Colwell: Trump's QAnon embrace no laughing matter

We laughed at the QAnon crazies. At their wacky predictions of a storm coming, with military force to restore Donald Trump’s presidency and publicly execute Satanic pedophiles now cannibalizing kids and controlling the nation.

We laughed when Q believers waited in the rain in Dallas for the predicted appearance of John F. Kennedy Jr. He would become vice president upon Trump’s return. Kennedy couldn’t make it, perhaps because he died in a 1999 plane crash. Some believers hung around for weeks, figuring Kennedy was just delayed for some reason.

We laughed at predictions of the storm coming on Inauguration Day to prevent Joe Biden from taking the oath. He and other leaders of the Satanic cabal − in government, business, entertainment and news media − would face capital punishment. Trump would stay. But then Trump left. So, QAnon believers said the storm would come instead at a later date when inauguration was observed in decades past. Nothing on that date either.

More:Trump's answer to growing legal woes and shrinking support? QAnonsense, of course.

We laughed when QAnon first came to national attention. Pizzagate! That’s the QAnon contention that children were held prisoner in the basement of a Washington pizzeria, tortured there by Hillary Clinton and other Democratic pedophiles. A believer drove from North Carolina, firing a military-style rifle inside the place in seeking to rescue sex-slave kids in the basement. The place had no basement. He got four years in prison.

We laughed at the attire of the QAnon Shaman, with those horns on his furry headdress and face paint, as he led insurrectionists into the Senate chamber. His attire wasn’t appropriate for the Senate. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. But he had a bullhorn to shout directions and an American flag on a spear-edged flagpole. He was sentenced to 41 months.

Now comes a QAnon story that’s no laughing matter.

Some of the people all of the time:Debunked QAnon conspiracy theories are seeping into mainstream social media. Don't be fooled.

Trump, who sort of winked at QAnon during the presidential campaign, not wanting to turn away Q voters, now is openly embracing the central claim of the conspiracy crazies. On his Truth Social platform, Trump posted an image of himself wearing a Q pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.”

That’s their claim: The storm is coming to restore Trump to total power, with his opponents to be tried and faced with capital punishment on live TV.

Trump also published dozens of recent Q-related posts.

He closed a rally with music that sounded identical to the QAnon anthem called “Wwg1wga.” That’s an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.” Scores of people in the audience, recognizing the tune, raised index fingers in support of the “one” theme. Trump aides said the tune was a different one that just seemed identical to the QAnon song. Coincidence.

Online, QAnon enthusiasts rejoiced over Trump publicly embracing them.  Could this be the time when predictions of the long-awaited storm come true?

Messages on Q-linked accounts include claims of vindication: That Trump “Re-Truthed This for a Reason” and “Soon Q will be everywhere.”

Danger is posed by Trump’s embrace of QAnon.

Many of his MAGA supporters who never heard much about this Q stuff now will look into it and assume Trump must be telling them there really is a Satanic cabal controlling the country and keeping kids captive in pizzerias.

If QAnon believers decide that this is the time − really, finally − for the storm, they could initiate one, just as some of them did in joining insurrectionists storming the Capitol.

Trump is good at sending messages to get ready for a storm in his defense. Think of the message to the Proud Boys: “Stand back and stand by.”

Trump says he wouldn’t have Mike Pence again for vice president. So, how deep is Trump in QAnon theories? Is he counting on John F. Kennedy Jr.?

Jack Colwell is a columnist for The Tribune. Write to him in care of The Tribune or by email at jcolwell@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Donald Trump now openly embracing QAnon conspiracy claims