An alleged domestic terrorist appears to have been inspired by President Donald Trump's rhetoric — including the conspiracy theories he references.
The Intercept reported Saturday that people who know Michael Hari, a man who drove a getaway car after two other accomplices allegedly bombed a Minnesota mosque, say Trump's rants changed him.
“I don’t think Trump’s rhetoric is getting people to commit violence,” a man from the same religious community as Hari told the website. “It’s not like he’s saying, ‘Go bomb a mosque!’ I think it’s subtler. I think he’s flipping the switch in certain people. And I think he flipped that switch in Michael Hari.”
The report noted that his story "shows how our increasingly divisive, conspiracy-laden culture is pushing troubled people toward extremism and violence."
A member of the right-wing White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters Militia, Hari wrote a manifesto that he sold on Amazon claiming he "wanted to return the United States to a simpler, less progressive era through bombings and armed resistance," The Intercept noted.
Though his extremist Christian beliefs began as far back as 2001, he was reportedly at a low point in his life after repeated failed attempts at building a right-wing utopia when he encountered Trump's message.
"If you go back to 2016, think about where he was in life. His farm idea had failed; he had taken a shot to his pride there," the person who knows Hari told The Intercept. "And then here comes Donald Trump telling everyone, ‘Let’s make America great again.’ To Michael Hari, Trump was a righteous cause.”
He later picked up on the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy in which an alleged government insider known only by "Q" claims the president is working against nefarious forces within American politics bent on harming and destroying its people.
Read the entire report via The Intercept.