Followers of the conspiracy theorist QAnon have believed for months that Wednesday would be a day of “Great Awakening” foretold in the QAnon world when top Democrats would be arrested for running a global sex trafficking ring and President Trump would seize a second term in office.
As the Inauguration of President Biden unfolded on television, there were struggles to believe what they were seeing — no mass arrests known as The Storm, no President Trump prevailing to hold the office with the help of thousands of National Guard troops at the Capitol.
“I’m about to puke,” one QAnon fan watching Biden take the oath of office wrote.
Ron Watkins, a major QAnon booster whom some have suspected of being “Q” himself, posted a note of resignation on his Telegram channel on Wednesday afternoon.
But still there are signs that believers will persist.
One QAnon channel on Telegram with 40,000 subscribers noted that the last sentence of Eric Trump’s farewell tweet — “ … the best is yet to come!” — was also a common slogan for QAnon adherents, failing to mention that the phrase is a commonly used cliche. Another QAnon channel with 35,000 Telegram subscribers, devoted to the “Great Awakening,” highlighted Trump’s final remarks as president: “We will be back in some form — Have a good life. We will see you soon.”
Source info from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Daily Beast