Assassination conspiracy theories? Blame Trump

[dalton99a]

https://www.salon.com/2026/05/13/assassination-conspiracy-theories-blame-trump/

Assassination conspiracy theories? Blame Trump
False flag stories reveal a deeper truth about Trump’s failing presidency
By Amanda Marcotte

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No one deserves more blame for this state of affairs than Trump himself, and not just because he’s spent a decade lying and sowing his own conspiracy theories, giving permission to both his allies and his opponents to take a looser approach to the truth. Once in a while, a conspiracy theory may be wrong but still manages to channel authentic frustrations. This particular one is false, but its underlying assumptions about the president — that he’s a liar, and that he’s manipulative, corrupt and politically desperate — are all too real.

There’s an obvious explanation for why this conspiracy theory is so popular: Trump would fake such a thing if he thought he could get away with it. Anyone who doubts that has been asleep for the past decade, which have been marked by one Trump conspiracy after another. In 2019 he tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into lying about his political opponent, Joe Biden, which led to his first impeachment trial. A year later Trump was part of an elaborate scheme to steal the 2020 election, resulting in a second impeachment trial and multiple indictments at the federal level and in Georgia. He is currently embracing shadowy cryptocurrency schemes that are generating massive profits. He’s also openly bullying his Justice Department into not releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, suggesting that what’s hidden implicates him even more than the eye-popping stuff that has already emerged about his longtime relationship with the deceased sexual predator.

It’s not just that Trump is without morals. He seems to relish plotting and scheming. But while he might conceivably fake an assassination attempt for some perceived political gain, there’s strong reason to believe that he hasn’t done so. As the litany of his ruses shows, Trump lacks the talent for hiding his conspiracies from public view. If anything, he only gets away with them by being so brazen. It’s hard to imagine his administration being competent enough to fake such actions without at least one conspiracist letting the secret out, even by drunkenly bragging about it to a would-be mistress. Trump would even probably let the truth slip in one of his rambling diatribes to the press.

The conspiracy theories around the attempted assassinations don’t just speak to this larger truth about Trump’s corruption. They also channel the public’s rapidly growing frustration with a president who has broken every promise, while simultaneously focusing on self-aggrandizement, and it reflects an accurate sense that he would rather resort to cheating and lying than simply striving to do a better job in an effort to regain his lost political ground.

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[Torchlight]

1. If someone wants to take his assertions at face value, the kook's on them.

Even if Mr. trump said this summer in north Texas would be hot, I'd check the forecasts, pull out some hoodies and keep the propane ready. Then, when the hot summer gets here, I'd presume he's accidently correct and still keep the knit cap in my console... just in case.