President Donald Trump has long relied on extremists touting conspiracy theories to promote his political fortunes, even putting them in key positions in the United States government. Now a recent report reveals that believers in one of the most pervasive pro-Trump conspiracy theories are reading into a controversial social media post by a Trump official.
“But while [Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office] Scavino’s tweet angered nearly everyone who saw it, at least one audience segment was happy: believers in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory,” reported The Bulwark’s Will Sommer on Monday. Sommer was reporting on Scavino posting an AI video on social media showing himself and Eric Trump partying lavishly, with beautiful women and champagne, a post that struck many as tone deaf given America’s ongoing economic problems.
Yet that was not how some of Trump’s most ardent supporters viewed it.
“Soon after Scavino made the tweet, QAnon believers rushed to interpret it through the lens of recent QAnon clues, with many seeing it as proof that the movement, which is premised on sending” child abuser and cannibal Democrats “to Guantánamo Bay, is real,” Sommer wrote.
He added, “I admit that I first thought this was a bit crazy. But as I dug into it, it started to feel more and more compelling: Was Scavino’s party tweet really meant to rally QAnon with a hidden message?”
Sommer’s reasoning was that “a QAnon enthusiast named Kimberly Auer asked Scavino over X to confirm that Trump runs the ‘Papi Trumpo’ account by posting a Pitbull song, an apparent reference to the singer’s appearance on a remix of the Jennifer Lopez song ‘Papi.'”
The Scavino post includes a riff from Pitbull’s “Don’t Stop the Party.”
“If Trump is Papi, then maybe @Scavino47 @DanScavino could give us a NOD and post something w/ Pitbull music…I mean, he is a PAPI. lol,” Auer argued. As Sommer observed, “A little more than twenty-four hours later, Scavino made his hotel-lobby video post—accompanied by a Pitbull song. So, was this a tone-deaf post about living it up while the economy tanks, or the most audacious QAnon dog whistle of all time?”
He added, “Scavino doesn’t appear to follow Auer, meaning all of this could be a coincidence—except Scavino has a history of signaling to QAnon. Back in 2020, the New York Times noted that Scavino regularly posted ‘tick tock’ and clock images. Scavino offered no explanation or caption in each of these cases, either, but QAnon believers frequently use ‘tick tock’ as a slogan to suggest their moment of revenge on Democrats is at hand.”
This is not the first time Sommer has posted about the absurdities of QAnon ideology. Last year he drew attention to the fact that for all of QAnon’s obsession with conspiracies involving abused children, they seemed strangely silent about Trump’s suppression of the Jeffrey Epstein files and his longstanding friendship with the notorious late child sex trafficker.
“But with revelations about Mr. Trump’s relationship to Mr. Epstein mounting, the default QAnon position has become that Mr. Epstein just isn’t that interesting anymore,” Sommer wrote. “That’s partly because QAnon believers no longer stand out so brightly in the conspiracy-minded Republican mainstream.”
He continued that because believing the worst of Trump would be inconsistent with QAnon conspiracy theories, “the real problem with the Epstein revelations is that Mr. Trump sits uncomfortably close to the center of them.”
