THE FRINGE ON THE TOP

Trump is keeping his track record solid in terms of supporting more fringe candidates, which “elevates them within the conservative movement and gives them cachet,” as Vice magazine points out, as he seeks relevancy by endorsing candidates around the country – most notably those with connections to murky QAnon association. In Michigan, he has endorsed QAnon candidate Kristina Karamo, who is running to be Michigan’s next Secretary of State. Also running, at this point for the Republican nod, which is chosen at the party’s state convention, is state Rep. Beau LaFave (R-Iron Mountain), Cindy Berry, Chesterfield Township Clerk, and Cathleen Postmus, Plainfield Township Clerk. Whoever wins the Republican Party’s nod will face Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) in the general election. But will the backing of the tin foil hat crowd be enough to put Republicans over the edge with Trump’s choice of a QAnon character? “Trump is less concerned about whether these candidates support QAnon than he is about whether they support the Big Lie, and whether they will be in a position to help him if he decides to run again,” Amarnath Amarasingam, a QAnon and political extremism expert and professor at Queens University in Canada said in Vice.