No Evidence QAnon Followers Are Buying Trump Inauguration Tickets
The Claim
QAnon followers and Trump supporters are paying up to $1,200 for fake tickets to attend Trump’s second inauguration.
News posted on
Emerging story
Over the past week, social media users and websites have been claiming that supporters of Donald Trump along with QAnon believers have been purchasing scam tickets for his second presidential inauguration. These sources have posted a photograph of two tickets, showing the price listed as $1,200 and the inauguration date listed as being on August 15th, 2021.
Posts on social media have gained significant interactions, with one Twitter post gaining more than 6,500 likes within 48 hours.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation has found that these alleged scam tickets have not been purchased. First, the image of the tickets is doctored. The original image comes from a stock photo source. In fact, part of the watermark is visible in the doctored image, proving that the image comes from this source specifically. (The watermarks appear above the tickets, near the top center and top right of the image.)
The most popular tweet vaguely states that they are being sold on websites across the internet, but there are no specific instances. One site spreading this story claims that the tickets are being sold on Facebook. However, we checked both Facebook Marketplace and a range of popular QAnon groups and could find no evidence of anyone purchasing tickets for a fake second inauguration of President Trump. There is an incredibly slim possibility that the posts selling the fake tickets could have been removed since the story began spreading. It is likely that at least some evidence of these tickets being sold would exist, even if the scammers were trying to conceal their activities.
It is possible that this image was created by someone as a joke as a reaction to the story that Trump appears to believe that he will be reinstated as president in August. Others may have mistakenly believed that people had been duped into purchasing the tickets.
As our analysis could not identify any instance of a person purchasing fake second Trump inauguration tickets, and the sources of this claim cannot provide any instances of purchases taking place, we rate this claim as false.
