Crowds gather for the “Stop the Steal” rally at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
- Keith Scott, a Trump supporter, told CNN the “Stop the Steal” movement is like a “cult.”
- Scott, a 49-year-old Georgia man, embraced the movement after Fox News called Arizona for Biden.
- Scott told the network he was going to write a book to warn people against joining similar movements.
A Georgia man who traveled to Washington, DC and marched to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the 2020 election results on behalf of then-President Donald Trump now compares the “Stop the Steal” movement to a “cult.”
Keith Scott, a 49-year-old man who was upset that Fox News had called the pivotal swing state of Arizona for now-President Joe Biden on Election night in November 2020, believed that he had found his voice after that fateful day.
“I felt like a patriot that was standing beside our Founding Fathers speaking up against King George,” Scott told CNN in an interview published on Wednesday, describing January 6 as “the greatest day” of his life.
After the 2020 election, Scott said he eagerly embraced Trump’s debunked claims of a stolen election — fueled by radio programs hosted by the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the former president’s unsuccessful challenges to legal ballots.
At the time, Scott heard an advertisement about a caravan of “Stop the Steal” supporters in Atlanta, so he went to check it out and told CNN he was then hooked.
He eventually spent the next several months mainly living in his vehicle, attending “Stop the Steal” rallies in locales across the country.
“I felt like we were doing something,” Scott told the network. “If nothing else, we were showing patriotism, because we were standing up for — whether we were right or not — we felt like we were standing up, making our voices be heard.”
There has been no proof of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and while Georgia was one of the closest states in the nation on Election night, the contest in the state was expected to be close.
In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million ballots cast; the president received 2,473,633 votes, or 49.5%, while Trump earned 2,461,854 votes, or 49.2%.
Since his statewide loss, Trump has relentlessly inserted himself into Georgia politics — even pushing for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” votes to overturn Biden’s statewide victory — and has backed former GOP Sen. David Perdue’s intraparty gubernatorial challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused to entertain the former president’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 results.
Scott revealed to the network that he was close to the western entrance of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, observing fights between protestors and police officers while other attendees broke windows and breached the historic building.
Scott told CNN that he did not enter the building that day and has so far not been sought by the FBI. So far, more than 770 people have been charged in connection to the riot.
Scott said that “the people that actually, you know, had physical confrontations with police officers, they should be held accountable for that.”
He also told CNN that he didn’t know how the events that day were going to conclude, but said he saw “bad” things on January 6 “regardless of which side you’re on.”
Despite Scott’s newfound feelings about the “Stop the Steal” movement, he still supports much of their beliefs about the election, according to the network.
After the riot ended, Scott traveled to Texas to see a friend, where he revealed that he felt like he had just escaped a “cult” — and shortly afterward, he said that he would write a book entitled “Election Fraud Cult.”
He wants the book to serve as an alarm bell for people who are seeking refuge within such movements.
“My point is to look out for people,” he told the network. “Whether it’s politics or something else, don’t get so caught up that you’re not making your own decisions anymore.”
Read the original article on Business Insider 
