QAnon-Affiliated Ron Watkins Bombs at GOP Debate, Forced to Take Back Wild Claim About Biden and Ukraine: ‘I Made a Mistake’

Ron Watkins, a conspiracy theorist and administrator for the website 8kun (formerly known as 8chan), bungled his political debate debut on Wednesday night as another Republican candidate corrected one of his more wild claims.

Watkins is running in the GOP primary for Arizona’s second Congressional district and is considered to be a longshot candidate to represent the Tucson area.

The controversial figure is best known for having been suggested in the HBO documentary series Q: Into the Storm as being “Q” himself. QAnon is the far-right conspiracy theory, which has morphed into a political movement, that believes a secret cabal of satanic, child sex traffickers is working with the deep state to destroy Donald Trump, who is prophecized to eventually defeat the cabal with mass arrests and executions in “the storm.”

The documentary uncovered the fact that “Watkins had lied about his role in the more than 4,000 messages Q had posted since 2017” and posited that was the key piece of evidence to show Watkins was indeed himself “Q,” according to a Washington Post report on the documentary.

During Wednesday night’s debate, in which Watkins denied being “Q,” he was asked about U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Watkins responded by saying:

I support military aid to Ukraine but I want to say that we would not even be in Ukraine if President Biden did not shut down the Keystone Pipeline on the first day.

Because now that that’s shut down, we have to get our oil and we’re getting it from Russia and we’re getting these problems through the Ukraine that would not have happened if Biden did not shut down the Keystone Pipeline.

Watkin’s response factually misrepresented the purpose of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the fact that the phase Biden shut down was never in operation, the cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the fact that the U.S. banned Russian energy imports since Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion.

Debate moderator Ted Simons, somewhat baffled, asked Watkins to clarify, “So, you’re saying the pipeline helped prompt Russia to invade Ukraine?”

“Yes sir, because we’ve got all this oil coming through from Russia to the United States and they want the better route to bring the oil through,” Watkins explained.

Arizona State Rep. Walt Blackman then jumped in and admonished Watkins for his many factual errors.

“They went into Ukraine because Ukraine didn’t want to be a part of NATO,” Blackman began, noting Russia is in Ukraine not “We” as in the United States.

“Listen…you’re trying to work on a national stage and you don’t even know why the war started in Ukraine, it had nothing with the Keystone pipeline,” Blackman continued.

“The Keystone pipeline caused the inflation and the increase in our gas prices,” Blackman said of Biden’s shutdown on the construction of phase four of the project, a common GOP talking point.

Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline on his first full day in office and when construction ended on it in June 2021, only 8 percent of the project, which offered a more efficient route for Canadian oil sands to reach U.S. refineries, had been completed.

“The reason why they went into Ukraine is because Russia wanted Ukraine as they had them pre-World War 2 and Ukraine wanted to be part of NATO,” Blackman continued, concluding his takedown of Watkins.

“He’s right, I made a mistake,” Watkins then said when prompted for a response.

Watch the full exchange above, via Twitter.