Increasing numbers of MAGA allies are buying into a wild conspiracy theory about the 2024 attempt on Donald Trump’s life.
The failed assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, wasn’t fake news; it was a fake attack staged in part by Trump himself, they are claiming without evidence.
The growing buzz is apparently a twisted symptom of MAGA’s dissatisfaction with rising prices under the Trump administration and the president’s war against Iran.
Trump took full advantage of his brush with death while campaigning for the presidency in 2024. After Secret Service members scrambled to protect him when a shot rang out during a rally on July 13, 2024, he stood defiantly before the crowd with his fist raised. He later wore a large bandage on his ear, which was reported to have been grazed by the bullet.
Suspected would-be assassin Thomas Crooks—who shot three people at the event, one of them fatally—was killed on the scene by a Secret Service sniper.
Many liberal conspiracists at the time—often referred to as BlueAnon, a play on QAnon—speculated that the shooting was staged by Trump with the help of the Secret Service and some gel packs of blood in a bid to win votes, but they were far to the left of Trump’s adoring MAGA fans. Now the tide is apparently turning, WIRED noted in a survey of online and podcast comments.
“I think maybe it was staged,” announced podcaster Tim Dillon, a former staunch Trump backer. Dillon said Trump should fess up and 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.”
A post about Dillon’s podcast on X drew dozens of agreeing comments. One poster wrote: “I know a Mark Burnett production when I see one,” referring to The Apprentice TV reality show starring Trump.
Late last year, Tucker Carlson pushed the idea that the FBI covered up details of the shooting. Last month, former U.S. National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, who had just resigned his post in protest against the Iranian war, appeared on Carlson’s podcast to insist that the Trump administration had failed to provide more information about the attempt, and that investigations had been shut down. He offered no evidence for his claims.
But questions linger, with more doubters speaking out on X. One posted a photo from after the shooting of Trump with no apparent injury on the ear he later bandaged. “Not even Wolverine heals that fast,” the poster scoffed.
