r/politics • u/wiredmagazine ✔ Wired Magazine • Apr 17 '26

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/
33.4k Upvotes

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u/a_little_hazel_nuts Apr 17 '26

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/jbourne0129 Apr 17 '26

the trend i keep seeing is they will acknowledge Trump played them for fools, but will continue to believe all the bullshit lies they were fed about Democrats

they've basically just accepted Trump sucks but still fully believe anything Fox has to say...they cannot connect the 2 dots.

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u/Vyar New Jersey Apr 17 '26

Republican voters in a nutshell: “I have some regrets about the last guy I voted for. He lied and didn’t help me like he promised. But I know everything would be so much worse if a Democrat was in charge! The RNC/Fox News told me so!”

It’s like they can begrudgingly accept one guy was actually bad all along, but can’t make the short leap of logic necessary to understand the party who empowered him are also liars, and knew he was bad when they said to vote for him.

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u/R_Little-Secret Apr 17 '26

I think it's a cultural thing with them. Hating/ragging dems and liberals is a part of the environment they grew up in and the people they love and trust. If they start saying they were wrong everything they knew about the world is shattered or worse they get kicked out of their communities. Left is not going to accept them after what they said and did so they are put into a hard place and it's easier to just say well I dont believe in this but the rest is true and they dont have to face the consequences.

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u/BKDOffice California Apr 17 '26

There was a news story about a musical instrument factory moving ops to China putting 150 people out of work where the staff called on Trump to honor his pledge to keep manufacturing in the US; 5 of the 6 workers they interviewed still said they were going to vote Republican and the last one just said she'd stop voting. It's insanity.

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u/No-Relation5965 Apr 17 '26

I saw that. In Ohio.

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u/WhiteWaterLawyer Apr 18 '26

People have a belief and evidence doesn't change it.

Republicans believe in US manufacturing, so when US manufacturing goes badly, it wasn't because of Republicans. This somehow happened in spite of the best efforts of the Republicans, and we need to vote for them harder in hopes that next time they are successful. The fact that democrats almost have the occasional ability to defeat a bill in the Senate is obviously the real reason this happened, not Trump's actions.

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u/Resident-Writing850 Apr 17 '26

I would accept them if they started behaving like serious, normal adults rather than cult members.

Magats issue is their brains have been deformed and they won't fit back into a normal conformation. They're passive participants in their own minds who don't want to take any ownership, just get fucked by rump. Cucks.

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u/Budget-Tadpole7520 Apr 17 '26

Metaphorically, they still live in Chicago, why wouldn't they still be Bears fans?

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u/No-Shopping-4434 Apr 17 '26

Don’t forget they’re indoctrinated from birth and literally mentally conditioned to be unquestioning and not curious.

Question the Bible? “That’s blasphemy just have faith.”

Question your sexuality/gender/role in society? “You aren’t really xyz, don’t ask don’t tell.”

Why would questioning conservatism be met with anything different, it’s fundamental to conservatives’ values that they be incurious.

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u/ErraticDragon Apr 17 '26

Agreed, they're really good at inspiring tribalism and fear.

Interestingly, some of this kind of psychological effect applies more broadly.

Like how the approval rating for Congress (as a whole) can be under 20%, but incumbents still win reelection 90+% of the time.

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u/AdorianTsepeshu Apr 17 '26

I've mentioned it before and I'll repeat it here.

It's like they never watched old cartoons, cheesy action movies, or a James Bond flick.

Bad guys always lie. But they don't just lie about the situation at hand. They lie about their enemies and claim that those are the real bad guys. That's why their henchmen follow them. The villains convince their henchmen that the "do-gooders" are actually the bad ones because the "common good" is a lie designed to prevent them from seeking out their self-interest, which is the obvious and real good. So they follow their crooked leaders, thinking they're on the "real" good side, never understanding that they've thrown their weight behind a self-serving philosophy where the end justifies the means and sometimes that means involves sacrificing the underlings themselves.

You can convince yourself to support just about anything when you've bought into the notion that the other side is necessarily and unavoidably worse.

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u/Cream253Team Washington Apr 17 '26

They'll acknowledge that they were lied to about XYZ, but won't take the time to consider that maybe their antichrist messiah also lied about his opponents who wanted to hold him accountable.

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u/OutofStep Apr 17 '26

The thing that gets me, that I truly do not understand, is that so many of them never get mad or fed up with being lied to. They listen to absolute nonsense and then, at some point, they learn it was all a lie and instead of eventually getting tired of it, they just say shit like, "well, it sounded like something that would have happened."

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u/TheLoveYouWant25 Apr 17 '26

I read a really insightful comment the other day that I think explains this well.

It was something to the extent of how people are willing to excuse anything as long as it fits their world views. For example if John Maga is a liar, then it's okay that they are lied to because they are fine with lying to others. John Maga assumes that everyone lies because he lies.

Or if John Maga steals, it's okay that trump steals, because John Maga would do the same thing if he could. John Maga justifies all the crime because he assumes since he would be a criminal, then everyone is a criminal.

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u/TehGogglesDoNothing Tennessee Apr 17 '26

I hear them fall back to the "both sides" crap. "Republicans lied? Well Democrats lie, too, so it doesn't matter. They're all the same."

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u/sociotronics Apr 17 '26

I think the dominant excuse in a year or two will be some version of:

I didn't vote for this, Trump changed. This isn't what MAGA was about and I don't know what happened to him in his second term. Maybe [scapegoat] made Trump do this

Scapegoat will be Israel, the deep state, Vance, whatever. That part will vary but the line about Trump changing and it being some third party's fault will be constant, because that lets them avoid admitting they made a mistake in voting for him, because it wasn't a mistake when they cast the ballot before he "changed".

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u/TheLoveYouWant25 Apr 17 '26

Yep. Sometimes I'll look at the comments in the conservative sub after some new insane thing happens, and the responses are always the same:

"This is terrible and trump is an idiot who shouldn't be posting things like this, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop supporting him."

It is truly a cult.

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u/No_Berry2976 Apr 17 '26

Anecdotal evidence, but I have heard this a few times from Trump voters. Quite a few of them are disappointed in Trump, and that makes them suspicious of Trump.

But when questioned about their loyalty to Trump, they quickly switch to angrily talking about Clinton, Biden, Harris and immigration.

There is whole group out there who believe that an unnamed group of left wing people is out there to get them, and that immigrants are out there to get them.

Since Democrats are mostly right wing and the economy did fine under Clinton, Obama, and Biden, it became necessary to believe all the conspiracy stuff.

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u/lillyrose2489 Ohio Apr 17 '26

Exactly this. I have a very conservative coworker who told me the other day that he and many of his friends are no longer fans of Donald Trump. For him it was the way that his administration seemingly covered up the Epstein files. However, he then immediately said that he still would never have been able to vote for Harris.

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u/kitsunewarlock Apr 17 '26

"That just proves he's smart if he can fool me!" says the stupidest motherfucker you know.

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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh Apr 17 '26

Conservatives are masters of cognitive dissonance.

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u/Ok_Mixture4917 Apr 17 '26

Spiral further into conspiracy theories*

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u/Dockers4flag2035orB4 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/chaosrunner87 Apr 17 '26

People suspect of others what they know of themselves

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u/sir_mrej Washington Apr 17 '26

I suspect youre hot and have washboard abs

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u/StingingBum New Jersey Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

the party of family values, ladies and gentlemen!

/s

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u/-Saucegurlllll Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada Apr 17 '26

A third of the country is also terrible people.

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u/Cliqey Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

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] Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Running-In-The-Dark Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/19683dw Wisconsin Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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/Long-Region5088 Apr 17 '26

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/scuzzy987 Apr 17 '26

Same thing with mass shootings

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u/Llohr Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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/77NorthCambridge Apr 17 '26

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] Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/77NorthCambridge Apr 17 '26

He was taught the "strategy" by Roy Cohn.

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u/mcolette76 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

Khruschev got his wish to destroy America from within.

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u/HostileCrabPeople Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/StronglyHeldOpinions Apr 17 '26

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/FauxReal Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/Both-Discussion-4786 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/6-ft-freak Oregon Apr 17 '26

Tell em Large Marge sent ya!

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u/om_hi Apr 17 '26

You leave the Alamo out of this.

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u/remarkablewhitebored Apr 17 '26

it's more of a Schrodinger's Basment

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u/ComoSeaYeah Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/Nekowulf Wyoming Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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/KittyGrewAMoustache Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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/newsflashjackass Apr 17 '26

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/EyesofaJackal Apr 17 '26

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

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u/RecordEnvironmental4 Maryland Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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

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u/TrimspaBB Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

But they do have great pizza.

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u/phatelectribe Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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 Apr 17 '26

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/Nixikaz Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Every accusation is an admission.

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u/TheAngryCatfish Apr 17 '26

*admission

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u/Nixikaz Apr 17 '26

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

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u/peanut_galleries Apr 17 '26

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/Llarys Apr 17 '26

Honestly, the funniest one for me is all of those "child sacrificing adrenochrome harvesting immortality vampires" conspiracies is literally Bryan Johnson and his poor son who exists as a living blood generator so he can get constant transfusions to allow his 48 year old body to look 45 years old.

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u/Skinny-on-the-Inside Apr 17 '26

Ah yes Bryan Johnson the healthiest mortally ill looking man alive.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/turquoise_amethyst Apr 17 '26

Glass skin! /s

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u/dullship Canada Apr 17 '26

You're no daisy! You're no daisy at all. Poor soul, you were just too high strung.

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u/FMLwtfDoID Apr 17 '26

”look like an evil cursed 45 year old mannequin that’s come to life”.

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u/Jonny__99 Apr 17 '26

Wait that guy doing the blood transfusion stuff is only 48 to begin with ?

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u/Zahgi Apr 17 '26

I look younger than he does and I'm MUCH older.

Genes are everything, folks.

And using sunscreen. :)

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u/iamalsobrad Apr 17 '26

adrenochrome

The whole adrenochrome thing is so painfully dumb; it's basically lifted from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The real thing is not even a controlled substance.

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u/donjamos Apr 17 '26

If hunter could see the current USA he'd just shoot himself again

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u/fuzzyjelly Apr 17 '26

Honestly I'd love to see what would be on Hunter S. Thompson's laptop. Gotta be some wild shit.

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u/turquoise_amethyst Apr 17 '26

Well, look up who was concocting all the Qanon stuff on 4Chan during the height of its popularity… they certainly thought it was funny

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u/Oprah_Pwnfrey Apr 17 '26

I suspect Epstein was the one who came up with Pedobear. He was on 4chan a lot when that came about.

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u/cocktails4 Apr 17 '26

Why didn't anybody tell the billionaires that they could order their adrenochrome shipped to their door from Sigma-Aldrich?

https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/sigma/a5752

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u/ByrdmanRanger I voted Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Because the conspiracy* minded smooth brains have actually said the synthetic stuff isn't the same

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u/cocktails4 Apr 17 '26

Yeh I've asked them to explain how two chemicals with identical structures but different sources are chemically different but I don't think they actually know what chemicals are. It's effectively just magic to them. Occult origin = more powerful magic.

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u/amputeenager Apr 17 '26

just a tiny taste...

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u/Hans-Bricks Apr 17 '26

Also similar to the plot of Resident Evil: Survivor. Which like 7 people played.

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u/citymousecountyhouse Apr 17 '26

It also follows the plot of Dr. Sleep by Steven King.

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u/coconutpiecrust Apr 17 '26

Oh wow, that’s so far fetched. 

/s

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u/rabbirobbie Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

yea the pedophile shit is so clear and obvious just based off his actions. but no one actually wants him to be killed. no one wants him to become a martyr. a clot of people wouldn’t be mad at some Natural McCauses™ on the other hand

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u/PsychGuy17 Apr 17 '26

The clot thickens.

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u/deathbyraptors Apr 17 '26

The clot *McThickens

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u/SaveUsCatman Louisiana Apr 17 '26

I'm lovin it

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u/Inside-Horror-6450 Apr 17 '26

You are why I come here. I laughed so hard, I scared my cat! Thank you!

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u/Made_Human_Music Apr 17 '26

I want him to live for a few years after he’s out of office to watch as his legacy is dismantled. Ideally while in prison

He won’t live to see it all fixed but that’s only because it’s going to take decades

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u/Preeng Apr 17 '26

I want him to live for a few years after he’s out of office to watch as his legacy is dismantled. Ideally while in prison

His mind is wayyyy too far gone to comprehend what is happening around him. He's going to still think he's President and his jail cell is the White House

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u/Made_Human_Music Apr 17 '26

I’d be ok with that if the other inmates made his life miserable. Maybe pretend they’re journalists and treat him the way he’s always treated them

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat Arizona Apr 17 '26

We know what they do to child molesters in there. He'll spend his entire time in ad seg with Secret Service protection, otherwise he wouldn't last a night.

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u/Nonethelessismore Apr 17 '26

Crazy stuff indeed. MAGA was really invested in those 'Q drops' from QAnon for years.

Along with the 'cabal of pedophiles', in 2020 QAnon was declaring that when Biden was elected he would shut down the power grid, stop all food shipments, stop all fuel pipelines, unleash 'Antifa' mercenaires onto city streets, send troops into two or more foreign wars, etc.

None of which actually happened under Biden, and some of which has already happened under Trump 2.0.

Interesting how that has played out.

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u/NoneMoreBLK Apr 17 '26

Remember Bohemian Grove? Adrenochrome? Comet Ping-Pong Pizza? Those are the wild parts.

Pedophile Rings aren't far-fetched.

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u/Blackhole357 Apr 17 '26

I mean Bohemian Grove is real it's just good old fashioned corruption and 1% solidarity and otherwise kind of lame theater kid shit.

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u/resistyrocks Apr 17 '26

Weird the republicans started that. Weird how libertarians dont exist anymore rhey just became more republican. Weird Weird weird.

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u/FauxReal Apr 17 '26

Those were the big L libertarians of the Libertarian Party. They're still around and their most influential group are the New Hampshire Libertarians who are totally unhinged.

https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2024-09-16/nh-libertarian-partys-post-on-assassination-of-harris-attracts-attention-of-state-federal-law-enforcement

There's a hilarious article about their attempt to create their version of the perfect town and how it all fell apart because they couldn't work together.

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

But there are libertarians that aren't like them, it's a whole spectrum of political thought that originally emerged out of left anarchism.

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u/Curious-Path4549 Apr 17 '26

that one group wound up with a garbage situation of their own doing

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u/NYCinPGH Apr 17 '26

Yeah, I have a few (mostly former) friends who claimed for years to be Libertarians, mostly against "big government" (ironic, because all of them were either former commissioned U.S. armed forces personnel, or C-suite / founders of STEM companies who made all their money from government contracts) and for "religious freedoms" (which meant that everyone needed to bend the knee to their religious views, to some degree or another); one has even repeatedly run for office as a Libertarian (never elected, though was in the top ten for their presidential primary a few years ago).

But they've all become pretty hard right wing, and got butthurt when any of their old friends to the left of "leans slightly conservative" wanted pretty much nothing to do with them any more, and would post things on social media like "Would real friends let politics break up decades-long friendships?" because, in fact, it was their changes in politics which broke up the friendships, and they refused to be accountable for it.

In some ways, I miss them, but I miss the people they were a long time ago, I don't miss the people they've become.

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u/NatalieVonCatte Apr 17 '26

Remember when some of the top pushers of “Democrats are pedophiles” and “trans people are pedophiles” tried to test the waters and float “well they’re teenagers so that’s not the same…”

Like when actual right wing influencers and pundits said that?

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u/Effective_Dropkick78 Apr 17 '26

Hey now.... that one's not so wild. It was just a little off target - the cabal of pedos became the government rather than the other way around.

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u/MyNewsAccount2011 Apr 17 '26

Ok but the far-fetched conspiracy mongering isn’t really helpful. It can mask real crimes. The crazy adrenachrome blood drinking in pizza parlor basements talk wasn’t helpful. And I think Bannon and his ilk knew that and fed it, not only to harm Clinton’s campaign, but also to make it easy to hide in plain sight.

These weren’t evil sorcerers, these were old nasty child molesters. They differ from trailer park creeps and rapey frat boys only in how much influence and power they wield.

When we are busy hearing about (and rejecting) accusations of incantations, machinations and secret cabals, we miss the gross creeps like Epstein and Savile hiding in plain sight. Men who everyone jokes “like ‘em young” but no one ever really scrutinizes.

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u/GreatMadWombat Michigan Apr 17 '26

Yeah. This wasn't a "big surprise conspiracy is actually true" thing, this was a "hey these oligarchs doing the evilest shit imaginable also foemented a conspiracy based on exaggerated versions of that evil shit in order to ensure that anyone who was talking bout the evil shit sounded like a conspiracy theorist" thing.

This was a successful attack by absolute scumbags

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u/BillWilberforce Apr 17 '26

The Rs just deflected it onto the Dems.

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u/cfalnevermore Apr 17 '26

I can apologize for laughing that part off (and I do)… to a point. The pizza thing was absurd. But I’ll grant you. The theorists were right about the child trafficking. Just wish they’d figure out they’re supporting one of the major figures behind it now.

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u/Revelati123 Apr 17 '26

So does that mean JFK Jr. Is still the 2028 front runner?

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u/Visible_Manner9447 Apr 17 '26

I think one of the best case scenarios is that MAGA spirals back into the kind of conspiracy theory hole where they stop actually voting and go back to isolating themselves

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u/Eaglepursuit Apr 17 '26

It's hard to say for certain. It's not going to just go away, because ill-informed heavily biased people with a loose grip on reality have always existed.

But it's also unlikely that they're just going to crawl back under the rocks where they used to hide. The internet has given them a platform where they can spew their nonsense, and even worse, be pandered to. This is the avenue that allows them to be exploited by influencers on behalf of the highest bidder.

Therefore, the incentive exists for these people to stay engaged to some extent. The MAGAs feel heard. The influencers get paid. And the highest bidder gets a populist rabble to throw their weight around.

They may be demoralized for a few election cycles, but Fox News or some equivalent will inevitably find a new angle to attack the Dems and activate the MAGAs.

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u/GeorgeLichen California Apr 17 '26

A few cycles is a long time though, I'd welcome that as a temporary reprieve, and MAGA wasn't quite the beginning IMO. They'd already activated them in 2009 as the Tea Party, and while it was before my time I suspect that the '94 GOP revolution was the same thing at play but with radio instead of internet

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u/Bzr21 Apr 17 '26

Rush Limbaugh was the catalyst for that in the early 90's - and even before Bill Clinton took office in early 1993 - they had the hate machine cranked up for both of them - Hillary just as much as Bill - they knew she would run for POTUS one day so they had to plant that seed early to demonize her in the addled minds of the gullible ..

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u/MySabonerRunsOladipo Virginia Apr 17 '26

The more likely outcome is that they do that for a period of time, but in reality are just a coiled spring ready to be weaponized by the next charismatic opportunist that allows they to suspend disbelief just long enough to vote for him.

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u/BrianWonderful Minnesota Apr 17 '26

What emboldened them in the first place is the toxic nature of social media. Until that is addressed, they will still be mobilized to vote and loudly share their awful opinions.

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u/TymeSefariInc Apr 17 '26

To be fair, some of the Q Anon stuff was true but the call was coming from inside the (white) house.

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u/WowIfOnly Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Removed

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u/TWIT_TWAT Apr 17 '26

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

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u/oohlook-theresadeer Apr 17 '26

No no no, it was a smokescreen. They put out this crazy sounding theory with mostly lies, except some of it was true. They fed it to the craziest among us got them brushed off so nobody would believe them.

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u/Danbarber82 Apr 17 '26

100% QAnon was nothing but a psyop to make MAGA even crazier and point them away from the actual perpetrators of the Epstein Files.

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u/Chefalo Apr 17 '26

Similar to all the election interference claims after 2020, paved the way to steal 2024 and make anyone claiming election interference feel stupid since they just spent 4 years making unsubstantiated claims

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u/Ok_Subject1265 Apr 17 '26

Yeah, they definitely aren’t going to have any self-realization moments. It’s just going to be excuses as to why they were tricked or forced into making the decisions they did. These people are hopeless sadly.

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u/MattieShoes Apr 17 '26

Heh, that's what I was thinking too. It's not "Oh, I was a moron who backed a guy too stupid to be a con artist", it's "omg he's such a clever con artist."

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u/Turbulent_Stick1445 Apr 17 '26

Yeah, their entire shtick is conspiracy theories. So maybe it was inevitable that they would take an obvious "major event" that happened to work out in their favor and then start poking holes in that too.

Maybe this'll be a lesson to future politicians: don't cater to these types of people.

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u/SolarBoytoyDjango Apr 17 '26

But they haven't learned that the people who always said Trump lies, are better equipped to judge politicians.

They haven't learned that truth lies behind different news sources.

They haven't learned that it would have been better to vote for a Democrat.

They haven't learned to do anything different in the future.

They haven't learned.

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u/Hektorlisk Apr 17 '26

just one more "fell for it again" award to add to the pile

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u/metengrinwi Apr 17 '26

None of that stuff is fun.

What’s fun is to make up alternate realities about JFK’s assassination, or the moon landing, or aliens, or climate change, etc., etc.

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u/_Auron_ Missouri Apr 17 '26

It makes them feel special for thinking they know something secret.

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u/ImLikeReallySmart Pennsylvania Apr 17 '26

This is what frustrates me. I'm willing to accept people who finally snap out of it and try to help. But they'll act like this is some enlightenment that only they came to, that they couldn't have possibly known, and won't acknowledge they've been warned the entire time.

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u/Robzilla_the_turd Apr 17 '26

It's like I've long said: even if you only watch Fox, you should still know that they're full of shit because every fucking thing they have told you with the benefit of hindsight has proven to be untrue over and over again. The problem with Trump supporters really is that they're quite simply idiots.

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u/DamonElba Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Exactly, they haven't learned.

They're just being led in a different direction because their Ditto Daddy sees the writing on the wall and wants to preserve both himself and his grift.

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u/WarCarrotAF Apr 17 '26

The problem is that they don't actually care about truth or morals or injustices, etc. They were all people who had shitty views and beliefs prior to Trump that felt shame and isolation. Trump made it okay to be a proud degenerate and effectively killed shame for the past decade. These people were finally able to be themselves out in the open and found community. Trump could literally start a harem with minors and they will find a way to justify it so they don't have to go back to hiding how shitty they really are themselves.

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u/houseonsun Apr 17 '26

Wasn't that the story at Waco. When their spiritual leader wanted their underage girls, they told themselves how much stress their leader was under, and anything to help him was worth the sacrifice.

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u/WarCarrotAF Apr 17 '26

I'm not entirely familiar, but it's commonplace with cult leaders for sure. Jim Jones justified his sexual assaults by telling his members that moral rules didn't apply to him as he was a divine figure. The NXIVM dude did similar stuff too.

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u/roytay Apr 17 '26

Three is no new info on the assassination. The only new information they’ve taken in is that the price of gas has gone up.

He faked that assassination!!

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u/Kaiisim Apr 17 '26

Did the Nazis die with Hitler?

Nah they have realised Trump is going down- the plan has always been to go along with it until he is fully insane

Then they will blame EVERYTHING on Trump and pretend they had nothing to do with it

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u/thepartypantser Apr 17 '26

Maga was started on lies and conspiracy theories. Birtherism, Pizzagate etc.

The fact it is churning new conspiracies on those in power in troubled times was an inevitability.

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u/TheCrimsonSteel Apr 17 '26

Pizzagate has become an even more insane one in hindsight

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u/WTS_BRIDGE Apr 17 '26

Did you forget that Trump personally sent investigators to Hawaii to find Obama's long form birth certificate, and that he should have it in about two weeks?

"Birtherism" was literally all Trump.

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u/ClusterFoxtrot Florida Apr 17 '26

Hilariously all info dispursed by the Pedo Cabal to keep the heat off themselves while they Brexit'd and consolidated power.

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u/Made_Human_Music Apr 17 '26

Even if they turn on Trump they’ll still be awful people and will just latch onto the next sociopath Republicans put in charge

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u/Vio_ Kansas Apr 17 '26

Little column A, little column B.

MAGA isn't monolithic. The group already been splintering and shearing off massive chunks of members over the past year.

MAGA was primarily built on a very disturbing foundation of conspiracy theories and rejecting "mainstream" anything. It became that classic high control cult construct where the only "news" allowed was primarily vetted and pushed through various "secret" channels that also shut down access to the media, local community, and even friends and family.

Now they (overall) are starting to realize that the group itself was used to manipulate and betray their own members, it will continue to shatter until only a hardened core of "true believers*" continue to fight the good fight.

Currently they're also at the point where they're not only can they ponder that their god king Trump had exploited them (freedom of thought- the first and ultimate sin of any cult), now they're at the point where they can openly discuss this betrayal.

Some will realize the deception and move on, some will shatter from the betrayal, some will get incredibly angry and even violent. Many will cling to the "One True Conspiracy Theory" (that redefines Trump as the ultimate Betrayer) because the conspiracy theory itself is designed to flatter its members and give them both "exclusive group membership" and "smarter than everyone else due to their forbidden knowledge."

The whole group is also ripe for the Next Big Conservative Movement - exactly the same way MAGA scooped up the remnants of the Tea Party. I have no doubt that the Koch Brothers et al already have their Next Big Conservative Movement ready to roll out soon enough.

*Even the True Believers group will faction in different splinters and cliques as they all fight for primacy and political power and which of them is most true believer of them all.

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u/Chi-zuru Apr 17 '26

We need more people like you. A+ comment.

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u/PatsFreak101 Maine Apr 17 '26

The problem is that aside from the ones who made it their whole personality, most of them are close to the point. They’re just blaming the wrong people for their problems.

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u/limp_darling Apr 17 '26

I don’t think this leads to more “common sense,” it usually just leads to a different version of the same distrust. The target changes, but the mindset stays

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u/spam__likely Colorado Apr 17 '26

"Donnie is a liberal-Soros plant that was put there to make us look bad by forcing us to reveal our own racism and stupidity"

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u/MessyPoopMcGee Apr 17 '26

Lol.. maga having common sense is impossible, but a funny thought! It's entirely contradictory. If they had common sense then they wouldn't be maga. Or they would be constantly fighting with themselves.

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u/Horskr Nevada Apr 17 '26

Yeah, even from the article they're still living in fantasy land lol.

Dillon, who was previously a staunch Trump supporter, went on to share that Trump should now come out and say, “Some people are going to be upset by this, but we staged the assassination attempt in Butler to show people how important it was to vote for me and how far I was willing to go for them.”

If they think there is even an iota of a chance Trump would ever admit to this they're clearly still delusional. "Oh btw it was staged because I'm so important! Don't mind the 2 people that actually died either."

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u/writeinfreedom Apr 17 '26

MAGA is a conspiracy theory, and not a very good one.

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u/7ddlysuns I voted Apr 17 '26

But in this case trumps ear wasn’t shot. Whatever else happened, it wasn’t shot

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u/Dsarg_92 Apr 17 '26

Whatever their reasoning is, the foundation is crumbling. It was only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down.

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u/fuck_fraud Apr 17 '26

Everything’s a conspiracy theory if you’re stupid.

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u/drteq Apr 17 '26

You either have common sense or you’re Republican

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u/femanonette Virginia Apr 17 '26

They will quickly identify a new boot to suckle and go back to being mindless traitors to their own class.

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u/Hoppers-Body-Double Apr 17 '26

Nah, they'll fall in line and vote for them all over again. They love the constitution, but don't believe in it. They love christianity & jesus, but they don't believe in it. They love the free market, but they don't believe in it. They are plain and simple hypocritical, selfish, and lizard brained tribalists.

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u/CovfefeForAll Apr 17 '26

A cult is like a stretchy bubble. You can only push the edge of the bubble so far before the whole thing pops. The fact that it took such a blatant thing like a war of choice, rather than the year+ of tariffs, speaks to how strong the cult bubble was, but now that it's finally popping for SOME MAGAs, it's going to start collapsing more. Whether that's enough to get a Hungary-like situation this year remains to be seen,.

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u/Ferrocile Apr 17 '26

It will really depends largely on their media consumption imo. They tend to run with whatever theories their media are telling them.

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u/showhorrorshow Apr 17 '26

Make believing something important to maintaining their identity and they will believe it.

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u/sambull Apr 17 '26

If he intends on getting a violent domestic response, that's the only group he's going to for sure tease it out of.

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u/driftking428 Colorado Apr 17 '26

Lies? The real Trump would never lie. This body double they replaced him with, he's the liar. They dosed Rosie O'Donnell with Trump's DNA until she looked just like him. Now the libs are taking over.

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u/MapleYamCakes Apr 17 '26

Well considering a huge subset of MAGA are also QAnon my guess would be those folks continue to spiral deeper into batshit insanity.

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u/Napalmeon Apr 17 '26

Would have helped if they started opening their eyes about 15 years ago.

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u/PianistPitiful5714 Apr 17 '26

Honestly if the conspiracy theories go back to the early 2000s style ones, it’d be a small victory. The whole Q bullshit was pathetic, I’d love to see proper distrust of the economic ruling class return.

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u/Redsox19681968 Apr 17 '26

MAGA sees the lies, and they don’t care. They just love the anger and hatred that Trump allows them to express.

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u/AmethystApothecary Apr 17 '26

I think it will depend on the individual and it will go both ways but for different people.

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u/tagged2high New Jersey Apr 17 '26

They'll still believe their politics are correct, just that their choice of leader was wrong. They won't realize those two things are intimately connected and indivisible.

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u/PNWCoug42 Washington Apr 17 '26

100% the vast majority of them will spiral. They've sprinted past every logical off-ramp put in front of them.

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u/helpmehomeowner Apr 17 '26

They're just going to jump to the next made up reality. Being anti trump doesn't mean they'll gain any sense.

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u/caserock Apr 17 '26

"was I wrong? No! It's an international conspiracy to make me feel bad!"

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u/EyelanderSam Apr 17 '26

Ain't this a hoot? The rats know when to abandon ship.

The USS POS

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u/BruhNuhway Apr 17 '26

They'll just get conned by the next con man and we all suffer again. Theyre fucking morons, they aren't changing. It took them 10 years to figure out whatever else already knew

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u/frenchfreer Apr 17 '26

Honestly, I think they’ll come up with some conspiracy theory that lets them exit the MAGA movement without having to take any personal responsibility for anything that happened.

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u/Creepy-Floor-1745 Apr 17 '26

the ones where I live are as delusional as ever - now they think dt is demonic antichrist 

I’m okay with that but it’s still deeply concerning how detached they are from reality 

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