In recent weeks, as criticism of President Donald Trump of his own supporters reached a peak fevera new conspiracy theory has taken hold: Some of the president’s biggest supporters now claim, without evidence, that Trump staged the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 and is covering it up.
At an outdoor campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Trump survived an assassination attempt when a bullet fired by a 20-year-old onto a nearby roof severed the top of his ear. Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter sitting next to the president, was shot and killed. The shooter was later killed by Secret Service agents. Conspiracy theories surrounding Butler’s assassination accelerate has permeated the Internetbut for many Trump supporters, his survival was seen as a sign from God that he was the chosen one.
However, as Trump’s grip on MAGA has weakened, a growing number of his supporters have begun to promote the narrative that the entire incident was staged.
“I think it might have been staged,” Tim Dillon said on his show last weekend about the assassination attempt. Dillon, who was previously a strong Trump supporter, went on to say that Trump should now say, “Some people are going to be upset by this, but we staged the assassination attempt in Butler to show people how important it was to vote for me and how far I was willing to go for them.” »
Some of these claims started months ago. In November, former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson promoted the idea that the FBI was somehow involved in covering up the shooting, writing on X that the “FBI lied” about the shooter’s online footprint.
A day later, conservative pundit Emerald Robinson went further: publication on that the FBI “did it.” (In the same article, Robinson claimed the agency was responsible for everything from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to “Jeffrey Epstein blackmail tapes” and “Governor Whitmer’s false kidnapping plot.”)
But claims that Trump staged the whole thing really gained momentum when former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, appeared on Carlson’s podcast last month, a day after he resigned from his post over the Iran war.
During the interviewCarlson and Kent discussed the Trump administration’s failure to provide more details about the Pennsylvania shooter. Kent claimed, without providing any evidence, that investigations into the shooting were stopped before they were completed.
Kent also claimed that this vacuum of information about the incident would lead to more conspiracy theories. “If you don’t want to address this question, then stay silent and say you can’t ask this question,” he said. “Which then creates people who come out of nowhere and start drawing their own conclusions. » (It is in fact, say the experts, a basic dynamics behind conspiracy theory.)
“If you can’t look at this story, use critical thinking and at least have some questions, you are the problem and we need you to get out of this,” Trisha Hope, national delegate for the Republican Party of Texas and former Trump supporter, posted on about Butler this week.
On Telegram, prominent QAnon promoter MJ Truth asked his 100,000 followers: “What do you think of the narrative surrounding Butler’s assassination attempt on Trump? »
The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of responses, almost all of which remain from Trump supporters, said they believed the incident was staged and that the truth may never come out. “The truth will come out in 60+ years when we are all dead and no one really cares anymore…just like JFK!!!!” one follower wrote.
Many of Butler’s conspiracy theory claims have also involved discussions of the Israeli government’s alleged control over the U.S. government, which strongly echo classic anti-Semitism. In a monologue posted on his channel Last week, Carlson questioned why Israel had “so much control over our government” and claimed that “one of the clues is the Butler shooting” and that the Trump administration’s failure to investigate the incident indicated Israel’s level of control.
This allegation was later echoed by Candace Owens, another prominent MAGA figure, who stated in a recent podcast that Israeli-American political donor Miriam Adelson was actually behind the assassination attempt. Owens claimed that Trump withdrew $100 million in donations from him, but failed to fulfill his promise to then support Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, and that this was the reason for the assassination attempt. Owens further suggested that this was also why Trump never really properly investigated the assassination when he became president.
Ali Alexander, the far-right activist who organized the Stop the Steal campaign following the 2020 presidential election, has a slightly different view of the assassination, instead saying it was further proof that Trump is the Antichrist, something many MAGA figures have also considered this week.
“Let me be clear: If Donald Trump did not receive a miracle, then it was a deception or a dark sign,” Alexander wrote in a five-page PDF he posted Tuesday evening on his Telegram channel. “There is a Bible prophecy in Revelation 13:3 apparently concerning the Antichrist being struck on the head. »
THE passage in question It actually reads: “I saw that one of its heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed. Fascinated, the whole world followed the beast.”
While the vast majority of people discussing conspiracy theories about the shooting today are Trump supporters or former supporters, in the hours and days after the shooting, it was the left. so-called Blue Anon accounts pushing claims that the shooting was staged, suggesting it was all orchestrated by the Secret Service and that Trump had used blood gel packs to try to attract sympathy and votes.
