QAnon followers are once again pulling in all directions as they struggle to explain why Donald Trump would urge people to get COVID-19 vaccinations, which are highly-detested among Q-conspiracists.
The former president, who is a savior-like figure in the conspiracy theory, told Fox News in a phone call on Tuesday night that he and Melaina, the former first lady, both received vaccine shots and told others to do the same.
"I would recommend it and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me," Trump said.
"But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by them and I agree with that also. But it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works."
QAnon has long been an extreme anti-vaxx movement.
Influential QAnon followers have pushed misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, including claims that it will alter your DNA and turn people homosexual and transgender.
QAnon started pushing the anti-vaxx cause further in the wake of a series of setbacks and failed predictions which began to define their movement, including Trump losing the election, the lack of mass executions at Joe Biden's swearing-in ceremony and Trump not returning as president on March 4.
With Trump contradicting QAnon theories that the vaccine is dangerous and the coronavirus is a hoax, many of its supporters came up with ways to cope with the latest cognitive dissonance, including suggesting it was not actually Trump speaking to Fox.
"Hi guys, I listened to it again... how he greeted Maria [Bartiromo] and how he spoke to her! That wasn't him," Mary Cue wrote in a QAnon channel on encrypted messaging service Telegram.
"I saw and heard a lot of interviews between him and Maria that wasn't like he speaks to her normally and it wasn't his voice at all...Me and some other people noticed this immediately."
Melissa Weeks added on Telegram: "How do I even know that was really President Trump speaking? They can fake anything."
"I just listen to it again and I have to agree it doesn't really sound like him," wrote Katherine Proudfoot. "Whoever it was was very good at imitating him though."
Ghost Ezra, a QAnon advocate with more than 250,000 subscribers on Telegram, also suggested: "My first take on the interview is that it didn't sound like Trump.
"For conversation sake, let's assume it was," Ghost Ezra added, before that the people should make up their own minds about whether they should get the vaccine or not.
Ghost Ezra later posted a long held belief that the vaccine is somehow related to Trump ordering a military operation to carry out "the storm" prophecyin which Trump is supposedly to carry out the mass arrests and executions of high-profile child abusers.
"Vaccines = arrests. Learn the language, it could be a matter of life and death. Just say no to the jab," Ezra wrote.
Another Telegram user suggested: "Operation Warp Speed = administering vaccine (arrests) to Pedo Vampires."
Others also chose to believe that Trump was giving out coded messages to be interpreted by QAnon supporters and did not actually mean people should get the vaccine when he told people they should get the vaccine.
"Come on people he's talking about taking down all the bad people, saving the world," wrote Kim Stephens. "Read between the lines. Anybody in their right mind would not take the vaccine."
"He was NOT talking about the 'COVID' vaccine. He was definitely talking about the operation listen carefully to the interview again," Josh Walls added, without clarifying further.
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Others have questioned why Trump would tell the American public to get the vaccine if it is not safe or linked to a military operation which would result in mass arrests.
"Something is way off in that he's promoting it in contradiction to his previous statements, it means either he's compromised and blackmailed (maybe one of his family held hostage) or he was never what he seemed to be," wrote George Young.
Lisa C added: "Still don't understand why he would speak in code where only anons would know what he's talking about and the others who hear him say take the vaccine assume [logically] that he meant to take the actual vaccine. Particularly since taking it is potentially deadly or life altering."
Fellow Telegram user Rob Rock wrote: "Why doesn't Trump and the military just simply announce what is going on?!?! What is the point with keeping all the so-called secrets?
"Why push a vaccine if the pandemic is a 'hoax'?!? This narrative doesn't make sense. We're getting punked."
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