Trump Praises Conspiracy Theorist Who Won Georgia Primary.
VAUSE: Senior Republicans including -- let me start that again. Senior Republicans including the U.S. President are praising a conspiracy theorist who is likely to be elected to Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene secured the Republican nomination for congressional district in a deeply conservative part of Georgia. She's known for extreme and racist views and her allegiance to the QAnon Conspiracy. But on Twitter, President Trump is calling her a future Republican star, a real winner. CNN's Manu Raju tells us more about Greene and the controversial belief put forth by QAnon adherents.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Q is real. Q is not a conspiracy.</s>MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a conspiracy theory born on the dark fringes of the Internet. Something the FBI contends is a national security threat, but the QAnon theory has been embraced by some House Republican candidates in races across the country. And on Tuesday night, one of them won her Republican primary. And is on track to winning a House Seat in November.</s>MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R), CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I just want to say to Nancy Pelosi, she is a hypocrite, she's an anti American, and we are going to kick that</s>RAJU: Businesswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is now the heavy favorite to win a seat representing a deeply conservative district in northwest Georgia. Greene has repeatedly praised the QAnon theory.</s>GREENE: Q is a patriot; we know that for sure. But we do not know who Q is. People believe that Q is someone very close to President Trump.</s>RAJU: The movement sprung to life in early 2017 based on a belief that there is a high-level government official, Q, who sprinkles clues on Internet message boards about a series of massive deep state conspiracies at work in the country. In 2019, the FBI raised concerns over the potential for violence linked to such fringe theories. Greene also won, despite a history of racist and incendiary remarks against Muslims.</s>GREEENE: We have an Islamic invasion into our government offices. They want to put their hand on the Koran and be sworn in? No. You have to be sworn in on the bible.</s>RAJU: About Democrats.</s>GREENE: They are trying to keep the black people in a modern day form of slavery. It's a slavery system to keep their vote.</s>RAJU: About blacks and confederate statues.</s>GREENE: If I were a black people today, and I walked by one of those statues, I would be so proud because I'd say look how far I have come in this country.</s>RAJU: And trumpeting a conspiracy theory about the liberal megadonor George Soros. Echoing an erroneous anti-Semitic attack against the Holocaust survivor that he collaborative with Nazis.</s>GREENE: I will not apologize for standing up against George Soros, even when they want to call me an anti-Semite.</s>RAJU: Her comments put House Republican leaders in an awkward spot, with the House GOP's campaign arm refusing to endorse her on Wednesday. When videos of her past comments were first unearthed by Politico in June House Republican Whip Steve Scalise vowed to back her primary opponent and called her remarks "disgusting". A spokesman for House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said they were appalling. But President Donald Trump was quick to herald her victory, saying in a tweet Wednesday morning that she is a future Republican star and a real winner. A couple of hours later, a McCarthy spokesperson said we look forward to Greene and other Republicans winning in November. Asked on Wednesday about Greene's victory in Georgia and embrace of the fringe movement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that Republicans seem comfortable with it. Now, as Republican leaders are mostly silent today, one Republican congressman did speak out, and that's Adam Kinzinger of Illinois who went on Twitter and said that this movement is a fabrication and he said that there's no place in congress for these conspiracies. But that actually drew a rebuke from a top Trump campaign official who went after Kinzinger on Twitter and said that he should be -- the congressman should be focused on Democratic conspiracies instead. So it goes to show that this debate, an unwelcome debate among many Republicans may soon be entering the halls of the Capitol. Manu Raju, CNN -- Capitol Hill.</s>VAUSE: Rick Wilson a political strategist, a former member of the Republican Party, cofounder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. He's with us this hour from Tampa in Florida. Mr. Wilson, welcome to</s>CNN NEWSROOM. RICK WILSON, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.</s>VAUSE: Ok. Well, you've written quite a few books over the years, one of the best known ones is "Everything Trump Touches Dies". A brilliant title, but is the exception to that conspiracy theories -- in particular the kind of lunacy which seems to be rocket feel for the crazies who believe in this QAnon stuff?</s>WILSON: I think that the integral nature now of conspiracy theories to the Trump Republican Party is one of the reasons that it is going to be marginalized as a political force as we move forward because it's now become deeply hard wired into the GOP ranging from the QAnon type conspiracies which are very far out on the fringe to the George Soros conspiracies, to the deep state conspiracies. All these things in the GOP's DNA now make it seem to normal voters like a bus load of "Mad Men".</s>VAUSE: Well, speaking of that, Donald Trump's director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, he's been linked to QAnon through his Twitter account. And for a little more now on how team Trump has embraced QAnon, here is part of a report from CNN's John Avalon.</s>JOHN AVALON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It has seeped into the groundwater of Trump era hyper-partisanship with Q paraphernalia sold out at Trump rallies. And appearing with disturbing regularity on his supporters. And although he hasn't spoke directly about QAnon the President has fanned the flames repeatedly re-tweeting QAnon supporting accounts, memes and hashtags. The Trump campaign even included QAnon signs in and out which was later taken down. This month "Business Insider" published date showing the Trump campaign relies on a huge network of QAnon accounts to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation.</s>VAUSE: Compare that to a time when Republican leaders shut down militias unfounded rumors. It wasn't that long ago, it was 2008. Here it is.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't trust Obama. I have heard about him and he's not -- he's an Arab. He is not -- no?</s>JOHN MCCAIN (R), FORMER SENATOR: No, ma'am. No, ma'am. He is a decent family man, citizen that I just happened to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that's what this campaign is all about. He is not. Thank you. Thank you.</s>VAUSE: So how did the Republican Party move from the moral compass of John McCain, to now being the party where whack jobs have a political plan?</s>WILSON: Well, , that is a moment that I treasure about John, and I have to say I remember that moment very clearly because it did have a resonance that our political differences don't have to be based in some sort of deeper, strange, esoteric secrets. They could just be political differences. So, you know, that was really the beginning of an era where Fox News prospered greatly by pushing out conspiracy theories -- a lot of what became the Trump right media online enterprises such as Breitbart. The traffic in those sort of things aggressively and look, I remember taking static in 2008 when someone brought me this shifty newspaper article and said he was born in Kenya, and I laughed at it.</s>WILSON: And I said we are never making him out about -- that's ridiculous. And I had forgotten about it until the moment John said that but that was -- you know that sort of thing is now grown into a multi billion dollar enterprise. There are people who monetize the conspiracy clap-trappers out there in great degrees. And Facebook is making an awful lot of money with these conspiracy groups that use that platform as a primary vector to spread this kind of misinformation.</s>VAUSE: Here's a little more from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican candidate who's running in an overwhelmingly conservative district in Georgia, making her almost certainly to be Elected Member of Congress come November. Listen to this.</s>GREENE: According to him, many in our government are actively worshipping or they call Morlock (ph). I mean is that going to be true that the child pedophile you and the elites and the Washington -- and easy -- is that really going to see come out? Is that -- we're really going to see come out. Is it true as type of corruption we are going to see come out? Is it going to be satanic worship?</s>VAUSE: You know part of this is that, you know, you know, they believe a savior will defeat the satanic worshiping pedophile and that savior's Donald Trump which that alone takes quite the takes quite the imagination. But at this point, are the QAnon types -- are they intrench within the GOP? Could they be purged? Does the party want them?</s>WILSON: I'll give you a great example today. Of how deeply in example today of how deeply entwined they become. A Republican Congressman Adam Mackenzie criticized future Congresswoman Greene for trafficking in the QAnon information. The Trump campaign then proceeded to attack him. This is how deeply wired it is. This is now the party of Trump and the party of Q. It is not the party of Abraham Lincoln.</s>VAUSE: Very quickly why isn't that something similar hasn't happened on the Democrat side of politics? Why is it just the Republican side?</s>WILSON: You know, conspiracies go in a lot of different directions but for a simple reason -- a lot of the Republican base for the last 25 years has been living on a drip of Fox News which has told them over and over again you can't trust anybody but us, the rest of the world is lying to you, everything else is an illusion. And so those people were sort of primed to disbelieve empirical fact and so when QAnon came along, it was this very appealing seemingly coherent theory that let them explain the world that they didn't understand to themselves. And that's why it's been such an appealing thing on the right, I think.</s>VAUSE: Yes, it's pretty sad at the end of the day. Rick Wilson --</s>WILSON: It really is.</s>VAUSE: -- thank you very much for being with us. We appreciate it.</s>WILSON: Appreciate it. Thank you.</s>VAUSE: And thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. The news continues after a short break with Robyn Curnow. 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