At former President Donald Trump’s rally in Arizona on Saturday, there were enough conspiracy theories and lies about ”election fraud” and “psy-op” being spread from the stage by Trump and his cadre of sycophant GOP lawmakers to keep hardcore MAGA fans happy.
But for one group, the conspiracies needed to be taken to a completely new level.
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Having spent the last two-and-a-half months holed up in Dallas awaiting the reappearance of John F. Kennedy and his son, a group of two dozen or so QAnon followers, led by an antisemitic guru called Michael Protzman, made the 1,000 mile trip to hear Trump speaking at his first major rally of 2022.
Ahead of the rally, Protzman, or Negative48 as he’s known to his followers, predicted the event would feature some major revelations. While most QAnon followers criticized Trump for talking about returning in 2024 rather than trying to overturn the 2020 election result, Protzman told his followers that something huge happened in the desert on Saturday night.
In an audio chat with his followers on Sunday, Protzman claimed that Kari Lake, the former TV anchor who is now running for Arizona governor, had just finished speaking but was brought back up on stage by Trump, in order to show people that Trump was in fact JFK in disguise.
The basis for Protzman’s unhinged claim? Trump appeared to be shorter than he should have been.
While the number of people around Protzman in Dallas has dwindled from several hundred to a few dozen in recent weeks, he still commands a huge online following, and some of those watching the rally online claimed to have spotted JFK Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (who died in the same plane crash as her husband) in the crowd.
Separately, a rapper called Pryme Minister, who is one of Protzman’s acolytes, claimed that two people seen behind Trump at the rally were actually Tupac and Kobe Bryant.
At least two dozen of Protzman’s army of loyal supporters made the long journey from Dallas to Florence over the weekend, with most of them traveling together in a rented minibus.
At the event, Protzman, dressed in a Trump hat, a long red tie, and a “Let’s go Brandon” hoodie, attempted to red-pill attendees by displaying the bastardized version of the Hebrew numerology system called Gematria that he has used to convince his followers that he can tell the future.
At the beginning of November, Protzman managed to convince hundreds of people to travel from across the U.S. to Dallas based on the prediction that JFK would suddenly reappear and reappoint Trump as president. The prediction, and multiple others in the weeks that followed, failed to come true, but Prtozman has convinced several dozen people to remain with him in Dallas, as he continues to promise that some major revelation is coming.
Protzman has also convinced his followers that he has a direct line to Trump and this was reinforced when Protzman ushered his followers into a cordoned-off VIP section at the rally right in front of the stage, a sign his followers took to mean that Trump was giving them special treatment.
Also present in the VIP section at the rally was Jim Watkins, the man most responsible for allowing QAnon to flourish on their 8kun message board.
Jim Watkins was at the rally in Arizona to support his son Ron Watkins, who was there to gin up support for his fledgling Congressional campaign in the state. He handed out a bunch of “Trump Won” signs to attendees, posting on Telegram later that he was happy to see one being held up behind the former president at the rally.
In a bizarre meeting of minds, Ron Watkins took some time on Saturday to pose for photos with Protzman and his group. However, in his own live chat on Sunday Ron Watkins dismissed the claim by Protzman that it wasn’t Trump on stage in Arizona the day before.
But Watkins’ dismissal of Protzman’s claim will likely have little impact on the JFK group, who are making their way back to Dallas, where they plan to remain until Trump is returned to the White House and JFK returns from the dead.
