Trump’s Truth Social Is A Cesspool of QAnon Conspiracies

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In a 2020 Trump town hall in Miami, scheduled after Trump refused to commit to a virtual presidential debate:

NBC host Savannah Guthrie asked if he would denounce the theory and “just say it’s crazy and not true”, Trump responded: “I don’t know about QAnon.”

Guthrie suggested to Trump that he did actually know about the conspiracy theory, which has been widely covered in the press and has found support among many of Trump’s supporters.

“What I do hear about it, they are very strongly against pedophilia,” Trump said.

Guthrie again pressed him to clarify that he did not believe in the conspiracy theory.

As Trump continued to equivocate, and the pair talked over one another, Trump said: “So cute.”

Later Guthrie asked Trump why he had retweeted a QAnon Twitter account which claimed, baselessly, that Joe Biden had had a navy Seal team killed.

“That was a retweet! People can decide for themselves!” Trump said.

Guthrie responded: “I don’t get that. You’re the president, not someone’s crazy uncle.”

Actually, he IS someone’s crazy uncle, i.e., Mary Trump.

From denial to an acquisition:

The Daily Beast reports, Trump’s Gone Full QAnon. There’s No Point in Denying It Anymore.

Former President Donald Trump has boosted content from accounts that support QAnon conspiracy theories on his Truth Social platform at an accelerated rate, ever since the FBI searched the Florida country club resort he calls home. In doing so, Trump has at last obliterated any of the plausible deniability previously afforded to him in his prior crossovers with the false conspiracy theory’s followers.

It’s no accident that QAnon supporters are using the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social. Appealing to them was an explicitly stated strategy to build out its user base.

Media Matters senior researcher Alex Kaplan chronicled efforts by CEO and former congressman Devin Nunes and one-time board member and Trump administration official Kash Patel to court the community, including the early promotion of an account that appeared to be emulating the pseudonymous author, “Q”—the heart of the QAnon movement.

Truth Social has verified 47 QAnon-promoting accounts with more than 10,000 followers each, according to an analysis by NewsGuard. By Kaplan’s count, Trump has used his Truth Social account on the platform to boost at least 50 distinct QAnon-supporting accounts to his more than 4 million followers.

Kaplan, in a phone interview, said QAnon content “plays a significant role in Truth Social’s ecosystem” and that Trump’s sharing of content from QAnon accounts since the FBI executed a search of Mar-a-Lago echoes his history of doing the same on Twitter before he was banned.Trump had shared posts from QAnon accounts prior to the FBI search, but Kaplan said the saturation of such content on his Truth Social feed has been particularly high since the search.

“There always seems to be a correlation between the amount of times Trump is amplifying QAnon accounts and periods where I’d say he’s under stress,” Kaplan told The Daily Beast. “QAnon accounts are usually ones that are giving him praise and reassurances, which I’m sure he likes.”

Being a man who values devotion to himself above all else, Trump surely appreciates an online community that imagines he is a kingly figure engaged in a clandestine battle against his perceived enemies. And even as broad swaths of the movement have evolved from cracking riddles left in one of the internet’s many cesspools, they continue to churn a steady flow of nonsense for Trump and his defenders to pluck and deploy in a smokescreen they hope will separate them from any semblance of accountability.

Last month, Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account that contained an audio track that QAnon believers and researchers believed was titled “WW1WGA”: an unmistakable catchphrase of the conspiracy movement. A Trump spokesperson disputed the identification of the song, telling Vice News that the song was actually one called “Mirrors” by composer Will Van De Crommert. Experts said the songs were identical, though Vice reported that “Mirrors” was uploaded online a year before its QAnon-titled copy. Regardless, the QAnon community on Truth Social declared the video as proof that the Q author was who they thought they were. Kaplan said that between the video and Trump’s repeated sharing of content from QAnon accounts, the conspiracy theory’s followers are “noticing this [pattern] and taking it as a sign” they’ve been right all along.

True believers think Q was a high-level government official with insights into an imagined secret plan for Trump to thwart political, intelligence, business, and entertainment leaders orchestrating global downfall and engaging in satanic forms of child sex abuse. Forensic linguists and documentarians would grow to suspect that Ron Watkins, notorious for his role as an administrator on the forum board where Q posts were found for most of the author’s active time online, was actually responsible for at least some of the posts.

Since debuting in 2017, Q went on to post thousands of cryptic messages that formed the foundation for a vivid tapestry of conspiracy theories that would help drive several people to criminal acts, including violence, kidnapping, terroristic threatening, murder, and participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The movement built around Q posts gained so much traction that the FBI would identify it by name in a 2019 memo about threats extreme conspiracy theorists posed to national security.

In spite of those readily apparent dangers, Trump and his familymembers, lawyers, and notable political allies have all cozied up to the conspiracy theory movement’s supporters in some form.

Hallmark language used by QAnon supporters has receded on mainstream social media platforms, but many of the communities and influencers that brought its theories to life remain intact on alternative ones, now including Truth Social. Even as the community largely moved beyond its obsession with the musings of Q, causing some writers to erroneously identify the movement as dead, followers of the theories have remained energized and active. Some have set their gazes above their keyboards, choosing to run for office or involve themselves in a nationwide election denialist movement that has captured the loyalty of nearly half of Republican nominees on the ballot this fall. One influencer explicitly hopes to influence elections this year.

Throughout his presidency, Trump dodged every chance to distance himself from the QAnon crowds that obsessed over his every hand motion and turn of phrase. “I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” he told reporters in the White House briefing room in 2020. When asked about QAnon again during a town hall interview with NBC News, Trump refused to say the theory was false and claimed he didn’t know about it before saying he heard its believers “are very strongly against pedophilia.” The former president’s recent and reinvigorated embrace of the movement’s supporters should expose how vapid those dismissals were.

Trump’s business partners welcomed them onto his platform, and it’s apparent that he likes what he sees.

It’s beyond time to retire whatever plausible deniability may have been afforded to Trump’s fondness for his most conspiratorial supporters. It’s right in front of our faces, in a place called Truth.

We almost had another QAnon Pizzagate shooting this week. These people are quite literally nuts and dangerous. Trump Fan in Clown Wig Threatens to Kill All Democrats in a Dairy Queen:

A former President Donald Trump supporter from Pennsylvania was arrested after storming a Dairy Queen with a loaded handgun while wearing a clown wig.

During the incident, he claimed he was going to “kill all the Democrats because Trump was still president.”

Jan Stawovy, a 61-year-old from Hunker, Pennsylvania, told police who confronted him that he “talked to God” and was a “prophet” who was working undercover with the Pennsylvania State Police on a drug sting operation.

He also told officers that he was working to “restore Trump as president” according to the affidavit reviewed by local TV station WTAJ.

Stawovy was arrested and police subsequently found two more loaded handguns in his car along with 62 rounds of ammunition.

Stawovy is now facing multiple felony charges including making terroristic threats and carrying a concealed firearm without a license, according to online court documents reviewed by VICE News. A date for his arraignment has not been set.

It is unclear exactly what triggered Stawovy’s actions on Saturday, but a review of his Facebook page shows that in recent weeks his behavior has become increasingly erratic. Stawovy had previously raised the possibility of a “civil war” breaking out in 2024 and had boosted lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

On Saturday, hours before the incident in Dairy Queen, Stawovy posted an image showing two letters he had received from two local churches barring him from attending their services anymore after disruptive behavior.

In one letter, the pastor of a local church outlined that Stawovy had arrived at a service on Sep. 4 wearing “a clown costume and full makeup [which] frightened many of our congregants.”

In the wake of Trump’s election loss in November 2020, Stawovy was immediately convinced that the former president had won. “Good morning. Good Tithings. Guns. God. And 4 years of President Trump!!!!,” Stawovy wrote on Dec.1, 2020. He has posted multiple pro-Trump messages since the election loss as well as multiple memes about gun control and protecting the 2nd amendment.

Stawovy has also posted some QAnon-linked videos referencing the “great awakening” and “deep state” plots to deny Trump the presidency. He has also shared posts from a number of high-profile figures within the QAnon community, including former Trump lawyer Lin Wood and evangelical pastor Greg Locke, who has repeatedly preached QAnon conspiracies from the pulpit.

On Aug. 7 this year, hours before the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Stawovy posted: “Civil War in 2024?”

Trump’s increasingly violent rhetoric and embrace of violent conspiracies like QAnon have led to a number of attacks from his supporters. In the hours after he demonized the FBI for searching his home, one armed supporter attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati. 

And on Sunday, a Michigan man who believed QAnon conspiracies Trump’s lies about the 2020 election shot and killed his wife and critically injured his daughter.

Trump’s acquisition of QAnon on his Truth Social social media site and his inciting violence with his “the storm is coming” meme is already getting people killed.

Just wait until his endorsed candidates lose in November. He will once again be screaming “stolen election” and inciting these QAnon nuts to take to the streets in political violence.