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In recent weeks,<\/span> as criticism of President Donald Trump from his own supporters has reached a fever pitch, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold: Some of the president\u2019s biggest supporters are now claiming, without evidence, that Trump staged the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024 and is covering it up.<\/p>\n During an open-air campaign rally on July 13, 2024, Trump survived an attempted assassination when a bullet fired by a 20-year-old on a roof nearby clipped the top of his ear. Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter sitting near the president, was shot and killed. The shooter was later killed by Secret Service agents. Conspiracy theories around the Butler assassination quickly permeated the internet, but for many Trump supporters, his survival was seen as a sign from God that he was the chosen one.<\/p>\n As Trump\u2019s hold over MAGA has waned, though, an increasing number of his supporters have begun to push the narrative that the entire incident was staged.<\/p>\n “I think that maybe it was staged,” Tim Dillon said on his show last weekend about the assassination attempt. Dillon, who was previously a staunch Trump supporter, went on to share that Trump should now come out and say, \u201cSome 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of these claims began months ago. In November, former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson promoted the idea that the FBI was somehow involved in covering up the shooting, writing on X that the \u201cFBI lied\u201d about the shooter’s online footprint.<\/p>\n A day later, conservative pundit Emerald Robinson went further, posting on X that the FBI \u201cdid it.\u201d (In the same post, Robinson claimed that the agency was responsible for everything from the January 6 attack on the Capitol to \u201cJeffrey Epstein’s blackmail tapes\u201d and the \u201cGov. Whitmer fake kidnap plot.\u201d)<\/p>\n But the claims that Trump had staged the entire thing really picked up steam when former US National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent appeared on Carlson\u2019s podcast last month, one day after he resigned from his position over the Iran war.<\/p>\n During the interview, Carlson and Kent discussed the failure of the Trump administration to provide more details about the Pennsylvania shooter. Kent claimed, without providing any evidence, that investigations into the shooting had been shut down before they finished.<\/p>\n Kent also claimed that this vacuum of information about the incident would lead to more conspiracy theories. \u201cIf you don’t want to address that question, then you just go silent and say you can’t ask that question,\u201d he said. \u201cWhich then creates people who come out of nowhere and they start drawing their own conclusions.\u201d (This is in fact, experts say, one basic dynamic behind conspiracy theorizing.)<\/p>\n \u201cIf you cannot look at this story and use critical thinking skills and have at least some questions, you are the problem and we need you to snap out of it,\u201d Trisha Hope, a GOP national delegate from Texas and former Trump supporter, posted on X about Butler this week.<\/p>\n On Telegram, prominent QAnon promoter MJ Truth asked his 100,000 followers: \u201cHow does everyone feel about the narrative surrounding the Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump?\u201d<\/p>\n The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of replies, almost all of whom remain Trump supporters, said they believed the incident had been staged and that the truth may never come out. \u201cThe truth will come out 60+ years from now when we’re all dead and nobody really cares anymore \u2026 just like JFK!!!!,\u201d one follower wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n