Media Matters' Alex Kaplan explains how a QAnon influencer is trying to get Big Lie candidates elected to control elections
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Media Matters' Alex Kaplan explains how a QAnon influencer is trying to get Big Lie candidates elected to control elections
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From the July 30, 2022, edition of BBC Trending
MIKE WENDLING (HOST): As I said earlier, Jim Marchant, the Republican candidate [for secretary of state] in Nevada, is just one candidate who has connections with a prominent QAnon influencer. To get a scale of this movement, I've been chatting to Alex Kaplan. He's a senior researcher with Media Matters for America. It's a left-wing research group that keeps tabs on movements like QAnon.
ALEX KAPLAN (MEDIA MATTERS SENIOR RESEARCHER): I've been keeping track of — this is for the second cycle now, or second congressional cycle — of candidates running for Congress who have expressed or promoted at some level QAnon. And, currently, I have found over 60 candidates. That is possible that number could grow.
WENDLING: Alex Kaplan says to understand how this movement came together, we need to know about one person in particular.
KAPLAN: This is one of the biggest stories in the history of QAnon, what Juan O. Savin is doing.
WENDLING: Juan O. Savin. That's an alias, not his real name. And yes, it seems like it's some sort of riff on the number 107. Like everything in the world of QAnon, Juan O. Savin's backstory is murky, shrouded in mystery and misinformation. News reports say he's an insurance investigator who lives on the west coast of America, but somehow he's become a political powerbroker, enlisting candidates to run for powerful positions, those secretary of state jobs that oversee elections like the one that Jim Marchant hopes to win in Nevada.
KAPLAN: We have Marchant confirming that Juan O. Savin's involved. Juan O. Savin has confirmed, and I have him on video, saying he's involved. We now have multiple cases of candidates who were secretary of state candidates, confirming that Savin was involved, on video.