'The rot is deep': QAnon has infiltrated the 'highest levels of the Republican Party'

Reflecting on the outrageous grilling Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson received at the hands of Republican senators during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Intelligencer columnist Jacob Silverman suggested that the GOP rhetoric showed the party appears to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of QAnon.

Previously QAnon conspiracies were relegated to the fever swamps of the internet and Donald Trump rallies, but the unrelenting questioning of Judge Jackson, who is set to become the first Black woman appointed to the nation's highest court, is an indication that conspiracy rumors from QAnon cult members are becoming the GOP's stock-in-trade.

According to Silverman, the QAnon "rot is deep" in the Republican Party.

Touching on reports that Ginni Thomas was texting absurd conspiracy theories to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the Jan 6th insurrection, the columnist explained, "Thomas’s willingness to embrace even the most wild-eyed, Big Lie–fueled theories only affirms what we already know about some of her political peers, including those who served in the Trump White House. Some went along out of self-preservation or an instinct for power, but other Trumpists, including perhaps Trump himself, actually accepted the proliferating lies about hacked voting machines, a communist influence project, corrupt state officials, and whatever else could be added to the witch’s brew of baseless speculation."

RELATED: Josh Hawley was projecting when he falsely attacked Judge Jackson at her SCOTUS hearing

Case in point, he noted was the hectoring of Jackson by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).

"Earlier this month, Missouri senator Josh Hawley presented a long Twitter thread charging that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson 'has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook' — a blaring Klaxon for QAnon adherents obsessed with child endangerment," he wrote. "He later repeated his criticisms on the first day of Jackson’s confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court, prompting a White House spokesman to assert that Hawley was engaging in a 'QAnon-signaling smear.' Hawley’s remarks were later echoed by South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who, in addition to chiding Jackson for representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, told Jackson, 'Every judge who does what you are doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited.'"

After writing, "The signs of the Republican slide toward full epistemic crack-up are all around us," Silverman added, "If you had any lingering pretensions that our political elites know better than the average QAnon-pilled zombie, it’s past time to let them go. The people in charge of the Republican Party are mostly old and poorly informed operators who believe some of the most asinine theories to emerge from social-media bilge. Granting them some measure of savviness — saying that this is red meat for the Republican base, or that it keeps the checks from right-wing billionaires coming in — is to offer too much credit."

Turning back to Ginni Thomas, the columnist suggested her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, may also be infecting the court.

"The added trouble with Ginni Thomas, of course, is not just that she’s a well-connected right-wing activist who communicates abject lies to sympathetic presidential officials. It’s that her husband, whose own beliefs are more closely held but likely fairly bonkers, has the power to help implement her agenda and protect her from repercussions," he wrote before concluding, "...the depressing reality is that the rot is deep. Even if Ginni and Clarence Thomas are excised from American political life, their shameless confederates remain."

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