MAGA conservatives have suggested that the fatal shooting at Brown University was a politically motivated attack, even as the manhunt for a suspect and motive continues.
As the authorities revealed new surveillance footage on Monday after FBI director Kash Patel’s controversial handling of the case, conspiracy theories swirled about the tragedy, which killed two people: Ella Cook, the vice president of the university’s Republican club, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzoko, an aspiring neurosurgeon.
President Donald Trump said on Monday afternoon that it was not known whether the attack was targeted. However, some of his supporters have been quick to suggest it is another case of political violence by those on the left.
“Ella Cook was just 19 years old—a Conservative, a Christian, and Vice President of the Republican Club at Brown University. She was brutally killed by a shooter in what appears to be a targeted political attack,” conservative podcaster Benny Johnson wrote on X, alongside a list of violent attacks against right-wing figures such as Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk.
“If you still don’t see what’s happening, you haven’t been paying attention.”
MAGA Congressman Andy Biggs agreed, declaring: “Enough is enough. Political violence must come to a swift end.” Actor and Trump supporter James Woods also weighed in, claiming: “They will keep assaulting and murdering conservative Americans until we are wiped out or start fighting back.”
And William Branson Donahue, founder and chairman of the College Republicans, claimed to have been “told” that Cook was “allegedly targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood.”
“This was an attack on our family,” he said.
The Brown University attack took place on Saturday, when an active shooter opened fire at the Rhode Island campus, killing two people and injuring about nine others.
Also at the campus were two students who had also experienced mass shootings before: Mia Tretta, who was shot in the 2019 shooting at Saugus High School, and Zoe Weissman, who attended Westglades Middle School, adjacent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a student killed 19 people in 2018.
But this, too, fueled conspiracies and questions surrounding the attack, with some asking “what are the odds” of people surviving the Brown attack while a Republican was killed in the latest shooting.
“Both have already been making the rounds on CNN and MSDNC, pushing the gun control agenda in the immediate aftermath of surviving yet another mass shooting,” noted Joshua Hall, a self-described “libertarian for Donald Trump.”
“Does anyone actually believe that this is a coincidence?”
With the investigation into its third day, police on Monday afternoon released two brief videos of the possible gunman—whose face is not visible in the footage—in the hopes that someone might recognize him.
But the investigation has come under fire after a man initially detained over the incident was released, in yet another embarrassing twist for FBI Director Kash Patel.
Patel had posted about tracking the person of interest down, claiming on X that the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team had used “critical geolocation capabilities” to detain the man in a hotel room in Coventry.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha later came out to declare the evidence in the case “now points in a different direction.”
It was not the first time Patel, who critics say is highly unqualified for his job, had come under scrutiny for premature social media announcements.
Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk earlier this year, Patel also posted that the suspect was in custody, only to say less than two hours later that he had been released.
Asked on Monday afternoon if Patel had explained why it had been so difficult for the FBI to identify the shooter, Trump sought to defend his MAGA acolyte.
“It’s always difficult. So far we’ve done a very good job of it,” he said.
“But you’ll have to ask the school about that because this was a school problem,” he added.
“They had their own guards, they had their own police, they had their own everything.”
Asked if a motive had been identified, Trump said no, but “hopefully they’re going to capture this animal.”
The Brown University shooting was one of several deadly attacks in the U.S. and abroad over the weekend.
After the attack took place on Saturday, Americans woke to the news on Sunday morning of an anti-semitic mass shooting in Sydney, Australia, that has so far killed 16 people and injured dozens more.
Later on Sunday, acclaimed film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered in their home in Los Angeles, a killing that Trump controversially suggested was due to Reiner’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” or TDS.
