How a South Carolina mom left QAnon behind

(CNN) — Ashley Vanderbilt says her four-year-old daughter Emmerson knew “something was wrong with her mom.”

“I wasn’t one hundred percent there like I should have been,” she recalls.

After November’s election she spent days on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube becoming indoctrinated into the world of QAnon. By inauguration day, she was convinced that if then President-elect Joe Biden took office the United States would literally turn into a communist country. She was terrified that she would have to go into hiding with her daughter.

Many QAnon believers have clear political motives, but Vanderbilt says she is a passive participant in politics.

“I’ve always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it. I grew up being told we were Republicans, so I’ve always been that straight red ticket,” she explained in an interview with CNN near her home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, last Saturday.

She doesn’t watch the news. “What have we heard the last four or five years? Don’t watch the news. ‘Fake news.’ ‘Fake news.'”

Vanderbilt worked in the office of a construction company. But, like millions of Americans in 2020, she says she lost her job at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown. Feeling depressed and with more time on her hands, she began spending a lot of time online.

The 27-year-old mom is an avid user of the video app TikTok. It’s there, she says, that she was first introduced to QAnon.

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