https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/15/us/trump-shooting-investigation#trump-shooting-conspiracy-theoriesFour minutes after the first report of a shooting at a rally for Donald J. Trump on Saturday, an anonymous account on X posted, “Joe Biden’s antifa shot President Trump.”Within half an hour, another account on X with links to the QAnon conspiracy theory claimed without proof that the attack against Mr. Trump had most likely been ordered by the Central Intelligence Agency. Shortly after that, the far-right activist Laura Loomer posted on X about some recent remarks that President Biden made about Mr. Trump and then wrote, “They tried to kill Trump.” She did not provide evidence.An hour later, with official details of the assassination attempt still scant, the narrative that President Biden and his allies had engineered the attack on Mr. Trump was being amplified by Republican lawmakers, Russian sympathizers and even a Brazilian political scion. By the time 24 hours had elapsed, posts about the unverified claim had been viewed and shared millions of times.The idea that President Biden was behind the shooting of Mr. Trump was perhaps the most dominant conspiracy theory to emerge after the attack in Butler, Pa., on Saturday. The unproven conjecture surfaced almost instantly, hardened into a narrative and then catapulted between platforms large and small, even as information about the incident was limited. It was a striking example of the speed, scale and stickiness of rumors on social media, which often calcify into accepted truth far more efficiently than efforts to debunk or pleas for restraint.
That the subject this time was Mr. Trump, who frequently claims to be victimized by powerful forces while demonizing his enemies, only helped fuel the conspiracy theory. Its acceleration was also enabled by years of distrust stemming from tales of shadowy cabals of elites — which Mr. Trump has called “the deep state” — engaged in nefarious plots.“The result was a perfect storm of righteous fury, blame-casting and conspiratorialism, at a moment when absolutely everyone was paying attention,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who studies online ecosystems.Baseless claims of a left-sanctioned hit job on Mr. Trump were only part of “a massive online spread of false claims” about the shooting, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research group. References to false assassination narratives amassed more than 100 million views in 24 hours on X alone, the group said on Monday. That far exceeded the 35.1 million views for content related to false flag rumors and other conspiracy theories after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.Other unsubstantiated theories about the shooting were fueled in part by left-wing accounts, including that Mr. Trump had deliberately staged the shooting to improve his election chances, slashing his ear with a hidden razor, popping a concealed blood capsule or otherwise fabricating a fake gunshot wound. Fingers were also pointed at other imagined culprits, including the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Jews, trans people and Ukrainians.
But the unverified story line that President Biden and the Democrats were responsible stood out. According to the data firm PeakMetrics, the largest portion of discussion about the shooting on X and Telegram in the first seven hours — about 17 percent — involved expressions of solidarity and prayers for Mr. Trump. The next largest chunk, about 5 percent, accused Democrats of instigating the violence.On July 12 and July 13 — the day of the shooting — there were 83,000 mentions on X of the phrase “inside job,” a 3,228 percent increase compared to the 48-hour period immediately prior, according to NewsGuard, which monitors online misinformation.In a statement, a Biden campaign official said that after “this horrifying attack, anyone — especially elected officials with national platforms — politicizing this tragedy, spreading disinformation, and seeking to further divide Americans isn’t just unacceptable — it’s an abdication of leadership.”The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Adam Berinsky, a political science professor and misinformation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the rapid spread of conspiracy theories online reflected widespread political division.“It says a lot about our current political moment that the politicization at the extremes is the natural default,” he said.The timeline of the conspiracy theory focused on Mr. Biden and the Democrats’ culpability was documented by think tanks, private companies that monitor misinformation and research groups, including Advance Democracy, the Anti-Defamation League, the Atlantic Council and Cyabra.
The first signs of that unproven idea emerged minutes after gunshots sounded at Mr. Trump’s rally on Saturday.6:11 p.m. Gunshots ring out.6:15 p.m. An anonymous X account pointed fingers at Mr. Biden’s “antifa,” a reference to the loosely organized left-wing anti-fascist movement, for the attack.6:19 p.m. A user in a Trump fan forum called Patriots.win wrote, “I guess they really do want war.”6:33 p.m. A pro-police group with 107,000 followers on X criticized “those who have been using inflammatory, dehumanizing rhetoric creating an atmosphere for violence.”6:34 p.m. Another account on X made the outlandish claims, without proof, that the Central Intelligence Agency had been involved, and also accused Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama of having tried to kill Mr. Trump.
>>1315840>amplified by Republican lawmakers, Russian sympathizersWhy do the Republicans always conspire with the Russians?
6:45 p.m. Laura Loomer wrote on X about President Biden’s comment to donors earlier in the week that “it’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” She did not mention that Mr. Biden had made the remark as part of an appeal to pivot public focus away from his disastrous debate performance last month and toward his political rival.Minutes later, Ms. Loomer, who has just under one million followers on X, said that “they tried to kill Trump,” suggesting that the attack was arranged by the Democrats to take attention away from Mr. Biden’s age.“Do I think the rhetoric led to this? Yes, I do,” Ms. Loomer said in an interview on Monday. “A bull’s-eye is a target. It doesn’t matter if it’s a different context, it’s the imagery.”6:47 p.m. After Ms. Loomer’s posts on X, other Biden critics seized on Mr. Biden’s “bull's-eye” language. Representative Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, posted on X that “Joe Biden sent the orders.” His post has been seen more than 16 million times.7:12 p.m. Only an hour had passed when the oldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, the far right former president of Brazil whom Mr. Trump had endorsed, weighed in. Flávio Bolsonaro wrote on X that “the left” tried to kill Mr. Trump.
8:30 p.m. At least six Republican members of Congress had blamed the assassination attempt on rhetoric from Democratic politicians and the media. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was named by Mr. Trump as his vice-presidential pick on Monday, wrote on X that the language used by the Biden campaign “led directly” to the shooting.The post, which has amassed 17 million views, went up hours before the F.B.I. named Thomas Matthew Crooks as its suspect on Sunday. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia also addressed Democrats and the media on X, posting, “YOU are responsible” and “they tried to murder President Trump” (Law enforcement have not offered insight into the motivations of Mr. Crooks, who was a registered Republican.)11:21 p.m. A pro-Russian account on Telegram also mentioned Mr. Biden’s “bull’s-eye” remark, alongside a photo of Mr. Trump’s wounded ear, picking up hundreds of thousands of views. RT, the Russian state television network, later went on X to amplify claims that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were at fault.Some of the conservative voices who lodged the accusations against the president and other Democrats have long histories of aggressive rhetoric themselves. Ms. Greene repeatedly called for executing Democrats before she was elected to Congress. Mr. Collins has endorsed violence toward immigrants. Several, including Ms. Greene and Mr. Vance, are scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.Outside the convention on Monday, Senator Steve Daines, a Republican of Montana, said the speculation online was “not helpful,” adding that “I see no evidence of” Mr. Biden or other Democrats inciting violence.
this, as well as other wild conspiracy theories such as it was "staged" or "a republican did it"
The conspiracy theories have since continued evolving.One strain focused on accusations that Mr. Biden’s team had rejected earlier requests to bolster Mr. Trump’s protective detail, which have been denied by a Secret Service spokesman.Video clips of Candace Owens, a conservative political commentator, declaring that the shooter “was allowed to scale that roof” have also drawn hundreds of thousands of likes on TikTok and Instagram. Similar claims surfaced on the video platform Rumble.By Monday, some social media accounts were hawking merchandise promoting the conspiracy theories. T-shirts with images of a bloodied Mr. Trump raising his fist, with the words “Not Today Deep State,” were on sale on Truth Social. On TikTok, baseball caps with “STAGED,” using the same image of Mr. Trump, were also on offer for $25.___
>>1315844It's a friendship of convenience but it only goes so far
>By Monday, some social media accounts were hawking merchandise promoting the conspiracy theories. T-shirts with images of a bloodied Mr. Trump raising his fist, with the words “Not Today Deep State,” were on sale on Truth Social. On TikTok, baseball caps with “STAGED,” using the same image of Mr. Trump, were also on offer for $25.I was I had zero empathy so I could grift MAGA morons for easy money.
And immediately after JFK was killed democrats blamed Republicans, and kept blaming Republicans for months until they found out it was a left wing communist.It's not an unreasonable belief to initially believe that political opposition kwas responsible for the death of a political candidate Idk what these journos expect out of people
Crazy nutjobs.. thinking the Biden admininstration that has been demonizing Trump for 10 years, hitting him with bullshit fake crimes, trying to steal his properties, make up constant lies about him, AND are in charge of his security detail for that day (where they let the shooter climb on a building 150 yards away and crawl the fuck around for 20 minutes) would somehow be involved is ridiculous russian propaganda straight from bigoted neonazi homophobic MAGA dark nationalists.
Nobody's gonna care when Biden easily wins re-election. I'm sure Trump and his cult will whine about a "stolen election" again. See you all in '28.
>>1315924Interesting friendship that has spanned since Trump took over the party.
>>1316039How does a criminal billionaire convince simps like this one he did nothing wrong?
>>1315847A republican did do it >>1314612.There's irrefutable proof.
>>1316069you mean democrat donor thomas crooks?
>>1316093>>1316104
I don't get why supporters of Donald Trump are celebrating it. It only makes it look more staged.Why on earth would you celebrate the near assassination of your candidate?If he really almost died then that is not something to celebrate.If it was staged then that makes sense to celebrate because you knew he would have been okay the entire time.
>>1316093People who know him even say he was very conservative. He donated to democrats and became a registered republican after that. So he either switched sides or did not know he donated to democrats.There are plenty of videos of Donald Trump with talking about actual violence. So Thomas Crooks was probably of the mind that the answer to real or perceived wrong doings is violence. And he felt slighted by Donald Trump in some way so he decided that he had to take him out.
>>1316127>don't get why supporters of Donald Trump are celebrating What's likely going to become one of the most historic images of a presidential election just got produced and it's showing trump surviving an assassination attempt that occurred in a race against an opponent who already seems half dead.Also, trumps polling is further ahead of biden's now than it ever has been and most of the polling comes in at the end of the week https://files.catbox.moe/5edonp.png
>>1316131It still doesn't make it look any less staged. You think it makes him a martyr or something but you are still celebrating his near death.Even if it is real, imagine what Donny thinks seeing his supporters celebrate that? And that the shooter might have been one his own supporters? You think he is going to be the same man after that?He already wanted vengeance against people who were outwardly against him now imagine what he will do to people who are on his side.Even the media is saying "Dead man's family hasn't heard from Trump but Biden reached out"Did the family check in on Trump? Trump supporters rely so much on him I bet he is sick of them. Like 8 million annoying children who won't let him rest for 2 minutes.
>>1316191>You think that'll sit well with traditionalist Repubs?Don't exist. The Republican party is only sheep and craven opportunists and has been for years if not decades.
>>1316189>It's staged!Ah the whole crisis actor bit, huh?Crazy leftist.
>>1316093Yes, that's right. The man who registered as a republican once he was old enough to vote, and donated to the Dems when he wasn't. I guess Trump had a powerful effect on him and he switched.
>>1316191>There are those who'll vote Democrat no matter whatYes we already have an article on democrat cultists and biden's "blueanon" problem
>>1316189Cringe
>>1316208>blueanonIs this the latest Republican media forced meme?
>>1316282of course, they're avid projectors
>>1316282Yes
>>1316282it's coming from self-hating lefts. the only place i've ever heard it is on hasan and majority report
>>1316283>>1316305please don't samefag here
>>1316407you do
