Some MAGA voters say Trump assassination attempt was staged: 'The truth will come out'

The MAGA movement has long coalesced around conspiracy theories, and recently, many have begun floating a new hypothesis: that the 2024 assassination attempt on future President Donald Trump was staged, and that his administration is now covering it up.

On July 13, 2024, shots rang out during a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, clipping his ear and killing an attendee sitting behind him. The 20-year-old shooter was then killed by the Secret Service, and almost immediately, conspiracy theories began popping up across the internet. MAGA faithful, however, took it as a sign of Trump's divine protection — at least for the time being.

Over the past several months, however, Trump’s appeal has waned with a MAGA that has been disappointed by the president’s foreign military endeavors, economic failings, and bumbling release of the Epstein files. As a result, a growing number of disillusioned MAGA adherents are suggesting that the assassination attempt was faked.

"I think that maybe it was staged," said podcaster Tim Dillon, previously a Trump devotee, in early April. According to Dillon, the time has come for Trump to come out and say that, “Some 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.”

While such claims are growing louder, they aren’t new. In November, Tucker Carlson suggested that the FBI was involved in covering up the facts behind the shooting, posting that the “FBI lied” about the shooter's online habits. The following day, conservative pundit Emerald Robinson went even further, posting that the FBI “did it.”

Now, however, MAGA followers have begun loudly connecting Trump to the supposed plot, particularly after former US National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent resigned from his post and appeared on Carlon’s podcast, during which Kent claimed (without offering evidence) that the investigation into the shooting had been ended before it was concluded.

This prompted QAnon promoter MJ Truth to ask his 100,000 Telegram followers, “How does everyone feel about the narrative surrounding the Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump?” Nearly all replies asserted that the assassination was staged.

“The truth will come out 60+ years from now when we're all dead and nobody really cares anymore … just like JFK!!!!,” wrote one.

Then after Carlson suggested that the Israeli government had “clues” about the shooting, far-right provocateur Candace Owens picked up the conspiracy, claiming that Israeli-American political donor Miriam Adelson was actually behind the attempted assassination. Adelson, proffered Owens, had donated $100 million to Trump in exchange for his support of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and when he reneged, she tried to have him killed.

Ali Alexander — a far-right activist who organized the Stop the Steal campaign after the 2020 presidential election — has a completely different theory: that Trump is the Antichrist.

“If Donald Trump didn’t receive a miracle, then it was deception or a dark sign,” Alexander wrote in a PDF he posted to his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “There is biblical prophecy in Revelation 13:3 apparently about the Antichrist being struck on the head.”

The passage he’s referencing reads, “I 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." Trump has, incidentally, received numerous accusations that he is the Antichrist in recent weeks, though for other reasons.

As WIRED notes, “The vast majority of people discussing conspiracy theories about the shooting today are Trump supporters or former Trump supporters.”