Thursday was a big day for people who believe in the QAnon conspiracy. Former President Donald Trump was arrested (again), he returned to Twitter, and his mugshot was published.
In his first tweet since Jan. 8, 2021, 2 days after the Capitol riot, Trump shared a his mugshot and wrote underneath it, “Election Interference, Never Surrender, donaldtrump.com.” Minutes later, QAnon message boards and Telegram channels lit up with messages seeking to analyze its meaning. Their conclusion, as it nearly always is, was that “the storm is coming.”
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“It’s always darkest before the storm,” a Trump supporter tweeted alongside the former president’s mugshot. “Tsunami Trump is coming for the swamp.”
Though none of this, of course, is happening, the “storm” in QAnon lore is the moment when Trump will rise up against his “deep state” enemies and retake control, expose a global pedophile ring run by Democrats and elites, conduct mass arrests, and ultimately execute his enemies in public.
But supporters quickly claimed there was a secret code within Trump’s tweet, pointing out that the three letters at the beginning of each line spelled out END. This was then linked to a message posted by Q in 2019, that reads: “There is no step five. End.”
For QAnon fans who have been waiting for years for the conclusion of this conspiracy, this claim was too enticing to ignore. “The crime is complete, they have finally arrested the president after they stole the election, now the military can’t ignore this anymore,” one users of a QAnon-focused message board wrote. ”Their job is to protect the constitution and not the politicians. Now the crime is complete, the entire bait has been swallowed. Brothers and sisters… Welcome to act III.”
This interpretation ignores the fact that for years, QAnon influencers have been predicting that Trump would signal his return by returning to Twitter and writing: “The storm is upon us.” They have also told their followers that Trump was going to return to the Oval Office. Now, millions of people continue to believe in this conspiracy despite all the evidence to show that it was not orchestrated by a government insider revealing top secret information, but was instead run for the most part by a former pig-farmer in the Philippines and his son.
Some people focused on other aspects of Trump’s tweet, including the time it was posted at, which was 9.38pm. This was quickly converted to 21.38, which was linked to Q drop 2138, which reads: “Battlestations ready. WWG1WGA” a reference to the QAnon slogan, “where we go one we go all.”
The decoding didn’t stop there, however. Some focused on Trump’s self-reported—and likely completely false—weight of 215lbs and height of 6 foot 3 inches. As a number of QAnon supporters have pointed out, when you add up all these numbers, you get 17, which is a reference to Q, the 17th letter of the alphabet.
Others figures in the movement claimed the mugshot was fake, pointing to a lack of shadow, the fact the Fulton County insignia is much smaller in Trump’s photo than others arrested as part of the same investigation, and the fact Trump looked much thinner in his mugshot than he did as he walked into the jail.
But as usual, QAnon figures and followers missed the real message in Trump’s tweet: the link to his campaign website where he is using his arrest as a way to raise donations and sell merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, and beer koozies that feature his mugshot.
