In a guest column for The Daily Beast, ISD Senior Research Manager Jared Holt argues that granting plausible deniability to Donald Trump over his promotion of QAnon content on Truth Social is an error. Trump, who has over 4 million followers, seems to relish in the support by QAnon supporters, and ups their content in moments of “stress”, like the recent search at Mar-a-Lago.

“It’s no accident that QAnon supporters are using the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social. Appealing to them was an explicitly stated strategy to build out its user base,” Jared writes.

Truth Social, the alt-media platform owned by Trump has verified 47 QAnon-promoting accounts with over 10,000 followers each, according to an analysis by NewsGuard.