Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthem

A joint report by the FBI and the homeland security department last year warned that QAnon members posed a significant threat of more violence, particularly because of growing disillusionment in unfulfilled predictions that Joe Biden would be removed from office.

QAnon adherents believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.

Trump has previously embraced the group and its baseless theories, having frequently retweeted posts that related to or supported QAnon while he was president, and before he was permanently removed from the social media platform Twitter.

The trend has continued since he left office in January 2021 and set up his own failing network Truth Social.

In Youngstown, Ohio, at a rally ostensibly supporting the Republican Senate candidate JD Vance, but which looked more like a campaign event for the White House run in 2024 that Trump has repeatedly teased, supporters saluted the former president as they appeared to recognize the track being played.

Trump had used the music last month in a post to Truth Social as a background to clips of him decrying the state of the nation under the Biden administration.

Ron Watkins ran for a congressional seat in Arizona earlier this year but finished last in a seven-candidate Republican primary, drawing fewer than 3,000 of the nearly 80,000 votes cast.