Donald Trump Has Promoted QAnon-Linked Twitter Accounts More Than 250 Times

President Donald Trump said he knows "nothing" about QAnon during NBC's Town Hall, despite previously describing them as "people that love our country" and frequently promoting accounts linked to the conspiracy theory on Twitter.

Trump has been criticized after he failed to denounce or even criticize the movement, which believes Trump is secretly fighting a "deep state" satanic pedophile ring involving high-profile Democrats, when pressed to do so by host Savannah Guthrie.

"Can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true and disavow QAnon in its entirety?" Guthrie asked.

"I know nothing about QAnon, I know very little," Trump said.

"Let me just tell you what I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia and I agree with that."

After Guthrie brings up the baseless suggestion of there being a "satanic pedophile cult," Trump replies: "I know nothing about it. I don't know that and neither do you know that."

Trump was also asked why he recently shared an unhinged theory with ties to QAnon which claimed Joe Biden ordered a helicopter full of NAVY Seals be shot down to cover that Osama bin Laden's body double was actually killed during the raid in 2011 under the Barack Obama regime.

"That was a retweet, that was an opinion of somebody. I'll put it out there, people can decide for themselves" Trump said.

"I don't get that. You're the president," Guthrie responded. "You're not like someone's crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever."

As noted by Media Matters, this was not the first time that Trump has either retweeted or replied to an account on Twitter with ties to QAnon.

As of October 15, Trump is reported to have promoted QAnon accounts to his 87.2 million followers at least 258 times from around 150 individual accounts.

Notable examples include several retweets from Jack Posobiec, the alt-right figurehead who helped spread the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, which also has ties to QAnon.

"The President is retweeting a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I am pointing this out because we shouldn't accept it as normal, Congressman David Cicilline tweeted at the time in March 2019.

Other notable examples include the now-suspended account @The_Trump_Train and the @MAGAPILL account, which have been known to promote the theory.

In April and May 2019, Trump was also found to have retweeted multiple accounts of QAnon supporters, some of whom had #QAnon in their bios or #WWG1WGA— an abbreviation of the QAnon slogan "Where we go one we go all."

In March 2019, Trump also retweeted a video from an account called Deep State Exposed, which regularly posts Islamophobic conspiracy theories, before retweeting the account again in May of that year.

In July 2019, Trump tagged pro-QAnon account @Voteridplease in one of his tweets while discussing the need to "insure the safety and sanctity of our voting system." The account frequently tweeted support of the QAnon movement and had the "Where We Go One We Go All" slogan in its banner before it was suspended.

In August 2020, Trump spoke publicly about QAnon, saying he only really knows its supporters as "people that love our country," and who "like me very much."

When asked at the White House briefing about the theory that he is saving the world from satanic pedophiles, Trump responded: "Is that supposed to be a bad thing? If I can help save the world from problems I'm willing to do it, I'm willing to put myself out there."

QAnon was listed by the FBI as a domestic terror threat in August 2019.

The White House has been contacted for comment.