Some QAnon followers believe that Ivanka Trump has been executed by her father after she posted a picture of herself being given a vaccine.
This is just one of many conspiracy theories that exploded on QAnon channels after Trump posted a picture on Twitter of herself getting a COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday.
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In her post, Ivanka captioned a photo of herself wearing a white T-shirt while a nurse injects the vaccine into her arm, “Today, I got the shot!!! I hope that you do too! Thank you Nurse Torres!!!”
Within hours, QAnon followers had come up with multiple wild allegations, including that the picture was a fake or had been doctored, that Trump’s crossed hands were a clear sign the photo was staged, or that the fact she didn’t specifically mention that she received the COVID-19 vaccine meant it was likely some other shot.
Several QAnon followers claimed on Telegram to have scanned the QR code that appears in one of the photos Trump posted on Twitter, returned a number that, when plugged into the DuckDuckGo search engine, returns the web address for the 8kun board that QAnon’s anonymous leader used to post updates.
VICE News also scanned the QR code and found that it did not link to the 8kun message board.
Other QAnon supporters were simply upset about Trump’s decision to take the vaccine.
“This disappoints me enormously,” Jordan Sather, one of the most influential QAnon followers wrote on his Telegram account.
But one QAnon adherent took things a bit further.
The QAnon promoter known only as GhostEzra, whose Telegram channel has almost 300,000 followers, wrote that “Ivanka got her shot, never once did it say vaccine. Big difference.”
For the uninitiated, this might sound like another claim that the photo is a fake. But GhostEzra’s followers know that saying someone “got their shot” is an old reference that means the person was an enemy of the QAnon effort to expose the deep state, and has been killed by former president Donald Trump and his team.
“Right, so was she executed?” one follower responds.
But others were confused, pointing out that Ivanka Trump was always viewed positively by the QAnon community.
“Why? How could Trump off his own daughter?” one follower wrote.
Others pointed out that her statement about vaccines actually lines up with what Trump himself said earlier this week about the efficacy of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“Her post aligns with Trump’s recent statement about the ‘wonderful vaccines’ …very confused,” another follower wrote.
The majority of QAnon followers are also anti-vaxxers, and have been among the biggest spreaders of vaccine misinformation online. Their main claim is that the vaccine rollout is part of a deep state-orchestrated effort to control the population.
Lin Wood, one of the biggest QAnon influencers with over 800,000 followers on Telegram, who is currently seeking a GOP leadership role in South Carolina, had a more religious approach to his disinformation.
“I will NOT take the CCP Flu vaccine [because] from a spiritual viewpoint, I trust God’s promise of protection.”