{"id":60652,"date":"2026-04-19T07:28:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=60652"},"modified":"2026-04-19T07:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:30:27","slug":"maga-is-increasingly-convinced-the-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=60652","title":{"rendered":"

MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged<\/b><\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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David Gilbert | WIRED<\/p>\n

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In recent weeks,\u00a0as\u00a0criticism of President Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0from his own supporters has reached a\u00a0fever pitch<\/a>, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold: Some of the president\u2019s biggest supporters are now claiming, without evidence, that Trump staged the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024 and is covering it up.<\/div>\n
During an open-air campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Trump\u00a0survived an attempted assassination<\/a>\u00a0when a bullet fired by a 20-year-old on a roof nearby clipped the top of his ear. Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter sitting near the president, was shot and killed. The shooter was later killed by Secret Service agents. Conspiracy theories around the Butler assassination quickly\u00a0permeated the internet<\/a>, but for many\u00a0Trump supporters,<\/a> his survival was seen as a sign from God that he was the chosen one.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“I think that maybe it was staged,” Tim Dillon\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0on his show last weekend about the assassination attempt. Dillon, who was previously a staunch Trump supporter, went on to share that Trump should now come out and say, \u201cSome 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.\u201d<\/div>\n
Some of these claims began months ago. In November, former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson\u00a0promoted<\/a>\u00a0the idea that the FBI was somehow involved in covering up the shooting, writing on X that the \u201cFBI lied\u201d about the shooter’s online footprint.<\/div>\n
A day later, conservative pundit Emerald Robinson went further,\u00a0posting on X<\/a> that the FBI \u201cdid it.\u201d (In the same post, Robinson claimed that the agency was responsible for everything from the January 6 attack on the Capitol to \u201cJeffrey Epstein’s blackmail tapes\u201d and the \u201cGov. Whitmer fake kidnap plot.\u201d)<\/div>\n
But the claims that Trump had staged the entire thing really picked up steam when former US National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent appeared on Carlson\u2019s podcast last month, one day after he resigned from his position over the Iran war.<\/div>\n
During the interview<\/a>, Carlson and Kent discussed the failure of the Trump administration to provide more details about the Pennsylvania shooter. Kent claimed, without providing any evidence, that investigations into the shooting had been shut down before they finished.<\/div>\n
Kent also claimed that this vacuum of information about the incident would lead to more conspiracy theories. \u201cIf you don’t want to address that question, then you just go silent and say you can’t ask that question,\u201d he said. \u201cWhich then creates people who come out of nowhere and they start drawing their own conclusions.\u201d (This is in fact, experts say, one\u00a0basic dynamic behind conspiracy theorizing<\/a>.)<\/div>\n
\u201cIf you cannot look at this story and use critical thinking skills and have at least some questions, you are the problem and we need you to snap out of it,\u201d Trisha Hope, a GOP national delegate from Texas and former Trump supporter,\u00a0posted on X<\/a>\u00a0about Butler this week.<\/div>\n
On Telegram, prominent QAnon promoter MJ Truth asked his 100,000 followers: \u201cHow does everyone feel about the narrative surrounding the Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump?\u201d<\/div>\n
The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of replies, almost all of whom remain Trump supporters, said they believed the incident had been staged and that the truth may never come out. \u201cThe truth will come out 60+ years from now when we’re all dead and nobody really cares anymore \u2026 just like JFK!!!!,\u201d one follower wrote.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Many claims about the Butler conspiracy theory have also involved discussion of the Israeli government’s purported control over the US government that strongly echo classical antisemitism. In a monologue\u00a0posted on his channel<\/a>\u00a0last week, Carlson questioned why Israel had \u201cso much control over our government\u201d and claimed that \u201cone of the clues is the Butler shooting\u201d and that the Trump\u2019s administration\u2019s failure to investigate the incident indicated the level of Israel\u2019s control.<\/div>\n
This allegation was then echoed by Candace Owens, another prominent MAGA figure, who\u00a0claimed in a recent podcast<\/a>\u00a0that Israeli-American political donor Miriam Adelson was actually behind the attempted assassination. Owens claimed that Trump had taken $100 million from her in donations, but had not followed through on his promise to then support Israel\u2019s annexation of the West Bank, and that this was the reason for the attempted assassination. Owens further suggested that this was also the reason Trump never really investigated the assassination properly when he became president.<\/div>\n
Ali Alexander, the far-right activist who organized the Stop the Steal campaign in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, has a slightly different take on the assassination, claiming instead that it was further evidence that Trump is the Antichrist, something\u00a0many MAGA figures have also been considering<\/a>\u00a0this week.<\/div>\n
\u201cTo be clear: if Donald Trump didn\u2019t receive a miracle, then it was deception or a dark sign,\u201d Alexander wrote in a five-page PDF he posted to his Telegram channel on Tuesday evening. \u201cThere is biblical prophecy in Revelation 13:3 apparently about the Antichrist being struck on the head.\u201d<\/div>\n
The\u00a0passage in question<\/a>\u00a0actually reads: \u201cI saw that one of its heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed. Fascinated, the whole world followed after the beast.\u201d<\/div>\n
While the vast majority of people discussing conspiracy theories about the shooting today are Trump supporters or former Trump supporters, in the hours and days after the shooting, it was left wing\u00a0so-called Blue Anon accounts<\/a> pushing the claims that the shooting was staged, suggesting it was all orchestrated by the Secret Service and that Trump had used blood gel packs in an attempt to draw sympathy and votes.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\nhttps:\/\/archive.ph\/fY2Rv#selection-813.0-2217.188<\/a><\/p>\n

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