QAnon followers believe Trump will be inaugurated as president this month

Followers of the right wing QAnonconspiracy theory are looking forward to a couple big dates in March 2021: March 4 and 20, specifically.

QAnon believers say any day in March the former President Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President once again.

This is not true. Donald Trump will not become President of the United States this month, just weeks after Joe Biden was inaugurated.

These facts do not matter to QAnon conspiracy theorists, though.

"Some QAnon believers are keeping a broader timeline in mind, including the entire month of March," says Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab resident fellow Jared Holt, who tracks right wing extremism. "Many of the justifications for those dates stem from worn-out theories that can be traced back to the sovereign citizen movement." (The sovereign citizen movement is an extremist right wing anti-government idea that believes they are not subject to most U.S. laws.)

The central belief of the QAnon conspiracy is that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a global Satanic trafficking ring made up of cannibals who are part of the Democratic Party and the Hollywood elite. These types of conspiracies, along with the Big Liethat the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, were enough to send thousands of Trump’s supporters, including many QAnon believers, down to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 to storm the Capitol. The falsehood that Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election results led to violence that left at least five people dead.

A recent poll found that about 30 percent of Republicans — a significant number — believe in that core conspiracy which drives QAnon forward. Knowing what some QAnon believers are capable of, combined with the fact that it's taking over a portion of one of the U.S.'s two major political parties, it's important to keep up with what's spreading in these conspiratorial circles.

Here’s why the QAnon faithful believe Trump will become President again this month.

March 4

The first major date that QAnon conspiracy theorists are looking forward to is right at the start of the month: March 4. On this day, as the conspiracy goes, Donald Trump will once again become the president. Why March 4? Well, like most QAnon conspiracies, it’s complicated.

March 4 was the original date of inauguration day until 1933, so there is some history to that date. It was moved to Jan. 20 with the passing of the 20th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. But, that’s where it stops making any sort of sense. The origins of QAnon’s March 4 date is steeped in an old conspiracy theory stating that a law passed in 1871 that turned the United States of America into a corporation. According to the QAnon lore, the United States ceased being a nation that year, making Ulysses S. Grant that last legitimate U.S. president.

Combining all those various untrue theories together, QAnon believes that Trump will ascend back to the presidency on March 4, becoming the 19th President of the United States.

The March 4 date has been spreading around 8kun, Telegram, and right-wing social media even beforeBiden was inaugurated in Jan. After the Jan. 6 date failed to overturn the election results, some QAnon followers thought Trump would arrest his political enemies on Jan. 20, when they were all gathered for Biden’s inauguration. Part of the original March 4 conspiracy counted on Biden’s arrest leaving the country without a president. That’s when Trump would step in on the fourth.

Many QAnon believers think that the whole Biden presidency has been a work of fiction so far, with former President Trump still pulling the strings from behind. For example, they believe Trump still controls the U.S. military.

Late last month, when the official Twitter account for the U.S. Marshals tweetedhistoric facts about Abraham Lincoln "quietly slipping into Washington, D.C." for his March 4 inauguration in 1861, QAnon followers erupted with glee. After all, they view everything as secret code and believe Trump’s still in control, so many QAnon believers saw this as a wink and a nod that Trump will again become president on March 4, 2021.

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While there isn’t a rallying cry to come to D.C. to "fight" for Trump like there was on Jan. 6, Trump’s hotel business is apparently expecting some uptick in travel to the area from his supporters. Early last month, Forbesnoticed that the Trump International Hotel in D.C. bumped its room rates for March 3 and 4 from the usual "$476 to $596 per night" to "$1,331 per night" for the same accommodations.

"March 4 was a prominent date, but as time has gone on, fewer QAnon followers seem committed to that specific date," Holt tells Mashable. "Recently, I've even seen some go so far as to claim that the projected date is a 'false flag' meant to embarrass movement followers or inspire believers into actions that will cause them to fall into traps set by law enforcement."

March 20

March 4 is quickly coming up and if that falls through, like every single QAnon prophecy that’s been foretold since the conspiracy began in 2017, there’s already a backup.

March 20 is already spreading in some QAnon circles as a major date when they believe that Donald Trump will...you guessed it, become the President of the United States once again.

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It’s unclear where this date comes from as it doesn’t seem to hold any sort of historical significance like March 4 does. The Washingtonianpoints out that March 20, 1834 was the date the GOP was founded, but that doesn’t appear to be relevant to the conspiracy theory.

Could enough QAnon believers have simply created March 20 out of a subconscious amalgamation of Jan. 20 and March 4 after hearing about the two inauguration dates enough times? It seems possible! However, as conspiracy theorists once again look to kick the can down the curb, the March 20 is a specific date a few of them are starting to fall on.

Thankfully, according to Holt who was warningabout the threat of violence on Jan. 6 in the days leading up to the insurrection, it doesn’t seem likely that QAnon supporters will mobilize in real life for any of these rumored March happenings.

"I've seen very little online to suggest mobilization from QAnon believers in March at a significant scale, and certainly nothing to suggest another event on par with the January 6 capitol attack is on the immediate horizon," he says.

Again, Joe Biden is the President of the United States. He won the election on Nov. 3, 2020 and was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021. The only way Donald Trump will become president once again is if he runs in 2024 and — unlike the last time — wins that election.