Conspiracy theories have become almost ubiquitous inside right-wing circles in the years since twice-indicted former President Donald Trump entered the political arena. Now, in Iowa, a proponent of wild ideas has been placed in charge of one county's elections.
"David Whipple was appointed last week by the Warren County Board of Supervisors to serve as Interim Warren County Auditor, a position responsible for overseeing elections in the county. The appointment was made in a special meeting after former Warren County Auditor Traci Vanderlinden announced her retirement last month," Vice News reported on Thursday.
According to Vice, Whipple's reputation as "a man with no experience running elections and who believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, the 9/11 attack was faked, and QAnon is real" was well-established before the Board of Supervisors appointed him.
Vice recalled that on November 4th, 2020, the day after Trump was defeated by President Joe Biden, Whipple referred to the then-president-elect as a "crooked pedophile child sniffer." Whipple also "continued to post disinformation about the election and Biden in the following weeks and months, as well as anti-vax disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccination. On Jan. 2, 2021 he shared a link to a video entitled Q: The Plan To Save The World, a 2018 video that has become one of the foundational texts of the QAnon conspiracy movement."
Curiously, Vice noted, all of Whipple's content was "scrubbed" after the Board of Supervisors selected him.
That left Warren County Democratic Party Chair Jim Culbert scratching his head. "If you don't believe in elections how can you be in charge of elections?" he remarked to a local radio outlet, as quoted by Vice. "If you don't think that they were fair and honest, how is that going to inform how you do the job? We just don't know this guy, he came out of nowhere."
Meanwhile, 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls have been schmoozing with Hawkeye State voters hoping to differentiate themselves from Trump, who despite his criminal entanglements remains the GOP's clear frontrunner.