At his televised town hall on Thursday, Trump replied to a question about the conspiracy theory phenomenon by saying, "I know nothing about QAnon." He said this even though he has distributed QAnon-based claims with his own social media accounts, and his rallies have long been gathering spots for vocal and highly visible displays of QAnon symbols and ideas.
After Trump made multiple claims to ignorance -- "I know nothing about it" -- moderator Savannah Guthrie reminded him that Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska had declared "QAnon is nuts and real leaders call conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories." Trump responded: "Can I be honest? He may be right. I just don't know about QAnon."
When a politician says "Can I be honest?" it's a signal that he hasn't been honest so far, and what will follow is likely to be spin. In the case of QAnon, Trump tried to have it both ways. He does this a lot.
In 2016, Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper, "I know nothing about David Duke." As even the most casual news consumer knows, Duke is a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who, as a student, wore a Nazi-style uniform on campus at Louisiana State University. (In 1991 when he was running for office, Duke said he disavowed Nazism and the Klan, explaining that that he had come to express, instead, "my love for Western civilization." In July, Twitter permanently banned Duke for repeatedly violating its rules on hate speech, including with anti-Semitic posts.
Trump had previously talked about him publicly -- at least three times -- but when Tapper asked about Duke's endorsement of his 2016 campaign, then candidate Trump drew a blank.
In that same interview with Tapper, in fact almost in the same breath, Trump said, "I know nothing about White supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about."
Trump has played this ignorance card many times, leaving the impression that he's unconcerned about the racist ideology that powers men like Duke. White supremacy was very much in evidence at the violent 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville. At that time, after one rallygoer killed a counter protester with his car, Trump noted there were "very fine people on both sides."
In the uproar that followed his "very fine people" observation, the President did condemn White supremacy. But coming just days after the torch-bearing marchers had shocked the country with chants of "Jews will not replace us" it could seem to many as if Trump had succumbed to political pressure and that his original, spontaneous -- "both sides" -- statement was more authentic.
In the time since, White supremacists and their cousins the White nationalists, have apparently regarded Trump as a comrade, if one who can't proclaim his allegiance too loudly.
Trump performed the same dance of vague signals more recently when he claimed to reporters, "I don't know who the Proud Boys are." To be clear, the Proud Boys are a violence-prone organization that the FBI has classified as an "extremist group
