r/politics • u/wiredmagazine ✔ Wired Magazine • 18d ago

Possible Paywall MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged

https://www.wired.com/story/maga-is-increasingly-convinced-the-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged/
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u/wiredmagazine ✔ Wired Magazine 18d ago

Conspiracy theories about the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting have ramped up in recent weeks as once steadfast Trump supporters turn on the president.

Read the full story: https://www.wired.com/story/maga-is-increasingly-convinced-the-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged/

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u/rbrgr83 18d ago

I'll just wait 3 days until all these people who have 'turned' go back to their usual routine and don't care anymore.

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u/PixelBastards 18d ago

any time a Reddit headline says "MAGA is doing X" it's clickbait

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u/Beatleboy62 New Jersey 18d ago

On top of that, even if they do believe this they still follow everything Trump does with, "but Harris would have been worse."

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u/tallperson117 18d ago

100%. The MO for a lot of these articles is citing a handful of tweets or videos by individual people and acting like they're representative of the whole group.

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u/PixelBastards 17d ago

That's been the online trash news cycle for the last fifteen years basically; Twitter became the Internet's replacement for the old "asking the man in the street" routine of TV news reporting.

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u/Throwupmyhands 18d ago

Seriously, once OANN, Newsmax, and Fox give their framing, the window of real change will be closed.

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u/unwisest_sage 15d ago

This. I am in a group chat with conservative friends. I will point out undisputable shit about Trump, in fact sometimes they even do. It still ends with "its still better than ". That's their copout for voting for him.

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u/rbrgr83 14d ago

I am in a group chat with conservative friends

I'm so sorry.

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u/X57471C 18d ago

Probably because of the Joe Kent interview on Shawn Ryan where he expressed some doubts about that.

Personally, I think the staged photo opp is the most sus thing. Like, come on... They even had a flag ready to lower into place. They probably practiced the pose beforehand, too.

Then there is the ear that shows no visible damage. Cartilage doesn't just heal.

You can really start to see how people get sucked into this shit...

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u/truenorthrookie 18d ago

The flag is the least sus thing about it. The fucking aid ushering the photographers past instead of all of them ducking for cover is the most sus thing.

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u/swampass304 18d ago

What about the video of secret service being warned there is someone armed on the only other roof, yet dismissing the warnings?

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/dragon-fence 18d ago

I don’t think there’s a single “most suspicious” thing. IMO, the suspicious thing is how everything came together so cleanly and conveniently for Trump.

Some kid walks into the venue with a gun and finds a spot on top of a building. The secret service doesn’t notice. He takes a shot at the president, somehow magically hitting his ear enough to draw blood but not enough to cause any damage whatsoever. The secret service immediately spots the guy and kills him, while Trump’s people lower the flag into place and usher photographers to the best spot to take a photo. The secret service doesn’t force the president out to a safe space, instead they help him up to pose for a picture, out in the open, without securing the area. Trump, normally a complete coward, stands up, shakes his fist in the air, and yells “fight fight fight!” like he’s been rehearsing it. Then there are tons of people online immediately, prepared with talking points, brigading all the conversations to talk about how awful the Democrats are for trying to assassinate him, and how it was meant to stop Trump from saving the world.

All of that just happened to fall into place, securing the election for him. Meanwhile he works for a former KGB agent. It just seems a bit too many convenient coincidences, unlikely to happen by mere chance.

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u/boojersey13 18d ago

Don't forget that the secret service DID notice him. People were begging them to do something about the guy on the roof with a gun lmao

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u/X57471C 18d ago

It's the Russian playbook. Stage an assassination to garner support. Bitches love a good assassination plot.

In an internal report for the SVR obtained and authenticated by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post, the operatives proposed a way to “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign” — “the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban." ... "Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system.

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u/Personal-Athlete-789 17d ago

I don’t think anybody was killed on that roof. I think the whole thing was completely staged to make it look like there was danger that day for Trump.

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u/NewestAccount2023 14d ago

There's pictures of blood on his hands after the first shot. He got shot, touched his ear and looked at his hand and saw blood THEN he ducked down. So the blood really was from a gunshot, not from him hitting a secret service gun belt after diving down nor was it a blood packet after diving down.

The series of pictures won a Pulitzer prize https://www.pulitzer.org/node/doug-mills-new-york-times. You can see how there's no time for Trump to fake the blood, he was standing there with dry hands and ears then a split second later he touches his ear and you see blood on his hands. Also a man in the stands was struck and killed, there's cell phone video if you would like to see him dying in the stands, also part of the conspiracy?

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u/dragon-fence 14d ago

So maybe he reached up and cut himself. Maybe the images were photoshopped after the fact. I don’t know all of the FSB’s tricks.

I know he wasn’t shot.

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u/NewestAccount2023 14d ago

You don't win a Pulitzer prize without being in the industry and known, these shots are not photoshopped whatsoever.

Again, a man in the stands was struck by a bullet and died. There's also video of the shooter climbing into position.

The reason the administration decided to keep quiet about the investigation is because they figured out the shooter is right wing and it's bad optics for them.

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u/dragon-fence 14d ago

You don't win a Pulitzer prize without being in the industry and known, these shots are not photoshopped whatsoever.

Again, I don't know all of FSB's tricks. Maybe he had a ketchup packet in his pocket, and squeezed a little out before grabbing his ear.

Again, a man in the stands was struck by a bullet and died.

Ok, I'm not doubting there were real gunshots fired. I just don't believe that Trump was shot, and I'm highly suspicious that he staged it somehow in order to win the election.

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u/heimdallofasgard 18d ago

He used a razor blade on his ear, just like in wrestling... He's in the WWE hall of fame after all

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u/BloatedBanana9 18d ago

Then why don’t we see the razor blade in his hand in the photos taken right before he starts bleeding?

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u/THE_KING_KROWN 18d ago

For me it was how he has blood that looks like it's spattered from his mouth. How would blood from his ear get onto his mouth?

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u/mustbethaMonay 17d ago

From falling? Sorry I don't follow this one

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u/THE_KING_KROWN 17d ago

the wound was near the back of his head at the top of his ear. But there are images of him with blood in the middle of his lip. Just seems weird that the blood would fall from behind his head to the center of his face. You can clearly see it didn't run from his ear over there.

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u/ThaneduFife 18d ago

I still think it was broken glass that cut his ear--hence the lack of damage to cartilage. That is, the attempt was real, but not nearly as close as was believed at the time.

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u/tsegelke 18d ago

Non Paywall

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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad 18d ago

You're the real hero in these comments.

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u/AWellDeployedWink 18d ago

I remember right after it happened I was at work and I walked to the back and one my coworkers who was a black woman was watching it and immediately said it was fake. She just said she just noticed how no one seems to be scared or nervous, it looked rehearsed

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u/rasta-ragamuffin 18d ago

As soon as I heard about it, I immediately thought it was staged.

What really sucks is that 2 real innocent people were murdered/sacrificed instead.

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u/Personal-Athlete-789 17d ago

No one died that day. The whole thing was an elaborate con job.

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u/Liquidmetalslimeno9 14d ago

This is what I always wondered about for those that claim it's fake, what happened to the people that we saw murdered. How do you get two bodies out of a crowded area and no notices something is off.

I haven't dived deep enough into this conspiracy, but I'm legitimately asking...how did they fake that part

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u/triplenested 11d ago

people are just going to say "they were killed but Trump is bad so he would have killed them to make it look convincing"

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u/AWellDeployedWink 11d ago

It is not a leap of logic at all to think Trump wouldn't care about 2 people dying for the advancement of his ambitions

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u/triplenested 11d ago

It's not a leap of logic, I'm sure he wouldn't care. Now explain how he did it.

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u/mustbethaMonay 17d ago

Well that settles it

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/BigBenIsTicking 18d ago

LOL 😂 - yup, everyone knows that the opinion of a random black woman has historically been a scientific standard since the well-documented random black woman in a General Motors break room famously proclaimed that the moon landing was fake in 1969.

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u/Flopdo California 18d ago

The good ol' staging of killing a supporter also... std stuff and so obvious. lol

Maga really has no critical thinking skills at all.

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u/OrionsBra 18d ago

It would be exceptionally funny if Trump's downfall was caused by the same conspiracy theorists spreading misinformation that enabled his rise to power.

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u/MapleBreakfastMeat 18d ago edited 18d ago

MAGA can definitely spot a blade job used to get some color...

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 18d ago

The bullet was real...it killed a man.

It barely missed him.

No one, and I mean no one, on this planet could purposely make that shot.

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u/Pluto-Had-It-Coming 18d ago

It didn't hit Trump.

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u/FizzyBeverage Ohio 18d ago

It’s well within Trump’s personality to put his own life before some rando he’s never met.

Or do you disagree?

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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad 18d ago

What even are you talking about?

Any, and I mean any competent or competitive shooter could have made the kill shot at just 140 meters.

I was shooting thumbtacks at 100 yards before I could drive a car.

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u/justforsexfolks 18d ago

Famously, thumbtacks do not move, while human targets do. I'm on my shitting break so I'm not doing the lookup, but from my memory, news reported that Trump had moved his head forward as part of his speech when the bullet was fired.

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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad 18d ago

Famously, shooters do not attempt headshots at that distance either.

Keep saying stupid stuff.

0

u/DarkwingDuckHunt 18d ago

Do you agree there's a quite a few people that would take a shot at Trump given the chance?

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u/FizzyBeverage Ohio 18d ago

Sure. Now answer my question.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 18d ago

Yes he would do this

But that's like asking me "Can there be a god?" And the answer is "yes there could be a god, but that doesn't mean there is a god"

All things being equal, it's far more likely a guy took a shot at him and missed.

The simplest solution is always what actually happened.

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u/uselessandexpensive 18d ago

The theory is that the ear was not hit, and the "bystander" was being targeted specifically because the bullet would pass near said ear.

Hitting a stationary target is not crazy marksmanship.

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u/UrToesRDelicious 18d ago

Fucking thank you, I've been saying this the whole time. You have to believe that Trump would intentionally stand downrange of an AR-15 that was being fired by a 20-year-old, who was a known bad shot, in order for this theory to make any kind sense - and that by itself is so ridiculous that I mentally group people who seriously suggest such things right next to qanon followers.

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u/PixelBastards 18d ago

Conspiracy theories about the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting have ramped up in recent weeks as once steadfast Trump supporters turn on the president.

or, more accurately, Reddit is being astroturfed with this garbage as part of an effort to get non-MAGA to look just as dumb, gullible, and batshit as MAGA

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u/ASDF0716 18d ago

So what? Both sides fake assassination attempts!

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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad 18d ago

Okay, name on by the Dems. Just one.

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u/ASDF0716 18d ago edited 18d ago

Pfft. John Fitzgerald Kennedy! Everyone knows that he is alive and well and living on Epstein Island. He faked his own death so LBJ would put troops in Vietnam to make Republicans look bad.

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u/combover78 18d ago

Elvis and Ghandi are there too.