Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump went on a spree of sharing posts on his social media platform, Truth Social. He reposted several images made using artificial intelligence that support QAnon, a conspiracy theory group. One of the images called for putting former President Barack Obama on trial in a military court.
The posts started on Sunday morning, when Trump shared a picture of himself next to Obama. The caption on the image said, “All roads lead to Obama. Retruth if you want public military tribunals.” This was a clear suggestion that Obama should face legal punishment through military court trials.
QAnon is a widely debunked conspiracy theory that started on anonymous message boards. It falsely claims that high-profile people, mostly Democrats like Obama and Hillary Clinton, are part of a secret and evil group involved in child trafficking and other crimes. The theory even suggests that these people have huge control over the U.S. government. Some versions go so far as to claim that John F. Kennedy or his son faked their deaths and are secretly helping Trump in his fight against this supposed criminal network.
A central idea of QAnon is that Trump is the hero leading a mission to stop this hidden group. They believe he will eventually arrest these people and bring them to justice through military trials.
Trump has posted QAnon content in the past, and this time he shared more AI-created images with captions that read things like “Slayer of the Deep State,” “Blind justice under the law will return to our republic,” and “We are taking back our great country.” These phrases are common among QAnon supporters, who believe Trump will restore what they see as a corrupted government.
All of the posts Trump shared came from a Truth Social user named Spiritual Streetfighter. Her profile says, “I believe in Q,” and ends with the phrase “Where We Go One, We Go All,” which is a slogan used by QAnon followers to express loyalty and unity.
After Trump shared these posts, QAnon believers and conspiracy theorists celebrated online. Alex Jones, a well-known conspiracy promoter, claimed that President Biden was not really elected and that Obama has secretly been controlling the government for the past few years. He used this claim to justify why Trump is talking about military trials. Jones even used the news about Biden’s prostate cancer to support his belief that Obama is still secretly in power.
