Combine that revelation with Carlson’s 2024 visit to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin and Owens’s trip this month to St. Petersburg for a major government conference, and it’s enough to make you wonder if something is going on here! What’s the frequency, Tenet?
For today’s issue, we’ve got something more domestic but equally outlandish. Donald Trump is falling out with his most crazed fans: the QAnon community. Plus, some of the legal basis for the FBI’s investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center looks awfully similar to the text of a letter Turning Point USA sent to Stephen Miller.
Sign up for Bulwark+ so I can keep digging through this stuff all day!
—Will
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Aggrieved QAnoners Accuse Trump of Q-Baiting
The Trump administration launched a bizarre QAnon-themed social media campaign this week, using QAnon slogans like “trust the plan” and even a fake Q post to promote Trump executive orders on “quantum computing.”
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“Where we go one, we go quantum,” one Department of Defense account posted on X, a clear play on the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.”
Why would the administration play footsy with QAnon? Perhaps they’re just stirring the pot? Maybe they feel like the QAnon brand is a little less toxic, since it’s been a while since Q believers murdered their family members, kidnapped a child, or stormed Congress? Maybe they’re true believers? After all, Trump has frequently posted QAnon memes in the past, albeit not this explicitly.
The most likely reason is that it’s a troll job—more about that later—but that’s not exactly why, the posts went over so poorly with the QAnon believers (in addition, it almost goes without saying, to normies). The movement, once convinced that Trump was a messianic figure who would literally bring about heaven on earth, apparently has gotten sick of him.
“We’re done being treated like shit!” wrote QAnon promoter Liz Crokin, saying Q believers’ lives had been destroyed while Trump did nothing.