Kristina Karamo, the Trump-backed GOP candidate for Michigan secretary of state, once expressed support in 2020 for one of QAnon’s most outlandish conspiracies: that elites drink the blood of children and ‘sell baby body parts’ after abortions.
VICE News obtained an audio recording of Karamo’s appearance on a QAnon podcast called Redpill News just weeks after the 2020 election, where she said that abortion is “child sacrifice” and boosted false claims that the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “Antifa posing as Trump supporters.”
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“If you go to the Satanic temple website, they have an entire five-minute video explaining why abortion is a religious ritual,” Karamo said in the interview, which also featured Rudy Giuliani associate Melissa Carone. “They literally say that it is a sacrifice, it is a religious ritual for them to have an abortion, it is sick. And as you mentioned, the baby body parts… they sell the organs. There’s a ton of money involved in freshly harvested organs. There’s so much evidence out there.”
This is one of QAnon’s most extreme beliefs, that members of the global elite traffic children in order to harvest a chemical from their blood that they use to live longer.
Karamo became a minor star in the GOP after she claimed to have witnessed voter fraud during the 2020 election while acting as a poll challenger in Detroit. Her affidavit was used as part of a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that challenged the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The lawsuit was thrown out by the Supreme Court in December 2020.
But Karamo continued to rise within the GOP, and in October 2021 she was unveiled as one of the founding members of the America First coalition of secretary of state candidates organized by Jim Marchant, the Nevada secretary of state candidate, who recently told attendees at a Trump rally that he would “fix” the election to put Trump back in the White House. However, Karamo told Bridge Michigan this month that is not her plan. “That’s not how the democratic process should go,” she said, before adding that she’s “walking into it with my eyes wide open.”
And though Karamo has strongly denied she supported QAnon conspiracy theories after she appeared on stage at a recent QAnon conference in Las Vegas, and denied her affiliation with QAnon when she joined the America First coalition, one of the main figures behind the coalition is Wayne Willott, a well-known QAnon influencer known to his fans as Juan O Savin.
Additionally, many of Karamo’s statements on her website, social media posts, talk show appearances, and podcast interviews between June 2018 and March 2021 reveal a history of transphobic, homophobic, and incendiary Christian nationalist statements.
In July 2018, Karamo posted a now-deleted video on her website titled “America Stay Free” where she stated, “I’m seeing drag kids, oh, genderfluid kids, and ’It’s nothing wrong with being trans or giving kids hormone blockers.’ I mean, this is straight demonic. It makes absolutely no sense.”
In the same 2018 video, she added, “I know a lot of people who criticize people who are struggling with same-sex attraction […] you fornicating so you’re, you’re doing your awful engagement, sexual sin. It’s all bad,” Karamo said, adding that one “can’t love and care for a child with two people of the same gender.”
Karamo last week said that she would not apologize for being a Christian, and that her controversial opinions on LGBTQ issues are not pertinent to her campaign. In August, however, she appeared on a panel soliciting support for her campaign at a conference hosted by Church Militant, an organization deemed an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Karamo has also attacked her opponent, Democratic incumbent Jocelyn Benson, over her inclusive policy on transgender youth, after spending years going after the trans community.
Karamo has also repeatedly called for Christians to take power and stated that the “righteous are in authority.” In a post on her website from June 2018, called “Walking in Love,” Karamo talks about harming non-Christians. “[I have] such strong feeling towards secular progressives, that I’ve in my heart wished them harm and/or misfortune.”
Karamo’s campaign did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment about the 2020 interview or these other unearthed comments.
Despite the endorsement from Trump, Karamo is trailing Benson significantly in most polls.
