Wish I Could Push This Scandal In The Face Of Every Stupid Mainer Who Has Told Me For 30 Years "But Susan and Olympia Are Different"

“So if you give to somebody from one of those PACs, you are expecting something in return.” Al Diamon, longtime Maine political reporter

If you have been busy with how your own state is going to hell, you might not have seen the story that "moderate" Republican Susan Collins' political action committee gave $400 to two Republican-fascist candidates for the Maine Legislature who are all-in on QAnon.

Sen. Susan Collins is financially supporting the state legislative campaigns of two fellow Maine Republicans who fervently believe in QAnon, the perverse conspiracy theory whose adherents are considered a domestic terror threat by the FBI. In recent days, Facebook and YouTube have announced actions to curb the spread of QAnon content due to mounting fears that its followers — who deify President Trump and believe his enemies are a global cabal of pedophilic Satanists — will engage in violence before or after Election Day.

Kevin Bushey and Brian Redmond, the QAnon believers supported by Collins, are both military veterans who eagerly anticipate a political bloodbath will soon erupt nationwide, ultimately leading to arrests, military trials, and “God-declared executions” for “traitors” like top Democratic politicians and donors, socialists, Planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter and Sunrise Movement activists.

Last month, Collins’ personal political action committee, Dirigo PAC, contributed $400 each to Bushey and Redmond. Both are challenging Democratic incumbents for seats in the Maine House of Representatives representing parts of Aroostook County — the poverty-plagued, northernmost area of the state, where Collins was born and raised. The Maine GOP’s campaign fund for House races also gave Bushey and Redmond $400 each last month. For Redmond, those contributions amount to more than half the money his campaign has raised so far.

“Given the closeness of her race, [Collins] should have been really careful about who she gives money to,” said longtime Maine political columnist Al Diamon. He said there’s “no way” the donations to Bushey and Redmond “would not be carefully vetted” by Collins and her staff.

PACs like Dirigo “are very specific about who they give to, because they’re entirely designed to advance your political career,” Diamon said. “So if you give to somebody from one of those PACs, you are expecting something in return.”

Collins’ communication team did not respond to a request for comment.

Redmond is the less prominent of the two QAnon believers Collins is backing, but his advocacy of the conspiracy theory has been on open display. Before his Twitter account was banned earlier this month, his cover photo read “Q’s Army/Irregular Warfare Division” and declared “WWG1WGA,” shorthand for the QAnon rallying cry, “Where We Go One We Go All.” Media Matters reported last month that his account “repeatedly tweeted the QAnon hashtag and the QAnon slogan,” and his Facebook account also includes QAnon posts.

In an interview with Mainer, Redmond said he discovered QAnon in the comments section of Zero Hedge, a far-right, libertarian economics blog notorious for spreading conspiracies. “I was hooked right off the bat,” said Redmond, who now considers himself an investigative journalist. “It was an opportunity to wrestle back control of our government from subvertists and treasonists. … As a veteran, I was called to arms.”

I had been planning on writing a piece about how Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Lisa Murkowski's names all appeared on Sheldon Whitehouse's poster of the Senators who signed onto the lawsuit to overturn the ACA, all of those "moderates" did that. But I thought this was more timely. There will be plenty of time for recriminations over the gutted or destroyed ACA after Coney Barrett and her Bush v Gore buddies throw tens of millions of Americans off of health care coverage during a pandemic.