As Donald Trump heads into a November election rematch against President Joe Biden, his online posts are reinvigorating a conspiracy theory known as QAnon that has been a key component of his support over the past few years.
QAnon faded from prominence after Trump left office, but he has renewed his promotion of the ideas on his social media platform, Truth Social.
A new investigation by liberal watchdog group Media Matters, provided exclusively to USA Today, finds that President Trump has reposted or promoted QAnon-related accounts more than 800 times since the sites launched two years ago, making their message widely visible.
Experts say the endorsement amounts to a tacit support for a dangerous movement that has been linked to a range of criminal acts, from the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol to sporadic incidents of violence and even murder.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about QAnon. Trump has spoken favorably of the movement during his presidency and continues to chant QAnon slogans and play songs associated with the movement at rallies.
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“I think it’s almost expected that the Trump campaign will revert to its old tactics of pandering to some of the more extremist wing of the conservative movement, especially given how close the polls are,” said Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
But amplifying QAnon is dangerous, Holt said, especially at a time when the country is already highly polarized. “It’s playing with fire,” Holt said.
QAnon began as a series of anonymous posts on radical online message boards, in which users claiming to be a mysterious whistleblower known as Q claimed to be working within the Trump administration.
The posts claimed that world affairs were being controlled by a vast Democratic conspiracy, that Democrats also worshipped the devil and abused children, and that Trump was part of a secret plan to bring them down. Mass arrests, which followers called “The Storm,” were imminent.
No evidence has ever emerged to support these beliefs, but Q’s ideas and key catchphrases from his posts have become elements of pop culture in a world captivated by the daily drama of Trump’s campaign and administration.
QAnon banners and T-shirts were frequently seen at Trump rallies, and after the nation ousted Trump from office, rioters brought a QAnon banner into the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the election.
Mainstream audiences have heard less about Q since President Trump left the White House and was banned from what was then called Twitter. QAnon-related accounts have also been banned entirely from several major social media platforms. But the belief, which has grown broad enough to encompass almost any conspiracy theory, has never gone away.
Experts told USA Today that Trump’s string of reposts could be sparking renewed interest as an election approaches that could return him to the White House.
One of QAnon’s key slogans is “Where we go one, we go all” (abbreviated “WWG1WGA”). Another is “Nothing can stop what’s coming” (abbreviated “NCSWIC”), referring to the idea that Trump will eventually expose the conspirators. Media Matter found that the two phrases were used in a recent post by Trump that was shared with Truth’s 7 million followers.
The recent flurry of posts should be alarming to anyone, said Logan Strain, who began tracking QAnon as an amateur online researcher in 2018 and has become a widely-cited author and expert on the subject. Under the pen name Travis View, Strain co-hosts the podcast “QAnon Anonymous” and has spent years exploring the long-term effects of conspiracy theories and interviewing people who study them.
“It is outrageous that a presidential candidate leading the polls is actively and knowingly encouraging an extremist movement that is causing real-world violence and destruction in the personal lives of those who believe in it,” Strain said.
QAnon beliefs have torn families apart
AJ Rose, 44, knows firsthand how powerful and pervasive the QAnon conspiracy theory remains in communities across the country.
In East Tennessee, she said, she is surrounded by QAnon adherents who have a deep distrust of government and a blind faith in the former president, a group that has deceived two of her family members.
“A lot of people trust Trump because he was once president, so what he says carries a lot of weight and, unfortunately, it’s pretty dangerous,” Rose said. “The government has turned its back on people who are poor, who have health issues, mental health issues, physical issues. So when you have someone who says, ‘I hate the government too. Look what they’re doing to me. They’re after me, but I’m going to solve it,’ the magnetism of QAnon is very strong.”
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So strong, in fact, that it captivated her 67-year-old mother, Anita Rose, a widow, Republican and retired journalist. Debilitated by the sudden death of a family member, Rose became a Trump follower and then a QAnon follower.
Anita Rose was grieving and searching for answers, her daughter said. She saw Trump as the country’s savior. Her aging father, a veteran exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, was already heavily influenced by Trump and QAnon, making things worse.
Anita Rose said she became convinced Trump was protecting the country from a ring of pedophiles, and that her daughter helped her find out the truth. “I don’t think he’s doing that anymore,” she said.
AJ Rose knew his mother had heard his message when the photo of Trump praying in front of the American flag disappeared from the refrigerator.
“A lot of horrible things have come out of QAnon,” Rhodes said, citing examples such as the storming of the Capitol and Pizzagate, in which unfounded claims that Democrats were running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza place were spread and a man stormed into the restaurant with an assault rifle.
“I’m trying to rack my brains thinking what good is coming out of QAnon and there really isn’t anything. QAnon isn’t uniting the country, helping families, spreading good information that people need to know about their health. It’s not doing any of those things. But it’s hurting people.”
There are many painful stories of QAnon ripping families apart.
Mike Rothschild, author of the 2021 book “A Gathering Storm: How QAnon Became a Movement, a Cult, and a Universal Conspiracy Theory,” said American families pay a high price when their loved ones become radicalized.
“There are people who have ruined their families, ruined their lives, lost their jobs, gone to prison because they’ve been caught up in this ecosystem,” Rothschild said. “A lot of these people are really suffering and they’re looking for some kind of explanation for why the world is the way it is. They’ve just found it in the wrong place.”
QAnon cultivates loyal Trump supporters
During Trump’s presidency, QAnon supporters wore “Q” jewelry and carried large “Q” signs at rallies. To reach loyalists, Trump and his campaign began courting QAnon supporters even after the FBI identified it as a fringe conspiracy theory likely to “inspire domestic extremists to commit criminal and sometimes violent acts.”
Several people have cited QAnon as the basis for mysterious murders. In 2021, a California surfing instructor and QAnon believer shot and killed two young children with a spear gun. He told authorities he had been enlightened by QAnon and needed to kill them so they wouldn’t grow up to be monsters. In 2022, a Michigan man shot and killed his family, killing his wife and severely wounding his daughters. According to the man’s daughter, he fell into a “rabbit hole” of QAnon conspiracy theories.
QAnon is often linked to politically motivated acts, particularly crimes committed during the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Some rioters carried QAnon banners during the storming of the Capitol, and dozens of those arrested for their roles in the January 6 riot were obsessed with the conspiracy theory.
QAnon adherents have started wildfires, destroyed monuments and buildings, and been arrested with bombs and weapons. Members have started cults and been charged with attempted coups. The conspiracy theory has even inspired extremist movements in places as far away as Japan and Germany.
At the same time, QAnon researchers say conspiracy theories have always provided the former president with a perfect base of supporters.
Previously, President Trump was banned from the social media site then known as Twitter for two years after spreading hundreds of accounts promoting QAnon.
Since returning to the site, now known as X, Trump has not posted about Q, instead using his own social media platforms to spread the conspiracy theory.
Trump has avoided disparaging or condemning QAnon, and when questioned publicly he has said he doesn’t know much about the movement but has praised QAnon supporters for supporting him.
“I’ve been told that these are people who love our country,” Trump said at a White House press conference in August 2020. “I don’t know anything about it other than that they like me.”
When told that QAnon supporters believe the “deep state” is controlled by Satan-worshipping, pedophile Democrats and that only Trump can defeat them, he responded: “I’ve never heard of that, but is that a bad thing or a good thing? If I can help save the world from its problems, I’m happy to do that.”
“Trump is the star of the QAnon show,” said Megan Squire, deputy managing director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “He loves all of his fans. That’s always been the case.”
QAnon Gains New Influence on Truth Social
On Truth Social, a highly partisan platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, the social media company bearing his name and in which Trump holds a majority stake, QAnon is just a click or tap away.
Kash Patel, a Trump adviser and director of Truth Social’s parent company, said in a right-wing video webcast in 2022 that the site was purposely incorporating QAnon messaging “to gain viewership.”
QAnon-related accounts have boasted about the number of times Trump has done what they call “expose the truth,” and hashtags herald a “Great Awakening” in which Democrats will be arrested and Trump will win a second term as president.
In September 2022, President Trump posted a photo of himself wearing a Q-shaped lapel pin with the phrase “The storm is coming,” a QAnon catchphrase describing the period of turmoil before the Great Awakening, in which President Trump will triumph over the forces of evil in the final battle.
Over the past year, President Trump has promoted QAnon-related accounts on Truth Social nearly 350 times.
One post linked to a Rumble video showing QAnon content, with Trump commenting, “Great video!”, while another wrote, “Go for it, Q!”
Media Matters identified Truth Social accounts as promoting QAnon if it found them sharing slogans, posts from “Q” or imagery related to QAnon.
Truth Social has welcomed QAnon influencers, said Alex Kaplan, a senior research fellow at Media Matters, which compiled the report.
“For the first few months, Truth Social really promoted these accounts, some of which were just named ‘Q,'” Kaplan said. “They aligned themselves with Q from the beginning.”
