![]()
It wasn't that long ago when Hts was playing down the prevalence of the Q-Anon subcult. Since then, Q-Anon ideology has become so prevalent among MAGA devotees that Trump has taken to wearing Q-Anon pins at rallies and promoting it.
From the NYTimes link below:
Trump has long played footsie with QAnon, whose adherents prophesy an apotheosis, or “storm,” in which Trump is returned to power and his enemies rounded up and executed. “I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” Trump said in 2020. When he was still on Twitter, he regularly retweeted QAnon followers.
But in recent weeks, as Trump’s legal troubles have mounted, his endorsement of QAnon has become more forthright. On Sept. 12, he reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin and the words “The Storm Is Coming” on his social media platform, Truth Social. An Associated Press analysis, published on Sept. 16, found that of nearly 75 accounts Trump has reposted on Truth Social in the past month, more than a third have promoted QAnon.
“What he’s doing on Truth Social is a massive escalation,” said Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.”
At a rally on Sept. 17, Trump spoke over mournful music that was, as The New York Times reported, “all but identical” to a QAnon theme song; many in the audience raised a pointed finger in the air, a QAnon salute. On Friday, the former president reposted a video full of QAnon memes on Truth Social. (Some around Trump may believe it’s unhelpful for him to openly court an apocalyptic cult; at a rally on Friday, staff reportedly made people giving the QAnon salute lower their arms.
