Last month, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell claims Donald Trump will be reinstated in August after he proves that there was widespread fraud in the election, which would lead the Supreme Court to overturn the results.
Lindell based his prediction on a timeline that involved bringing pro-Trump cases before the Supreme Court in July. This would be after he assembled a case so compelling that when argued before the justices they will have no choice but to overturn the results of the election in a unanimous decision.
Now that August is upon us, Lindell is changing the date once again. He told The Daily Beast that the change is due to issues surrounding his August 10-12 symposium and the Supreme Court’s schedule.
“We’ll be bringing our findings to the Supreme Court in late August or early September, some time after the cyber-symposium ends, and it proves it was an attack by China,” Lindell said. “When I gave my prediction about August, and that was several months ago, that was an estimate at the time. But it took so long to get this symposium set up. However long it takes for the Supreme Court to take it up and decide on this, I can’t predict that. I’m not the Supreme Court.”
There is no legal path for Trump to be reinstated. The votes have been counted and the results certified for President Joe Biden. Trump and his allies tried unsuccessfully to halt the count and subsequent certification of results in the courts, losing 59 cases.
Still, members of the far right group Q-Anon believed Lindell’s conspiracy theory about an August reinstatement and have been busy coming up with conspiracy theories of their own to support Lindell’s.
One user posted on Q-Anon message board 8Kun that Lindell’s symposium coincides with a test of the country’s Emergency Alert System which Trump would use to announce mass-arrests of Democrats, according to The Daily Beast. Others pointed to the rise of the COVID-19 Delta variant as signs that Democrats were planning mid-August “lockdowns” to distract from voter fraud. One user bizarrely claimed that vaccine mandates for the military will lead to a revolt in Trump’s favor this month.
Members of Q-Anon are used to false predictions by now, but this August prediction of a possible Trump reinstatement might just be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Officials are worried that the group’s frustration may lead to violence as the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly warned, according to CNN.
According to a study by the Global Network on Extremism and Technology cited by the Daily Beast, members of Q-Anon see these failed predictions as openings to take up arms instead of losing trust in the movement’s leaders.
“The largest concern arising from these failed predictions is that QAnon supporters are beginning to feel led to take matters into their own hands after seeing that they cannot expect political or military leaders to implement their vision. In this case, the failed predictions of the past may well spur some QAnon supporters to take direct action and fuel a new, more dangerous, stage in the development of the movement,” the paper said.
