“You will never insult anyone on your side,” he said. “You will never offend anyone by something they believe in. In fact, it includes them. That I think it is an understanding that they are still human.”
Kinzinger urged people who “believe in this game of conspiracy theory” to “do some independent research.”
“Now,” Kinzinger said, “the new Q-Good reads like a tarot card reader giving you something so vague that it will absolutely fit into anything that happens in the coming months.”
That’s all part of the disadvantage, according to experts studying the online information space.
In media and tech circles, there is growing concern about the appeal of QAnon, aspects that are right-handed delusions. Yet it is included in congressional races and national news coverage.
Some Trump aides have flirted with the conspiracy theory and the president himself has retweeted accounts using QAnon language. When asked about the cult on Friday, Trump refused to deny it.
Kinzinger is almost alone, among Republican-elected leaders, there.
He was speaking initially after Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a history of embracing theories, won a GOP primary runoff in Georgia on Tuesday.
After Greene’s victory, Kinzinger tweeted that QAnon “could be Russian propaganda as a basement dweller. However, no place in Congress for this conspiracy.”
“I think until about a week ago, there was no reason to report it because it did not need the attention,” he said of “Reliable Sources.” “But now that it’s made mainstream – we have a candidate who embraces it who won a primary.”
Kinzinger noted that he supported Greene’s opponent in the primary. Because the Georgia district is heavily Republican, Greene is expected to win her general election game.
Kinzinger, who has a history of criticizing Trump when other GOP lawmakers remain silent, said on Sunday that “the president has not completely offended it or in the sense it has denounced it.
He noted that, “Democrats and Republicans should point to extremism in their own party, because that’s where it’s effective,” adding, “It will not be effective from the other side who point it out. Again, it just contains them. “
In a YouTube video shared on Sunday through the congressman’s account, Kinzinger walked through the establishment of QAnon and explained how her ideas have been debunked in the past. He spoke respectively about people who embrace conspiracy theories, or are fooled, even about people like QAnon who portrayed other Americans as satanists and pedophiles.
“I remember being stunned by the evidence that the moon’s landing was fading – for a whole day,” he said in the video. “There is nothing wrong with people believing them. They are not crazy. They are not meant to be bad.”
On “Reliable sources,” he said, “people often embrace such theories” out of an interest in, if only the truth is known, life would be better for me and other people. So, everyone thinks they’re the good man. Everyone wants to do right. “
Kinzinger also responded to a tweet from Trump official Matt Wolking calling for QAnon and not “conspiracy theories fueled by Democrats.” He called Wolking’s whataboutism “quite surprising.”
Kinzinger said he thought the decision to go after him on Twitter was made by Wolking and not the Trump campaign as a whole.
“It was a decision by that staff. The campaign should handle that, you know, and I’m sure they are. It was probably not a really good political move on the part of the staff,” Kinzinger said.
– CNN’s Ali Main, Austen Bundy, and Betsy Klein carried reports.
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