Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America

by Will Sommer

“This is far beyond the Republican community,” Jake said. “This is so far beyond what you think of as the far right.”

“Look, you’re convincing people the election was stolen,” Kinzinger recalled telling McCarthy. “You know damn well it wasn’t.”

Over and over, I talked to grieving families of QAnon believers who told me that the person they had lost to Q saw their beliefs solidified by Republican silence over the conspiracy theory.

If Republicans think elections aren’t legitimate, then it’s more likely that they’ll support any measure to take power. American democracy will enter a death spiral.

QAnon’s growth is a story about how Trump and the Republican Party decided to capitalize on QAnon’s growth for their own benefit. The president and Republican leaders could have easily dismissed it a year or two after it began. Instead they decided to tolerate its growth within their party. Republican voters, meanwhile, were too committed to their party to keep QAnon supporters like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene out of Congress.

It’s difficult to imagine Republicans participating in any sort of bipartisan government solution to disinformation, whatever that might look like.