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A former QAnon supporter has apologised to Anderson Cooper for previously believing that the CNN anchor ate babies.
Jitarth Jadeja, who believed in the baseless conspiracy movement until June 2019, spoke with Cooper for an upcoming CNN report investigating the QAnon movement titled “Inside the QAnon Conspiracy”.
In a preview released ahead of the special report, Cooper began by acknowledging that he, as well as other high-profile individuals, have been the target of some of QAnon’s most “outlandish” conspiracies.
“It’s also something of a personal project, as the QAnon fringe has previously focused on me and a bunch of other reporters, as well as many other public figures, as somehow being responsible for some of their more outlandish, should we say, and bizarre conspiracies,” the journalist said ahead of the interview, adding that he was called a “paedophile” and linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein through “phony flight logs”.
During the interview, Cooper asked Jadeja whether he, at the time, believed some of the movement’s claims, which include that high-level Democrats and celebrities “worship Satan” and “drink the blood of children”.
In response to the question, Jadeja revealed that he thought Cooper was guilty of the claims.
“Anderson, I thought you did that,” he responded. “And I would like to apologise for that right now. So, I apologise for thinking that you ate babies. But, yeah, 100 per cent.”
Jadeja’s response appeared to surprise Cooper, who responded: “You actually believed that I was drinking the blood of children?” to which Jadeja replied: “Yes, I did.”
According to Jadeja, who stopped believing in the unhinged theories after watching YouTube videos debunking the movement’s claims, he believed Cooper was involved because Q, the conspiracy movement’s leader, “specifically mentioned” the CNN anchor.
“And he mentioned you very early on,” Jadeja continued, adding that the anonymous conspiracy theorist also referenced Cooper’s family and that more recent QAnon theories have speculated that the journalist is a “robot”.
During the interview, Jadeja, who lives in Sydney, Australia, also revealed that his belief in the baseless theories spouted by Q also extended much further, telling Cooper that he believed “that QAnon was part of military intelligence, which is what he says,” and that “the people behind him were actually a group of fifth-dimensional, intradimensional, extraterrestrial bipedal bird aliens called blue aliens”.
“I was so far down in this conspiracy black hole that I was essentially picking and choosing whatever narrative that I wanted to believe in,” he said.
QAnon, which started as a fringe internet conspiracy, entered the mainstream under the Trump presidency, with followers convinced that the former president was waging a secret war against high-profile paedophiles running a Satanic sex ring, among other baseless beliefs.
The group was dealt one of its biggest blows on Inauguration Day, which many had believed for months would be a day of reckoning and would see Donald Trump arrest enemies of the country and remain president.
CNN’s QAnon special airs Saturday at 9 pm ET.
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