Trump Aides Battle To Keep QAnon Out Of Rallies

Politico reports:

This past weekend, two promoters of QAnon were given press credentials to Donald Trump’s MAGA rally in Sarasota, Fla. The men took selfies with their badges, taunted journalists covering the event as “fake news,” showed off their wristbands printed with the movement’s slogan — “#WWG1WGA” — and generally reveled in the access they’d scored.

Not everyone was happy to see them there. Trump’s press team said the two men, Jeffrey Pedersen and his podcast co-host Shannon Shadygroove, were not welcome, and had registered for the rally with “Red State Talk Radio,” a network that has sent people who, a Trump aide said, “appear to be legitimate” to events before.

Trump and his aides have made efforts to keep QAnon from becoming a prominent feature of Trump events for years. There had been a longstanding (though not always successfully executed) policy at Trump rallies to remove any signs or slogans relating to non-Trump causes, and QAnon merchandising fell into that blanket policy.

Read the full article. According to Politico, Trump organizers complain that even if only one person in a QAnon t-shirt gets into a rally, that’s who will appear on the front page of the New York Times. Meanwhile, Trump himself continues to praise QAnon nutbags like Ashli Babbitt, whom he called a “wonderful person” during yesterday’s interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.