trump and qanon

Trump And Qanon - Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Sept. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

After years of winking at QAnon, Donald Trump openly embraces the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of horrific real-world events linked to it grows.

Trump And Qanon

On Tuesday, using his Truth Social platform, the former Republican president posted a photo of himself wearing a Q-needle covered with the words "The Storm is Coming." In QAnon lore, the "storm" refers to Trump's eventual victory, when he will likely regain power and his opponents will be tried and potentially executed on live television.

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As Trump mulls another bid for the presidency and becomes increasingly assertive in the Republican primary process during the midterm elections, his actions show that far from distancing himself from the political fringes, he welcomes them.

He has made dozens of recent Q-related posts, as opposed to 2020 when he claimed that while he didn't know much about QAnon, he couldn't disprove the conspiracy theory.

Pressed on QAnon's theories that Trump is supposedly saving the nation from a satanic cult of child traffickers, he claimed he didn't know, but asked, "Is that supposed to be a bad thing?"

Trump's recent posts include images of himself calling himself a martyr fighting criminals, psychopaths and the so-called deep state. In a now-deleted post from late August, he posted a "q drop," one of a series of encrypted message board posts that QAnon supporters claim came from an anonymous government official with a top-secret clearance.

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Even when his posts didn't directly address the conspiracy theory, Trump boosted users who did. An Associated Press analysis found that of the nearly 75 accounts Trump reposted on his Truth Social profile in the past month, more than a third of them promoted QAnon by sharing slogans, videos or images of the movement. About 1 in 10 include QAnon language or links in their profile bio.

Earlier this month, Trump chose a QAnon song to close a rally in Pennsylvania. The same song appears in one of his recent campaign videos and is titled "WWG1WGA," an acronym used as a rallying cry for Q's followers, meaning "Where One Goes We All Go."

"Yes, haters!" wrote a commenter on an anonymous QAnon message board. "Trump re-validated the Q memes. And he's going to do it again, more and more of them, over and over, until (asterisk) everyone (asterisk) finally gets it." Fight us all you want, anything! Soon Q will be everywhere!”

"Trump is sending a clear message to patriots," wrote a QAnon account on Truth Social. "He realized it again for a reason."

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The former president may seek solidarity with his staunchest supporters at a time when he faces mounting investigations and potential challenges within his own party, according to Mia Blum, a professor at Georgia State University who has studied QAnon and recently wrote a book about the group .

"These are people who have elevated Trump to the status of a messiah where only he can stop this cabal," Bloom told the AP on Thursday. "That's why you see so many images (in QAnon online spaces) of Trump as Jesus."

On Truth Social, QAnon-affiliated accounts hail Trump as a hero and savior and vilify President Joe Biden by comparing him to Adolf Hitler or the devil. When Trump shares content, they congratulate each other. Some accounts proudly display the number of times Trump has "repeated" them in his bio.

By using his own language to address QAnon supporters directly, Trump is telling them they were right all along and that he shares their secret mission, according to Janet McIntosh, an anthropologist at Brandeis University who has studied the use of language and symbols from QAnon. .

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It also allows Trump to espouse his beliefs and hope for a violent uprising without specifically saying so, she said, citing his recent "storm" post as a particularly chilling example.

"'The Storm is Coming' is an acronym for something really dark that doesn't get spoken out loud," McIntosh said. "It's a way for him to be violent without actually asking for it. He is the prince of plausible deniability.

Bloom predicted that Trump may later try to market Q-related merchandise, or perhaps ask QAnon followers to donate to his legal defense.

A growing list of murderous episodes has been linked to people who have expressed support for the conspiracy theory, which US intelligence officials have warned could spark more violence.

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In November 2020, two men drove to a polling place in Philadelphia in a Hummer decorated with QAnon stickers and loaded with a rifle, 100 rounds of ammunition and other weapons. Prosecutors say they are trying to interfere in the election.

Last year, a California man who told authorities he had been enlightened by QAnon was accused of killing his two children because he believed they had snake DNA.

Last month, a Colorado woman was found guilty of trying to abduct her son from foster care after her daughter said he began associating with QAnon supporters. Other followers have been accused of vandalizing the environment, throwing paintballs at military reservists, kidnapping a child in France and even killing a mob boss in New York.

On Sunday, police fatally shot a Michigan man who they say killed his wife and critically injured his daughter. A surviving daughter told The Detroit that she believes her father was motivated by QAnon.

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"I think he's always been prone to (mental issues), but it really broke him when he was reading all that weird stuff on the internet," she told the paper.

That same weekend, a Pennsylvania man who had reposted QAnon content on Facebook was arrested after allegedly pointing a gun at a Dairy Queen, saying he wanted to kill all Democrats and put Trump back in power.

Major social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have banned QAnon-related content and suspended or blocked accounts trying to distribute it. That forced much of the group's activity to platforms that have less moderation, including Telegram, Gab and Trump's embattled platform, Truth Social.

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Trump Isn't Secretly Winking At Qanon. He's Retweeting Its Followers.

Sign up for our morning letter to get all our stories delivered to your inbox every weekday. Recent cases in which former US President Donald Trump appears to be embracing the QAnon conspiracy theory have raised concerns among lawmakers, law enforcement veterans and cult experts.

On September 12, Trump shared a photo of himself wearing a Q pin superimposed with the QAnon phrases "The Storm is Coming" and "WWG1WGA" (an acronym for "Where We Go One, We Go All)" on his Truth Social account.

Trump has boosted at least 50 separate accounts promoting QAnon since joining and actively uses its online platform Truth Social, according to Alex Kaplan, senior researcher at Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog.

"In case it wasn't abundantly CLEAR by now, President Trump himself makes it undisputed that he is 100% on board with Operation Q," Jon Sabal, a non-QA conference organizer, posted on his Telegram channel. Sabal previously said the U.S. military had a duty to remove President Joe Biden, whom the conspiracy theorist called a "crazy actor," from office.

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QAnon debuted five years ago on a fringe online platform. Cryptic and false statements were repeatedly posted by an anonymous commenter known as "Q" who claimed to be a US government insider. Many followers of the movement, based on these posts, believe that Trump is engaged in a secret war against enemies of the "deep state", including former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in 2016. According to the strange conspiracy, Clinton and other Democrats are part of a cabal of devil worshipers who kidnap children to abuse and even eat them.

The former president, while not openly abandoning this belief, has often supported, without credible evidence, other conspiracy theories, including that the results of the 2020 presidential election were rigged to deny him a second term.

"A vile group of corrupt, power-hungry globalists, socialists and liberal extremists in Washington has waged war on the hard-working people of Ohio," Trump said at a Sept. 17 rally in Youngstown. “Our greatest threat remains the sick, sinister and evil people in our country.

A song performed at the Ohio event that was almost identical to a QAnon anthem titled "Wwg1wga" (an acronym for "where one goes, we all go"). The same song was previously heard at a Trump rally in neighboring Pennsylvania and in a recent video related to the former president.

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As the music played at the Youngstown event, many in the audience pointed their index finger in the air, which some observers say represents the "one" in the QAnon slogan. Some online commentators, including Walter Schaub, former director of the US Office of Government Ethics, compared the images to fascist rallies of the 1930s and 1940s.

Others on social media said the gesture, which had not been seen before at Trump rallies, was too vague to be definitively linked to the QAnon movement, noting it could be a reference to the "America First" theme, to which Trump has invoked since he ran for president. in 2015. The greeting was also identified

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