Trump shares old TSA pat-down video from QAnon, via Larry the Cable Guy
President Trump on Tuesday shared a nearly two-year-old video of a TSA pat-down that originated from a QAnon conspiracy theorist’s Twitter account.
The two-minute video — which resurfaced in a tweet from actor James Woods that was retweeted by comedian Daniel Lawrence Whitney, better known as Larry the Cable Guy — showed a teenage boy being searched at an airport security checkpoint. It has been cited by far-right commentators as an example of overly intrusive government policing.
“Not a good situation!” Trump commented on his retweet of the video shortly before midnight. It was interspersed among tweets about the Electoral College, which he once wanted to abolish and now wants to keep.
Not a good situation! https://t.co/uaMcSrX4yM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2019
It wasn’t clear why the video was suddenly making the rounds on Twitter again, or what event might have brought it to the attention of the president.
The clip posted by Woods came from a Twitter account called Deep State Exposed, which is operated by Jeremy Stone, a follower of the so-called QAnon conspiracy theory that dark forces within the government are at work against Trump and his administration.
“TSA goes out of their way to hire high school dropouts with an inclination for sexual perversion,” Stone tweeted Monday. “It’s mind control!!!”
Woods’s tweet of the video was retweeted by Larry the Cable Guy, who wrote: “Absolutely ridiculous! How many times do you have to feel a kid up to figure out he’s not a threat? This is infuriating and hard to watch.”
The video went viral in 2017. But the clip shared by Stone, Woods, Larry the Cable Guy and President Trump does not provide full context.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, the 13-year-old passenger “underwent enhanced security screening, which included a pat-down, after his laptop alarmed an explosives trace detection machine” at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
“In total, the pat-down took approximately two minutes, and was observed by the mother and two police officers who were called to ease concerns of the mother,” the TSA said in a blog post. “The passengers were at the checkpoint for approximately 45 minutes, which included the time it took to discuss screening procedures with the mother and to screen three carry-on items that required further inspection.”
The video, the TSA noted, was filmed by the teen’s mother.
Of course it’s not the first time a conspiracy originating on the fringes of the internet has made its way to the president’s Twitter feed.
In 2017, amid an outcry over his response to the deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump retweeted a tweet from Jack Posobiec, an alt-right media figure who had pushed the so-called Pizzagate conspiracy theory that top Democrats were involved in a child sex-trafficking ring at a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. Posobiec also championed the baseless conspiracy that the Democratic National Committee was behind the death of former staffer Seth Rich.
The same year, Trump retweeted a handful of anti-Muslim videos posted by the deputy leader of a British far-right group, prompting a public condemnation by British Prime Minister Theresa May.
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