The Daily Beast published an explosive report this weekend exposing an obscure Mar-a-Lago employee who may or may not subscribe to the insane QAnon conspiracy, which alleges, among other things, that the Democratic Party heads a ring of Satanic pedophiles.
I can’t tell which is crazier: The conspiracy theory or the fact that a Daily Beast reporter went after a random private citizen over this nuttery. The only journalistic excuse appears to be that she has some sort of proximity to power. Remember: She’s a pastry chef.
“Trump Employs QAnon Believer Elizabeth Alfieri as Pastry Chef at Mar-a-Lago,” reads the headline to this groundbreaking scoop.
Its subhead reads, “Pastry chef Elizabeth Alfieri bakes cakes and posts about her belief in a conspiracy theory that Democrats are pedophiles.”
This is not the Onion. I didn’t think anyone could top the time CNN went after an obscure Twitter user who made a GIF critical of the cable news network, which was shared later by Trump, yet here we are. Good work, Daily Beast reporter. Keeping America safe and well-informed, one obscure pastry chef at a time!
These are real lines published in a real report:
It wasn’t clear whether Alfieri herself had added the frosted ‘Q.’
This one is particularly good, too [emphasis added]: “In her profile on a pro-Trump group’s website, Alfieri writes that she quit her last job to “have the privilege of using my talents for the service of the First Family.” Since then, Alfieri appears to have gained access to Mar-a-Lago’s inner-workings.”
What, exactly, does this Daily Beast reporter think pastry chefs do for a living?
The report also reads:
Trump Jr. later posted a picture of himself with the same cake on Instagram.
Alfieri also claimed to interact with the Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago. She posted pictures of Secret Service security pins, tagging them with QAnon-related hashtags.
[…]
Alfieri has found ways to tie her passion for baking into QAnon. In January, she posted a picture of a bundt cake with a slice cut out to form a ‘Q.’
The most unintentionally hilarious line in the entire article comes when its author writes, “This isn’t the first time a QAnon believer has been close to a top Trump administration official.”
Just so we’re all clear here: He’s talking about a pastry chef employed by a private company. I guess we’ve defined down the word “close” to the point where it can now also mean “not close at all.” It’s fun with words!
Is this real life? Am I in hell?
You’ll find no defense here of QAnon lunacy, but private citizens are free to be as crazy as they want to be. If she worked in the federal government, that’d probably be a different thing, but she doesn’t. She works for Mar-a-Lago, which Trump owns. She doesn’t deserve the attention and scrutiny we reserve for elected officials.
