As most of the country expressed outrage that a shooter could come within an inch of killing a former president and current GOP nominee, left-wing corners of the internet rushed to watch old video of Donald Trump making appearances at pro wrestling matches.
The theory was that Mr. Trump staged the shooting, cut his own ear to draw blood, then emerged with a raised fist to savor unwarranted adulation.
Never mind the emergency room doctors, the former White House physician, photos capturing a bullet in midair, and even The New York Times’ analysis of audio and video footage concluding that Mr. Trump suffered a gunshot wound.
The word “staged” trended on X as Trump-haters reached for alternate explanations for his bloodied face.
Some pointed to Mr. Trump’s past appearances at pro wrestling events, saying he had learned their tactic for cutting themselves midfight to produce dramatic bloody injuries.
Others said their suspicions were fueled by the timing, questioning how the gunman only managed to nick the former president’s ear. Still others found it curious how quickly merchandise with Mr. Trump’s iconic bloody-faced fist pump was available.
And others obsessed over bullet trajectories, dimensions of the wound and the amount of blood, coming to the conclusion that things didn’t add up.
“There was no blood on his hand when his hand fell from his ear before he went down behind all the secret service people and became hidden. Then while he was hidden, they put fake blood on him,” said one Reddit user. “The police and secret service ignored the warnings because they were in on it.”
Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York’s Lehman College, said it’s all fueled by a Trump obsession that has consumed so many voters for nearly a decade.
“It’s all a part of the same psychology, which is Trump hatred, which will leave no stone unturned to blacken his name,” said Mr. Renshon.
The theories are proving particularly persistent.
After the initial wave of skepticism cooled down, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray breathed new life with his testimony to Congress last week in which he seemed to question Mr. Trump’s account of a bullet.
“There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear,” Mr. Wray told lawmakers.
Coverage of Mr. Wray’s testimony quickly spread online.
“He said he ’took a bullet for democracy.’ Apparently not,” said one commenter on Reddit, while another insisted, “He cut his own ear.” Still another dubbed Mr. Trump “Ear Farce One.”
Claims that Mr. Trump was seen at his golf course a day after the shooting without a bandage on his ear quickly spread, despite having no basis. And even initial reports that he was struck by glass instead of a bullet persist, though the teleprompters — the supposed source of the glass — were intact, according to fact-checkers.
Not even the death of a rallygoer and the critical wounding of two others dissuaded the naysayers. One poster called it “collateral damage” while another said: “I wouldn’t put it past him to kill one of [his] supporters to make it look real.”
The FBI initially defended Mr. Wray’s comment, but after 48 hours the bureau walked it back, saying “what struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.”
That correction drew far less attention on the doubter forums.
To be clear, even the most liberal members of Congress aren’t expressing those views.
But in online forums where younger liberal-leaning Americans gather, doubts about the shooting are plentiful. At Reddit, for example, where users vote on posts to give them a higher profile, stories questioning Mr. Trump’s injuries regularly got boosted to the website’s “front page.”
Mr. Trump’s shooting has spawned some theories on the right as well, including a sentiment that his protection was so lacking that it was suspicious.
Mr. Renshon said those questions are being fueled by the way officials, including the now-ousted Secret Service director, handled the initial aftermath, suggesting they left the gunman’s rooftop sniper’s perch vacant because her agents were afraid of slipping “on a sloped roof.”
He said that kind of “ridiculous” answer leads people “to wonder whether there was some malfeasance that borders on a setup.”
“If I were in the position of authority in this case I would err on the side of giving more and more information because people really need to be assured there’s not something untoward going on here,” said Mr. Renshon, author of books psychoanalyzing recent presidents, and of the forthcoming book “Crossing the Rubicon in American Politics: Causes, Consequences and Cures.”
Even some mainstream news outlets have given nods to the conspiracy theories. Stories tracking the size of Mr. Trump’s ear bandage implicitly questioned the extent of the original injury. Those stories often pointed out that Mr. Trump has not released a medical report, which the reporters said fueled the doubts.
It’s a striking turnabout for Mr. Trump, who himself famously drove unfounded theories about President Obama’s birth.
So-called birthers used the same argument on Mr. Obama that Trump skeptics now use: Release the documents or else we’ll assume you’re lying.
Mr. Obama eventually did so, in 2011, with the White House releasing his long-form birth certificate. But that wasn’t enough to quell right-wing skepticism.
Joe Arpaio, at the time the sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona and later a major Trump supporter, dedicated his volunteer “posse” to disproving the document. In 2012, he held a press conference to announce they had “proved” it to be a fake.
For the Trump shooting, Cyabra Strategy, a firm that tracks disinformation, conducted a study and concluded that a large portion of the shooting skepticism was coming from what it called “fake accounts.”
And there has been some consistent pushback even from the left, where social media posters have chided fellow progressives for outlandish speculation, saying it was what they would expect from “right-wing conspiracists.”
Fed up with the spreading theories, Sen. John Kennedy this week sought to nail things down.
“Is there any doubt in your mind or in the collective mind of the FBI that President Trump was shot in the ear by a bullet fired by the assassin?” the Louisiana Republican challenged FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate.
“There is absolutely no doubt in the FBI’s mind whether former President Trump was hit with a bullet and wounded in the ear. No doubt. There never has been,” Mr. Abbate said.
“You’re sure?” Mr. Kennedy persisted, adding, “It wasn’t a space laser? … It wasn’t a murder hornet? … It wasn’t Sasquatch?”
“No, senator,” Mr. Abbate said.
“It was a bullet,” Mr. Kennedy asserted.
“It was a bullet, senator,” Mr. Abbate concluded.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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