QAnon spreads Biden photo online claiming it shows Trump is secretly in the White House
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Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory believe an image of Joe Biden shows that Donald Trump was recently in the White House, and was in fact US president.
The image, which shows the Democrat taking a phone call in the Oval Office, features a figure reflected in a window to the right of the US president, Mr Biden.
It was shared to Mr Biden’s Instagram account last week, from where it was taken and shared to Telegram, a messaging platform favoured by the far right and followers of QAnon.
The conspiracy theory alleges that a cabal of Democratic sex traffickers conspired against Mr Trump when he was in office, and — after his defeat to Mr Biden — that the Republican will return as president, or has already returned.
As reported by Newsweek, the image of Mr Biden was shared by a popular QAnon account, “We The Pepe”. The name references the cartoon character Pepe the Frog, which has been appropriated by the far right.
The account argued that the former US president could be seen in the reflection in the Oval Office’s window, and told its more than 750,000 followers: “Did you see who’s in the reflection?...Go see for yourself.”
Another QAnon account, “MelQ”, also shared the image to more than 140,000 followers on Telegram, as did others on the messaging platform.
According to Newsweek, the image was widely taken by followers of QAnon that Mr Trump was not only in the White House, but was secretly in charge of the US – a tenet of the conspiracy theory.
“Did they just photoshop mumbles Biden into a picture that was taken while DJT [Trump] was in office. Asking for my fren [sic] that questions everything,” a Telegram user allegedly wrote of the image.
QAnon supporters currently believe that Mr Trump will return to office in August in the wake of his 2020 defeat to Mr Biden.
It is in the latest date for Mr Trump’s resurgence offered by followers of QAnon, after a string of theories and predictions about the former US president.
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