Skepticism

BlueAnon’s Silly Trump Assassination Conspiracy Theories

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Look, this is totally my fault for leaving town for five days on a little vacation, thus missing four to five major world-altering events that would make for appropriate video topics. Pardon me while I draw your attention alllll the way back to…two weeks ago? When a former president and current Republican nominee for president came within a few millimeters of being assassinated. Remember that? No? Well, it happened.

It was a sudden and scary event that, like a lot of sudden and scary events these days, happened on camera and was immediately seen by people around the world before we had any information to put it into any kind of context. And you know what that means: much like darkness and dampness are a breeding ground for mold, ignorance and fear are a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

In the past few years, conspiracy theories have been completely dominated by far right conservatives: COVID is a bioweapon, vaccines are zombie-makers, Trump won the 2020 election, Democrats are running a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor, you know, normal stuff. The last great liberal conspiracy theory was that 9/11 was an inside job, which is now just a Gen Z joke that I personally do find very (darkly) funny. Oh, and I guess liberals also had a brief period where they had the anti-vaccine market cornered but in retrospect that was a flash in the pan.

Anyway, no political persuasion is fully immune from the siren call of the conspiracy, and the Trump assassination attempt was an event that truly brought out the craziness on the left. Let me start by saying I get it: this was an incredibly cinematic chain of events. The Secret Service failed to clear this one building with a rooftop just perfect for sniping from, they failed to respond promptly to people pointing out the gunman, one shot seemed to just barely graze Trump’s ear, and Trump was able to stand up and raise a fist for a perfect photo op in front of the American flag. What are the chances of all that happening? Well, 100%. The chance was 100%, because that’s what happened.

Yes, it all SEEMS way too scripted, but yeah, this is what happens when the following takes place:

First, American politicians decided that guns were more important than kindergartners, so assault rifles are relatively cheap and easy to get.

Then, they decided that mental health, like regular health, is a luxury item that only the rich get to have.

Then in 2016, Trump was elected and he made the Secret Service follow all of his many family members around the world and stay in Trump’s own properties at exorbitant cost, leading to severe budget shortfalls and an inability to pay hundreds of agents, many of whom resigned en masse.

Trump then gutted the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, and fired many high-level people including the head of the Secret Service, who Trump called “Dumbo,” with no notice or explanation.

Then Trump spent eight years spreading violent rhetoric, calling neo-Nazis “very good people,” encouraging the Proud Boys to “stand by,” praising violent dictators, encouraging cops to abuse protestors, literally starting a riot on January 6th that resulted in several deaths, saying it’ll be a bloodbath if he doesn’t get elected this time, I mean, I could go on but you were there. You saw it.

When you add all these events up, they equal an inexperienced and underfunded Secret Service that failed to handle a confused, angry man with a gun.

But that explanation is boring, and facing it requires us to face the fact that our politicians have failed us quite horrifically, and preventing something like this from happening again means making huge systemic changes to the way our “democracy” works. Much easier to understand is this alternative: Donald Trump is a big fat lying megalomaniac and so he set this whole thing up to seize power.

I immediately saw claims that the assassination attempt was a “false flag” on social media, but as the Washington Post reported, even influential Dem insiders were spreading the conspiracy:

“Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political adviser to Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, encouraged supporters in an email late Saturday to consider the “possibility — which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally — … that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”

“He added: “NOT ONE NEWSPAPER OR OPINION LEADER IN AMERICA IS WILLING TO OPENLY CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT TRUMP AND PUTIN STAGED THIS ON PURPOSE. Ask the question, people.””

The caps really sell the idea that this is in no way a completely bonkers conspiracy theory that your great uncle might shout at you after his fourth whiskey.

Here’s what would be required for this to have been staged: Trump convinced or brainwashed a 20-year old loser, who was a registered Republican who had Googled both Trump and Biden and the JFK assassination, to bring a real rifle to his rally and actually fire it AT TRUMP’S HEAD. We know it was a real rifle with real bullets due to the fact that two people in the crowd were injured and one straight up died, unless you believe that the Secret Service shot those people in order to really sell the con. Then Trump would use a fake blood capsule or something to smear on his ear, and then he and the agents act both physically and verbally for the microphones, as if he’s struggling with the agents and they’re frantically attempting to confirm with their colleagues (who are also acting) that the shooter has been killed.

There is no reasonable way to engage with that conspiracy theory. It is, on its face, ridiculous, and it’s embarrassing that so many libs didn’t spend 10 seconds thinking it through before spreading it online.

There’s one other lefty conspiracy floating around, which is that Trump WAS shot at, but the bullet didn’t graze his ear. Instead, this one goes, the bullet hit a teleprompter, which threw off shards of glass that hit his ear. The source was supposedly a Pennsylvania police source speaking to Newsmax, that bastion of hard-hitting journalism, with no other evidence to support it. Both teleprompters were clearly in frame after the shots were fired and appear completely undamaged, but this conspiracy still whipped around liberal social media. This post illustrates why this lie was so delicious:

“Trump was shot at. Nearly killed. Others were shot & killed or wounded.

He was lightly injured by flying debris/shards of glass. If an AR round had winged him it would have been a much worse injury. He didn’t “take a bullet for you”. He took a shard for you. Am I wrong?”

People like this wanted to downplay the actual threat and injury because they wanted to stop MAGAs from hoisting up Trump as some kind of hero. And they’re right to want to do that: being shot at doesn’t make anyone a hero. But the way to fight that narrative isn’t to just spread misinformation about the actual injury that actually happened. It’s wrong, AND even if that rumor had happened to be right, so what? A former president coming that close to getting headshot IS STILL A VERY BIG DEAL! There’s still a question as to whether or not it may have been shrapnel, but it DOESN’T MATTER! Trump DID almost die! You’re not going to change anyone’s mind who literally thinks that God Himself saved Trump’s life. You can’t even convince them by asking if God specifically wanted that other guy to die. They do not care. Move on.

It’s pathetic but also very interesting to me that “BlueAnon” is actually happening. I noticed it ramping up after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, with people accusing me of being a Russian asset just for being horrified at what I saw. A lot of commenters here and on social media insisted that for the good of the country I should either be quiet or just straight up lie about what I thought, which, sorry, that’s just never gonna happen. If someone pointed a gun at me and told me to make a video saying something I know is misinformation I’m just gonna have to die, sorry. But for a lot of liberals, that kind of ethical decision goes the other way. They’re happy to play the same game that the far right plays because they think it’s the only way to beat them. 

And that’s where the conspiracies started, too, with people claiming Biden had been drugged before the debate, and then claiming that ABC screwed with his audio in his disastrous follow-up interview that was meant to make us all feel better.

I suspect this liberal dive into territory formerly dominated by the far right is due to similar reasons the far right went there in the first place: they fell into an echo chamber, saw an existential threat coming, and got scared.

I DO see Trump as an existential threat, and I DO think that we can learn lessons on how to fight them by seeing how the far right got as much power as they have now. But the lesson isn’t to use misinformation or fall back into comforting conspiracy theories. The lesson is to fight harder, to not back down, to canvas our neighborhoods, to tell our stories, to fund better candidates, to show up and vote for every position from the US president down to the school board, and to then annoy the living shit out of our politicians to make them do what we want. That’s how the Religious Right did it and that’s how we can do it.

I’ll conclude by noting that this incident also kicked up a bunch of far right conspiracy theories because that’s literally all the far right does these days: they invest in pyramid schemes and make up conspiracy theories, and they’re all out of pyramid schemes.

Just kidding, the far right pyramid schemes will never run out.

Early rumors were that the shooter was antifa, when in fact his high school classmates described him as being very conservative. They postulated that Biden had ordered the hit, which only makes sense if you also believe that Biden is competent enough to orchestrate an assassination of a political rival but senile enough to hire a 20-year old dork who seemed to have also considered killing Biden himself. Though to be fair, most far right conspiracies about Biden require him to basically be like Harvey Dent if the normal half of him was just really old and sleepy.

Unlike with the liberal conspiracies, the rightwing ones are getting boosted by prominent people like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and Jesse Watters on Fox News. As Jeff Sharlet points out, they have a good reason to do it: “…the effect for Fox viewers is to make clarity impossible—thus increasing the longing for a strongman to set it right.”

So yeah, it seems like this assassination attempt really brought the country together, with both left and right posting completely ridiculous conspiracy theories because they’re scared and want an adult to step in and make everything better. It’s beautiful, in a way. Anyway please don’t shoot anyone and vote for democrats in November, thanks bye.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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