welcome to the cnn special report, the cult of qanon. i'm anderson cooper. that's because qanon is based on this idea that donald trump andujar vest their blood in order to extract, ingest a chemical called adrenochrome. i know it sounds crazy but there are hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions who believe this. some say they've lost faith and no longer believe in q. others come up with other explanations for trump's loss

and what he says is his return to power. we talk to a man who says a great storm is coming. his name is brian okstat. he said he pieces together clues on a massive good versus evil. he sent me a message. you're done, he wrote. you're on the list. execution. bang. you're dead. you sick evil [ bleep ]. i didn't know who brian was when he told me i was going to be executed. turns out his instagram is filled with postings about the satanic kabal he believes him part of. >> something big's about to go down. i really believe it. god has given me a lot of faith and i want to share that fwait you, and hope with you that all is not lost. all is not lost. the bad guys are about to go down. >> he says he doesn't trust any mainstream organizations.

he gets his information from online postings by q followers and others who are pushing this alternative reality as truth. >> we're now seeing so many things come to the surface. no longer will the ignorant be able to hide behind the mantra, but the news didn't report it. you're beginning to realize that citizen journalist, are going to look like prophets. >> he agreed to be interviewed by skype. >> you dmed me saying i was going to be executed -- >> yes. i wasn't very nice. >> you said you were going to enjoy it. you followed up. saying execution, bang, you're dead. >> yes, i did. that was not very plight. you aren't the only one i sent that to. i've since backed off because i can't prove anything about you, anderson. all i know is there's a lot of strange coincidences.

i would say anybody who is high up should be showing to the world via public execution. hillary should be executed live so all of us can see the end of evil. like i said, lesser people, we don't necessarily need to see it. somebody's not high up in the kabal, we don't need to see it. >> president obama, president biden. >> george bush. >> they all should be executed publicly. >> oh, yeah, for sure. because they're part of this. >> later after the interview was done, he reached out to tell me he thinks he all should be tried in a military court before any executions. he says he's been' posed to the government for 15 years. while he says he's not a follower of q, he does use their slogans and hashtags and seems to believe most of their core conspiracy theories. i've seen slogans like the great

awakening you've used. you believe there is a global cab alof democrats, deep state officials, celebrities, and others who are satan worshippers and pedophiles -- >> yes. absolutely. >> and eat children. >> absolutely. i think the proof is over overw overwhelming. the only group you forgot to mention is republicans. >> you believe they're in on it, too? >> oh, sure. >> the people who have poured their lives into this say march 4th is the day trump will return to the white house and executions will begin the next day. he said he's not sure about the dates but believes a whole series of up seen events have already taken place. [ speaking foreign language ] >> he thinks it's likely that the vatican has been taken over by the u.s. military. he also believes the pope has likely been executed.

as for washington, he thinks it's been turned into a prison by the national guard and military. that's where more executions will likely take place. the ideas that q puts out are based on theories that have been floating around for centuries, and a lot of them are based on, i know, anti-semitic, anti-catholic troops that have been used, you know, the nazis says yous drank the blood of children the late 30s. that was one of the things they used against yous. in the middle ages juice were set to have put poison in the water and pouchb frogs and that was the source of the plague and they were the ones to blame. my dad in mississippi in the mid 30s, he was told that catholics in his town had tunnels in their backyard that went directly to the vatican. it's the same thing, tujs from

the valt can to jerusalem. isn't it -- aren't these just age old, you know, in some cases anti-semitic troeps. >> some of the things you just said sound like those are, for sure, but i can say that i can clearly see what's happening now. i don't know about -- i can't verify the tunnel all the way from vatican to jerusalem. it was reported and -- so it sounds like it's a good possibility but it could be true. it sounds far-fetched, but so does these political elite and hollywood elite and business el elite. killing babies and drinking their blood. that sounds crazy. i mean, it does. if i was -- if i was one of your listeners listening to me, i would think this guy's crazy.

but i'm telling you, go look. you can see it at the satanic bhijry, the sacrificial bemidji is everywhere. >> if you were living in nazi germany, i know, in the late 30s and 40s, you would think that yous we juice were jews were drinking the blood of children. does it not concern you that some of these are troeps that have been out here to demonize, you know, the other for centuries? jews, catholics, whoever it may be. >> i -- i don't know. all i know is the evidence is overwhelming against people who are around today. i -- i'm that -- i mean -- >> it's just a coincidence that it's the same kind of tropes?

s. >> i know that there's satanic -- there's plenty of evidence throughout history. you can go online. we can do research. >> he sees himself as an investigator of sorts, piecing together hid oen clues of this secret global kabal. he sees donald trump as some sort of savior. >> the hope comes from everything and maybe it is a lot of the q stuff that the kabal is falling. i see governments falling all over the world. i'm just trying to connect is dots. i'm not an insider. i'm just a guy with a laptop with too much time on my hands. >> that is one of the things you feel like you're able to do now which is search and connect dots. >> yeah. >> that's what you were actively doing that? >> yes, i am. yes, absolutely. >> that gives you hope that the -- >> yes. >> -- the idea that you can connect these dots? >> yes. it gives me hope to believe

that -- hope on theep trump is actually one of the good guys and i'm hoping on hope that if there is a plan, so that's q, right, trust the plan. hope upon hope there is a plan. >> where is the evidence that he's been spearheading a battle against pedophiles armed the world? he didn't talk about that really at all when he was in office. >> yeah. i think all you have to do, to validate what i'm saying. use another search engine. can't find it on youtube, search it on google. the reference to trump talking about this is one of his main agendas. you wouldn't know that from the mockingbird media. you can find it out. >> the truth is president trump rarely smoke out publicly about sex trafficking. it certainly was not one of his main agendas. why did qanon followers see trump as a messiah.

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could. >> what? >> you'll find out. >> those vague words about the storm spoken by then president trump at the white house on october 5th, 2017 are often sited about the gij of what we know as qanon. >> it's a time iran was in the news. a lot of focus on that.

the president said something that was cryptic and strange about a coming storm and how this moment was the calm before the storm. and the reporters in the room sort of seized on that with iran in mind and asked what storm, president trump, what are you talking about, and he was sort of -- you'll see, wait and see. >> q took off after this remark that president trump made. they intercepted that as a coded signal that something called the storm was coming, and the storm in their minds was this day of reckoning. >> and that became one of the fashional bits of lower for q, which started posting on an image message board a couple weeks later. >> on october 28th, someone who called themselves q clearance patriot wrote on an online forum which was known for anonymous or anon posts. they claimed to have a high level of clearance which comes

from the department of energy. >> this was not the first anon that has plamd to be a high ranking government insider on fortune, but q clearance patriots says i'm a member of the trump administration, i have this q level clearance and i'm providing you with secret information about what's really happening behind the scenes in washington. >> over the months and years, q continued posting vague clues often in the form of questions and riddles. they became known as q drops. followers would then spend days and weeks trying to decipher the meaning of them. certain catchphrases became commonly used among believers. >> they're sort of a rallying cry, where we go one, we go all, which is an expression of solidarity. >> they call each other patriots, almost universally. >> there is this reference to

the calm before the storm, the idea that the storm is a moment when a mass number of arrests will take place. >> and everything is sort of in this like militariesque code. so potus is used instead of calling him president trump or hillary clinton in the qanon drops is never hillary clinton. she's always hrc. >> thaere's a great way wakenin. they believe there will be a society wide spiritual awakening. >> there are things like enjoy the show, watch for fireworks in the coming days. >> similarly, trust the plan. >> trusting the plan is an important part of qanon belief because there's some times that predictions don't pan out. >> it's not clear if anything q has predicted has come true. the first post said that hillary clinton was about to be

arrested. q predicted other dates when this nonexisting global kabal would be exposed. there were supposed to be mass arrests and martial law, all fantasy. it didn't matter to q followers. they either ignored or explained them away. >> i know nothing about qanon. what you tell me doesn't make it fact. i hate to say that. i know nothing about it. i do know they are very much against pedophilia. they fight it very hard. >> this was president trump on nbc news this past october. he repeatedly claimed he didn't know anything about qanon but he praised them, giving q followers encouragement. these q supporters at a conference in arizona cheered on trump's words to nbc. many followers believes trump signals his support for him in public with hidden messages and

signs. >> they study all of trump's public appearances with this kind of extreme rigor, looking for tiny details, signs that he supports them, that he's listening to them, that he's sendi ing them coded signals. they take it a sign as he's talking to them. >> 17, 17, 17 wrote i've heard qanon say trump made these signs it looked like a q. >> now he says he's changed his mind. says many q followers' faith in trump is limitless. >> do you really believe that president trump was working to attack this global kabal of s saturdayin worshipping

pedophiles? you believed he was deeply involved? >> yes, of course i believed that. i believed he's been charged by military intelligence that he was an avatar, right. there are people out there believe he's a time traveller. there's people out there think he's jesus, so yeah, yeah. hundred percent. >> he continues to believe trump is fighting a battle against evil. >> it's always been this great hate for trump because they know he's not on the inside. looking back on it, in hindsight, i stayed away from politics. now i'm trying to connect all these dots. they've hated him from day one. they've develop after him from day one, and why? that's my question. why? so then i'm -- to me in my mind, that's why. he's trying to shut down child trafficking all over the world. >> how did a conspiracy cult based on lies and bizarre accusations grow so fast?

it wouldn't have happened without the help of social media. >> the way in which it went mainstream is they turned these concepts into memes and things that were very shareable on sites like facebook and twitter that capture people's interest. there's a reason they call it a rabbit hole, right. so the cause, in particular save the children. they took that slogan and co opted it and made it feel comfortable for a mainstream person to be like, yes, i want to help save the children. they take one click and learn some things and they click another and they may do some searches and all of a sudden they've gone down this rabbit hole for hours to a place they've now been exposed to some darker theories that are not as simple as the meme may have initially found. >> experts say the save the children hashtag appeared to be a powerful recruitment tool for

qanon. so-called save is children rallies have popped up all over the country. >> you are making us look bad. we're just trying to save our children. piss me off. >> the irony is many qanon followers have turned against the nonprofit organization save the children, which actually works around the globe to do exactly what q followers claim they're fighting for, saving children from danger. >> the problem with save the children -- and i went to my favorite store the other day, and told them i would no longer be shopping there because they support them because bill gates is a pedophile. really, really sad that a lot of people don't know and that don't know what's really going on. >> bill gates doesn't own save the children, like all the other qanon conspiracies, the accusations against him are completely baseless. >> you're a qanon follower?

>> hundred percent. >> the idea of saving children, even though it's not actually happening within qanon, could be one reason why so many women have joined in on the conspiracy. terror expert says women are often drawn to qanon through popular media sites. >> we know that the population of believers in qanon are disproportionately female. part of the reason that's the case, the algorithms in facebook that would subject qanon groups were people who were interested in essential oils, natural birth, perhaps even yoga. the facebook algorithms would thing suggest other groups that were qanon affiliated, so the women started joining qanon in greater numbers and people's facebook feed or their instagram feed began to be populated by all this qanon teerm. once the qanon people hijacked the hashtag save the children, that's when you started to see

more and more women. >> facebook ended up restricting the use of the save the children hashtag because of qanon. some experts say there's some similarities in the method of recruiting women between them and the terror group. >> it's this understanding that women are the primary drivers. not only will they ensure that the men stay in the movement, but of course they raise the kids with those beliefs. if you want to ensure the longevity of a terrorist group, make sure the women are on board and they will teach the children to be as radical as their fathers and sort of not move away from the movement. the other thing that's similar, when you look at the way that isis was able to get lots of women from the west, they recruited young girls or girls in their 20s. the way they did that was, did you want to help the orphans in syria, so of course the women wanted to help the orphans. this is again so similar to save

the children. it's this way of capitalizing on women's maybe inherent altruism that they're doing something good, that they think that they're helping, that it's not coming from radicalization where i want to kill people. it's coming from a place where i want to help people. >> we see a huge presence on instagram. there's a big sort of overlap with mommy blogs and q support. >> she's been following qanon for the past year for cnn. he shows us how easy it is to stumble on possible qanon groups by searching on instagram for save the children. >> this is what instagram does now. you looking for information? if you're looking for information about the humanitarian, this is their website. 2ke78ic socialists of america. so it's like, you know, what

does socialism add the democratic socialists of america have to do with save the children? the whole thing is they're trying to tie the whole thing to pedophilia. you don't see the save the children logo there. you don't see any information of helping that organization anywhere there. >> ashley vanderbilt lives in south carolina h her daughter. she said she became a good qanon foll follower. >> i started liking a lot of trump posts and things that were anti-biden, so the algorithm must have graduate that kind of stuff to me. >> she said she would spend hours online at night believing qanon theories no matter how crazy they were. >> they would drink children's blood because arrenocontrols or something, but they have to

torture the children. i mean, i have a four-year-old. who can think of that? and they said it's when they're in pain and they're, you know, screening, it's the adrenaline is up and that's when they drink that blood because it does something. something. . i don't know what it does but that's what they did. >> it would scare the bejesus out of him and torment him to raise the spike in the adrenaline which makes the blood better for them to ingest or however they put it into their system. >> he takes the fantasy a step further. >> i saw a post recently you put on instagram that google is a part of a luciferian part of kabal. >> absolutely. >> you've said google chrome is related to adreno-chrome. >> i see the words and then i

think, ah-ha. dhauz make sense. one of the things that q said is when does a coincidence cease to be a coincidence. so yeah. >> uses the word from -- that to you means adrino chrome? >> yes. if you look at the processing unit from cisco that they used was called the drino. you got adrino chrome, you got 666 in their little things, the all seeing eye in the middle. >> you believe in the google symbol that there's a 666. >> yeah. absolutely. >> why would a company, though, if they are part of a secrets kabal, why would they be naming products after key elements of what's supposed to be secret about, i moan mean a chal that has gotten a lot from children

and they're drinking. >> that's a good question. i can only answer that from what i know or what i see, and what one, is their arrogance that they're never going to get caught and that no one can do anything, even if they find it out. and then three, they're stupid. because it's all out. it's all coming out. one of the other things q said is their down fall will be their symbolism. and i think that's true. the symbolism is everywhere. >> this is fake. look closely at what he claims is 666 hidden in the google chrome icon. these whitelines that make it look like the number 6 doesn't exist. they appear to be added in by someone who tried to make it look like the number 6. another example of a conspiracy based on a lie. what drew so many people in, especially during a pandemic? ♪ hey now, you're an all-star, get your game on, go play ♪

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let me ask you a question, america. let me ask you a question. this goes out to all mick. the so-called doctor of the world, dr. fauci, ok. i haven't heard this guy mention drinking a glass of orange juice, he's not even taking a flint the stone fireman. the guy, wake up! wake up. >> this qanon supporter clearly isn't a fan of public health officials like dr. anthony fauci. >> mr. doctor fauci. >> neither are others many view dr. fauci and the pandemic

itself as part of another conspiracy. to them, china, the world health organization and the so-called deep state are involved in a plot against america with a virus that may or may not be real. >> the pandemic was a gift for qanon in a way, because it presented this full other subset of conspiracy theories for q to gobble up, which is what this conspiracy does best. it eats up all the other conspiracy theories out there. but in a universe of q seized on this idea that the pandemic was fake or that the united states and china secretly worked together to unleash it because of the quote unquote deep state. >> thank you very much. >> fauci became a central among the q crowd in part because there was a clip in the pandemic where president trump had a press briefing and fauci is bhinld and president trump said something and you see him going like this.

>> does anybody have any questions. >> suppress a chuckle and that was all over the q network. people seeing on fauci as being against trump in their view. >> there's a long-standing conspiracy theory against scientifically proven to be effective vaccine. the anti-vax movement very easily fell into the q universe when the pandemic began. it shouldn't be surprising at all that the people who believe in qanon also tend to be anti-vax or anti-mask or they were trying to get the country to open up as soon as possibler than was readily available or safe by medical standards. so there's this overlapping nature of qanon where these adjacent conspiracies are folded into qanon, so the qanon represents not just one conspiracy but several

conspiracies that are connected to it. >> the pandemic helped fuel the q cult partly because people simply had more time at home, with not much else to do but turn to the internet. ashley vanderbilt says she was laid off after the pandemic hit, which she believes made her more vulnerable to falling into the cult. >> i think i spent a lot of time this year isolated from everybody, you know, i've just been home a lot. i lost my job last april in 2020, and so i'd sit at home a lot. i was super depressed. just because you're not around anybody, and i think in a way, i probably lost touch with a little bit of reality and like almost common sense, and so i'm not so much embarrassed for what i believed, but i mean, i feel foolish. how could you have -- how could you have done that. how could you have thought that way and gone to the extreme with

it? >> i think combined with the social isolation that the pandemic brought on, the stress of everything associated with the pandemic, people lose their jobs. people are scared of this virus that you can't see, you can't chrome. >> whatever happens, we're totally prepared. >> people are not sure who to trust for the information about the virus. the president says one thing, the cdc says something else and that created a lot of fear and a lot of stress on people, and we know that when people experience certain stressors that can be a pathway to radicalization as people were spending more time on their computers, away from their friends, they're not doing a happy hour anywhere, they're not going to the little league game. they're just at home and they're online a lot. they're searching for answers and they're looking for ways to gain control in a world that

seems completely out of control. and that's when you started to see kind of this exponential growth of qanon, and the polls starting to indicate that it had gone mainstream. >> does it help fuel its growth? the postings called q drops are crypt ek in nature often. they're vague, seemingly presented as puzzles sthal loyal followers can solve or decode. >> once a new q post is posted, people use the q drop app to get it. they'll take screen shots and post them in chat rooms and they'll start trying to figure out how it connects to the larger qanon narrative. >> these clues that q leaves are written in ambiguous and cryptic terms, which is kind of what

people are drawn to, right? people want to sort of do the research. you hear this again and again. they want to do their own research and pore over these clues. >> this is an example of a q drop from favorite. >> it starts with all caps which says panic in d.c. then it says ll talking equals truth reveal tarmac d.c. this is a reference to lore etsa lynch, the former attorney general under president obama in some sort of truth that q is saying was revealed in a conversation with b.c., which is bill clinton, on the tarmac. it continues. l.l. talking equals truth reveal comey hrc e-mail case. comey is james comey, the former fbi director. ll talking truth reveals truth.

ll talking equals truth revealed brepdon no name cord to frame potus. when do birds sing, q. so as with most q drops, this one doesn't have a clear hint or narrative. it's coded. it's sort of written in this cryptic language, but the message that people take from this is there's some nefarious link between loretta lynch, the former attorney general, this former clinton e-mail case, john brennan, the former cia director and a plot against president trump. when do birts sing is a cryptic reference to when do people confess to their crimes, when does the storm happen when this house of cards that the kabal has erected comes crashing down. if you're part of qanon, you're not just absorbing things people tell you, you are out there,

digging, trying to put together pieces of this puzzle and then you are congratulated for finding stuff. it's almost like a video game. >> a video game based on lies, played by potentially hundreds of thousands of followers or more around the world wchl. >> one thing that i learned when i started spending a lot of time in qanon chatrooms and forums and facebook groups is that this is really social for them. this is a kind of collaborative truth seeking effort and it's a community. they make friends with other qanon believers. they congratulate each other on their birthdays and wish each other happy holidays and talk about their grnd parents coming to visit next week. this has become their primary social life. they get more out of it than just plolitics. >> what surprised me was the

number of people i met who, yes, they were pro trump but more than that, they were deriving a expense of spiritual satisfaction from q. there was a lot of people they felt the sense of peace of serenity in their lives that they didn't have before before they started getting into q. this isn't a preliminary movement. it takes on the contours of a baby religion born on the internet. it raises questions about like what's a religion versus what's a cult versus what's a conspiracy theory versus what's a mass delusion, and i think you see pieces of all those things in q. >> he says he was a qanon follower for almost two years. he says after watching q's predictions repeatedly fail he's now realized it was all made up.

>> i'd say that q is kind of like jesus and trump is kind of like a god figure, right? for me personally, the part that was really appealing was that in a sad kind of way this kind of gave me some joy and a sense of optimism. you know, i was looking at the world and it was so chaotic and everything was so negative, and there were just bad things happening all the time. the idea that we could somehow make the world a better place for all of humanity just really gave me a sense of optimism. so that was the situation that my life was so sad and i was so sad that i was looking to q for joy as well as a sense of belonging, just like any cult, you know, they prey on the vulnerable and the disaffected. that's exactly what happened. >> considering some believed they were fighting to save children, it's no surprise this online conspiracy could result in real world violence.

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q is a real thing. >> they're pedophiles, killing our children and using their blood and sacrificing to hollywood. >> the thought that they're trafficking in children andujar vesting their blood is at the core of the qanon conspiracy theory. there are many other far-out claims made by q followers. >> it is branched in many different directions and now you'll finite qanon believers talking about anything from the ilaluminum natty and area 51 to control of the banking system by george sorrows and other shadowy moefl jewish financiers. they believe in power. >> i've heard everything from the idea that john kennedy jr. is still alive and secretly supports trump to he was

designate assas assassinated. >> all you have to do is look into the e-mails. hillary clinton is a satanic witch. ok. >> you may recognize this guy, so-called qanon shaman this this was two days after the election. his name is jacob chancely. he's been seen at other trump rallies as well. freedom. >> he was front and center on the attack on the capitol prosecutors say he obstructed a police officer. they also say he told the fbi that vice president mike pence was a child trafficking traitor. he said he wasn't violent and didn't cross police lines. >> most recently on january 26 when we saw people brandishing q

signs, there was evidence before that that q was dangerous but it is abundantly clear that this was a dangerous and violent movement. >> this map running after a police officer was charged for his role in he's pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. >> we've seen lots of incidents of violence and lawbreaking related to qanon, inspired by qanon. murders, kidnappings, threats against lawmakers in the name of q. >> in march 2019, this man allegedly shot and killed a reputed mafia member in new york city, said victim was member of the deep state working to bring down president trump. at arraignment, flashed a q symbol on his hand.

pleaded not guilty. another forced armed standoff near the hoover dam, demanding release of deposit report on hillary clinton's emails. pleaded guilty to terrorism charge. some of the administration have spoken out against qanon, others trying to appeal to its followers. texas gop started using the slogan we are the storm, same as q followers. texas gop denies connection to qanon but continue to use the term, even after attack on the capitol. republicans across the country who engaged with the qanon conspiracy ran for election. marjorie taylor greene. >> q is a patriot, loves his country, on the same page as us, very pro-trump.

had connections at highest levels, posted many things that seem to verify he's the real deal. >> from colorado. >> everything i've heard, i hope he's it's real. >> both serving in congress. said not a follower of qanon and after calls for her to resign, greene has said publicly she doesn't believe in qanon. >> i stumbled across something end of 2017 called qanon, posts mainly about the russian collusion, lot of it what i would see on the news at night and got really interested in it. when i started finding misinformation, lies and things not true in qanon posts, i stopped believing it. >> but even after 2018 when she said she stopped believing. >> are you still involved with qanon muss? >> she was still pushing

conspiracies. >> he's unfair to criticize regular american people looking things up on the internet. >> marjorie taylor greene has successfully fundraised off her relationship with qanon. other qanon influencers have profited off the rise of this conspiracy. >> it's probably important to make the distinction between the rank and file followers and q. >> look it up. >> it's community. >> and people who were either influencers for qanon or people making a lot of money from qanon materials. the influencers were selling q-branded materials or books, or diverting funds to stop the steal. >> online retailers like amazon and etsy have recently made moves to take down qanon themed products but there's many other places to find the merchandise, still money to be made off the

qanon cult. >> it was everybody. we don't know who particularly q is, q is a movement. okay? it says think for yourself, doesn't tell you follow one leader, you can think about what you want with q. but i follow the facts and information and i think for myself and as american. >> q still is at this point an anonymous message board poster. it's not known who he or she is, if it's single person or foreign government attempting to sow division. >> i talk to a lot of qanon believers who say it doesn't matter who q is, identity or if it's the same person all along seems to have become secondary in this case. they're curious who it is but almost not know because allows them to preserve the illusion. >> more people i talked to who deeply believe it it didn't care. what if you find out the person

who is q admits it was made up, and i heard from people who said doesn't matter who q is, this is so much bigger than q. >> what is it like to be named by q? find out after q posted question who is a. cooper. >> you actually believed i was drink the blood of children. ♪ hey now, you're a rock star, get the show on, get paid ♪ ♪ and all that glitters is gold ♪ get 5 boneless wings for $1 with any handcrafted burger. only at applebee's. welcome, today's discussion will be around sliced meat. moms want healthy... and affordable. land o' frost premium!!! no added hormones either. it's the only protein i've really melted with.

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what's going on with tom hanks? >> you guys want me to explain everything today, huh? dude, it's all suspicion, that's suspicion. >> how do you know tom hanks is -- >> how do you not know? >> you're reporting a negative. >> one of dozens of celebrities that q supporters have accused of being part of so-called global cabal, there's no evidence, none at all to believe the claims. >> you have him on your sign, call him a pedophile. >> yes, how did he get to position of power? >> some of the celebrities have been critical of president trump in some way, others simply thought to be democrats.

>> q has specifically called out members of this global cabal who they say include people like tom hanks and chrissy teigen, selected not randomly but because people find references in social media posts, photos of them from a decade or two ago or with bill clinton, someone at heart of this theory. will turn these people into enemies and viciously harass people. once they fixate on a target, they all go on social media, swarm that target. i've been the target of it. it's happened to a lot of reporters, political pundits, celebrities, and it's very unpleasant to be on the receiving end of that. >> q first posted about me november 5th, 2017, asking the question who is a. cooper. this came two days after i was on the air reporting about indictments in the russian investigation. once mentioned by q, followers

of this conspiracy cult went to work, inventing a bizarre story about my life. according to q followers, my mom, gloria vanderbilt, was a satanist, pointed to this photo when i was six years old, mexican folk art is the virgin mary with christ but they said it was satanic, and christ figure sacrificed, and claimed i was molested likely in old pool in what they said was mom's house, it was old estate that neither i or as far as i know my mom had ever been to. posted this picture saying me as child abused in pool. cia allegedly trained me as super secret agent to the media. operation mockingbird. the confirmation, the necklace my mom wore in old photo looked

like guatemala, cia supported a coup there in 1954. i was also called a pedophile. phony flight logs from jeffrey epstein's airplane appeared online with my name and dozens of well-known people. it's all made up but qanon people believe it or use it to try to harass me. a believer until june 2019. >> did you at the time believe that democrat, high level democrats and celebrities were worshipping satan, drinking the blood of children? >> anderson, i thought you did that. and i would like to apologize for that right now. so i apologize for thinking that you ate babies. but yeah, 100%. >> you actually believed that i was drinking the blood of children? >> yes, i did. >> was it something about me

that made you think that? >> it's because q specifically mentioned you and mentioned you very early on. he mentioned you by name, and from there, if -- he also talked about for example your family, but yeah, and i -- going to be honest, people still talk about that to this day. there were posts about that just four days ago. so some people thought you were a robot. >> you really believed this. >> i didn't just believe that, i at one stage believed that qanon was part of military intelligence, what he says, on top of that, that the people behind him were actually a group of fifth dimensional interdimensional extr extraterrestrial bipedal blue ail

a aliens. i was so far down in the conspiracy black hole i was picking and choosing whatever i wanted to believe in. >> he no longer believes but hundreds of thousands, some suggest millions of others, still trusting the plan. still trusting that members of this so-called cabal, including me, will be executed, even if donald trump is no longer in the white house. >> i can't prove anything about you anderson, all i know there's a lot of strange coincidences. so are we. prudential helps 1 in 7 americans with their financial needs. that's over 25 million people. with over 90 years of investment experience, our thousands of financial professionals can help with secure video chat or on the phone. we make it easy for you with online tools, e-signatures, and no-medical-exam life insurance. plan for better days. go to prudential.com or talk to an advisor.

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white house on january 20th, many qanon believers were stunned, nothing they'd been promised were come to past. were promised arrests, exposures, military regime, classified documents one read. >> there was a complete meltdown of qanon followers. there was this belief while they weren't able to stop the election from being certified by the congress, what was going to happen next was president trump was going to declare martial law at the last minute, issue a national emergency broadcast alert, that electricity was likely to go down, water was likely to go down, so everybody needs to stockpile food and water and be able to survive in the winter for a couple of weeks. and then president trump would rightly take his place for his second term as president, and there would be no president biden. >> i joseph biden jr. do

solemnly swear. >> but as we've seen in the past, the believes simply evolve. many are now claiming trump will make a return to the white house. others claim he's still secretly running the government. one 4chan user wrote anything that happens in next four years is actually president trump's doing. it's now harder to find qanon content on the internet, major companies have decided to crack down. twitter has banned more than 70,000 accounts for promoting q. facebook says since august removed more than 18,000 profiles and more than 20,000 instagram accounts for violating policies against qanon but there are other platforms where qanon is thriving. >> after the insurrection, when twitter and facebook started kicking off a lot of qanon accounts, seen a lot of followers move to platforms like

gab. a social media platform been around few years, one of the most hate-filled platforms out there. this one qanon group on gab, qanon and the great awakening, has more than 200,000 members. and if you're in it, you basically live in a parallel universe. if we go through it here, people are posting every few minutes, sometimes every few seconds. everything in this group is basically designed to grab you further and further, drag you further and further down the qanon rabbit hole. it's sort of perfect example of what you see in groups like this, right? purports to be a picture from a livestream of the white house, probably at some hour of the very late at night when maybe the lights are turned off, maybe the front flood lights, or might be image totally doctored.

but can see the guy is saying, looks like lights are out at white house yet again for so many days in a row. q did say something about if the lights are out, know we are in control. this is a person who is really trying to cling on to that belief, that qanon is something real. and this was just posted, you know, several weeks after biden has been inaugurated. >> thank you, everybody. >> trump leaving the white house hasn't changed brian's belief that members of the cabal will be exposed and even executed. you believe there will be public executions of people in the -- this cabal? and if i was in it, i would be publicly executed? >> if, anderson, you're saying you're not, told me you're not, i'll take your word for it, i don't have any proof.

but i would say anybody that is high up should be shown to the world via public execution. i can't prove anything about you anderson, all i know there's a lot of strange coincidences, like the imagery above your mother's bed, you know what i'm talking about. >> right. >> the imagery with you and your brother on the bed, satanic imagery with person being sacrificed. there's that. >> my mom was baptized catholic and episcopalian by competing relatives, and she liked folk art. that's old mexican folk art representation of the virgin mary, the sacrifice part of it, because i still have this in my basement, jesus christ after he's taken off the cross, adult, laying with the wounds.

virgin mary looking over christ off the cross. but it's interpreted as satanic child sacrifice. >> i got you. like i said, i'm -- i backed off a lot of that, sent a lot of crazy messages because you can imagine, when you see all this stuff, it can -- babies getting killed, can make you kind of angry. so yeah, also, right, i did apologize to you after that. and i -- because i can't prove any of it, i don't know if it's true. but there's certainly things like that that i guess were misconstrued we could say. >> whatever brian thinks about me now, he's still convinced there is a global cabal out there and thinks some of them have already been arrested. >> you think it's possible that hillary clinton has already been arrested, there's a double of her out there, and biden has been overthrown but there's a double of him?

>> i think those are possible, really do. like i said, i told you before we started this, lot of stuff i'm going to say sounds crazy to me when i say it out loud, but if you look at the evidence you can find, you see this is plausible. and i can't think of any other excuse for why she would still be walking around. her, biden -- >> but it is really plausible -- >> the bushes. >> where in life have you ever seen a body double for months on end that works? i know sad m hussein had a double here and there. >> maybe because they do brief appearances, not like out in public. >> honestly, i interviewed biden a couple of nights ago. face-to-face, and got to tell you, it was joe biden. >> okay. >> trying to be rational with

brian as with many conspiracy theorists doesn't get you far. last i heard from him, he told me he was praying for me. >> i'm really hopeful, anderson, that everything you just told me is true. i'm hopeful it is true and i'm hopeful that you're actually one of the good guys in all of this. that you're actually working behind the scenes to help goodness win over evil. >> ashley vanderbilt considers herself one of the lucky ones to make it out of qanon. said the continued online chatter about trump's return to power didn't make any sense. >> i already started seeing posts of this is how it's supposed to happen. inauguration is supposed to happen, treason has been committed now. putting out hope that trump will still come back. i looked at fiance, said you can

stop watching the videos. i don't think i can believe it. he said why, and i for some reason, reasoning and logic came to me, i was just like it doesn't make sense a president can be sworn in, all of this is happening and all of a sudden trump's going to come back march 4th and change. it just doesn't seem right. >> there are however plenty of others still out there in the u.s. and around the world who think it does seem right. some experts fear they may migrate over to other fringe extremist groups. >> here's the dangerous part, white supremacists and antigovernment extremist started to realize this was likely to happen after january 6th. they weren't able to stop biden from being approved by congress, so there was disheartening moment for many in the -- of trump and qanon supporters. so you started to see the white

supremacists come up with recruitment techniques and they started hosting on their sites to educate other white supremacists on how to approach disheartening qanon adherent or trump supporter. they have to feed their grievance, make sure they stay angry, put blame on the system, the government, trump itself. looking to recruit. >> hard part of leaving qanon, once you've started to see the world in the way that qanon followers see the world, as a series of lies being told by elites, it becomes very hard for them to trust in mainstream authorities ever again. they sort of have this idea that the knowledge that they're being fed is not real, and that they have to go looking for their own sources of truth. >> and many of those sources are now heralding a new day of reckoning close at hand. >> trump will take office as the

19th president of the united states on march 4th, under the restored republic.

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executions will be happening on march 5th. that's a big statement. and i'm really looking forward to it. >> qanon supporters have been waiting for this imaginary global cabal of pedophiles to be exposed and punished since the beginning of the movement. some still cling to this belief and are preparing themselves now for the 4th and 5th of march. >> big belief, thing you see a lot of chatter about right now,

idea on the 4th of march trump is going to come back, and on the 5th of march there will be public executions of trump's political enemies. >> new dates based on law from 1871 who established a government for washington, d.c.. conspiracy theorists incorrectly believe that any president sworn in afterwards is illegitimate, last legitimate was ulysses s. grant. and they believe donald trump will return on that date to be sworn in. national guard troops will remain through march 12th, partly because of fears of qanon violence on the 4th. >> hey, hey, hey, your favorite truth seeker, holding the light for everyone out there who has given up hope that trump is not the president of the united

states of america. when in fact he is. >> these videos are on tiktok. >> patriots, trump supporters, just wanted to say this, keep the faith, i really believe something is coming soon. >> tiktok has made moves to ban qanon content but still finds its way on the site. >> people aren't just posting stuff that says qanon, you know, they're posting these messages. qanon adjacent, world of conspiracy. this is another example, you know somebody trying to claim that gallows are being built outside the white house, pushing this ridiculous narrative there's going to be public executions when trump comes back in march. this scaffolding is press rising where the media was on inauguration day. to be fair, even on gab, on a platform full of misinformation, sometimes people will call this stuff out, say no that's the

media -- but others go with it, say yeah that makes sense. what we do know, a lot of people read this stuff and really, really, really believe it. >> there have always been conspiracy theories, but never before have they been able to spread so quickly. just a few clicks can take you down a rabbit hole of deranged, sycophancies and dangerous believes. cult of qanon shows us even the most ludicrous and disturbing ideas can find an audience online, and in the real world, the results can be tragic. >> i will die for my country, my family and my friends. ain't nothing else. >> they ain't going to win. >> you don't want none of this. since suzie's got goals, she'll want a plan to reach them.

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good evening. another big night of breaking news. an fda panel recommending emergency authorization of a third covid vaccine from johnson & johnson. the one-shot version. if approval is granted, people could start getting it next week. any minute the house will vote on covid relief legislation if as expected it pasz, the senate version will be stripped of a provision to more than double the minimum wage. we'll talk with someone that fought to keep the pay raise,

bernie sanders and how much else is in the bill for so many americans in need. also tonight, house republicans that decided they had better things to do than be in washington to vote on the covid bill that's going to affect tens of millions of americans. at least a dozen lawmakers that said they could not be at the capitol due to the on going public health emergency oddly enough sought refuge in the same place, orlando, florida where they're taking part in conservative political action conference, or cpac, and just to give you the idea of the respect they have down there for the on going public health emergency, listen to this. >> everyone, when you're in the ballroom, when you're seated, you should still be wearing a mask so if everybody can go ahead, work on that. i know. i know it's not the most fun. [ shouting ] >> you have the right -- >> one of the cpac refugees is freshman north carolina