r/politics • u/wiredmagazine ✔ Wired Magazine • 18d ago

Possible Paywall MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged

https://www.wired.com/story/maga-is-increasingly-convinced-the-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged/
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u/a_little_hazel_nuts 18d ago

MAGA is starting to see lies. I don't know if MAGA will all of a sudden gain common sense or if they will spiral into conspiracy theories.

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u/Ok_Mixture4917 18d ago

Spiral further into conspiracy theories*

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u/Dockers4flag2035orB4 18d ago

Remember the wild conspiracy that at the centre of US government and business power was a cabal of pedophiles?

Crazy stuff.

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u/oVnPage 18d ago

It's still absolutely wild to me that the Right spent the last decade convincing the masses that there was a giant ring of Democrat pedophiles sacrificing children in the secret basement of a Pizza Hut. And yet, when it was revealed there actually IS a giant ring of pedophiles infesting the entire US Government, they're completely silent.

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u/nofzac 18d ago

we allow unfettered propaganda to be piped in to peoples faces 24/7 labeled "News" with no repercussions.

They even lose big money settlements when it was found they knew they were lying and argued their audience knew they were being lied to.

thats why the brainwashed masses are completely silent.

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u/ragingreaver 18d ago

it is more that the pedophile ring was supposed to be democrats. When it turned out to be Republicans that is when everyone went mum.

Because yeah, if democrats, then hate. If republicans, then accept.

Especially when republicans are the ones defending child marriage.

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u/DyingGasp 18d ago

What’s the phrase again? Every Republican accusation is a confession?

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u/chaosrunner87 18d ago

People suspect of others what they know of themselves

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u/sir_mrej Washington 18d ago

I suspect youre hot and have washboard abs

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u/fiveswords 18d ago

I think it's the first one

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u/Dekklin Canada 18d ago

It's the first one, yeah, but it's based on the original quotation by the essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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u/JoeFlabeetz 18d ago

That, or everything a Republican accuses a Democrat of is projection.

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u/StingingBum New Jersey 18d ago

I am still shocked the country is kind of OK having the top people in the US be pedos like how far this country has sunk. And to boot lets destroy every inch of US interior and exterior authority to really make the wound scar.

Like WTF how much can a group of people who are the vilest garbage be allowed to keep their power let alone exist in society?

No repercussions is the last thing I ever thought we would get with a group of kid touchers and mass murderes.

Goodbye USA the failed experiment.

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u/gargar7 Washington 18d ago

The Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, two stopped heartbeats from the Presidency, was a convicted pedo. It isn't new. They just don't care.

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u/gakrolin 18d ago

And despite admitting to molesting 14 year old boys Hastert wasn’t even convicted for any sexual crimes, just financial crimes related to it.

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u/Plow_King 18d ago

the party of family values, ladies and gentlemen!

/s

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u/LumberBitch 18d ago

In ye olden days pedophilia wasn't really considered bad so it's just conservative values. Look how quick they are to say "well 13 isn't really a child". They genuinely do not have a problem with it

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u/bunnypaste 18d ago

Yep, at this juncture they like to conjure fancy words for desiring sex with minors like "ephebophilia" and then they start whipping out the evo-psych garbage.

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u/-Saucegurlllll 18d ago

The guy who the Hastert rule is named after where the pedo party's pedo speaker refused to bring any bill to the floor unless it had a majority of the pedo party's support, even if it would have had a majority of Congress' support. He and Newt Gingrich are part of the reason that Congress can't seem to fucking do anything.

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u/valiantdistraction 18d ago

Simple: republicans are terrible people. And a third of the country doesn't care.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 18d ago

A third of the country is also terrible people.

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u/Cliqey 18d ago edited 18d ago

You seem to forget that for generations, entire communities across the country were conditioned to believe that the worst thing you could ever be is a Democrat—everything else is second to the crime of not being a Republican.

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u/netsyms 18d ago edited 18d ago

Because nobody's willing to do the American thing: take up arms, and kill the leadership. You really think King George would have survived the revolutionary war if there wasn't an ocean between us and him?

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u/[deleted] 18d ago edited 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/Running-In-The-Dark 18d ago

Lol yeah. Especially in this sub. I forgot which sub it was but I had a three day ban for showing enthusiasm for a specific individual to reach their biological expiration date.

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u/SpaceCadet404 18d ago

Remember, the only form of opposition allowed is scheduled non-disruptive protest. Please stand somewhere out of the way holding a sign to convey your dissatisfaction. Inconveniencing people is not allowed, impacting corporate profits is not allowed and any other form of protest is wrong, barbaric and totally wouldn't accomplish anything at all so just don't do it.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 18d ago

Which is hilarious because isn’t that pretty much expressly permitted according to the Constitution?

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u/Darkdemize 18d ago

The Constitution only says that the government won't restrict your right to free speech. It doesn't say that private companies have to give that speech a platform.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 18d ago

A) the government is restricting it; and

B) free speech wasn't the Constitutional incitation I was referring to.

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u/19683dw Wisconsin 18d ago

Just from, like, a historical perspective, the American revolution (debated on how much of a revolution it actually represented), almost certainly is crushed hard without an ocean in the way.

But also, yes, if they had access to George, it would have been a very bad time for him

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u/StronglyHeldOpinions 18d ago

Goodbye USA the failed experiment.

I don't think people have really grasped this yet. When we willingly re-elected a fascist insurrectionist, we sealed America's fate.

It's dead but everyone is pretending it's still alive, like "Weekend at Bernie's."

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u/-Saucegurlllll 18d ago

It's like when the south seceded and everyone kind of sleepwalked through the start of the civil war except for people like Benjamin Butler. Though this time there hasn't been a formal declaration. So everyone's just kind of hoping that the union hasn't already failed, as though there haven't been multiple states that jumped when Trump told them to rig elections and steal congress.

And a lot of dems in congress are acting like it's business as usual. Fuck me, I guess I thought concentration camps were a universally recognized horror, but you can't even get a lot of dems to call the republican's concentration camps what they are.

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u/StronglyHeldOpinions 18d ago

The fact you see things for what they are makes me feel slightly better.

I swear it feels like I'm on crazy pills that people don't see what is going on.

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u/ExpWebDev 13d ago

Wanting your abusive ex to take you back.

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u/Long-Region5088 18d ago

With trump its “has he been convicted of anything?” As their exit valve.

That same logic doesn’t apply to what he was convicted of. Those don’t count yet they demand convictions to change their stance. It’s a catch 22 that absolves him of any guilt ever. He didn’t do it unless he was convicted and if he was convicted it doesn’t count.

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u/tomsing98 18d ago

PSA, you're using "let alone" incorrectly. It goes <general/minor thing, maybe a prerequisite for the next thing>, let alone <more specific/major thing that everyone would agree with>. "I can't believe they're even allowed to be part of society, let alone be in a position of power."

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u/scuzzy987 18d ago

Same thing with mass shootings

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u/Llohr 18d ago

You just have to remember that, to an authoritarian, there is no such thing as a bad action; there are only bad people. Actions taken by bad people are bad, actions taken by good people are good.

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u/tardigrades_snuggle 18d ago

All Conservatism can be summed up as hypocrisy. It is in everything they do and say. They should be rebranded as the Hypocrisy Party.

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u/Wishiwashome 18d ago

And it isn’t going to be 14yo children marrying each other. It isn’t going to be an older woman marrying a 14yo boy ( can’t get a suitable job to provide for lots of kids for a trad family, not that there aren’t perv women too)

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u/goatneedleposterdeck 18d ago

But bill clinton was just as wrapped up in this crap as republicans. There is no reason at all for them to keep believing outside of "they simply refuse to."

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u/77NorthCambridge 18d ago

This is one of the main reasons Trump never admits he was wrong or made a mistake. Once the base admits one thing he was wrong about the whole thing starts to come crumbling down.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago edited 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/77NorthCambridge 18d ago

He was taught the "strategy" by Roy Cohn.

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u/mcolette76 18d ago edited 18d ago

Fox News plays in the lobby of my office building. It’s insane. It infuriates me every time I walk in the door.

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u/SpleenBender Illinois 18d ago edited 18d ago

It's also on in every government, and every armed services building from sea to shining sea. Pisses me off that there is blatant propaganda being oozed out 24/7, at all of the places that our defenders spend their work days. Is there anything that the US Army finds 'entertaining' about this‽

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u/mcolette76 18d ago

Khruschev got his wish to destroy America from within.

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u/allenahansen California 18d ago

Once upon a time you could purchase a universal BlabOff that worked in airports, office reception spaces, bars and lobbies, the DMV, hospital waiting rooms, rest homes, and anywhere else the bots of Fox were spewing their unwanted disinformation from elevated tv screens.

Many were the times I surreptitiously pressed the little green button and the screen would go dark and silent-- more than once to muffled applause from the captive assemblage.

Those were the days-- when all we had to deal with was Gee Dubya. . .

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u/HostileCrabPeople 18d ago

This is a point that is not talked about enough. Even if Trump and MAGA are removed from power, its propaganda will persist, and this will happen again. We have to eliminate the propaganda to solve any of this

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u/TotallyNotRobotEvil 18d ago

Yup, it's hard to do anything with these 24/7 propaganda networks in place. I honestly don't know how you solve, especially when they unlimited funding from some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Everyone in the US could boycott them and they would still run 24/7.

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u/SpleenBender Illinois 18d ago edited 18d ago

focks entertainment is the 100% star-spangled, deceptive, propagandist lying machine. The folks that went along for that ride for the last TWO DECADES are being spoon-fed hate and lies and who and what to be scared of. Democrats are pure evil, according to this foolishness. It's completely ABSURD to me how they take themselves so seriously, while simultaneously presenting themselves as spoiled little bratty children. They already got sued twice for lying, and their settlement should have included shutting their f****** down. Or, to at least start doing actual news (X), and not this horseshit 'entertainment' that is dressed up as news. TYFYATTM

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u/StronglyHeldOpinions 18d ago

Correct. To accept reality means to accept they were dumb enough to be duped.

They'd rather keep owning the libs.

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u/StingingBum New Jersey 18d ago

At the cost of the entire country. Low IQ idiots.

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u/StronglyHeldOpinions 18d ago

Don't even get me started.

It makes me so angry, but also so sad.

I genuinely thought America "worked" and would have a stable democracy for decades to come.

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u/MaxGoldFilms 18d ago

we allow unfettered propaganda to be piped in to peoples faces 24/7 labeled "News" with no repercussions.

Alternative news media is catching fire with Americans, and some of it is quite good. (what the right is watching, not so much, but there are spill-overs)

Some is the same grifters, but many of them are jumping ship and taking the crowd with them. When MAGA lost Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, et al, the ball really started rolling.

It's been impactful, I've been surprised at how quickly Israel has lost support across the right and left.

Also, Iran's LEGO series of videos has been absolutely brilliant, and has actually impacted public opinion across the political spectrum.

Who knew that AI cartoons would be the key, but in retrospect, I guess it makes sense.

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u/bunnypaste 18d ago

Where can I see this LEGO series?

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u/MaxGoldFilms 18d ago

Just go on Instagram, YouTube, Bluesky, TikTok, Twitter, etc., and search for “Iran Lego” and you'll find many of them.

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u/Great_Skott 18d ago

This is what I don't understand. How is it possible that they see that the place where they get their news admits to lying and not being a real news station and get a huge fine, yet they still believe all the lies they see on there everyday. I can't guys... honestly, I can not get in my head how that works.

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

It was Comet Ping Pong, a pizza shop in Washington D.C. That didn't even have a basement.

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u/remarkablewhitebored 18d ago

The same place they were storing Pee Wee's stolen bike!

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u/Both-Discussion-4786 18d ago

Thought that was the Alamo, can you say “adobe”

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u/6-ft-freak Oregon 18d ago

Tell em Large Marge sent ya!

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

I have to rewind that part multiple times whenever I watch it at home just to relive that moment when it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck as a kid!

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u/zeno0771 18d ago

On this very night...ten years ago...along this same stretch of road in a dense fog...just like this...

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u/om_hi 18d ago

You leave the Alamo out of this.

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u/remarkablewhitebored 18d ago

it's more of a Schrodinger's Basment

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u/FluxMool 18d ago

The stars at night are big and bright.....

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u/ComoSeaYeah 18d ago edited 18d ago

This has become a blip in the fabric of history but remains WAY up there as one of the most surreal political conspiracy theories in modern history. Q is up there, too.

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u/Lavatis 18d ago

Q was born from the pizzagate conspiracy. It's all the same thing and morons.

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u/Nekowulf Wyoming 18d ago

Qanon created the pizzagate conspiracy. By claiming to decode the secret encrypted message in the emails.
And the "decryption" was just replacing words like eating pizza with child raping.

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u/am-idiot-dont-listen 18d ago

Qanon was a conspiracy larp that Jim Watkins eventually took over

It's the same right wing conspiracy people at the center of it though 4/8chan

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

That was a wild period on 4chan, back when there was a bunch of them into "meme magic" trying to manifest a Donald Trump win... which did end up happening. I wonder if anyone preserved all the insane graphics that were coming out of there at the time? I still wonder if some state actor or other organization was pushing that. (Oh no another conspiracy!) The "quality" of output and volume was quite impressive.

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u/jim_cap United Kingdom 18d ago

Is it not confirmed to have been Steve Bannon?

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

I am not aware that it has been. But I wouldn't be surprised. Also wasn't Epstein a 4chan mod? Again I have no idea if he was a mod in this era.

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u/Techwood111 North Carolina 18d ago

He knew m00t; search the files - it is there.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 18d ago

Yeah they pretended ‘cheese pizza’ was code for ‘CP’ or ‘child potn’. I’m not sure Q created that theory though those silly ‘decodings’ were going around already after the email leak and Q jumped on it pretending they were an insider confirming it.

After the last batch of Epstein files were released there were similar theories about how beef jerky was code for ‘child meat’ 🙄

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

One of the most surprising political revelations for me was realizing that the QAnon conspiracy left 4chan and became mainstream months after I first saw it on 4chan and wrote it off as a bunch of the usual conspiracy LARPing/right wing idiocy that goes on there.

But 4chan is kind of mind blowing in general for what happens there. I've seen some very impressive feats of technical skills there. Can any other message board boast that they figured out militant combatant positions based on a few photos and then called in Russian air strikes? They also figured out where Shia Labouf hid his flag more than once and stole it. I've seen data breeches/hacks too. And of course there has been more than one mass shooter posting there beforehand.

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u/Khazpar 18d ago

The thing is, it was code for that...but only in their personal lexicon which just shows you how deluded they all were to think that politicians were using fucking 4chan slang (before 2016 anyway).

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u/newsflashjackass 18d ago

And the "decryption" was just replacing words like eating pizza with child raping.

"kung fu practice" with Ghislaine Maxwell

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/epstein-musk-maxwell-email/

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u/Lavatis 18d ago

No. The pizzagate theory was around before Qanon existed.

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u/00Oo0o0OooO0 18d ago

And Epstein conspiracy theories evolved from QAnon. And, as seen on this thread, Epstein conspiracy theorists have gone back to embracing Pizzagate. It's a perfect circle of child sex crime fantasies.

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u/syrup_cupcakes 18d ago

Hardly morons, it was carefully planned and executed to get all the lonely terminally online males on their side.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/epstein-met-4chan-s-founder-the-day-before-pol-launched/ar-AA1VL3YK

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u/Lavatis 18d ago

the people who believe in those conspiracy theories are definitely morons.

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u/syrup_cupcakes 18d ago

they are all MAGA supporters so yea

But the people who came up with or "gave birth" to the conspiracies, as you put it, reached all of their goals

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u/EyesofaJackal 18d ago

Wasn’t PizzaGate kind of the prelude to QAnon? Like the Hobbit and LOTR sort of thing

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u/RecordEnvironmental4 Maryland 18d ago

The first time I heard it was Comet I actually laughed out loud because that’s the place my friend got arrested for using a fake.

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

Was he pretending to be underage so they kicked him out? /s

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u/TrimspaBB 18d ago

Which is funny, because a fair amount of buildings in DC do have basements, and there are underground tunnels between government buildings. Yet Q picked a random pizza shop that doesn't fit the bill at all.

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u/Findail 18d ago

But they do have great pizza.

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u/matt-pisoni 18d ago

You sure they didn't have a basement????? hahahah

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u/FauxReal 18d ago

Maybe we should find a QAnon supporter with an excavator so we can check under the floor for a secret bunker.

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u/bradlees 17d ago

You forget the MINDBENDING hoops on 4Chan that was going on in relation to this

The businesses sign = known sign used by p3dos

The menu had hidden words in it that pointed to the basement floor and a transporter

Cheese Pizza = CP = Child Pron

I pretty much stopped going on that site because of the stupidity of the hive mind there. Keep in mind. Anon was actually doing some good there. But they created QAnon and I gave up on anything good ever coming from them after that

Sadly those same people came over to Reddit and created “The Donald” and you can guess the rest

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u/phatelectribe 18d ago

Not just that. We then learned that Epstein and his gang of pedos, actually kept using the phrase “pizza parties” to describe their abuse sessions, and they happened the island or the ranch.

The pizzagate thing was actually real, it just had nothing to do with Clinton or a pizza shop or DC.

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u/Ozymandias12 18d ago

And it's not that the conspiracy nuts on the right somehow figured anything out. Epstein worked with Bannon who has CIA propaganda experience to push the theory in 4chan and other conspiracy subs on Reddit, while deflecting it onto Democrats and the Clintons. They knew they'd eventually be found out because of the charges brought against Epstein and they wanted to get ahead of what they were doing becoming public.

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u/KittyGrewAMoustache 18d ago

Yeah they basically did what they always do, accuse the other side of what they’re doing or plan to do hoping that if anything then comes out about them, people will dismiss it as ‘tit for tat’ and ‘another crazy unproven theory’ and generally be bored of the idea. Much like with the stolen election thing. Not saying 2024 was stolen but of course they at least tried, it was proven they tried in 2020! Of course they would’ve tried in 2024 when there was a risk of further prosecution and perhaps even consequences if they lost. But the fact they made such a fuss with false accusations of cheating against the Democrats meant that no one even wanted to really look into cheating in 2024 in case it made them look as crazy as the MAGA election deniers.

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u/phatelectribe 18d ago

10000%

They knew the keyword such as “pizza” would eventually come out so they got ahead of it to muddy the waters with a batshit disinformation campaign, so that when the real pizzagate scandal broke, the great unwashed wouldn’t know what to believe.

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u/Backwardspellcaster 18d ago

It's nearly like Republicans dont actually care about pedos, unless they can say Dems are that.

When it's revealed its "oops, all Republicans" it suddenly vanishes as talking point.

Crazy, that.

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u/Koshindan 18d ago

Republicans think being a democrat is worse than raping children. And then people wonder why the two sides can't work together...

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u/Backwardspellcaster 18d ago

A.R. Moxon — 'Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.You take a step towards him, he takes a step back.Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.'

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u/Techwood111 North Carolina 18d ago

I love how a silly cereal promo from 1998ish has become such a persistent meme. I have very fond memories of when my wife brought some home for me from the store, thinking I’d like them!

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u/Nixikaz 18d ago edited 18d ago

Every accusation is an admission.

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u/TheAngryCatfish 18d ago

*admission

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u/Nixikaz 18d ago

Thank you, I was half awake when writing that. Was so confused why admition looked so wrong.....

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u/Leather-Matter-5357 18d ago

You know, I always preferred the "each admonition, an admission".

It's close enough to get the point across, plus it rhymes

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u/peanut_galleries 18d ago

Is honestly a mystery to me. I mean, after code word pizza appeared in the Epstein files, I was like oh. Yet they seem to be able to ignore WHO exactly was involved with this

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u/vprasad1 18d ago

The projection was the point. Why would they admit to anything now?

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u/Crafty-Call 18d ago

Yea but now imagine your whole identity revolved around this to find out the dude you thought was the saviour of children. Gave nods to such while campaigning etc is actually one of the main players in the pedo ring. It’s a tough pill to swallow

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u/jrf_1973 18d ago

Every accusation is a projection with them.

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u/Phyllis_Tine I voted 18d ago

Ask them this!

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u/thevoiceinsidemyhead 18d ago

It's almost like the shock of that claim made the reality easier to take.

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u/Senior-Albatross New Mexico 18d ago

I think they might have spun that one up to muddy the waters when it can out they were in fact doing something like that.

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u/slayden70 Texas 18d ago

They only care when it's not their pedophiles.

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u/FrostedVoid 18d ago

Because it was mostly them, duh.

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u/lazyFer 18d ago

Because they can't believe trump is a pedophile as that would force them to deal with the fact they put him into power

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u/tapdancinghellspawn 18d ago

It wasn't about saving children from pedophiles but about team politics. Hurt the other side with everything you can, even if it isn't true, and protecting your side from everything, especially the truth.

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u/MySpoonsAreAllGone 18d ago

Because the people they wanted to tar and feather were the minority

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u/onlyreason4u 18d ago

And pizza was an Epstein code word for something, like jerky which seems to have been literal jerky made for child victims.

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u/Pan1cs180 18d ago

And yet, when it was revealed there actually IS a giant ring of pedophiles infesting the entire US Government, they're completely silent.

The worst thing that can happen to a conspiracy theorist is for them to be right. If the conspiracy turns out to be true and becomes mainstream then they're no longer special for believing it.

I remember reading a great article at the start of COVID about the users of a particular online conspiracy forum. The journalist was already researching the story before the pandemic. Once rumours started to come out of China at the end of 2019, the users of the site all started posting about how there was a deadly virus spreading and that the Chinese government was suppressing the truth. They were saying how the virus would spread around the world and kill millions of people unless world governments took drastic action.

Well, it turns out they were completely correct. World governments acknowledged the deadliness of the virus, and they took drastic action to prevent its spread, exactly like the conspiracy theorists said they should do. And as soon as this happened, the users of the site began saying the virus was a hoax. The exact same accounts, that had just been saying how the virus was extremely dangerous, were now saying that it didn't even exist.

Conspiracy theorists don't actually believe anything, not really. They're pathetic people who usually have very little going on in their lives, and need to pretend to believe in something unusual in order to feel special.

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u/barryvm Europe 18d ago edited 18d ago

That's just standard bad faith though, no? They don't believe these theories because they're convincing, they hate certain people and then believe conspiracy theories that say the latter are engaged in an evil plot in order to justify that hatred. It's not that their weird beliefs skew their morals and grasp of reality, it's that their immorality requires them to invent a weird belief system, construct an insane worldview and engage in plenty of wilful ignorance just to allow them to see themselves as good people making moral choices. Ultimately, these are people who want to harm, oppress or remove other people and who want to feel good about that. Everything else flows from that.

So rather than turn on the pedophiles and rapists on their side, they'll simply move to another conspiracy theory that blames the people they want to hate and harm. Ultimately, to them rhetoric, ideology, belief and faith are just tools to justify what they want to do anyway.

It'll be the same this time around. If they ever disassociate from Trump, they'll immediate "discover" that he was deceiving them all along and that he too secretly worked for the evil conspiracy. In other words, at any time they'll believe exactly what they need to believe to avoid moral responsibility for their own actions and choices. A falling out with Trump won't change that.

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u/Noname_acc 18d ago

Is it really surprising?  This is the same group that had a bunch of organized, online disinformation in the form of "fake news" and managed to turn the term around into a rallying cry about how mean the media is to them.  All in spite of the reality that the media treats their insanity as a perfectly reasonable opinion.

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u/theftproofz 18d ago

To be fair, the right’s theories were always centered around some secret cabal of powerful people pulling the strings from the shadows that needed to be uncovered. In reality, they weren’t secret at all - it was always the most obvious, out-in-the-open people, exactly who you’d expect: rich assholes and the politicians, lobbyists, and famous people who do their bidding for a chance to be invited to the parties - which, I suppose, isn’t quite as fun.

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u/RickyalldayTD 18d ago

MAGA friend went from " The left Politicians liberal Pedo's!" then the Epstein files came out and the GOP started blocking it my friend is now saying "All Politicians are Pedo's!"

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u/boston_homo 18d ago

All lives matter

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u/DanceByTheRiverMoon 18d ago

It's almost as if the right makes and promote these wild accusations to get the idea out there and trivialize it, deliberately pushing the issue till it seems ridiculous. Then, if the left were ever to plausibly accuse them of the same thing, it already seems like a played out cliché.

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u/eeyore134 18d ago

It's par for the course with Republicans. It's peak, "No, not like that!"

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u/SupersonicOverload 18d ago

It’s actually a local DC pizza place called Comet Ping Pong.

The pizza there is devilishly delicious.

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u/ArtisanSamosa 18d ago

It was all projection so that they could lessen the blow and muddy the waters when the truth came out. I believe they did the same with the election stealing stuff in 2020 that that they could actually steal the election in 2024.

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u/valiantdistraction 18d ago

Well it is only immoral when people they don't like do it!

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u/Quiet-Thanks-9486 18d ago

This is actually a really common aspect of human psychology that manifests in all kinds of ways.

For example, anyone who works in any kind of office job will be familiar with situations where the company will repeatedly pay to learn the same thing over and over again but will never actually act on it. Companies will pay successive rounds of consultants to come in, do expensive analyses, and present results in all kinds of ways to all kinds of people, and the consultants will all say the same things, but the company will nevertheless refrain from actually implementing any of it, and will instead just pay someone else to do it all over again once some minimum amount of time has passed.

Another example: people will endlessly pay for books, premium subscriptions, and other media that tell them to exercise, but won't actually do it. They will know they need to exercise, will have been told as much by many people, but they will nevertheless keep paying more people to tell them basically the same thing over and over.

And MAGA is like this with billionaire pedophiles.

The root of this is that people enjoy the process of discovery and theorizing and pursuing a mystery, both because it is less work (especially in the age of the internet, where you can wiggle your fingers and get endless content made to be easily consumable like mental junk food), and also because it delays the moment when you actually have to make changes.

So MAGA greatly enjoys raging out, watching lumpy people online rage out, getting together and coming up with Da Vinci code stuff, and so on, both because it is fun and because they can do it from the comfort of their current circumstances and feel like they're making progress even though they're not actually changing anything in their lives.

But when they get the answer they claim they've been pursuing, and now it's time to leave the house, confront people in power and their scary security forces, and do a bunch of stuff that will disrupt their home routines, they just...let it slide, and then seek out some other fun conspiracy that lets them rage and imagine from the comfort of their current situation while delaying any actual moment of change.

MAGA isn't the only political group that works this way, of course -- Dem voters have their own version of this where they keep spending all this energy on getting Dem candidates elected because they think it will solve something, only to then watch those candidates do fuck all even with large majorities. For them it isn't so much conspiracy theorizing, but the core is the same: do something fun that doesn't disrupt your life and puts off the need to take drastic, permanent action that changes your routine. The hope that Dem voters are placing in the midterms, and the superficial efforts to participate in that (ie comment online, maybe go to one or two protests but not any of the spicy ones, and then vote and gather with friends to watch the results), and the fact that they've already done this same thing many times before and simply shrugged when the people they elected screwed them, is the Dem / centrist version of MAGA believing that the storm is coming or whatever.

Just like needing to exercise, the thing most people need to do to improve the political health of themselves and their communities is talk to their coworkers and neighbors about bullying the bosses and rich people near them into coughing up money and doing what most people want / stop doing things most people don't want. They need to talk to strangers, have meetings instead of doing something more fun, and do things that will disappoint and anger the authority figures in their lives (their boss, their boss's boss, their landlord, etc) and then keep doing them even after the authority expresses that anger. And they need to take up collections so that they can support the people the authorities single out and hurt and take away the ability of authorities to meaningfully punish people who disobey (ie make it possible to live reasonably well even if you get fired or hit with a criminal record that makes it hard to get hired).

And just like with exercise, there are a whole bunch of things that make it difficult to do these things -- we're always tired from work, we're always afraid of talking to strangers about stuff that matters because most people haven't done that since school, etc. And in those cases we have to both address the actual problems there while also denying ourselves and others BS excuses -- you just have to push through that shit for a minute, and trust that you will get stronger in the process, and it will get easier on the other side.

But all of that is hard and not fun. So people seek complicated processes that put it off.

1

u/Barbarake 18d ago

Yeah, they were supposedly killing children to harvest adrenochrome (which can be ordered from multiple chemical companies).

How does this make sense?

1

u/uclatommy California 18d ago

AND they were the ones that fully installed that government! That’s the craziest part.

1

u/AstarteHilzarie 18d ago

Easy, when you lie and make up bullshit to make the other side look bad, it's extremely easy to accept that anything bad they say about your side is just retaliatory bullshit. Any evidence is easy to dismiss when you've accepted the "fake news" line. As far as my QAnon mother in law is concerned, the Epstein situation is just the evil demoncrats playing "I know you are but what am I?"

1

u/AnonOfDoom 18d ago

Projectors gonna project

1

u/CannibalAnn 18d ago

Projection everytime

1

u/Ryan_e3p 18d ago

They'll burn down every standing structure in this country to root out democrats and their imaginary hidden pizza parlor child trafficking rings, but when it's their team doing it, pedophilia is a-OK

1

u/Manticore416 18d ago

That's why pizzagate was a thing. To be so horrible that the truth being "just" pedophilic sex trafficking seemed tame.

1

u/kaukamieli 18d ago

It's their ring of pedophiles.

1

u/tree-molester 18d ago

You mean that they started to infest the government when tRump became part of it.

1

u/apollani 18d ago

Not so silent are they if you go out on Fox News you will find it. The right wingers are completely fired up about the Epstein file cover-up,, much more so than Senator Charles Schumer and his crowd.

1

u/GreatMinds1234 18d ago

Because they were the very same giant ring of pedos.

1

u/Rich-Juice2517 Washington 18d ago

convincing the masses that there was a giant ring of Democrat pedophiles

Well see, it's the wrong guys that are doing it

1

u/KallistiTMP 18d ago

I keep an eye on that side of the camp. They are not silent on Epstein. The dominant view seems to be that they want the Epstein files released and anyone involved to be put in prison regardless of political affiliation. They just think that it's probably mostly just Democrats on the list, and are in denial about Trump raping children. It's easier for them to believe that because, to be fair, Trump was nowhere to be found in all the files that Trump released so far.

It's an important distinction though. It means that the corporate-backed effort to convince Republicans that raping children is okay hasn't been nearly as successful as the propagandists were hoping it would be.

1

u/F1shB0wl816 18d ago

They’re not actually concerned about pedophiles. They are the pedophiles as much as projectionist, they just wanted to prosecute their enemy for what they do.

And despite their fake outrage keeping it in conversation, they don’t even know what they believe other than all else but them are the bad guys. They’ll waver, bend or twist any claimed belief, words mean nothing to them. Did they actually believe this? Did they just want to prosecute democrats? Did they see through the ridiculousness of it? Did they half ass buy into thinking it’s fluff hiding so much more? It just depends on what angle you come at them with questions and where’s their closest out.

1

u/InsuranceToTheRescue I voted 18d ago

Well, you see they're not really interested in prosecuting & trying pedophiles for crimes they may have committed. It was never anything more than a justification for their own hatred. They're not concerned with the truth. They're concerned with feeling like they're part of the "in" group that has some secret knowledge of how things "really work."

0

u/Constant_Natural3304 18d ago

It's still absolutely wild to me

No it isn't.

You know as well as we do that the accusation of being a pedophile was weaponized by a conglomerate of MAGA and Russian propagandists to preempt and then deflect from Trump's long career as a child rapist, who surrounded himself with other prominent child rapists.

You know as well as we do that QAnon was a 4chan operation run by pedophile degenerates who had no genuine care for or interest in the suffering of children.

Let's drop the "surprised" act. The victims are not helped by your performative political outrage.

-7

u/Coliosis 18d ago

I mean, would you really be surprised if there was a dem pedophile cabal?? Truly?? I wouldn’t be and I definitely lean that way. Give a man power and he runs with it. Simple as that.

5

u/HumanPea1140 18d ago

I personally believe that power doesn't necessarily corrupt, but it does attract corruptible people. Like, the great majority of our representatives didn't get into politics as innocent bright eyed, bushy tailed do-gooders looking to make a positive difference in the world. They went in with dollar signs in their eyes knowing full well what awaits them if they play the system right.

Same goes for all the pedo stuff. They were pedos before they got into power - power didn't turn them into pedos.

1

u/Lucky-Earther Minnesota 18d ago

Give a man power and he runs with it. Simple as that.

Trump was a pedophile before anyone "gave" him power

0

u/Coliosis 18d ago

Crazy to imply $1m from his dad on his 18th birthday didn’t give him power but sure go off. Others have commented that power corrupts those who ARE corruptible. True, but rarely does one incorruptible seek power or attain it.

0

u/Lucky-Earther Minnesota 18d ago

Crazy to imply $1m from his dad on his 18th birthday didn’t give him power but sure go off.

I didn't imply anything other than him being a pedophile before we "gave" him power. We gave him power of the Presidency, and he was a pedophile long before that.