A crowd response at a Trump rally created a quandary: What to do about the QAnon song
The music has been widely described as an anthem for QAnon, an extremist movement that the FBI has designated as a domestic terrorism threat. The main discredited belief of QAnon revolves around the baseless claim that Trump is secretly fighting a secret cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles.
Trump infamously took a similar approach to avoiding disavowals of Russian President Vladimir Putin, former KKK leader David Duke and the far-right group the Proud Boys. The FBI has warned that “anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” and extremist ideologies such as QAnon will “very likely motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity.
Trump’s video featured him narrating signs of American decline over black-and-white clips from his rallies and illustrations of his words, such as the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan and a graphic stabbing. Trump liked how the music’s gloomy, spooky mood worked with the dark tone of the video, the adviser said. Trump takes special interest in musical selections, considering multiple versions, the adviser said.
The song completed its journey from Trump to QAnon back to Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania over Labor Day weekend. Trump mentioned that he wanted spooky music to end his speech, like the song in the video, the adviser said. So he started doing a live performance of the video, reading the same script with the same soundtrack, including thunderclaps that preceded the music.Trump dropped the thunder sound effect when he repeated the performance at Saturday’s rally in Ohio.