Sips Coffee ☕
Polls suggest that 20% of Americans had favorable views of QAnon as late as 2022.
Many of Trump’s nominations for high-ranking posts were figures who had previously been considered on the fringes of national politics. Some of them have brought conspiracy theories into the highest echelons of government.
FBI Director Kash Patel, for example, has been sympathetic to QAnon. He appeared on a show hosted by a QAnon influencer before being selected to run the agency. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has advocated anti-vaccination conspiracy theories also shared by QAnon.
Q’s ideas have not dissipated. It’s what I call QAnon’s afterlife, or the transformation of QAnon from a conspiracy theory to a political vocabulary. In fact, the movement’s vocabulary quickly began to appear in official government circles at the start of Trump’s second term.
In March 2026, for example, the official X account for the White House posted a photo of a mustachioed fighter pilot with the QAnon tagline “Patriots are in Control.” While the phrase may pass as mundane, I believe it is a clear reference to QAnon language, first used by Q in October 2017.
The U.S. Department of Labor posted the same phrase over an image of Trump in January 2026. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has publicly advocated deep state conspiracies, ran the department until she resigned on April 20, 2026.
And Musk, the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, celebrated America’s 250th birthday with an AI-generated video called “Sweet Land.” This post generated buzz because it referenced QAnon and prompted an online scavenger hunt for Q symbols.
Amid the U.S. war with Iran, some government officials have turned to QAnon for inspiration.
The official account for the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, Emil Michael, has posted propaganda using Q catchphrases as military slogans. For example, the department posted a picture of a Marine saluting Trump with the phrase “Trust the Plan.”
On Truth Social, Trump posted a meme of himself on the deck of a battleship with the words “It was the Calm Before the Storm,” a cryptic phrase first used by Trump while meeting with military leaders in October 2017. Almost exactly one month later, the phrase appeared as a central QAnon concept.
The use of Q phrases by government agencies during wartime has excited online conspiracy theorists. They see it as an official endorsement that “the storm” will soon be upon us, a time of upheaval and punishment of the shadowy deep state. For these conspiracy theorists, Trump and Q will bring about “the storm,” to be followed by a golden age.
The QAnon style of American politics
Whether or not these references to Q posts by official government accounts are truly ideological or simply trolling is less relevant than the effect they have.
👹The UN has publicly announced that 🥸climate change
‼️never existed
💊Solar power generation was just about vested interests.
💥All man-made
PrivateCanadianNews
@Michael59302787 Exactly 💯 💥 I'm tired of giving a list of possibilities to the non-stop cop-out question -
What can I do about it ? 🤪🤪🤪
Where is imagination 😕