GOP Congressman Blasts Trump for Retweeting ‘Batsh*t Crazy’ QAnon Conspiracy: ‘If It’s Insane, You Probably Shouldn’t Tweet It!’

Rep. Denver Riggleman blasted President Donald Trump for retweeting a “batshit crazy” QAnon conspiracy theory, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that it was an “insane” and “dangerous tweet.”

Tapper began the segment with the original tweet that the president had shared, which he described as “yet another baseless conspiracy theory” — a post by a QAnon supporter claiming that former President Barack Obama had somehow faked the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, killing a body double for the terrorist leader instead and murdering the Navy SEALs to cover up the crime.

The tweet was, as Tapper correctly noted, “heinous false allegations too deranged to really go into here,” and Twitter swiftly suspended the QAnon supporter’s account. One of the SEALs who was on the 2011 raid denounced Trump’s promotion of the tweet.

Riggleman clearly was on the same page. The Virginia Republican previously served in the Air Force and was a contractor with the National Security Agency. He wrote and passed a House resolution condemning QAnon.

Riggleman noted that he had “worked radicalization and counterterrorism for two decades” and called the tweet Trump shared an example of the “insanity on the internet.”

“It’s a dangerous tweet and that’s the kind of the things we cannot do,” said Riggleman, noting that the YouTube account linked in the tweet said that Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “should be hanged.”

“That is the language of radicalization,” he said. “People go down these rabbit holes and I think the people that believe this…are the same people that believe Lord of the Rings was a documentary and that’s how crazy they are.”

“There are technical terms for that,” he continued, “let’s be honest, let’s use the technical term for what’s going on here, and it’s batshit crazy.”

Tapper chuckled at Riggleman’s comments, and brought up QAnon supporter, Georgia Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Riggleman replied that public officials had an obligation to deal in “truth and facts,” and fact check before tweeting.

“If it’s insane, you probably shouldn’t tweet it,” he said.

“Are you at home in the Republican party any more?” Tapper asked. “They are embracing this insanity that you condemn.”

“My loyalty isn’t to a party,” Riggleman answered. “My loyalty is to the people who elected me and my family…The president is not my boss.”

“I’m a pretty independent minded guy,” he added, saying it was getting “harder and harder to find a home in the GOP” because it was becoming less about conservatism and more about being a “cult of personality” for Trump.

“It’s really getting difficult for me because of my independent sort of thinking, the way that I am, really to stay on this course, and I think at some point we are going to have some kind of reconfiguration of the GOP and say, we have to go back to policies, principles, and ideas and not just cults of personality and if people don’t like it, as far as I’m concerned they can pound sand.”

Watch the above video, via CNN.

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