As things begin to look worse and worse for former Republican President Donald Trump amid the FBI inquiry into his stolen trove of documents, he has turned to increasingly desperate measures.
And a new post on his Truth Social social media app shows just how far he is willing to go in his desperate bid to cling to relevance and power. In short, he's gone full QAnon.
Trump has, of course, flirted with the unhinged far-right conspiracy theory and its devotees since it first came on the scene way back in 2017. But he's always maintained plausible deniability by leaning more toward dog-whistles than full-throated support.
That approach appears to be over with now that he is just outright sharing QAnon content, such as this meme showing Trump wearing QAnon regalia, overlaid with two of QAnon's most well-known slogans, which Trump "re-truthed" to his account.
\u201cTrump again going mask off with the QAnon stuff on TruthSocial today. He "retruthed" a photoshop of himself wearing a Q pin plus a couple of Q catchphrases from a Q account.\n\nTrump's not flirting with QAnon anymore, he's moving in.\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
As NBC News' Ben Collins put it:
Trump is again going mask off with the QAnon stuff on Truth Social...
In the meme, Trump is depicted wearing a Q pin, the symbol of the mysterious figure "Q" on whom the conspiracy theory is based, supposedly a deep government operative with the high-level Q security clearance.
Q's cryptic information reveals, or "Q drops," form the basis of the conspiracy theory, which claims Donald Trump is working to expose and prosecute a cabal of child sex-trafficking, Satan-worshiping elites in worldwide politics, intelligence, business and entertainment that includes everyone from Hillary Clinton and George Soros to Madonna and Tom Hanks.
Trump's meme also includes two of QAnon's most ubiquitous and prominent slogans.
The first, "The Storm Is Coming," refers to the QAnon tenet of "the storm," which is the moment when Trump's work finally exposes the crimes of the elites and they are publicly executed after a military tribunal.
The second is the acronym WWG1WGA, which stands for "Where We Go One, We Go All," a sort of "all for one and one for all" rallying cry of solidarity among QAnon devotees to keep the faith and trust the process of Trump's rooting out of Satanic corruption.
If this all sounds absurd, that's because it is--and this piece does not even scratch the surface of the wide-ranging nonsensical obsessions of QAnon followers.
But while the absurdity of it all suggests QAnon is nothing more than a lunatic fringe, it is anything but: As of the most recent research compiled in February, some 20% of Americans in general and 25% of Republicans believe QAnon conspiracies, numbers that have increased markedly since Trump left office.
And with mainstream Republicans slowly backing away from him as his documents scandal begins to seem increasingly inescapable, Trump has been leaning into his QAnon base heavily in recent weeks.
\u201cTrump last night amplified at least 4 QAnon-supporting accounts.\u201d— Alex Kaplan (@Alex Kaplan) 1658151231
This has led them to believe they were right about everything all along, despite obvious events to the contrary like Q's years-long radio silence and Trump's own loss of the presidency.
There have been several incidents of QAnon-affiliated violence in recent weeks, including one in which a Michigan Q follower murdered his wife and injured his daughter, and another in which a Pennsylvania man stormed into a Dairy Queen vowing to "kill Democrats" and restore Trump as "president king."
On Twitter, many were disturbed by Trump's latest meme and what it might signal about his future plans.
\u201cTrump officially endorsing Q anon is likely the start of a years of lead period where he will incite his followers to commit political violence in retaliation for criminal investigations. This is going to get incredibly violent and scary.\u201d— Alejandra Caraballo (@Alejandra Caraballo) 1663096474
\u201c@oneunderscore__ https://t.co/BCCvN6I5Ae\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
\u201c@oneunderscore__ I\u2019m sure there\u2019s no coincidence\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
\u201cThis happened the day after a MI man killed his family after his mind was warped by Q conspiracies and the same day as a PA armed man walked into a Dairy Queen and said he wanted to kill Dems and make Trump king. \n\nBut Biden traveled to DE to vote.\u201d— Will Ragland (@Will Ragland) 1663171802
\u201c@oneunderscore__ what the hell is going on? What is their scheme?\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
\u201c@oneunderscore__ @Acyn If he\u2019s getting the troops fired up, he must be getting ready for something big to happen.\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
\u201cOn J6 when Trump couldnt get Pence to stop the certification, he thought a violent mob would fix it for him - this feels similar. Can't get real lawyers, party is turning, investigations beating down on him, but anons will still ride for him. Question is: to where?\u201d— marleydclements (@marleydclements) 1663096469
\u201c@oneunderscore__ He\u2019s calling for violence, just like he did before Jan. 6th. \ud83d\ude21\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
\u201c@oneunderscore__ He knows what he's doing. But will he put out the actual call for violence, coded of course, or is he just agitating them and hoping they begin going after small targets on their own so he can threaten further violence, as he's done before?\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
\u201c@oneunderscore__ Kinda aggravating to see fellow progressives swat this away. This is the reality. A former president is amplifying a cult that has a history of getting people injured or killed. Looking away is how we ended up here.\u201d— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1663093406
With Trump openly shouting-out the QAnon movement and members appearing on ballots all over the country in November, it's long past time the conspiracy theory's delusional bloodthirst is taken seriously.
NBC News via Lisa Anderson