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We’ll take “subheaders we never thought we’d have to write” for 200, Alex. QAnon’s complete infiltration of the Arizona Republican Party became even more apparent this week with the revelation that AZ-04 GOP candidate Jerone Davison hired a QAnon influencer to run his campaign.
According to new reporting from Media Matters, Austin Steinbert, “who is known online as ‘Baby Q’,” claimed he would use the Republican candidate’s congressional campaign to “push QAnon and gain political influence.” As a reminder, QAnon is a fringe conspiracy group that believes, among many other false conspiracies, that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”
Will Jerone Davison’s opponents, Kelly Cooper and Tanya Wheeless, condemn QAnon and the conspiracy theories that are now running the show in their primary?
“Every day we see more evidence of the chokehold extremism and unhinged conspiracy theories have on the Republican Party,” said DCCC spokesperson Monica Robinson. “Arizonans deserve better than the circus they’re getting from Republican politicians.”
Media Matters: QAnon influencer claims to be running an Arizona Republican’s congressional race
By Alex Kaplan
June 9, 2022
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“A QAnon influencer claimed to be managing the campaign of Jerone Davison, a Republican running for Congress in Arizona, in a video he recently sent to supporters.”
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“The influencer also said that the campaign was working to push QAnon in a ‘very mainstream’ way and that he wants to ultimately get to Washington and ‘set our own narrative.’”
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“Austin Steinbart, who is known online as ‘Baby Q,’ has previously claimed that QAnon ‘is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, one that uses space age quantum technology to post messages from the future to internet forums in the present[.]’”
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“Steinbart has served time in prison for hacking the medical records of celebrities.”
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“In a video he shared on Discord with his supporters in early June, Steinbart said that Davison, who is running for Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, ‘made me his campaign manager last week, like officially.’”
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“Additionally, Steinbart said that Davison’s campaign was ‘much more than just a campaign … cause if we are a part of it, if I’m a part of it, we can go to Washington with him, take a camera crew, and essentially, like, pull stunts every day, and just set our own narrative in — from the Capitol.’”
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“[Steinbart] said that ‘when Jerone gets into hearings, I can be sitting in that chair behind him and we can just call out his intelligence officials to their face, put — like, blow up their spot.’”
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“Steinbart also said that his involvement from the campaign gave him ‘extra cover from the FBI’ and that he used the campaign site he said he created for Davison to go ‘really hard’ on the ‘Q stuff,’ but that he ‘packaged it in a very mainstream’ way.”
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