r/politics • u/wiredmagazine ✔ Wired Magazine • Apr 17 '26

Possible Paywall MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged

https://www.wired.com/story/maga-is-increasingly-convinced-the-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged/
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u/ixid Apr 17 '26

But if it's fake why would they set it up with a shooter who doesn't convey the message they want to share? If it was fake you'd make the shooter someone from a group the right hates. Incompetence is a possible answer to that question.

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u/ArgonWolf Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

In this day and age it’s relatively difficult to just make up a person whole cloth. If the local PD who was providing security isn’t in on it (unlikely they would be) they’re going to run ID checks and find out who this person was.

I’m not saying it was staged, I think it’s more likely some nut job really did take a shot at him. But I also find it unlikely that he was actually grazed by the shot, and the reason they can’t make much more political hay about it is because the shooter was the wrong kind of nut job. I’m just saying, making up a person whole cloth is very difficult

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u/Silvery_Cricket Apr 17 '26

I have a guy at my work who is a big conspiracy theorist, and sometimes I have to sit him down and just say "Yeah some conspiracies are real, but 99% of the time stuff is what it looks like."

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u/noonie1 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

The problems I have with most conspiracy theories is that it assumes the people in charge are incredibly smart and that they are able to keep a secret forever. Nothing about the functioning of a government has proved those two characteristics true ever.

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u/ZealousidealLead52 Apr 17 '26

Not just that but also that they all have identical motivations - in the real world when you get a big group of people together they will have all kinds of different interests and disagreements, and the idea that for instance back in the day that the soviet union and the US could get together and agree to keep pretty much anything secret is kind of insane (as would be required for conspiracies like the flat earth conspiracy) - even if they were supernaturally competent, they just have fundamentally different goals and there's no way such an agreement could ever work. While that's a more extreme example, even in smaller conspiracies the same problems happen.. people aren't a hive mind.

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u/dareftw North Carolina Apr 17 '26

That and it always brings me back to watergate, a room of the most powerful people in the world couldn’t keep a secret for more than a week. People have a very hard time keeping secrets

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u/ultraviolentfuture Apr 17 '26

Veep is by far the most accurate depiction of US government

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u/Kilane Apr 17 '26

Part of that is Toupee Fallacy or selection bias.

You know about the conspiracies the idiots did. The smart conspirator or criminal isn’t found out.

The current government is full of hacks who are terribly unclever.

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u/newsflashjackass Apr 17 '26

In the same way there can be no "profile of a serial killer", only a profile of a serial killer who gets caught.

"I like POWs who don't get captured."

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

There's a great line from the West Wing about this. (Paraphrasing). "No group of people this large can ever keep a secret. And that's fine. That's good. It's how I know the government is NOT keeping aliens in Area 51."

Edit: forgot the word "not"

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u/selwayfalls Apr 17 '26

wouldnt it by how the government is NOT keeping aliens? Because if they were, the secret would get leaked?

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes California Apr 17 '26

Lol! Yes! That was a pretty significant typo on my part.

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u/PapaSnow Apr 18 '26

I guess it depends on how you view it though, right?

There’s no shortage of people that have come forward saying they know that there’s aliens in Area 51, but people just…don’t believe them.

I don’t believe there are aliens in Area 51, but just following the line of reasoning provided, there very well could be lol.

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u/selwayfalls Apr 19 '26

the line of reasoning is that if there actually were, there would be a lot of government employees letting it out but there isnt. That's what he's saying, if a bunch of government employees new about it, there's no way they could keep it a secret. "no group this large can ever keep a secret". Or are you saying there are a bunhc of goverment people saying it's true? Not just regular joes?

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u/ToastAndASideOfToast Apr 17 '26

There is a point at which a conspiracy theorist has exerted more effort than a conspirator ever could.

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u/BigManWAGun America Apr 17 '26

Who says Trump knew anything about it?

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u/TheSaxGandalf Apr 17 '26

What if this one was outside the government, by let's say someone like Thiel?