QAnon Shaman grilled on Congress bid: 'Don't you lose your credibility without the shirt?'
Newsmax hosts Shaun Kraisman and Emma Rechenberg grilled so-called "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley about how his conviction for Jan. 6 crimes would impact his run for Congress.
During an interview on Monday, Kraisman noted that Chansley was running for Congress even though some voters may be turned off by the costume he wore when he breached the Capitol on Jan. 6.
"I've got to point out the obvious here and give you an option or an opportunity, if you will, Jacob, you know as well as anyone else, people are gonna see that photo of you that everyone's seen, you know, with the face paint, with the bull horns, the whole thing, and they're gonna say, what?" the anchor said. "
This guy's running for Congress? The guy who, again, was charged with obstruction here for proceedings, and he wants to run to now represent constituents?"
For his part, Chansley blasted what he called the "mockingbird media."
"And the fact of the matter is, if people actually got a chance to hear what it is that I'm running on, I think everybody, Republican and Democrat voters, would agree," he replied. "So I'm not going to Washington, D.C. to make a career. I'm going to Washington, D.C., to make a change."
"But again, the public's first introduction to you, Jacob, quite frankly, if they didn't know you beforehand, is what you looked like on January 6th," Rechenberg pressed. "Do you regret that introduction to the public? The fact that this is how they're getting to know you, this is the image they have in their head about who you are, that in many cases, probably have already written you off."
Chansley argued that he was not one of the "swindlers in suits and liars in ties stealing our tax dollars."
"And I'll say this, if it takes horns and face paint with no shirt to end up disrupting the establishment and the established corrupt politics in our country, corrupt politics in the dinosaur circus that we call D.C., then I'm fine with that," he added.
"Don't you lose your credibility without the shirt?" Rechenberg asked.
"In my personal opinion, I think that it's a symbol that I'm willing to bear all," Chansley insisted. "That what people are getting with me is exactly, exactly what it is that I'm showing them, that I'm not afraid, I'm not trying to paint some image that all these puppet politicians do."
"I'm not disingenuous in any way, shape, or form," he remarked. "I come bare-chested, I come in full regalia. This is who I am, this is what I represent."