Following the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, the overwhelming majority of Americans have been left in a state of shock, anger, and fear for the future. At the same time, however, a small but vocal segment of the progressive left has descended into a cesspool of deranged conspiracy.
Rather than expressing compassion and concern for Trump in the wake of the first presidential assassination attempt in nearly half a century, some leftists have instead resorted to baselessly insisting that the shooting was cynically staged by the Trump campaign, or even that Trump was never shot at all. The left’s sudden embrace of far-reaching conspiracy theories demonstrates just how blinded they are by their unmitigated hatred of the former president—and why the American people cannot trust them.
In the most recent unhinged rant, MSNBC’s Joy Reid implied the entire thing was a setup during the network’s coverage of the RNC Convention on Wednesday. Trump “is an elderly man,” she claimed, “who, for whatever reason, was given nine seconds to take an iconic photo op during an active shooter situation. Weird situation, we’ll figure that out one day.” Later on in the same broadcast, Reid stated that President Joe Biden overcoming his case of COVID-19 would be “the exact same thing” as Trump surviving the assassination attempt.
But in spreading this baseless conspiracy theory, Reid may have just been picking up where Dmitri Mehlhorn—a top advisor to major Democrat donor Reid Hoffman – left off. In an email sent just hours after the attempted assassination, Mehlhorn remarked that one “possibility” is that that “this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”
“This is a classic Russian tactic, such as when Putin killed 300 civilians in 1999 and blamed it on terrorists to ride the backlash to winning power,” the email continued. “Others who have embraced this tactic of committing raw evil and then benefitting from the backlash include Hamas on October 7. If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack, that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.”
He added in all-caps: “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.”
Although Mehlhorn later apologized for his comments, he was far from the only leftist figure to publicly make these extraordinary claims. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, there were more than 300,000 mentions of the word “staged” on X (formerly Twitter) in the hours following the shooting. Meanwhile, there were 80,000 mentions of the term “inside job” in the same timespan—and according to PeakMetrics, 12 percent of posts on X and the Telegram platform discussing the event were conspiratorial in nature.
One Democrat also referred to the shooting as “choreographed.” Another insisted it looked “like a photo op.” Others theorized that the blood coming from Trump’s ear was really from a theatrical gel pack. Another X user went so far as to outrageously proclaim that Trump personally approved the tragic death of Corey Comperatore, who was fatally shot during the attempted assassination.
“I can totally see Trump ‘sacrificing’ one of his cult followers to make his ‘assassination attempt’ look more realistic and believable,” a Democrat influencer posited in a since-deleted post. “Fake blood. An upside [down] American flag. I ain’t buying it. Too perfect,” he wrote in a later post.
But the proposition that Trump (or anyone in his orbit) would take the extraordinary step of coordinating a fake assassination attempt—actively killing one person and critically injuring two others in the process—is not only patently absurd, but also morally repugnant.
Digital illustrations of the shooting show that Trump was mere inches and split seconds away from death—and that he can credit his survival to a series of last-minute head turns (he was gesturing towards a graphic on a jumbotron). Why would Trump—or anyone else for that matter—risk coming so close to dying (not to mention jeopardizing the lives of others) simply for a polling boost in an election that he was already winning handily?
Moreover, why would a candidate who already had a healthy lead in every swing state take such an extraordinary and unnecessary risk?
Regardless of the grave moral evils that would accompany staging an assassination attempt, any Trump campaign-led attempt to coordinate a faux assassination with U.S. Secret Service (a federal agency currently operating under the leadership of Joe Biden) would certainly have been immediately leaked and swiftly rebuffed.
For what reason, then, why are some segments of the left so eager to insist that the shooting was “staged”?
In the end, the left’s descent into unhinged conspiracy has been nothing more than the latest display of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” in which truth, facts, and reality fall by the wayside in favor of seething anti-Trump hatred—a far cry from the “character,” “decency,” and compassion” to which the Biden campaign and broader progressive movement have for so long disingenuously appealed.
Another great irony in the “staged” narrative is that Democrat officials and left-wing activists have relentlessly sought to dismiss basic facts touted by conservatives—from the Hunter Biden laptop, to the origins of coronavirus, to skepticism over the efficacy of COVID vaccines, to the circumstances surrounding Trump’s June 2020 appearance at Lafayette Square—as “conspiracy theories.” However, in this case, the same voices that denounce conservatives as lunatics and conspiracists every chance they get have remained conspicuously silent.
While there are still many questions surrounding the July 13 shooting that demand speedy answers, the utter lack of concern among some leftists regarding an assassination attempt against the presidential frontrunner—regardless of how much they may hate him—is deeply disconcerting.
If Democrats truly seek to “lower the temperature,” as Biden has repeatedly called for, they should forcefully disavow these repulsive conspiracies.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
