August 1st, 2024 | RYAN TYLER

Dissecting The COnspiracy Theories About The Trump Shooting

Some of them are downright stupid.

It's always a lone gunman. In some of the most high profile assassination attempts, the gunman has been shot and killed before he could be interrogated or tried in court. These facts fuel conspiracy theories and leave the ends open. Such was not the case in the attempt on Ronald Reagan, which happens to have the fewest conspiracy theories around it among all other attempts and assassinations in American history. Like the JFK assassination, the attempt on Trump will fuel conspiracy theories forever because the shooter can't tell his story—but many of the elements in these latest conspiracy theories lack merit.

A Second Shooter On A Water Tower

Days after the attempt, a blurry video of a water tower was posted online. The tower appears far away from Trump's rally, but shows a dark shadow slightly moving on top of it. However, none of the shadows can be made out and the video tells us nothing.

First, if you watch the video, it's not even certain the dark figure on top of the water tower is moving at all. There are several blurs and distortions in the video, which could have been caused by heat and various artifacts within the video caused by pixelation and distance. If you look closely, you can see the shape of the water tower also distorting. The logo for Pennsylvania American Water on the side of the tower also appears to be moving.

Second, due to the location and angle of the water tower, an accurate shot would have been more difficult for even the most experienced sniper.

Third, the hearsay and anonymous posts on X that claimed to be from professionals are suspect. One post, now missing, claimed to be from someone nearby the tower, who said the sniper on the water tower took a zip-line down after firing his shot and got into a black SUV that was “traced to the Department Of Agriculture”. Of course, the post was shared by thousands and helped fuel this false, distracting narrative.

A bunch of morons post blurry videos, then some random dude on X happens to “validate” all of this and trace the license plate of an alleged government SUV? Then he takes to his X account, with its American flags and MAGA references, to share his revelations online? If you believe this without any doubts, you can't be helped.

All the evidence so far is consistent with there being one shooter, despite the hysteria online.

Multiple shots were heard, but it has been confirmed they came from the same gunman, who fired eight rapid shots within six seconds before he was killed.

Janeen DiGuiseppi

One of the most outlandish theories is that the assistant director of the FBI, Janeen DiGuiseppi, attended the Pennsylvania rally incognito. Not only did she attend the rally, she sat directly behind Trump and recorded the whole incident on her phone.

I'm going to ask you to think about this for a minute. Go ahead.

Now, try to answer these questions.

Why would the assistant director of the FBI risk revealing herself by attending a Trump rally, where a member of the crowd was shot and killed, to see Trump get assassinated? Even if she knew it was going to happen, why would she risk her job and safety to sit directly behind Donald Trump? Furthermore, why would one of most important heads of the FBI choose to attend the rally at all, rather than send another agent to document the incident for her?

As the leader of one of America's top law enforcement agencies, would you think to yourself, “Hmm, I really feel like being sprayed with the brain matter of a former president today.”

In a world where the assistant director of the FBI is a legitimate psychopath (which isn't necessarily difficult to believe), the idea she would want to see Trump get killed in person is less outlandish—but, even so, the odds of someone intelligent choosing to do this are low.

Now, take the time to really compare photos of the woman in the crowd to photos of Janeen DeGuiseppi. The woman in the crowd is not only slimmer, she is younger and has a totally different nose and neck. They are very clearly not the same person.

As for the woman's behaviour? Not everyone reacts to popping sounds and screaming the same way. Not everyone reacts to danger in the same way. It was a big crowd and a lot of people were looking around, especially in the “direction of the shooter”. Also, would you really be surprised to see someone continue recording with their phone after someone was shot in front of them? We see these types of things posted online all the time. Some people are oblivious and callous, or simply unafraid. Most people want to capture the best videos to post online.

Few people attend a Trump rally expecting an assassination.

Trump Planned It

One of the theories circulating on the anti-Trump left is that Trump hired a shooter to shoot at him and miss. Imagine being dumb enough to think Trump would risk his own life by hiring an expert marksman to shoot a piece of his ear off so he could play victim and garner support.

I'm not going to give this asinine theory any more attention than this.

They Kept Trump On Stage

Social media is rampant with armchair experts and “former agents” who have criticized the Secret Service for not shuffling Trump off the stage immediately after the shots were fired. The Secret Service and law enforcement had a lot of failures in this situation, but was this really one of them?

With Trump's motorcade far off to the side of the stage, does it make logical sense to lift him back up and scurry him off on foot while there is still an active shooter targeting the stage? Or, is it more logical to have Trump lay down under a human shield of live agents until confirming the threat has been neutralized?

The latter seems to have been the choice—and also the most logical one.

In Reagan's situation, he was only feet away from his car. In Trump's situation, his motorcade was farther off to the side and down a set of stairs. As no agents could clearly get to Trump quick enough, they yelled at him to get down and then barricaded him with their bodies. To lift him up and expose his head again, before knowing if the shooter was dead, would have been stupid. All situations and circumstances are different and reacting the same way in all of them wouldn't be logical—especially when trying to protect the life of a president.

Trump was down for a while, proving that agents were awaiting confirmation that the threat was neutralized before bringing Trump back onto his feet.

Shorting The DJT Stock

Records show that short orders on the DJT stock surged on the last market day before the shooting, which was a Friday. It has since been called an error after 12 million orders were linked to a company called Austin Private Wealth. Unfortunately for conspiracy theorists, even if this happened, much of it could be explained by simple logic, psychology, normal market dynamics and a calendar.

Investors have to place most of their short orders during market hours, which are Monday to Friday, between 9am and 4pm. Short orders are nothing out of the ordinary—and they are certainly nothing out of the ordinary for Trump's media company. Investors have been shorting the stock for months.

If any investors were looking at the calendar the week prior, they would have seen that the highly televised Republican National Convention was the following week and that high profile speeches about foreign policy, the economy, and the election would be a big part of the news cycle. Case in point, Trump's published comments on Taiwan helped cause chip stocks to plummet in the same week.

Since many investors are cynical about Trump—just like everyone in mainstream media—they probably assumed he would say something that would hurt his stock and the entire market as a whole. Unable to place their orders on the weekend, they placed them on Friday, in preparation for the coming week and the RNC. Overall, stock markets took a hit and ended the week of the convention in the red.

DJT rallied on Monday after the shooting.

If anyone was shorting anything on the week leading up to Trump's rally in Pennsylvania, they were doing it because the Republican National Convention was starting on Monday, not because they anticipated his assassination. To some investors, a second Trump presidency is already baked in, so what he says matters. Trump is a protectionist, meaning that his speeches about the economy and foreign policy were expected to hit hard.

What Really Happened

The truth is less sensational than what conspiracy theorists say. Any gaps and mistakes that happened can be explained by the very same human incompetence we see across the board in our daily lives. Some people just don't have the capacity to make logical decisions and the obvious diversity hires on Trump's security detail are evidence of misguided priorities.

By now, we have all seen the footage of the female agent who couldn't holster her gun and looked lost. We have also heard the truth about the director of the Secret Service and her initiative to make 30% of the service female. There is nothing wrong with hiring women who can do the job, but hiring women for the sake of hiring women could be dangerous. We saw that on full display.

The real conspiracy here is DEI and the clear lack of logic exhibited by some of the people tasked with protecting Trump. Why there were no agents on the roof where the shooter positioned himself can be more easily explained by simple laziness, miscommunication, complacency, stupidity, or a lack of expectations. Why snipers let the shooter take a shot has already been explained by their inability to get a clear shot until the shooter became more visible as he moved to fire at Trump.

Snipers were aware of the threat and a law enforcement official attempted to investigate the shooter on the roof, but dropped back down when the shooter pointed his gun at him. It was less than one minute later he fired eight shots at Trump. It all happened within a matter of mere seconds and it all sounds less unusual when it's explained in proper context. Furthermore, some of the snipers allegedly had their view of the shooter blocked by trees.

Is it fathomable to believe that some law enforcement officials and agents don't like Trump and, therefore, are less willing to die for him? Yes. That could be a factor as well.

As for why Trump wasn't told to exit the stage when the threat was first identified is unclear. However, we know that Trump's protection at the rally was a joint operation between the Secret Service and local law enforcement, which could have made communication their primary issue. It may have simply been a delay in communication, or an attempt to maintain normalcy and prevent panic—which can often cause more chaos. Had they alerted Trump, or alarmed the crowd, it could have caused a panic and a distraction. This would have made the situation more difficult to control.

It's important to note the shooter may have planned to set off a detonation in order to cause chaos and a distraction so he could get a clear shot at Trump.

Reports suggest the shooter was identified 20 minutes before he shot at Trump, but agents lost sight of him before he reappeared around the building and on the roof. In this time, no one was yet certain he was armed—only that he was acting strange. It may have been when an officer was hoisted onto the roof to investigate that a gun was identified. We now know that less than a minute passed between this moment and the shooting.

There are obvious missteps and clear acts of complacency that have—rightfully—fuelled these conspiracy theories. However, that's likely all they were.