There is no evidence that the attempts on Trump’s life were planned. People still think they were

In recent weeks Both MAGA and left-wing influencers have found something they agree on: They say President Donald Trump is making assassination attempts of his own.

Within minutes of the Secret Service arresting an alleged attacker during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25, social media was filled with unsubstantiated claims that the attack was “planned.”

In the days that followed, these allegations led some prominent critics and creatives to reevaluate the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, with many claiming, without evidence, that it was also staged.

“This was not a real assassination attempt, and I’m also willing to say this was not a real assassination attempt on Butler during the campaign,” Lee McGowan, a digital creator known as PoliticsGirl who has been involved with the Democratic National Committee in the past, said in a video posted to TikTok that has been viewed nearly 900,000 times. “Yes, two real people died, but no one tried to kill Donald Trump.”

Bluesky, Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, who in recent weeks has reported extensively on whether or not Butler was staged, wrote on Channel

The trend of left-wing influencers promoting these conspiracy theories comes directly after a wave of prominent MAGA figures, angry about Trump’s war with Iran and his anti-Catholic rhetoric, have promoted conspiracy theories about Butler’s shooting. “In our economy full of online anger and rumors, it’s not surprising that individuals will try to seize the moment to generate outrage and get clicks,” says Nina Yankovic, CEO of the American Sunlight Project, which the Biden administration has appointed as a disinformation steward. “The line between ‘analysis’ and misinformation has never been narrower.”

WIRED looked at the main claims conspiracy theorists point to when claiming that the shootings at a dinner between Butler and reporters were staged, and why none of those claims stand up to scrutiny.

Butler’s attempt

“Evidence” cited by both left-wing and right-wing figures that Butler’s assassination was staged includes Trump’s raised reaction, his injured ear, directing photographers to the perfect spot for a photo opportunity, and a lack of information about the shooter and his motives.

Taken together, these anomalies were combined into an overarching conspiracy theory that appears to have convinced millions of people, on the right and left, that the attempt on Butler’s life was fake.

One of the key pieces of so-called evidence cited by conspiracy theorists on both sides of the political spectrum is a video they claim shows photographers being directed to their positions seconds after Trump was hit in order to perfectly capture his raised fist gesture.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the video shows a campaign staffer walking to the left of the stage after the first shots were fired, then returning seconds later to bring photographers to the front of the stage to capture footage of Trump after he was shot.

However, the photographers’ own accounts of what happened in those moments reveal that each one was just doing their job, and footage captured using Meta smart glasses by Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford shows that there were no campaign staffers telling the photographers what to do.