Kandiss Taylor, a GOP district chair in Georgia, claimed the Earth is flat on her podcast, Jesus, Guns, & Babies, alongside fellow flat-Earther David ‘Flat Earth Dave’ Weiss and Matt Long. She becomes the latest GOP member to jump on the flat Earth bandwagon, tacking this ideology onto her previous conspiracy theory exclamations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The three discussed the so-called “evidence” they say supports their belief that the Earth is not round as scientific evidence proves, with Weiss saying, “The people that defend the globe don’t know anything about the globe.” He continued, “If they knew a tenth of what Matt and I know about the globe they would be Flat Earthers.”
It was Taylor’s responses though that are drawing attention given that she is now a political figure that was voted into office only this weekend. On the podcast, she claimed it is the globes being sold in stores that support her flat Earth beliefs.
“All the globes, everywhere,” Taylor said, “I turn on the TV, there’s globes in the background … Everywhere there’s globes. You see them all the time, it’s constant. My children will be like ‘Mama, globe, globe, globe, globe’ — they’re everywhere. That’s what they do, to brainwash.” She added, “For me if it’s not a conspiracy. If it is real, why are you pushing so hard everywhere I go? Every store, you buy a globe, there’s globes everywhere. Every movie, every TV show, news media — why? More and more I’m like, it doesn’t make sense.”
Taylor’s podcast was posted to YouTube, which necessitated the need for the site to post a disclaimer from Wikipedia, saying claims that the Earth is flat “is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception…”
Taylor, who ran for Georgia governor last year, tried to utilised former President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories when he lost the 2020 election, similarly claiming the election was “rigged” after she lost the primary, receiving only 3% of the votes. Yet she made no claims of a fraudulent election process when she was elected as Georgia’s District 1 chair. “When they can’t cheat, I win,” she said in a text message, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported.
Taylor used her 2022 campaign to promote additional false conspiracy theories, claiming the GOP leaders were secret Communists and Democrats were satanic pedophiles.
Conspiracy theorists being elected into government positions are beginning to concern the more mainstream Republicans who say they don’t recognise the GOP party anymore. Former GOP Chair Jason Shepherd told the Atlantic-Journal, “I don’t recognise the GOP anymore,” adding, “and I’ve decided it’s time to devote my energies to better purposes, like actually helping elect Republican candidates.”