QAnon follower favored for congressional seat

A follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory on Thursday advanced to a runoff in the Republican primary race to represent a deep-red Georgia county in Congress.

Based on that result, Marjorie Taylor Greene could soon be the first member of Congress to publicly back the theory, which posits that President Trump and the military are working together to expose and arrest a shadowy cabal of global elites and Democratic establishment figures who control the government and run a global child sex trafficking ring.

Greene will face John Cowan, a physician, in the Aug. 11 runoff. Greene led the primary field with roughly 40 percent of the vote, 20 points ahead of Cowan.

The winner of that race will be a heavy favorite against Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, given that retiring Rep. Tom Graves (R) won the district by 53 points in 2018.

Greene has not made her belief in the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory a secret.

She said that “Q,” the mysterious figure who posts anonymous messages online that serve as the foundation for the theory, is a “patriot,” in a YouTube video from 2017.

“He is someone that very much loves his country and he’s on the same page as us and he is very pro-Trump,” she said.

“I’m very excited about that now there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan worshipping pedophiles out and I think we have the president to do it,” she continued.

Greene is not the first candidate to win the Republican party’s nomination this cycle while espousing a belief in QAnon.