Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

I was promised a recession.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

After roe, women are no longer free.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Not all heroes wear capes.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Come on, man.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Floriduh! Man Goes to the White House: QAnon Edition

Floriduh! Man Goes to the White House: QAnon Edition

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The QAnon conspiracy monger in the picture goes by the name of Lionel (he’s the one with the beard). He is an attorney from the Tampa area – not sure if he lives in Hillsborough or Pinellas County – who had a local call in radio show where he was pretty left of center. He then went to Air America for a bit and is now in syndication. Or he went to syndication, then Air America, and then back to syndication. And he was on CourtTV for a while too. And my Dad knew him – at one time way back in the day he took one or more of my Dad’s classes in the criminology/criminal justice program at USF. I had no idea he’d undergone an ideological inversion or become a conspiracy theorist and monger.

The Daily Beast has the details:

On Thursday, President Donald Trump posed for an Oval Office photo with one of the leading promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that top Democrats are part of a global pedophile cult.

YouTube conspiracy theorist Lionel Lebron was in the White House for an event on Thursday, according to a video Lebron posted online. During the visit, Lebron and his wife posed for a smiling picture with Trump in the Oval Office.

Lebron is one of the internet’s leading promoters of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory based on a series of anonymous clues posted to internet forums. QAnon believers have interpreted the clues, which they claim without evidence are coming from a highly placed source in the Trump administration, to mean that Trump and the military are engaged in a high-stakes shadow war against a supposed globalist pedophile cult. The conspiracy theory has caught on with Trump supporters, who have held up QAnon-related signs and wear QAnon shirts to the president’s rallies.

Lebron claimed to have received a “special guided tour of the White House” before posing for pictures with Trump. In a video posted Friday, Lebron said he didn’t use the brief encounter with the president to ask Trump about QAnon or its slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”

“I think we all know he knows about it,” Lebron said in the video, sipping from a coffee mug he claimed to have received as a gift at the White House.

Crazy days!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  2. 2.

    efgoldman

    Bumped from end of prev thread:

    We may have our grandson ten days earlier than scheduled/planned. Baby doesn’t give a shit what your schedule is.
    Daughter and SIL on their way to the ER.
    Don’t ask me. That’s all the info I have.

    YOU FIX THE FUCKING NYMS, PLS

  3. 3.

    Chyron HR

    I assume Trump has no idea who that is, since he’s not shaking him by the lapels and screaming “Mueller’s not secretly working with me! For the love of God, you have to stop his Rigged Witch Hunt!”

  6. 6.

    Mike in NC

    Tonight I finished “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and enjoyed it despite the author Rick Wilson being a hack. Tomorrow will start on “Fire and Fury”. Have a good supply of Pinot Noir to read by.

  11. 11.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I saw this tweet from Josh Marshall

    Josh Marshall
    I guess Air America execs firing Sam Seder and replacing him with Lionel Lebron really didn’t age terribly well.

    and I’d completely forgotten I’d ever heard of “Lionel”, but I had a preset button on the old Air America station on Sirius for years after it had become, something else, and I did listen to this guy a couple of times. I really don’t remember anything but a standard issue liberal talk radio guy from the late Bush years. In the death throes period of Air America, they also dropped Thom Hartmann (who I can’t listen to, but he’s been consistent) for poor, confused Ed Schultz.

  13. 13.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    “Lionel” is a frequent “guest” on RT were he defends Russia and Drumpf

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    You’re shocked? This is the same Oval Office staff that let in a prank caller pretending to be Senator Robert Menendez.

    Not.
    Shocked.
    In.
    The.
    Slightest.

    @efgoldman: Good luck to the incoming grandson! Ten days fortunately is manageable.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yutsano: I’m not shocked at all. Was a little surprised who it was because I had no idea he’d undergone the ideological inversion.

  21. 21.

    Gvg

    This White House let the Fire and Fury journalist hang around for months. I don’t believe the assurances that this gut got in with an important persons invite. I don’t disbelieve it either. I just find the argument unpersuasive and therefore the issue is unsettled.

  27. 27.

    hueyplong

    Not sure what’s gained by analogizing to someone convicted of relatively minor offenses when he’d done so much worse.

    I mean, that’s OUR argument.

  28. 28.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: Well, I’m not sure I’d object if Trump ended his days in the same way Capone ended his, but that would be sort of a bonus above and beyond getting him out of the White House ASAP.

  30. 30.

    Ken

    I can sort of understand how once someone’s inside they can wander around, because everyone assumes that they belong there. That’s an old trope much loved in spy movies.

    But what happened to the perimeter? Did the WH guards just give up after being yelled at once too often for stopping someone who wasn’t on the list, because Trump had invited them and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

  31. 31.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @Mike in NC: And after that, or before, try reading the transcripts of Glenn Simpson’s (Fusion GPS) testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Way more revealing than Fire & Fury. In it, Senators Graham and Grassley try to get Christopher Steele killed. Exciting.

  32. 32.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: I know he told Howard Stern that his Vietnam-era battle was with VD, but did he ever say who won? Tertiary syphilis kind of matches his symptoms.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    Repeating from below, as I understand it, due dates are usually just an educated guess on the doctor’s part, so 10 days early might not be. Hopefully all will go well for everyone.

  35. 35.

    MattF

    Here I’d thought that Qanon was fading. Someone in the WH thinks it’s just peachy. Clue: It’s not peachy, it’s crazy. Is that really so hard to grasp?

  36. 36.

    Shell

    Shit. What’s next. Trump claiming he can fix the deficit cause some Nigerian Prince sent him an email…

  37. 37.

    The Midnight Lurker

    I don’t know why there are so many comparisons of Trump to Al Capone. I never thought of Trump as a true gangster but more of a con man, like George Parker or Lou Pearlman. Grifter type.

  38. 38.

    Platonailedit

    Adam, totus denuclearized pompeo’s balls in public over NK visit. Any thoughts (and prayers) ?

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    How did this happen?

    Someone saw the name Lebron and stopped any further inquiry there.

    SATSQ.

    Sneaked out during a very, very, very short lull in the rain to go down the driveway to check on (damp) mail. Coming back up the slope, against the wind, was more exercise than usual.

    Cigar reorder, originally supposed to get here Thursday or Friday, has been listed by USPS as “arrived in Honolulu at 6:09 a.m. Aug. 23” for quite a while. Now finally changed to “in transit to next location.” Should they not show up on Saturday, rationing will be imposed (or may be forced to break out some of the finer stogies).

  42. 42.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @MattF: A few weeks back, I posted after doing some ‘research’ on some whacko right wing sites, that QAnon had been spun into a ‘liberal conspiracy theory’ cooked up by Hillary and Obama (they sure spend a lot of time together) to discredit Trump (yeah, that’s what did it). But canvassing, I never had anyone bring it up. Ping Pong Pizza, yes. Deep State, hell yes. Bigfoot porn, a few.
    Bigfoot porn? I still think this has to be a joke. Or some right wing, whacko conspiracy theor– oh, my God! It’s QAnon!

  44. 44.

    seaboogie

    @Adam L Silverman: Looks to me like Kellyanne has a sister – maybe from another Mister. (And George Conway posts anti-Trump tweets).

    The sheer, rank stupidity of this admin should not surprise me, but they do continually find fresh ways to re-up their game on that front.

    I reserve my particular loathing for the GOP Congress that supports this clownish shit-show in the name of power and judicial seats. They are Putin’s puppets in his long game, our republic be damned.

  47. 47.

    Redshift

    @hueyplong: Well, to be fair, it was Trump’s stupid argument first.

    But I’m also mystified who they think will be convinced by the argument that if Trump is investigated for something as big as colluding with Russia, he shouldn’t be prosecuted for anything lesser he might be guilty of, or it’s terribly unfair – just like Al Capone!

  48. 48.

    randy khan

    Well, apparently they let anyone into the White House these days. Look at the dope in the middle of the photo. I mean, who let him in?

  50. 50.

    Mary G

    More information from a reporter at one of the nation’s top newspapers:

    Am told QAnon gentleman who posed with Trump behind Resolute Desk came into Oval with a larger group. No separate appointment with POTUS. But aides either don’t know or won’t say how he got in with larger group. Several seemed startled themselves tonight when question was posed.— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) August 25, 2018

    Lordy. The burning question for our nation is how did the conspiracy theorist get into the Oval Office. Either the Secret Service hates him and hopes someone does him harm, or they’ve been ordered not to worry about the white people.

  51. 51.

    jane says

    @Heidi Mom: That’s the Resolute Desk, given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. It was the famed desk that JFK, Jr. was seen climbing out of the front door during the Kennedy Administration. With the exception of George H.W. Bush, every president since Carter (and many before then) has used it in the Oval Office.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_desk

  52. 52.

    hilts

    Years ago, Lionel hosted a radio show on WABC in NY. More recently, he served as a fill-in host for Curtis Sliwa and Ron Kuby. I thought he was simply a run of the mill moron. I didn’t realize he was also bat shit crazy.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Platonailedit: Exactly what Cheryl and I, and anyone/everyone else who knew anything about the DPRK and/or nuclear proliferation, said was going to happen. The only pleasant news out of this is the President is blaming Xi and China, not Kim, so no talk of fire and fury like no one has seen before. What this will mean is that there will be no more remains repatriated, not that I expect the DOD forensics teams are going to find any significant remains of US service members in what was sent back last month. Other than that the DPRK will do what it is going to do, but, for now, the bluster and brinksmanship seems to have stopped. Also, no Nobel Peace Prize.

  54. 54.

    Platonailedit

    @Adam L Silverman:

    So, the lil gnat won, at least this round? (suspended SK mil exercises, good PR, china ranting).

    Bummer that all the wingnutz’s prayers for a Nobel didn’t work out.

  59. 59.

    Gary K

    Does this guy tweet with a well-thumbed Roget at hand? “Oh, yeah, ineffable, that’d be a good one.”

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