This piece is based on a segment that originally aired August 1, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO. Watch the full segment here.
If you don’t follow Q-Anon, the internet conspiracy theory gaining traction among supporters of President Trump, you probably don’t know who Jen and Jamie Buteau are. But if you do, you know they’re the couple who (along with their 17 year-old son) that were seen by Q fans as getting a point and wave from Trump at Tuesday rally in Tampa. This rally is where Q went from the dark corners of the internet to wall-to-wall cable news saturation.
The Buteaus are from Ocala, Florida. Jen is a waitress and Jamie is currently unemployed. They cancelled cable recently to boost the size of their broadband pipe. They follow Q-Anon closely on the web, and they believe the whole thing centers around a person or group of people high up in the government who are dropping clues about what’s really going on in Washington. They no longer follow the mainstream media because they think it is, for the most part, lies.
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After they (maybe) got a shout-out from Trump, they got some fame among the Q set online. VICE News sat down with them in Tampa to find out what Q is all about and what draws them to it.
