A North Carolina woman who called for a protest at a local drag show claimed to know why an allegedly “intentional” massive blackout in the state happened during the show, sparking speculation online that she knew power systems were targeted by anti-LGBTQ+ activists. An investigation found that she was not credible.

But Emily Grace Rainey quickly took to social media to proclaim herself the victim, conveniently forgetting that she had claimed to have information about a crime. After adding rightwing podcasts started amplifying her claims and booking her as a guest, now Rainey says she knows who did – “aggressive leftists.”

[...]But now it appears it wasn’t God after all. It was “Christophobic” activists and “aggressive leftists” who did it, and they somehow made it look like it was her.

“Let me lay the scene out for you,” she said on Steve Bannon’s War Room. The show is on QAnon zealot and MyPillow owner Mike Lindell’s Lindell TV. “You have a very quaint downtown of a southern conservative Christian area, and a drag show event coming from Raleigh, called the House of Coxx with the chief performer, Naomi Dix, decides they’re going to do an all-ages drag show in our historic downtown theater.”

“So, like you mentioned, we countered – we mobilized the community, got enough pressure to the point where they finally relented and changed the age from all ages to 18 and up, so our first objective was achieved and we are very happy about that, but we still wanted to protest and pray, because it was inappropriate that such a red light district show was right in a family-friendly downtown, and it was within a thousand feet of a church and school, so these were breaking basic ordinances.”