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How the QAnon Movement Entered Mainstream Politics — And Why They're Silent on the Epstein Files

 

Some view it as a betrayal of Trump to fulfill one of his most significant promises.

 

By Art Jipson, University of Dayton

National News Published: July 21, 2025

https://katiecouric.com/news/national-news/qanon-response-trump-not-releasing-epstein-files/

 

The Justice Department asked a federal court on July 18, 2025, to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case. The direction from President Donald Trump came after weeks of frustration among some far-right groups over his administration’s refusal to release the complete and unredacted “Epstein files.”

 

Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-profile connections, was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and later died by suicide in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial.

 

In early 2025, a federal court unsealed portions of the court documents. While names of some of the alleged clients and victims were released, many were redacted or withheld.

 

Epstein’s arrest and death became a central focus for QAnon followers, who saw the events as proof of a hidden global elite engaged in child trafficking and protected by powerful institutions. The release — or withholding — of the Epstein files is often cited within QAnon circles as evidence of a broader cover-up by the so-called “deep state.

 

Some followers of the MAGA — Make America Great Again — movement and the Republican Party believe in the false claim that the United States is secretly controlled by a cabal of elites who are pedophiles, sex traffickers, and satanists.

 

Over time, what started as a baseless conspiracy on obscure platforms migrated into the mainstream. It has influenced rhetoric and policy debates, and even reshaped the American political landscape. The foundational belief of many of the QAnon followers is that Trump is a heroic figure fighting the elite pedophile ring.

 

Trump’s attempts at downplaying or obstructing the very disclosures they believe would validate their worldview have led to confusion. To some, the delay in the release of the files feels like a betrayal, or even the possibility of his wrongdoing. Others are trying to reinterpret Trump’s actions through increasingly baseless conspiracy logic.

 

Trump has publicly dismissed demands for the full release of the Epstein Files and referred to much-hyped records as a “hoax.” He has also made false claims. On July 15, 2025, Trump said: “And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama.”

 

As a scholar who studies extremism, I know that the movement views Trump as a mythological figure and it interprets Trump’s actions to fit this overarching narrative — an elasticity that makes the movement both durable and dangerous.

 

The QAnon movement began with the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016, which falsely claimed that high-ranking Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. The baseless theory gained enough online momentum that a man armed with an assault rifle stormed the restaurant, seeking to “free the children.”

 

In 2017, an anonymous figure called “Q” began posting cryptic messages on message boards like 4chan and 8kun. The baseless accusations of a global network of elites involved in controlling global institutions, including governments, businesses, and the media, as well as operating a child trafficking and ritual abuse, were central to the QAnon movement’s narrative.

 

The movement has recruited followers through language like “Save the Children,” to mobilize around issues of child trafficking.

 

Many QAnon adherents, particularly women, were drawn to the movement through such appeals to child protection. According to psychologists Sophia Moskalenko, Ph.D., and Mia Bloom, Ph.D., this type of appeal taps into powerful emotional instincts, making conspiracy theories like QAnon more persuasive and harder to dislodge, even in the face of contradictory evidence.

 

QAnon movement’s rise

QAnon followers perceived Trump as a messianic figure working to expose this cabal in a climactic reckoning known as “The Storm” – a moment when mass arrests would finally bring justice.

 

They claimed that this moment would eventually bring about a “Great Awakening,” a reference to the religious revivalist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this context, the phrase described the supposed political and spiritual enlightenment that would follow “The Storm” – a moment of mass realization when people would “wake up” to the truth about the “deep state.”

 

In 2019, the FBI identified QAnon as a domestic terrorism threat, and major social media platforms began banning related content, but by then, QAnon had bled into mainstream conservative politics. Q-endorsing candidates, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, ran for and won elected office a year later.

 

During Trump’s first administration — from 2017 to 2021 — the QAnon movement flourished. The posts from Q claimed to reveal insider knowledge of a secret war being waged by the president, often in coordination with the military, against the powerful elite.

 

Trump never explicitly endorsed the movement, but he did little to distance himself from it.

 

His administration also included figures, like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who openly interacted with Q content online.

 

Trump’s rhetoric, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, gave new life to QAnon narratives. When he questioned the integrity of the electoral process, QAnon followers interpreted it as confirmation of the deep state’s meddling.

 

However, after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, QAnon followers revised their original prophecy to maintain belief in “The Storm” and “The Great Awakening.” Some claimed the defeat was part of a larger secret plan, with Biden’s presidency serving as a cover for exposing the deep state. Some believed Trump remained the true president behind the scenes, while others reframed the awakening as a spiritual rather than political event.

 

Indeed, by 2020, several congressional candidates openly embraced or showed sympathy for the QAnon movement.

 

At various campaign rallies in 2022 and after Trump used the movement’s symbolism. On Truth Social, his social media platform, he retweeted Q-affiliated accounts, and praised QAnon supporters as “people who love our country.” That same year he reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.”

 

After the 2020 elections

Trump’s departure from the White House in January 2021 created an existential crisis for the QAnon movement. Predictions that he would declare martial law or arrest Joe Biden and other Democrats on Inauguration Day failed to materialize. Q’s posts also stopped, leaving many followers adrift.

 

Some abandoned the theory. Others rationalized the failed predictions or embraced new conspiracy narratives, such as the belief that Trump was still secretly in charge or that the military would soon act to reinstate him.

 

Some QAnon communities merged with or were absorbed into broader anti-vaccine, anti-globalist, and Christian nationalist movements.

 

How big is the movement?

Estimating the number of QAnon believers is difficult because many individuals do not openly identify with the movement, and those who do often hold a range of loosely connected or partial beliefs rather than adhering to a consistent or uniform ideology. Not everyone who shares a Q meme or echoes a Q talking point identifies as being part of the movement.

 

That said, surveys by groups like the 2024 Public Religion Research Institute and the Associated Press have found that 15–20% of Americans believe in some of QAnon’s core claims, such as the existence of a secret group of Satan-worshipping elites controlling the government.

 

Among Republican voters, the number is often higher.

 

This does not mean all these people are hardcore QAnon adherents, but it does show how far the narrative, or parts of it, has seeped into mainstream thinking.

 

Epstein as evidence of "the cabal"

The Trump administration’s failure to disclose the information in the Epstein files has fueled internal confusion, disillusionment, and even radicalization within the movement.

 

For some QAnon believers, this failure was a turning point: If Trump — once seen as the hero in the conspiracy narrative — would not or could not reveal the truth, then the “deep state” must be more entrenched than imagined.

 

At the same time, frustrations have grown within MAGA and the QAnon movement’s spaces. Some see it as a failure to fulfill one of his most important promises: exposing elite pedophiles. Others believe the delay is strategic, another example of “the plan” requiring more patience.

 

The QAnon movement continues to evolve, even as its central figure hedges and hesitates, illustrating the potency of myths in times of uncertainty. In my view, understanding why this belief persists is essential for comprehending the current state of American democracy.

 

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are viewing the recent release of Jeffrey Epstein's files as validation of their long-held beliefs, despite many of the documents failing to support their core claims.

 

QAnon Faithful See Validation in the Epstein Files

Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are viewing the recent release of Jeffrey Epstein's files as validation of their long-held beliefs, despite many of the documents failing to support their core claims.

 

Key Points of "Validation" vs. Reality

Elite Connections: QAnon followers point to the files as proof of their theory that a global cabal of business and political elites has a dark, hidden agenda. The documents confirm that numerous high-profile figures had personal relationships with Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

Mismatched Facts: While the files name prominent figures, they do not provide evidence of a "deep-state" pedophilia conspiracy or more extreme claims within the QAnon canon, such as cannibalism, cloning, or devil worship.

The "Cabal" Narrative: Experts suggest that these files help QAnon believers frame their worldview as an allegorical story about an elite class that has abandoned common morality.

Political Fallout:

Disillusionment with Trump: Some followers have become radicalized or disillusioned by Donald Trump’s failure to release the full files during his administration, viewing it as a sign that the "deep state" is more entrenched than they thought.

High-Profile Defections: Notable figures like Jacob Chansley (the "QAnon Shaman") have publicly criticized Trump over the Epstein files, even labeling him a "fraud" in recent social media posts.

Ongoing Disinformation: Fake reports and "inauthentic bot activity" continue to circulate, including fabricated claims of new "Epstein Islands" and secret government-run trafficking operations.

The The New York Times notes that while the facts do not neatly align with the conspiracy, this "does not seem to matter" to the movement's faithful, who continue to reinterpret the evidence to fit their existing narrative.

QAnon Faithful See Validation in the Epstein Files

 

QAnon Faithful See Validation in the Epstein Files

 

The nearly decade-old conspiracy theory does not align neatly with the facts emerging from the documents. That does not seem to matter.

 

Tiffany Hsu Stuart A. Thompson

By Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson

Feb. 28, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/business/media/epstein-qanon-pizzagate.html

 

The theory at the heart of the QAnon conspiracy theory was simple, even if the details were not: A global cabal of elites was running a child sex-trafficking ring.

 

The latest release of files about Jeffrey Epstein has the QAnon faithful crowing that they were right. The documents revealed that a global group of prominent business and political figures had close personal relationships with a convicted sex offender, and raised questions about how much those people knew about, or participated in, Mr. Epstein’s crimes.

 

Never mind that those relationships did not seem to prove a widespread deep-state scheme centered on pedophilia. Never mind that the files do not seem to back up other outlandish claims — such as beliefs about cannibalism, cloning or devil worship — in the QAnon canon.

 

For adherents, there is enough to make them feel vindicated. The drop, experts said, is legitimizing the vein of paranoid thinking that is increasingly prevalent in American politics and, in some cases, further cementing support among QAnon sympathizers for President Trump.

 

“People like me and MANY others, have known this for almost a DECADE,” trumpeted one Facebook user in a post. “It’s time to admit we were right,” a user on a QAnon channel declared on Telegram. The QAnon faithful gloated online by posting memes, like clips of John Travolta’s confident strut in “Saturday Night Fever” and heavy-metal riffs titled “Q Was Right” with the repeating lyric “wake up.”

 

Even some who doubted QAnon acknowledged that there might have been some truth to its ideas. Many of the QAnon faithful celebrated an apology of sorts from Bill Maher, the left-leaning commentator with a show on HBO, who said this month about sexual perversion among elites: “I’m big enough to say, QAnon, you were more right about this than I admitted, and than lots of other people admitted.”

 

“It’s terrible to be right about many of these things,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former congresswoman from Georgia, in a recent interview on YouTube that addressed sex crimes among powerful people and Mr. Epstein’s influence in high society. Ms. Greene was once a vocal QAnon supporter but distanced herself in 2021, saying then she was “allowed to believe things that weren’t true.”

 

In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for the White House wrote that Mr. Trump was “totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.” Ms. Greene did not respond to a request for comment.

 

The millions of files posted last month about Mr. Epstein chronicle his efforts to surround himself with young women and solicit sex from them. He was charged in 2019 with running a sex-trafficking operation in the early 2000s that brought dozens of girls as young as 14 to his opulent Upper East Side home. He was found dead in his jail cell that year, and his death was ruled a suicide.

 

The documents also show Mr. Epstein’s ties to powerful people including a former prince, billionaire businessmen, top officials from multiple White House administrations and academic leaders.

 

The files do not address many common QAnon assertions. Many prominent figures facing backlash for their proximity to Mr. Epstein were not documented as having supported sex trafficking, but rather as having socialized or dealt financially with him, or shared lewd remarks about women.

 

So the movement is adjusting its expectations and blind spots to fit the current reality, moving goal posts whenever certain wild predictions fail to happen, as it has frequently done in the past, according to longtime experts.

 

“Nothing is ever going to validate QAnon,” said Russell Muirhead, a politics professor and conspiracy theory expert at Dartmouth College.

 

He added, though, that the Epstein files can help make sense of QAnon and other conspiracy theories “as allegorical stories about an elite class that has lost touch with common-sense morality, that regards human beings as things to be used in whatever way is convenient.”

 

The QAnon movement emerged from the dark corners of the internet in 2017, spawned from cryptic posts attributed to a mysterious figure called Q. At one point, millions of Americans — including many politicians — believed its overarching theories, according to some estimates, though its popularity has faded greatly since 2020. Q hasn’t posted online since 2022.

 

Now, its adherents are using the massive trove of documents to reignite interest in their theories.

 

They are resurfacing, for example, a debunked theory from 2016, known as Pizzagate, which suggested that political figures used “pizza” as a code word for abusing children. It also suggested Democrats in Washington were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza restaurant.

 

The newest Epstein files do show the financier and his associates repeatedly discussing “pizza” and other food and drink, sometimes in ways that seem coded. Those documents — which include unverified and fake content, according to the Justice Department — have fueled new conspiratorial thinking, distorting the available evidence and pushing online speculation far beyond what the documents have proved. The files led Tucker Carlson, the conservative pundit, to declare on social media that “it looks like Pizzagate is basically real.”

 

But the new Epstein files do not appear to explain why Mr. Epstein referred so often to pizza. They do not include any suggestion of a Democrat-led child sex-trafficking ring. The pizza restaurant in question does not have a basement.

 

“It fits the pattern of conspiratorial thinking, where if you have a conclusion that you already hold on to, anything else can be confirmatory evidence,” said Yini Zhang, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo who studies social media and emerging communication technologies.

 

 

QAnon’s shifting standards are showcased clearly in its relationship with Mr. Trump. In QAnon lore, the president is a nearly messianic figure who was thrust into the political arena to round up and arrest elites involved in satanic, pedophilic activity.

 

In reality, he has been criticized during his second term for stalling or preventing the release of documents that critics speculate might implicate him or powerful people in his orbit. He has dismissed the inquiry as a Democratic “hoax.” In December, his administration missed a congressionally mandated deadline to release all of its files on Mr. Epstein. Mr. Trump, his properties, his associates and related terms were referred to more than 38,000 times in the files, according to a review by The New York Times.

 

Now, however, many in the movement have found ways to excuse Mr. Trump’s actions in what experts described as examples of cognitive dissonance or selective memory. Worries that the president was working with the deep state have evolved in recent weeks into a conviction that the documents fully absolve him and expose his enemies.

 

“Essentially, they’re tying themselves in knots to absolve Trump and play down the idea that Epstein ever really mattered — while still claiming they’re trying to stop trafficking and save children,” said Mike Rothschild, a journalist and expert on conspiracy theories. “We’ve gone from Epstein being the center of a vast interlocking ring of satanic child traffickers to Epstein being a bad guy who Trump exposed, so let’s stop talking about it.”

 

Tiffany Hsu reports on the information ecosystem, including foreign influence, political speech and disinformation

 

Stuart A. Thompson writes for The Times about online influence, including the people, places and institutions that shape the information we all consume.

OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash

 

OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash

 

The deal came hours after President Trump had ordered federal agencies to stop using artificial intelligence technology made by Anthropic, an OpenAI rival.

 

Cade Metz

By Cade Metz

Reporting from San Francisco

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html

Published Feb. 27, 2026

Updated Feb. 28, 2026, 12:27 a.m. ET

 

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said on Friday that it had reached an agreement with the Pentagon to provide its artificial intelligence technologies for classified systems, just hours after President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using A.I. technology made by rival Anthropic.

 

Under the deal, OpenAI agreed to let the Pentagon use its A.I. systems for any lawful purpose. The San Francisco company also said it had found a way to ensure that its technologies would not be applied for domestic surveillance in the United States or with autonomous weapons by installing specific technical guardrails on its systems.

 

“In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said in a social media post, using the initials for the Department of War, the administration’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.

 

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

The deal appeared to be a business and political coup for OpenAI, taking advantage of a rival’s troubles. Anthropic, which competes with OpenAI, had battled the Pentagon in recent weeks over how its A.I. could be used. In negotiations over a $200 million contract, the Pentagon had demanded that it be able to use Anthropic’s A.I. system for all lawful purposes, or it would cut the company off from government business.

 

But Anthropic said it needed terms that would ensure that its A.I. technology would not be used for domestic surveillance of Americans or for autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon, in turn, said a private contractor could not decide how its tools would be used for national security. Their disagreement erupted into public view this month and escalated as both dug in their heels.

 

Anthropic and the Pentagon failed to agree on terms by a 5:01 p.m. deadline on Friday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then designated Anthropic a “supply-chain risk to national security,” a label that cuts the A.I. company off from business with the U.S. government. Mr. Trump also weighed in, calling the start-up a “radical Left AI company.”

 

Amid the maelstrom, OpenAI stepped in. This week, Mr. Altman publicly backed Anthropic’s position that A.I. should not be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. On CNBC on Friday, he said he mostly trusted Anthropic and that “they really do care about safety.”

 

At the same time, Mr. Altman engaged in talks with the Pentagon, starting on Wednesday, over a deal for its technology, said two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

 

Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.

 

OpenAI “will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted,” Mr. Altman said.

 

These moves allowed Mr. Altman to uphold safety principles around A.I. while still landing the Pentagon contract. He added that the Pentagon had agreed to have some OpenAI employees work alongside government personnel on classified projects to “to help with our models and to ensure their safety.”

 

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment on OpenAI’s deal.

 

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

 

Mr. Altman and Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, have long been bitter rivals. Dr. Amodei and several other founders of Anthropic previously worked at OpenAI. But they left in 2021 after disagreements with Mr. Altman and others over how A.I. should be funded, built and released.

 

Last week, during an A.I. summit in India, Mr. Altman and Dr. Amodei were caught on video refusing to join hands during a photo session with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

 

It may take time for OpenAI’s technology to be used by the Pentagon. The company is not yet approved for classified work in part because its technologies are not available from Amazon’s cloud computing services, which is how the government often accesses classified systems.

 

That could change after OpenAI signed a partnership with Amazon on Friday. Amazon, a new investor in OpenAI, is pouring $50 billion into the A.I. start-up as part of $110 billion in funding that OpenAI raised to pay for its continued growth and to fuel A.I. development.

 

The Pentagon may also use A.I. services from other Anthropic rivals. Google and Elon Musk’s xAI have contracts with the Defense Department, and the Pentagon said earlier this week that it had reached an agreement to use xAI’s technology for classified operations.

 

Google has had similar discussions, but it is unclear where those talks stand. In 2018, during the first Trump administration, Google backed away from a military contract after protests from employees. It has since agreed to work with the Pentagon again.

 

This week, as the Pentagon threatened to sever ties with Anthropic, dozens of OpenAI employees signed an open letter urging other A.I. companies to support the stance that the technologies not be used for domestic surveillance or with autonomous weapons.

 

“They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in,” the letter read, referring to the Pentagon. “That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure from the Department of War.”

 

Cade Metz is a Times reporter who writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology.