Trump invites 'QAnon' conspiracy theorist to RNC speech, while members of Congress introduce resolution condemning the anonymous hoax
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- President Trump has invited Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congressional candidate who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy hoax, to come to the White House.
- "I'm honored and thrilled to be invited to attend President Trump's acceptance speech Thursday evening at the White House," Greene said Tuesday.
- News of the invite comes the same day that a bipartisan congressional resolution was introduced condemning QAnon.
- "QAnon and the conspiracy theories it promotes are a danger and a threat that has no place in our country's politics," Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican from Virginia, said Tuesday.
- Also on Tuesday, another Republican speaker, Mary Ann Mendoza, shared a Twitter thread from a QAnon conspiracy theorist alleging a Jewish plot to control the world, The Daily Beast reported.
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President Donald Trump has invited a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory to attend his speech for the Republican National Convention, a move that comes the same day that a bipartisan congressional resolution was introduced condemning the deranged hoax.
"I'm honored and thrilled to be invited to attend President Trump's acceptance speech Thursday evening at the White House," Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congressional candidate in Georgia, tweeted on Tuesday.
A source told the Associated Press that the invite is legitimate.
Greene has expressed support for QAnon, a set of conspiracy theories that hinges on claims from an anonymous online account that purports to have inside dirt on the workings of government (and the "deep state" it claims is thwarting Trump's agenda).
"Q is a patriot, we know that for sure," she said in a 2017 video, as NPR reported. Referring to Trump, Greene said: "There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it."
Despite repeatedly posting inaccurate claims — in 2017, it asserted that Hillary Clinton's arrest was imminent — QAnon has attracted ever more support. Its chief assertion these days is that President Donald Trump is covertly fighting an elite pedophile ring, despite said president's past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and public support for Ghislaine Maxwell, who faces multiple charges related to Epstein's sexual abuse of young people.
In July, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point described the conspiracy theory as a threat to national security, noting that "QAnon has contributed to the radicalization of several people to notable criminal acts or acts of violence," as PolitiFact reported.
The danger posed by self-righteous extremists has led some Republicans to go against the president and condemn the hoax and the movement behind it.
"QAnon and the conspiracy theories it promotes are a danger and a threat that has no place in our country's politics," Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican from Virginia, said Tuesday. Riggleman has introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning QAnon and asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep an eye on "extremists motivated by fringe political conspiracy theories," according to a press release.
"I condemn this movement and urge all Americans to join me in taking this step to exclude them and other extreme conspiracy theories from the national discourse," Riggleman said.
Organizers of the Republican National Convention, however, appear to agree with the president: Hours before she was set to address the RNC, one speaker, Mary Ann Mendoza, urged her Twitter followers to check out the anti-Semitic ravings of a QAnon conspiracy theorist who asserted that Jews are seeking to destabilize and control the world, The Daily Beast reported.
Neither the Trump campaign nor the Republican Party immediately returned requests for comment.
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