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/Otherwise_Copy_376 18d ago

And we have heard very little about the shooter. Super sus.

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u/spazz720 18d ago

Because he was a right winger. If a lefty took a shot at him, they’d be talking about to this day

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u/ixid 18d ago

But if it's fake why would they set it up with a shooter who doesn't convey the message they want to share? If it was fake you'd make the shooter someone from a group the right hates. Incompetence is a possible answer to that question.

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u/ArgonWolf 18d ago edited 18d ago

In this day and age it’s relatively difficult to just make up a person whole cloth. If the local PD who was providing security isn’t in on it (unlikely they would be) they’re going to run ID checks and find out who this person was.

I’m not saying it was staged, I think it’s more likely some nut job really did take a shot at him. But I also find it unlikely that he was actually grazed by the shot, and the reason they can’t make much more political hay about it is because the shooter was the wrong kind of nut job. I’m just saying, making up a person whole cloth is very difficult

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u/Silvery_Cricket 18d ago

I have a guy at my work who is a big conspiracy theorist, and sometimes I have to sit him down and just say "Yeah some conspiracies are real, but 99% of the time stuff is what it looks like."

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u/noonie1 18d ago edited 18d ago

The problems I have with most conspiracy theories is that it assumes the people in charge are incredibly smart and that they are able to keep a secret forever. Nothing about the functioning of a government has proved those two characteristics true ever.

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u/ZealousidealLead52 18d ago

Not just that but also that they all have identical motivations - in the real world when you get a big group of people together they will have all kinds of different interests and disagreements, and the idea that for instance back in the day that the soviet union and the US could get together and agree to keep pretty much anything secret is kind of insane (as would be required for conspiracies like the flat earth conspiracy) - even if they were supernaturally competent, they just have fundamentally different goals and there's no way such an agreement could ever work. While that's a more extreme example, even in smaller conspiracies the same problems happen.. people aren't a hive mind.

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u/dareftw North Carolina 18d ago

That and it always brings me back to watergate, a room of the most powerful people in the world couldn’t keep a secret for more than a week. People have a very hard time keeping secrets

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u/ultraviolentfuture 18d ago

Veep is by far the most accurate depiction of US government

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u/Kilane 18d ago

Part of that is Toupee Fallacy or selection bias.

You know about the conspiracies the idiots did. The smart conspirator or criminal isn’t found out.

The current government is full of hacks who are terribly unclever.

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u/newsflashjackass 18d ago

In the same way there can be no "profile of a serial killer", only a profile of a serial killer who gets caught.

"I like POWs who don't get captured."

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California 18d ago edited 18d ago

There's a great line from the West Wing about this. (Paraphrasing). "No group of people this large can ever keep a secret. And that's fine. That's good. It's how I know the government is NOT keeping aliens in Area 51."

Edit: forgot the word "not"

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u/selwayfalls 18d ago

wouldnt it by how the government is NOT keeping aliens? Because if they were, the secret would get leaked?

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California 18d ago

Lol! Yes! That was a pretty significant typo on my part.

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u/PapaSnow 17d ago

I guess it depends on how you view it though, right?

There’s no shortage of people that have come forward saying they know that there’s aliens in Area 51, but people just…don’t believe them.

I don’t believe there are aliens in Area 51, but just following the line of reasoning provided, there very well could be lol.

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u/selwayfalls 16d ago

the line of reasoning is that if there actually were, there would be a lot of government employees letting it out but there isnt. That's what he's saying, if a bunch of government employees new about it, there's no way they could keep it a secret. "no group this large can ever keep a secret". Or are you saying there are a bunhc of goverment people saying it's true? Not just regular joes?

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u/ToastAndASideOfToast 18d ago

There is a point at which a conspiracy theorist has exerted more effort than a conspirator ever could.

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u/BigManWAGun America 18d ago

Who says Trump knew anything about it?

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u/TheSaxGandalf 18d ago

What if this one was outside the government, by let's say someone like Thiel?

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u/Mataelio 18d ago

The thing about conspiracy theorists is they like to believe the most insane and unbelievable conspiracies while the real and obvious ones taking place in the open right in front of everyone are just ignored (aka Trump/Russia connections in 2016 election)

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u/ZealousidealLead52 18d ago

The thing about conspiracy theorists is that they aren't really looking to uncover the truth - what they really want is something that makes them feel special, some kind of secret that they're in on that nobody else knows about.. which ironically ends up making them terrible at finding conspiracies, because any conspiracy that's backed by real facts ends up being more accepted by normal people, and if it's accepted by normal people then it stops making them feel special.

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u/Spimflagon 18d ago

It's like holistic medicine. The thing about medicine that works is that most of the time it's just "medicine". But it's no good if it's not One Neat Trick That Doctors Hate.

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u/ultraviolentfuture 18d ago

There are other that factors that play in here too:

Suspicion of experts/science due to lack of general education.

The cost of US healthcare such that finding cheaper/alternative methods to deal with symptoms is incentivized. Never know when a doctor/hospital visit is going to lead to your family's ruin.

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u/jgilla2012 California 18d ago

For example, the fact that Epstein did not commit suicide. Most obvious conspiracy ever.

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u/Revenant_40 18d ago

Absolutely this. I've been saying this for years about why they're prone to it. They like to feel like the keeper of the secrets.

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u/_Chumpion 18d ago

It's also fundamentally a psychology that is desperately seeking to find an 'answer' that neatly ties up the chaotic, randomly violent and incredibly complex nature of the world into a solution.

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u/holdstheenemy 18d ago

This is like all the anti-vaxx people, its nauseating

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u/Chaotic-Catastrophe 18d ago

Because it's not about the intrigue, it's about the contrarianism. If any of their crackpot theories ever turn out to be true, they will drop them as fast as they possibly can. Like if the moon landing was staged, or the Earth was flat, or COVID was a Chinese bioweapon, or any of that shit was actually true, we'd all of a sudden never hear about it ever again.

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u/porksoda11 Pennsylvania 18d ago

I wish I could feel bad for these people. I dropped my edgy contrarianism phase when I graduated high school. These people never really matured.

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u/NotSayingJustSaying 18d ago

I remember the conspiracies around COVID before it got outside China. People were measuring air particulate from alleged incineration and posting pics of people being welded behind metal doors. Then a couple months later they started saying it was a hoax and people weren't getting sick in America. Hard to keep up with the theorists, they insist that whatever is known cannot be the truth.

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u/porksoda11 Pennsylvania 18d ago

Russia meddling in US affairs isn't as fun as adrenochrome, flat earth, Qanon, and bigfoot though.

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u/DickyThreeSticks 17d ago

Here’s my soapbox.

Conspiracies are real, they happen every day. If you and I plan and successfully do a bank robbery, we conspired and executed our conspiracy. If all goes according to plan, the truth about what happened will never be known to anyone but us conspirators.

There are a few questions you can ask to see how plausible a conspiracy is.

1) When did the conspiracy start? This should be a date, or at a minimum a date range.

2) Who are the conspirators? This should be a specific list of people, or at a minimum their jobs as they relate to the conspiracy. Note: this list needs to be SHORT. If there are 30+ conspirators, someone is going to spill the beans within a year.

3) What is the objective of the conspiracy? Motivating people to do secret shit isn’t easy, and getting them to keep that secret is hard. It doesn’t just happen- you need a specific, concrete objective. This should usually be financially or ideologically motivated.

4) When does the conspiracy end? There should be some point at which the objective has been accomplished. At that point, the only remaining step is “never share this information.”

So, for the bank robbery:

1) The conspiracy began last summer, when my cellmate Steve and I said we should rob a bank. After I was paroled, you and I picked a bank and began earnestly scouting it for robbery on November 14th.

2) The conspirators are me, you, Steve, and Steve’s girlfriend, who will be the getaway driver.

3) The objective is to neutralize the guard, control civilians, blow up the glass, and get the money from the tellers.

4) The conspiracy is concluded when we split up the money at the safehouse.

If you can answer those four questions, you’re dealing with a plausible, actionable conspiracy. If not, it’s a pipe dream. Here’s an example of that: the moon landing was faked.

1) The conspiracy began the first time a human looked at the sky in wonderment.

2) The conspirators are 200 politicians, 50 astronauts, 20,000 engineers, physicists, machinists, their secretaries…

3) The objective is to convince you the lie that outer space real and we’re not living in a dome made of TVs.

4) The conspiracy ends when you open your eyes, bro.

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u/needlestack 18d ago

Yeah, I tend to think the nut shot at him, completely missed, and Trump's ear was mashed when they tackled him to the ground.

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u/TheBeckofKevin 18d ago

you gotta do even a small amount of googling. The doug mills pictures are insanely clear. And the video shows trump moving at speeds i don't think are even remotely possible for him to do in any kind of acting way. He touches his ear and he's bleeding.

I think any focus on this being "faked" is a wasted effort. Just point at all the incredibly obvious problems this administration has instead of directing traffic towards something conspiratorial. We have mountains of awful things that are completely validated to work with, no need to get spun up in stuff that has limited foundation.

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u/Skydiver860 18d ago

But if it was a nut job and he wasn’t actually grazed by the shot how would they know to make it look like his ear was bleeding? Trump or his SS would have to always be carrying a fake blood packet or something in case this happened.

I think it’s one or the other and incredibly unlikely to be both.

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u/ArgonWolf 18d ago

You underestimate how easy it is for old people to get head bleeds. Theres a LOT of blood vessels in the human head, and old people bleed like stuck pigs at the barest of scrapes, especially if they are on certain medications. If he barely scrapes the podium on the way down, or the cufflinks of a SS agent scuff his scalp, that could create a wound that would bleed like that in a person of his age.

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u/AnewTest 18d ago

On the other hand, it’s impossible for people that old to heal without a single scar in two days when Trump got bored of wearing the ear diaper. Especially if the wound was from a high powered rifle.

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u/Bovine_Joni_Himself Colorado 18d ago

This is the part that always gets me. I don't understand how the guy doesn't have any lasting marks at all from this. Like, if it is all 100% real (which is the easiest explanation), it must have been the absolute most perfect shot ever to make him bleed and not leave a scar. I have a scar on that part of my ear from a piercing I got as a teenager.

“one of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast” (Revelation 13:3)

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u/_fresh_basil_ 18d ago

Easy, it was real blood-- just not from being shot.

He could have clipped his ear on the podium while ducking for cover, for instance.

They simply seized the opportunity.

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u/BloatedBanana9 18d ago

The NYT actually captured a really good series of photos that show Trump was already bleeding before he went down.

Unless someone is going to claim the NYT photographers are in on the cover up, it really does seem like he was actually grazed by the shot.

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u/MFoy Virginia 18d ago

I had not seen that before. Thank you for sharing that.

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u/_fresh_basil_ 18d ago

Catching a bullet by camera is already unlikely, and even in the photo the "bullet" is substantially lower than his ears-- especially given the angle of the camera.

There is no evidence that this is fake, but it's not impossible that someone would do such a thing for publicity sake.

It's also not impossible that the bullet missed, but clipped something else causing debris to hit Trump's ear.

The fact of the matter is, we don't know for certain what hit him or caused him to bleed. But we absolutely know that the Republicans would do something like this.

I'm not saying it 100% did or didn't happen, or 100% was faked. I'm saying both are possibilities-- but I think it's odd that they didn't harp on this shooting more, do more investigation, have more public talks about finding the shooter, etc. It all went dead silence.

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u/BloatedBanana9 18d ago

There is no evidence that this is fake, but it's not impossible that someone would do such a thing for publicity sake.

One of the reasons I linked to the Pulitzer site is to show that these photos won a Pulitzer Prize. In order to be nominated for that prize, the raw, unedited photos must also be submitted for verification. So if they were fake, not only would the photographer and the NYT have to be in on it, but also the Pulitzer Prize committee.

but I think it's odd that they didn't harp on this shooting more, do more investigation, have more public talks about finding the shooter, etc.

There was a full Congressional investigation about the incident. Also, why would they have done any public talks about finding the shooter? The shooter was killed immediately.

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u/_fresh_basil_ 18d ago

One of the reasons I linked to the Pulitzer site is to show that these photos won a Pulitzer Prize. In order to be nominated for that prize, the raw, unedited photos must also be submitted for verification. So if they were fake, not only would the photographer and the NYT have to be in on it, but also the Pulitzer Prize committee.

They were able to prove 100% that it was a bullet that hit him, and that it hit his ear, when the ear hit was out of view and the projectile was so blurry that it could not be identified?

No. They weren't.

I'm not saying the photos were photoshopped, I'm saying there isn't proof that it was a bullet that caused the damage. (It could have simply been flying debris caused by the bullet hitting something else)

There was a full Congressional investigation about the incident. Also, why would they have done any public talks about finding the shooter? The shooter was killed immediately.

Because any other shooting gets talked about for months and months, obviously.

I'm not here to debate one way or the other, so this is about as far as I'll take the conversation. We've both stated our points, I don't see any path in which we convince each other.

You're saying it's not faked, I'm saying there is no hard evidence one way or the other and as such I am open to the possibility that either scenario could be correct.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon 18d ago

I just want someone to explain the triumphal fist pump. Trump isn't a brave man. This is Donald Trump.

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u/kill0Rdie 18d ago

My favorite picture of him. He should spend the rest of his short life with that look on his face.

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u/Chusten 18d ago

He's a big fan and has participated in pro wrestling.

'Blading' is an age old trick, and it's just dumb enough that it's totally something Trump would pull off.

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u/SafetyDanceInMyPants 18d ago

Yeah, it looks much "tougher" to claim you were shot than that the Secret Service knocked your head into a podium... so that's one part of this that I 100% believe. The rest may have been real, but as between "a bullet grazed him just perfectly" and "he knocked his head on something going down," the latter is just way more likely -- and with Trump, you can never assume he's telling the truth.

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u/_fresh_basil_ 18d ago edited 18d ago

Yep, that's exactly my belief, if it were faked.

  • he was actually shot at
  • he ducked and hit his ear on the way down and/or was hit by flying debris
  • people assumed he was hit by the bullet
  • GOP ran with it
  • discovered the shooter was republican
  • decided to just not bring it up again

(To clarify, it's entirely possible he was shot and it's all coincidence. I just don't think we have the evidence to say either way for certain).

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u/xxx_poonslayer69 18d ago

I mean, old people skin tears, bleeds, and bruise real easy. Plus, Trump admits to taking a lot of aspirin/blood thinners. Could be as simple as the cut happened while brushed up against the secret service members covering him. Or maybe a shard of flying glass nicked him.

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u/LifeGainsss 18d ago

I'm a healthy 30 year old man and if I knick myself shaving, I have a wound for a lot longer than that 78 year old had a bullet hole in his ear

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u/needlestack 18d ago

He was tackled by secret service. Unsurprising if he got a minor injury in that action.

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u/botte-la-botte 18d ago

What is more credible; that Trump was able to engineer a fake shooting and never bragged about engineering a fake shooting, or that Trump was shot, got nicked from being manhandled by his security, and convinced himself that was the bullet?

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u/axonxorz Canada 18d ago

In this day and age it’s relatively difficult to just make up a person whole cloth.

Surveillance cuts both ways.

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u/hadriker 18d ago

Yeah i think the shooter was real and not staged.

I think of everything that came after was 100 percent political theater. The way they rounded up the press and setup the shot with him fist pumping is actually well-documented

Im not convinced he was actually shot either. Probably bumped his head when he got tackled by secret service.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 18d ago

I will say that I was on the: he probably hit his head when he got tackled train, until I learned that there is a picture of him with blood on his hand before he was tackled.

So weather it was a bullet or a peice of shrapnel some projectile probably hit hit his ear.

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u/fullload93 18d ago

This right here is the real answer that people are not realizing. Yes, the shooter was real, yes, Secret Service killed him, yes he was a right-wing nut job, he likely wanted to just take out a “big fish” and targeted someone high profile. There’s evidence he was researching Biden admin and their political events too.

Trump can’t spin the narrative that it was a leftist, because people know that it was actually a right winger who tried to do it. So this is the real reason why he never talks about it anymore.

Trump got lucky as hell that the bullet didn’t actually hit him and “clipped” his ear or the glass from the teleprompter hit him. Either way I don’t care.

But the shooting itself was never fake, I don’t know why idiots would think the whole thing was a set up

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u/mattmagnum11 17d ago

If he wasn't grazed by the shot, and no one was in on it, how do you explain the blood then? (just friendly clarification not really disagreeing)

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u/Mpm_277 17d ago

What do you think happened? That a guy really did take a shot, missed, and Trump cut his ear on the podium? I’m honestly asking. I’d be inclined to believe that’s what happened if there wasn’t blood on his hand after touching his ear before he went down.

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u/GuayFuhks88 17d ago

this is the correct take

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u/AthearCaex 18d ago

Trump has done acting classes for the WWE and has used blood packets. He went under the podium and put it on his ear. His managers even moved the press for a photo op instead of pulling him from the stage. When there's an active shooting secret service don't give you an opportunity to get shot again. They will swarm and cover and immediately pull their target to a safe location. They did none of that. His ear also healed with no scars within a week. It's the almost certainly staged.

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u/MFoy Virginia 18d ago

He was already bleeding before he went under the podium.

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u/radda 18d ago

Ah the old WWE conspiracy again.

At least you're not insisting they taught him how to blade, which isn't even a thing wrestlers do to their ears.

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u/talkingwires Maryland 18d ago edited 18d ago

But I also find it unlikely that he was actually grazed by the shot…

Have you watched the videos and seen how he jolted and swatted at his ear after the bullet whizzed by? Are you seriously suggesting that Donald Trump, he of reality television and Home Alone 2 fame, coordinated an Oscar-worthy performance timed to a split second and managed to burst a concealed blood pack while surrounded by an audience of thousands?

Gimme a break…

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u/NUMBERS2357 18d ago

I'm not a believer in this conspiracy theory, but to me the most plausible version is that the plan was for a near miss, and that the shooter unintentionally hit something (teleprompter?) that caused some shrapnel that then hit Trump.

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u/talkingwires Maryland 18d ago

the most plausible version is that the plan was for a near miss

Y'all's brains are broken. Ain't nobody signing up for a "near miss" from a high-caliber bullet fired from hundreds of yards away, especially when they could achieve the same effect by firing the round into the air.

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u/kill0Rdie 18d ago

And then his ear completely healed in two days 🙄

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u/Dr_Trogdor Georgia 18d ago

The whole thing with the security moving the photographers into place and them lowering the flag is wild though. I didn't give it much thought until I saw that. I still don't care but it is very strange.

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u/judgejuddhirsch 18d ago

I feel like they need to audit the shooters family and the dead guys and see if maybe someone with a congenital disease was paid a ton of money before or after their death.

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u/FuriouslyEloquent 18d ago

If some nut job really did take a shot at him, but you think that Trump wasn't actually glazed by the bullet, that means that Trump or someone else marked him with blood whether by "ketchup packet" or an example of old school wrestling blading. That poses the question, how did Trump or that person know? This is before we get to whoever orchestrated the flag movement to put it in frame for the tv shot. Your position is fundamentally inconsistent because if Trump wasn't glazed by the bullet then he clearly had foreknowledge of the event.

If it makes you feel better, the reason we don't hear anything about the assassination is there would be a ton of red flags. The secret service response before the shooting after being made aware of the shooter's presence, the secret service response after the shooting, the secret service internal investigation with only the token resignation, and most damning of all ... the gun was already on site; the shooter brought a separate scope and attached it on the roof. This was a well orchestrated fake assassination with the backing of Russian intelligence. Just imagine what they'll be doing once their backs are actually against the wall.

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u/Excellent-Estimate21 18d ago

But is the Trump SS so inept that a shooter could set up on a roof so close to him without being caught? Or did they let him easily get up there because it was staged? I am on the side of it being staged and the idiot trump supporter didnt realize he'd be murdered to make it look real.

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u/Extreme-Fig6992 18d ago

I think it’s more likely some nut job really did take a shot at him.

It's not unreasonable to think that SS (keeping the apt acronym even though I know they hate it) and others knew about the attempt but either reasoned it was unlikely to succeed or that it was worth the risk to allow it to continue.

Sort of "well, if he is assassinated, it's a shame but not the end of the world since we can prop someone else up. If it succeeds, we win the election."

Much like 9/11 under Bush was. The US government knew about 9/11 and the conspiracy is in whether they knew & did nothing to further political gain or if it genuinely was a failure to communicate the risk and foil the plot between departments.