Trump's tumble a damaging display of weakness as shooting fails to resuscitate ratings
Ever since an alleged assassin fired a gun during the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, conspiracy theorists have claimed the whole event was staged. Yet as one conservative critic of Trump pointed out, the president simply isn’t bright enough to orchestrate a plot that sophisticated.
“These guys aren't that smart,” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller said on Wednesday. “These guys can't do anything. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House the only person getting anything done? It's like these guys are incompetent on all levels.” For this reason, Miller expressed doubt that the administration could keep a secret as massive as faking an assassination attempt.
“Donald Trump can't keep any secrets,” Miller observed. “He blurts everything out. Like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the Butler thing was a false flag and one of the pieces that of evidence was that [Thomas] Crooks doesn't have a long internet history. This guy Cole Allen has a huge internet history.”
Additionally, Miller doubted that suspect Cole Allen would be willing to go to jail for life in order to be a patsy for a staged murder attempt.
“It seems like if he wanted to get out of that, he could just tell his lawyer like, ‘Hey, this was a false flag attempt at [FBI Director Kash Patel]. I was drunk one night and Kash offered and told me to do this. And I did it on a lark,’” Miller explained. Finally, he doubted that Trump’s approval ratings would benefit from a shooting attempt.
“Who is the voter that's going to change their mind about Donald Trump because of a shooting attempt?” Miller pointed out. “People have other concerns that they're focused on. You can understand [the] sympathy assessment in the poll,” but people can simultaneously oppose a president’s policies and not wish physical harm to befall him. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Americans feel exactly that way.
“Trump’s focus on his planned redecoration in the face of an apparent attempt on his life – the third in less than two years — has provoked a barrage of conspiracy theories,” The Telegraph's Ed Cumming reported on Monday. The president unintentionally fanned the flames by using the shooting as an excuse to push for a White House ballroom, one of his longtime pet projects.
“The most prominent is that Trump and his administration staged the attack to help shore up the ballroom project, which he hopes to have completed before he leaves office in early 2029,” Cumming said. “Authorities have stated they believe Allen acted alone and left a ‘manifesto’ in which he clearly stated he wanted to target officials in the Trump administration. But according to a report by The New York Times, the term ‘staged’ appeared in more than 300,000 posts on X by noon on Sunday.”
Cumming added, “On Bluesky, the social media network with a more Left-wing user base, many posts simply stated ‘staged’. Several prominent accounts reshared theories — without evidence — that were skeptical of the official version of events.”