Former President Donald Trump has amplified QAnon-promoting accounts over 800 times during his first two years of actively posting on his social media platform Truth Social, according to a Media Matters review.
In our review, we deemed Truth Social accounts “QAnon-promoting accounts” if they explicitly promoted the conspiracy theory by sharing affiliated slogans, posts from QAnon’s central figure “Q,” or imagery related to the conspiracy theory. We counted reposting or quoting a post as amplifying it.
This activity marks a stark increase for the former president, who previously boosted promoters of the conspiracy theory on Twitter (now X) during his presidency. From 2017 until his account was suspended on January 8, 2021, Trump amplified QAnon-promoting accounts on that platform more than 300 times, and he also praised the QAnon community multiple times.
Months after Trump left office, and after the hosts of a QAnon show received press credentials for a Trump rally, Politico reported that associates of Trump would try to “weed out any QAnon influences — both adherents and postings — getting close to him.”
Yet between April 28, 2022 — when Trump began actively posting on Truth Social — and April 28, 2023, Trump amplified QAnon-promoting accounts on Truth Social nearly 500 times. In some cases, he promoted explicit QAnon content.
That trend continued during Trump’s second year of actively posting on the platform: A Media Matters review found that between April 29, 2023, and April 29, 2024, Trump amplified QAnon-promoting accounts nearly 350 times, raising his total to over 800 times overall. Those second-year amplifications also included some explicit QAnon content.
The activity from Trump, who helped create Truth Social following his ban from Twitter after the January 6 insurrection, fits with an analysis from The Washington Post, which found that Trump posts on the platform “29 times a day on average, far more than he tweeted during his first campaign and most of his presidency,” that he is “more likely to write in all caps,” and that his posts frequently “contained insulting language directed at someone.” The Post also found that the former president’s feed “is packed with links to right-wing news sites and conservative influencers,” which differs from his previous Twitter activity of linking “to a mix of mainstream and partisan sources.”
Among Trump’s over 800 amplifications of QAnon-promoting accounts on Truth Social, he specifically:
- Amplified at least 6 posts from QAnon-promoting accounts that featured text from Q posts. That includes 1 video that also included 9/11 Trutherism, and 1 post that also mentioned the letter “P,” which has been invoked in multiple Q posts in reference to supposedly nefarious figures.
- Amplified at least 33 posts that featured the letter “Q” in their text or image; the QAnon slogan, “where we go one, we go all” (or “WWG1WGA” for short); the QAnon phrase “nothing can stop what is coming” (or “NCSWIC” for short); or “Q+,” a term some QAnon supporters use to refer to Trump himself. Twenty of these came during his first year of actively posting on the platform, and 13 in the second.
- Amplified more than 170 individual QAnon-promoting accounts.
- Amplified 1 post from a QAnon-promoting account which linked to a Rumble video that showed a Q post, with Trump calling it an “incredible video!”
- Amplified 2 posts from QAnon-promoting accounts featuring a video that included the QAnon slogan.
- Amplified 1 post from a QAnon-promoting account with the phrase “Do it, Q!” Some QAnon supporters claim that a photo from a Trump tweet had that phrase in its source code.
- Amplified 1 post from a QAnon-promoting account that was originally posted in a Truth Social group dedicated to the conspiracy theory.
- Amplified 2 posts from an account named after the QAnon slogan. He has also amplified 4 posts from an account whose handle is the QAnon slogan.
- Amplified “Patri0tsareinContr0l,” who has pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory and has been a member of a known QAnon influencer collective.
This activity comes as Truth Social’s leadership has actively courted QAnon supporters to the platform, and the former president and his allies have associated with and appealed to the QAnon community in other ways. For instance, former Trump administration official and Truth Social board member Kash Patel said that “we try to incorporate” QAnon “into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.” The former president has also been photographed with multiple QAnon figures, and his campaign has given QAnon figures press passes for his events, while denying some mainstream journalists. Trump has also used a song associated with QAnon on social media and at his rallies.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.