QAnon followers grow restless — which could lead to violence — as  Mike Lindell again delays Trump reinstatement timeline

QAnon followers are growing restless — and could turn to violence, officials have warned — as MyPillow founder Mike Lindell continues to push back a timeline for his conspiracy theory about former president Donald Trump's reinstatement to office.

Lindell previously said Trump's reinstatement would happen sometime this month, following a "symposium" where it would somehow be revealed that Trump in fact won the 2020 presidential election, even though he did not.

But on Monday, Lindell told the Daily Beast that it could be September (or perhaps even later) before Trump is reinstated based on false claims of election fraud — assuming Lindell doesn't reschedule again.

"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."

Meanwhile, QAnon followers who previously adopted Lindell's August timeline have been busy concocting new conspiracy theories, including that Trump's reinstatement will coincide with an upcoming test of the nation's Emergency Alert System, when the former president could announce mass arrests of Democrats, the Daily Beast reports. Others have pointed to the rise of the COVID-19 Delta variant as a sign that Democrats are planning mid-August "lockdowns" to distract from voter fraud, while still others say vaccine mandates for military service members will inspire an armed forces revolt. QAnon influencer Ron Watkins claimed Monday that a "whistleblower" release of manuals for voting machines made by Dominion will lead to the election being overturned, even though those manuals were already publicly available.

Although QAnon followers are used to false prophecies, some expressed frustration with Watkins. "Let's see some sh*t because we are all tired of waiting and trusting," one wrote in response.

And their growing frustration could easily morph into violence, as the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly warned. The Daily Beast cites a recent study by the Global Network on Extremism and Technology

"Perhaps 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," the study's authors wrote. "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."