In recent weeks both MAGA and left-wing influencers have found something they agree on: President Donald Trump, they say, is staging his own assassination attempts.
Within minutes of the Secret Service detaining an alleged attacker at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25, social media was flooded with baseless claims the attack was “STAGED.”
In the days since, these claims have led some prominent pundits and creators to reassess the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, with many alleging, without evidence, that it was also staged.
“This was not a real assassination attempt, and I am also ready to say that it was not a real assassination attempt in Butler during the campaign,” Leigh McGowan, a digital creator known as PoliticsGirl who has partnered with the Democratic National Committee in the past, said in a video posted to TikTok that has been viewed almost 900,000 times. “Yeah, two real people died, but no one tried to kill Donald Trump.”
Bluesky, X, and TikTok are filled with comments related to Butler and the WHCD, with an endless feed of posts and videos claiming that the Correspondents’ Dinner incident is further proof that the Butler assassination was staged. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, who in recent weeks has posted extensively about whether or not Butler was staged, wrote on X last week, “We can see now, placing Butler PA & the WH correspondents incident side by side, that the same scenario was planned in each instance.”
The trend of left-wing influencers boosting these conspiracy theories comes immediately after a wave of prominent MAGA figures, angry about Trump’s war with Iran and his anti-Catholic rhetoric, promoted conspiracy theories about the Butler shooting. “In our outrage- and rumor-filled online economy it’s no surprise that individuals are trying to capitalize on the moment to farm rage and get clicks,” says Nina Jankowicz, CEO of the American Sunlight Project who was named by the Biden administration as its disinformation czar. “The line between ‘analysis’ and disinformation has never been thinner.”
WIRED has looked at the main claims that conspiracy theorists point to when claiming both the Butler and Correspondents’ Dinner shootings were staged, and why none of the claims stand up to scrutiny.
The Butler Attempt
The “evidence” cited by both left-wing and right-wing figures that the Butler assassination was staged includes Trump’s raised-fist reaction, his injured ear, photographers being ushered to the perfect spot for a photo opportunity, and the lack of information about the shooter and his motive.
Taken together, these anomalies have been woven into a comprehensive conspiracy theory that appears to have convinced millions of people, on the right and the left, that the Butler assassination attempt was faked.
One key piece of so-called evidence cited by conspiracy theorists on both sides of the political spectrum is a video that they claim shows photographers being ushered into position seconds after Trump was hit in order to perfectly capture his raised-fist gesture.
The conspiracy theorists claim 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 shots of Trump after he was shot.
However, the photographers’ own accounts of what happened in those moments reveals that each of them were just doing their jobs, and footage captured using Meta’s smart glasses by Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford shows that no campaign staffers were telling the photographers what to do.
The video also raised the possibility that the flag suspended above the stage for the rally was lowered at the precise moment the iconic fist-raised photos were taken. However Botsford’s own footage shows clearly that the flag remains suspended at the same height between two cranes for the duration of the incident.
The images the photographer captured, showing Trump standing back up on stage, raising his fist and mouthing the words “fight, fight, fight,” have also been used as evidence that the incident was staged. Many social media users have compared his reaction in Butler to his reaction to a loud noise during a campaign rally in Ohio in 2016, when he looked terrified and ducked behind the podium. This theory isn’t actually based in any fact, however.
In many cases, a lack of hard facts about what happened in Butler has led to conspiracy theorists filling in the gaps with conjecture and claims that are not backed up by real evidence.
Take for example Trump’s ear. Many people who believe the Butler assassination was staged claim that Trump’s right ear, which was struck in the assassination attempt, shows little sign of damage and is evidence that he wasn’t really shot in the first place.
However, the reality is that while images taken on the day clearly show some damage to Trump’s ear, the extent of the injury remains unknown. The medical records from the Butler Memorial Hospital, where Trump was initially treated, were never made public. Two weeks after the shooting, Trump was seen in public without a bandage and showing little to no damage to the ear, which to some was evidence that Trump was at least lying about the extent of his injuries.
Trump insisted at the time that he was hit with a bullet. While then-FBI director Christopher Wray speculated that it could have been “shrapnel that hit his ear,” the agency confirmed in a statement a few days later that Trump was hit with a bullet, though it could have been just a fragment. Trump’s former physician Ronny Jackson wrote that the president had suffered a 2-centimeter-wide gunshot wound in the right ear from a high-powered rifle “that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear” but added that “no sutures were required.”
Similarly, the fact that little is known about the shooter, and almost nothing is known about his motive, has led many to suggest that he was a plant, a disposable stooge who was part of a larger conspiracy.
The FBI initially released very little information about the shooting, something that many believed would change when Kash Patel took charge of the agency in February 2025. However, Patel announced in November that the investigation is inactive and the agency concluded the shooter acted alone. Patel did not provide a motive for the shooting and said that the agency had run down all possible leads.
This didn’t quell conspiracy theorists: The Trump administration, and Patel in particular, have faced criticism from their own supporters for failing to deliver the promised mass arrests related to the Epstein files and so-called 2020 election interference.
The allegations of a cover-up were supercharged in March when Joe Kent, a day after he resigned from his position as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, appeared on the podcast of former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson and claimed, without evidence, that he was told to stand down in at least one of his investigations before they finished. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Other skeptics have pointed out the failings of law enforcement to prevent the shooter from scaling a building just 200 yards from where Trump was speaking, and the fact the Secret Service were aware of his presence 120 seconds before he started firing.
“People who have conspiratorial worldviews see shadowy conspiracies lurking around every corner,” says Joseph Uscinski, professor of political science at the University of Miami and author of American Conspiracy Theories. Uscinski adds that even if the FBI were to release a trove of documents related to the case and the shooter, the conspiracies would continue.
The WHCD attack
On Tuesday, the alleged Correspondents’ Dinner attacker was indicted. The grand jury returned four charges, including “attempt to assassinate the President of the United States.” That hasn’t stopped claims that the assassination attempt was staged, claims that were again based on wild conjecture.
Those claiming the incident was staged assert that the security measures in place at the event were lacking, allowing the alleged attacker to get into the hotel with guns and knives. This has been cited as evidence that the incident was planned. However, Garrett Graff, a national security reporter and contributing editor at WIRED who has covered many of these incidents and written a book about how presidents are protected, concluded based on the available evidence that these conspiracy theories were inaccurate and that the response was, in fact, “presidential security working as it is intended.” The alleged attacker was halted at the security perimeter—that perimeter simply didn’t include the entirety of the Hilton hotel, where the dinner was held.
Another claim spreading on social media is that the alleged attacker sent his so-called manifesto to family and friends days before the event and that law enforcement was aware of his plans but decided to do nothing about it. However, there is no evidence this actually happened, and authorities said that the screed from the alleged attacker was sent just minutes before the incident.
Another “so-called” smoking gun cited by conspiracy theorists are comments made by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told a reporter that “there will be some shots fired” in an interview ahead of the dinner. But rather than referring to actual gunshots, the full clip shows that she was clearly referring to the jokes Trump was scheduled to deliver. (Why Leavitt would give a preview of a staged attack meant by a sinister cabal to be taken as legitimate goes unexplained by conspiracists.)
Finally, a Fox News clip featuring the station’s White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie speaking from the Hilton hotel moments after the attack has also been used to suggest the incident was a false flag. Hasnie told viewers that prior to the shooting, Leavitt’s husband allegedly told her “you need to be very safe” before her on-air call was cut off. However, Hasnie later clarified in an X post that her cell service had cut out in a location with notoriously bad service, adding: “He was telling me to be careful with my own safety, because the world is crazy … He was expressing his concern for my safety.”
The claims that the Correspondents’ Dinner and Butler assassination attempts were staged both emerged in part because of a lack of information about what happened. But even if the authorities released further details about what happened at either incident, it is not clear that would change anything.
“Conspiracy theories pop up all the time to explain all sorts of things,” says Uscinski. “Often those things are very well explained, and there is a ton of good information about it, yet the conspiracy theories persist regardless. Think about JFK conspiracy theories—millions of documents have been released, yet majorities of Americans continue to believe in the conspiracy theories. Same with vaccines. Lots of massive studies show their safety and efficacy, yet the conspiracy theories exist.”
The post There Is No Evidence the Trump Assassination Attempts Were Staged. People Still Believe They Were appeared first on Wired.
