On Truth Social, one user with more than 31,000 followers and three Qs in his profile name posted an image in May of Mr. Trump sitting on a throne with a crown and a Q emblem behind him. Mr. Trump reposted the image.
Mr. Trump has also amplified messages that included the QAnon slogan WWG1WGA (for “where we go one, we go all) and that referred to a “storm,” a description for the mass arrests that the QAnon faithful believe will be used to destroy the deep state. Other messages later backed by Mr. Trump included a call for “civil war” and claims that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, was a “coup,” according to the report.
Mr. Trump also shared messages at least a dozen times from an account that posted about the “storm” and “a war against sex traffickers and pedophiles” to its more than 36,000 followers, NewsGuard found. Ricky Shiffer, a man killed by the police this month after he tried to breach the F.B.I.’s Cincinnati office, had also engaged with the same account.
Of the QAnon accounts identified on Truth Social by NewsGuard, 47 have red verification badges, which the platform says it reserves for “VIPs” with “an account of public interest.” Data.ai, which monitors app store activity, said Truth Social had been downloaded three million times in the United States on Apple iOS systems through Aug. 26.
Truth Social executives and backers have also interacted with QAnon supporters on the platform. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who resigned from Congress after 19 years to become Truth Social’s chief executive, regularly engaged with and tagged @Q. That account, which has more than 218,000 followers, has used “trust the plan” and other phrases associated with the conspiracy theory, NewsGuard said.
Mr. Trump teamed up with Digital World Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, to start Truth Social. Digital World’s chief executive, Patrick Orlando, has also reposted QAnon catchphrases for his nearly 10,000 followers on the platform, according to the report — which a representative for Mr. Orlando described as a “false and defamatory” accusation.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
