The Trump False Flag Conspiracy Theory Is So Stupid

By Jacob Weindling  |  July 14, 2024 | 1:40pm
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Big Story Attempted Trump Assassination
The Trump False Flag Conspiracy Theory Is So Stupid

In times of crisis, it is natural to question what you are witnessing. The very nature of crises is that they radically shift our shared reality, and the change is so dramatic that it takes days, weeks, years, or even generations for it to fully set in. The doubt evoked by its unreality is proportional to the scale of the crisis, and yesterday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has opened the window into a new world filled with unlimited and terrifying possibilities.

On a certain level I do sympathize with those convinced this was staged, because the images coming out of it are so dramatic and iconic that a part of your brain cannot help but reject them as an organic result of the gears of our universe. There are a lot of horrifying thoughts one can extrapolate from this new world we have woken up in today, but logic is still a thing, and for those of you saying this was staged, consider what you’re proposing here.

Do you really think that Trump would sign off on a plan where someone fired a bullet an inch away from his head from 400 feet? Jared Yates Sexton excellently detailed for Splinter today how Trump’s cult creates its own delusions and the dangers that spring from this moment, and today I am seeing echoes of this blind madness creating a self-serving conspiratorial narrative across the entire anti-Trump spectrum too.

The staggering ineptitude on display by the Secret Service does make the notion that this was an inside job or some other nefarious plot much more difficult to rebut, but I promise you that any rudimentary examination of modern history reveals that this was just the most incompetent government agency’s luck running out. They have already metaphorically dodged many bullets in the past, it was inevitable that their incompetence would force someone to have to dodge a literal one.

The video and pictures of his injury push back against the absurd notion that Trump reached back into his professional wrestling days and bladed himself while diving on the ground to sell the damage of the supposed orchestrated gunshots. It also disrespects the victims, two injured and one dead, and assumes that they were either necessary or accepted or invented collateral damage to make the whole illusion seem real. We live in a country with more guns than people, Occam’s Razor in any shooting will always be that it is real and organic.

In the initial moments, some pointed to the crowd behind him not reacting like they were being shot at as proof this was staged, but still adhering to this belief demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what we know happened. The gunshots came from his side, so unless they were fired directly at the bleachers behind him, the bullet could not have traveled in that direction without deflecting off of something first. Many still point to Trump stopping after the gunshots, defiantly raising his fist in the air and yelling “fight,” as proof that this could not be reality, and anyone under heavy gunfire would not stand up and do that, therefore the images from this moment are too iconic to be believed.

The problem with this theory is that we have the complete audio from the entire assassination attempt, and you can very clearly hear the Secret Service saying “shooter’s down” as they start to move him out. Trump heard a bunch of gunshots, felt pain, then heard more gunshots, and then heard the Secret Service say it was safe to move out. Even his addled brain can comprehend what likely occurred between the first gunshot and the last. He clearly believed he was safe, because the Secret Service said so.

That people are aghast at his presence of mind to create an enduring political moment that will reverberate throughout history says more about the person making the accusation than Trump, as he has long since proven he has incredible political instincts en route to trouncing both of America’s major political parties. The man is a monster, but he is also a special political talent, and yesterday’s surreal moment is proof positive of it.

To believe the conspiracy that Trump staged a false flag requires QAnon-levels of deluded logic. First, you must believe that the most self-centered man in America would sign off on a plan to fire a bullet at his head. Next you would have to assume someone was a good enough shot to just nick his ear without killing him or even blowing his ear to smithereens. Even if you hired the best sniper in the world there is a decent chance that the mild crosswind from the shooter’s position would push the bullet just enough off its intended course and into Trump’s brain.

Third, the sprawling federal investigation that has sprung up in its wake will comb over every nanometer of the shooter’s life, and the operational aspect of this harebrained plan would have to be flawless to escape scrutiny. The precision required to pull this supposed false flag off is superhuman, and it is far likelier that the randomness of life in America led to this astonishing result than calculated planning did.

Reality shattered yesterday, I get it. I’m still having trouble processing the fact that we were centimeters away from watching a bullet pass through Trump’s head on live TV. This picture is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. Every time I look at it I can feel a part of my brain rejecting its fundamental premise.

But it is real. Just like the gun the police found and the dead body next to it, which according to the FBI is 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. We don’t know why Crooks did this, and it’s important to remember Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassin John Hinckley Jr. did it to get Jodie Foster’s attention so literally anything is possible, but he did it. There is an immense amount of physical, audio and video evidence proving that an attempt was made on the former president’s life. Denying this to be true takes us down a dark path of which I’m not sure we could ever return from.

 
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