There were comments they noticed about child trafficking and sacrifice, a key theme of the extremist QAnon ideology. Over the course of 2020, amid a presidential election, racial justice protests and a pandemic, the five siblings began to trade increasingly worried text messages and emails about some of the things Claire was saying and posting on Facebook. Now it felt like they were occupying different realities altogether. They had learned to live with their disagreements over abortion. They had never felt such disdain for a politician before.īy the end of the Trump administration, the bounds of their political disagreements had shifted, Laurie recounted, becoming at once more intense and also less about policy and legislation in Washington. Celina, Laurie and their three younger siblings skewed left despite their conservative upbringing in South Dakota. Claire was a Canadian-born Catholic drawn to the Republican Party by her fierce opposition to abortion, and Trump had won her over with promises to champion her position. Like other families with split political affiliations, they had some yelling matches after Trump took office, especially over the former president’s immigration policies. Now she was inspecting her relationship with her mother, staging the illness and trying to make sense of how things had gotten so bad. Much of the day-to-day anxiety over Claire’s well-being had fallen to Laurie because they lived just a few miles away from each other in Oakland, Maine.Īs a pathologist, the bulk of Laurie’s work happened at a microscope, where she looked at human tissue up close and gave medical diagnoses based on what she saw. Something fundamental had changed since Claire and her husband “pulled the cord on mainstream media” a few years ago, said Laurie Nelsen, 46, the second-oldest of Claire’s five grown children. I’m terrified for her.” Laurie Nelsen in her backyard in Oakland, Maine. What Celina had been thinking for months now but could not find a way to say: “I want my mom back. What Celina wrote as a closing rebuke: “You used to be smarter than this.” “I gave up my weekend to make sure you had access to see what real evidence and research looks like, and you somehow think a video is … what? Evidence? Proof?” “Your response was to find some idiot’s video.and think that somehow that proves your point,” she wrote back. “Please share with everyone you know to save our country!” Lindell urged viewers on his personal website.Ĭelina lost her temper. It repackaged claims that had already been disproved by the media and dismissed by the courts, which was spelled out in the exhaustive set of court filings and links Celina had sent her mom. The 120-minute-long video was hosted on a platform called Rumble and purported to reveal conclusive evidence that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. She had to know whom her mother trusted more: her own children, or strangers on the Internet.Ĭlaire suggested that Celina watch a video called “Absolute Proof” being promoted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the most visible proponents of the false narrative that the election had featured widespread voter fraud. Nevertheless, Celina gathered her spreadsheet and her notes and emailed them to Claire, 71, who lived in Maine with Celina’s stepfather. RIGHT: A portrait of Claire Ryan at Celina Knippling's home in Maryland. LEFT: Celina Knippling put together a spreadsheet with facts about the 2020 election to present to her mother. A portrait of Claire Ryan at Celina Knippling's home in Maryland. It was her anti-Trump children, Claire Ryan contended, who were brainwashed.Ĭelina Knippling put together a spreadsheet with facts about the 2020 election to present to her mother. She knew that her mom no longer trusted the mainstream media to tell the truth, nor the country’s democratic institutions to adjudicate an election she was certain had been stolen. She broke down whether the presiding judges had been appointed by Democrats or Republicans.Ĭelina, 50, was not overly hopeful. She analyzed how many lawsuits had been won, lost or dismissed and on what grounds. From her home outside Baltimore, she coded by date, state, case number and outcome. Maybe they could do something about Claire.Īnd so on one Saturday in February, Celina meticulously assembled a spreadsheet of every court case filed by former president Trump and his allies to contest the 2020 election. But maybe they could do something to stop dangerous political fantasies and extremism from metastasizing within their family. She and her four siblings could do nothing about the lies that had spread outward from Washington since Election Day, or the violence it had provoked. In a country where disinformation was spreading like a disease, Celina Knippling resolved to administer facts to her mom like medicine .
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