by William Trollinger

Ken Ham’s silence is deafening. And so revealing. 

For those who don’t know, QAnon (quoting from Britannica) is a

conspiracy theory originating in forum posts on the website 4chan in October 2017. Conspiracy adherents believed [believe?] that U.S. Pres. Donald Trump was waging a secret war against a cabal of satanic cannibalistic pedophiles within Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the so-called “deep state” within the United States government.

It is not in the least surprising that Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis (AiG) did their part to encourage their followers in QAnon adherence. For one thing, 29% of white evangelicals – the core supporters of the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter – are QAnon believers. More than this, and as Susan Trollinger and I documented in a June 2025 Isis article, Ham and AiG are all about promoting conspiracy theories, including that evolution, global warming,  and the COVID pandemic are hoaxes manufactured by scientific elites and anti-Christian leftists. 

So it is that Ham repeatedly claimed that secularists are in favor of abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, and pedophilia. (And racism, in the process conveniently – as is always the case with Ham and AiG — eliding the past and present of white evangelical racism.) Moreover, AiG put out a YouTube video claiming that “social emotional learning” – an educational approach which they assert is prevalent in the secular public school system – is actually a “form of grooming children for sexual predation.” And in 2020 Ham opened Ark Encounter so that QAnon devotee and MAGA enthusiast Trey Smith could film his The Coming Storm: A Donald J. Trump  Documentary Inside Noah’s Ark. (a title which draws upon QAnon’s motto, “A Storm is Coming,” which refers to the notion that Trump is the storm that will clear the “swamp” of liberals and pedophiles). In this unbearably bad video – made worse by the narrator’s obsession with sticking his face as close to the camera as possible – Smith asserts that the Antichrist has been present throughout history, and is with us today, particularly in the Hollywood culture and the omnipresent “witchy people” lurking behind them.

After four years of attacking Joe Biden as “the enemy” of the American people, in 2024 AiG and the rest of the Christian Right could celebrate Donald Trump’s election. Now, finally, the swamp could be cleared! Now, finally, it was time to go after the secularist, liberal pedophiles!  And opening the Epstein files – which they alleged had been kept under lock and key by Biden and company– would be the first step!!

Oops. It turns out that the Epstein files have revealed that Donald Trump (and other Republican operatives, including Steve Bannon) was much closer to Jeffrey Epstein and other sexual predators than even his critics had imagined. And in the files that have been opened so far there is at least one specific (and not exactly shocking) accusation that Trump sexually assaulted an underage girl. 

 One could imagine that QAnon devotees would be thrilled that their notion of an“elite conspiracy of pedophiles” has been proven to be true. And while there are a few who are indeed happy to be proven right, it turns out that 

for most QAnon believers the priority is protecting Mr. Trump at all costs. Even if it means no longer asking questions. Even if it means letting the moment they finally got something right pass them by. Even if it means continuing to thirst for a storm that will never come. 

As Kali Holloway puts it in a Nation article entitled, “MAGA’s Reaction to the Epstein Files Reveals Total Moral Collapse,” the Right has revealed that – in its determination to “move on” from the Epstein issue – “the notion of sincere moral outrage grounded in right and wrong . . .  is genuinely lost on them.” For the Right, 

“Morality” isn’t about principles or lines you refuse to cross; it’s just a cost-benefit analysis between options that maintain power. That’s how authoritarian movements work – they put hierarchy, dominance, and power above all else . . . [And] where nothing is disqualifying, everything is permissible.

Despite all their emphasis on the notion that secularism = pedophilia, and despite all the ways that they have catered to the QAnon enthusiasts, Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis have been publicly silent on the recent Epstein revelations. They have been publicly silent about the fact that Mr. Trump sits “uncomfortably close to the center of them.” (Imagine all the articles, posts, videos, and rants AiG would have produced if it were Joe Biden instead of Donald Trump!) All evidence points to the fact that AiG’s commitment to Christian morality, to protecting vulnerable children from pedophiles, has been “trumped” by its attachment to a thoroughly corrupt and immoral president who cynically caters to the Christian Right. 

Moral collapse, indeed.