Literary Corner: There Are Some Very Fine Anti-Pedophiles

Via Encyclopedia of Alabama,

I Know Nothing

by Donald J. Trump

(Let me ask you about QAnon.
It is this theory that Democrats
are a satanic pedophile ring
and that you are the savior, of that.
Now can you just, once and for all,
state that that is completely not true, and—)

I know very little.
You told me, but what you tell me
doesn't necessarily 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.

But I know nothing about it.

If you’d like me to study the subject,

I’ll tell you what I do know about.

I know about Antifa,

and I know about the radical left,

and I know how violent they are

and how vicious they are.

And I know how they are burning down
cities run by Democrats,
not run by Republicans.

(Republican Senator Ben Sasse said,
“QAnon is nuts and real leaders call
conspiracy theories conspiracy theories.”)

Can I be honest?
I don't know.
I just don't know about QAnon.

(You do know.)

I don’t know.
No, I don’t know.
I don’t know. You tell me all about it.

(Let me ask you another thing.)

Let’s waste the whole show.
You start off with white supremacy.
I denounce it.
You start off with something else.
Let’s go.
Keep asking me these questions.

But let me just—let me just tell you.
What I do hear about it is
they are very strongly against pedophilia.
And I agree with that.
I mean, I do agree with that
and I agree with it very strongly

(But there’s not a Satanic pedophile cult being run by—)

I have no idea.
I know nothing about them.

Actually there's something more to that American history joke than meets the eye, perhaps. As you probably learned in high school, the Know Nothings were properly the American Party, a furiously anti-immigrant party of the 1850s, an ancestor, certainly, of Pat Buchanan's movement and of the Trumpery, which had some near successes as the Whigs disintegrated, but the reason for their nickname wasn't that they claimed to be especially ignorant; it was really that they claimed to be exceptionally paranoid, and none of them were supposed to admit that they belonged to the party: they'd say, "I know nothing."

Trump can't really be claiming ignorance about the QAnon cult either, in that he repeatedly insists that he does know something, namely he is well informed about their fearless opposition to pedophilia, in contrast I guess to the radical left, which he knows a lot about, although everything he knows is wrong, such as the view that they are burning down Democratic-ruled cities across our beautiful country, which is not even the case for Portland, per Politifact

We asked journalists from the Oregonian and other local news outlets about Trump’s claim. They described an on-the-ground reality in which most protesters have been peaceful, while a subset of people have clashed with police, graffitied buildings and ignited fires. The fires that have ensued have been quickly extinguished and confined to a few small parts of the city.

"Portland is not ablaze, though we do love the Trail Blazers," said Anna Griffin, the news director at Oregon Public Broadcasting, in a reference to the city’s NBA team. Street-level activism has been a feature of Portland’s culture for years, Griffin said.

"We’re a small city reckoning with centuries of racism — both within our law enforcement and laws themselves — and that reckoning isn’t tidy," added Alex Zielinski, the news editor at the Portland Mercury, an alternative newspaper. "But no, we’re not on fire."

and the cities most distinctively not burning include Jacksonville, Miami, Omaha, San Diego and Tulsa, with Republican mayors, and Las Vegas and San Antonio under independents.

So I think it's safe to say when Trump says, "I know nothing," he means to say he's a member in good standing of whatever QAnon is, and will never betray his comrades by telling us anything about them, though that's clearly false and he would gladly sell them out for a couple of bucks.

Know-Nothing propaganda depiction of filthy immigrants trying to steal our elections (the polls at left rear, the harvested ballot box in their hands), your sodden Irishman and violent Hun, 1850, via Amazon.