WAS IT STAGED? Recreating the Assassination Attempt On Donald Trump - Video ... How the ‘second shooter’ conspiracy theory spread after the Trump assassination attempt - Saved Web Pages Review
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The assassination attempt on Donald Trump this month unleashed a flood of unfounded conspiracy theories from the right and the left: that the shooting was part of a deep state coup, or that it was staged by the former president himself to win sympathy and the election. One conspiracy theory has undergirded both, however: that there was a second shooter, positioned on a nearby water tower.
A modern version of the discredited grassy knoll conspiracy theory — which posited that Lee Harvey Oswald was aided in assassinating President John F. Kennedy by another shooter atop a nearby hill — the water tower theory similarly comes with its own witnesses and, this time, hundreds of photos and videos, taken by news cameras and rallygoers, that are being dissected by vloggers and TikTokers to build a conspiracy theory in real time.
The conclusion drawn from the theory depends on the believer, and even then, it’s not always clear. Some suggest it reveals that the shooter, Thomas Crooks, who federal investigators have said was a lone gunman with no apparent political motive, was a patsy, set up to take the fall, and that a second shooter was on the water tower to silence him afterward. Others posit that the second shooter was the one who actually fired at Trump, and was an expert marksman who could convincingly graze Trump’s ear and provide a bloody show for a false flag operation.
“It’s not shocking that people are talking about second shooters,” said Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political science professor who studies conspiracy theories. “There’s really nothing new under the sun.”
The July 13 Trump campaign rally was held on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show in Pennsylvania.Jessie Wardarski / AP PhotoThis second shooter theory was born hours after Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Within a week it had gained traction with a handful of members of Congress.
“I have seen some pretty interesting video on the internet by experts that certainly calls into question what the FBI is telling us about a single shooter,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., already known for trafficking in discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Covid, said Sunday on Fox News. “I don’t know, but we can’t trust the FBI and the Secret Service to do an honest and open and transparent investigation. That’s just a very sad fact. So we have got to rely on other sources, independent, to really find out what the truth of the matter was.”
Emailed for comment or clarification about the “extremely convincing video online” he watched, Johnson’s communications director, Kiersten Pels, said, “The senator is simply demanding more evidence and more information from these agencies so that we can have a thorough and transparent investigation looking at all possibilities.”
The FBI said in a statement a day after the shooting that “the investigation to date indicates the shooter acted alone.” Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for the Secret Service, said this week that there was no evidence of a second shooter.
“We are committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that it never happens again,” Guglielmi said, noting that multiple investigations were ongoing. “That includes complete cooperation with Congress, the FBI and other relevant investigations.”
At a hearing Monday before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., mentioned the “rumors rampant online that there are several shooters” and criticized Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for not doing more to debunk circulating misinformation.
Cheatle, who testified at the hearing, resigned on Tuesday. She told members of Congress that Secret Service agents hadn’t been stationed on the water tower as it “would not be something that would be included in a security plan.” She also said, “I do not have any information related to any second shooter.”
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is sworn in Monday before testifying during a House hearing on the shooting. She resigned on Tuesday. Kent Nishimura / Getty ImagesAs with the Kennedy assassination, part of this theory relies on eyewitnesses at a chaotic scene.
Erin, who only gave her first name, first described her experience to an NBC News correspondent at the rally. Erin said a man beside her told her that he had seen a sniper kill Trump’s would-be assassin, “the gentleman in the water tower,” and she had heard from others that there were “two shooters on both sides.”
Three minutes later on Fox News, an unnamed woman said she had heard the multiple shooter story, too. “There was one I heard in the water tower and one by the fence.”
In both examples, the correspondents followed the eyewitness reports with calls for caution, noting that the scene was unfolding, that people were in shock, and that the details of those accounts had yet to be confirmed. But conspiracy theory influencers didn’t include the warnings.
Within days, tens of thousands of daily posts on X were creating and engaging with theories about a second shooter from the water tower, according to an analysis provided to NBC News by PeakMetrics, a company that tracks online threats.
One of the earliest posts came the day after the shooting from Ryan Upchurch, a YouTuber and musician from Nashville, Tennessee, who wondered on TikTok why “they kept covering up the water tower.” In a phone interview with NBC News, Upchurch said he was just curious about the tower because it seemed like it had been cropped out of the videos he was seeing online. He said he didn’t think another shooter had been up there, though, as they would be easy to spot and would have a hard time getting down without being seen. “It wouldn’t make sense,” he said.
Secret Service agents remove Trump from the stage in Butler, Pa., on July 13.Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty ImagesUpchurch’s post inspired other users who added to his questions with images from Google Earth of the Butler County fairgrounds where the shooting took place, posts that were soon being cited by well-known conspiracy theory accounts including SGT News on Telegram and on X by John Cullen, a self-described researcher who gained an audience posting wild and unproven theories about Covid and the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Cullen, who built further upon the theories with the help of his followers, has been making the rounds on YouTube and podcasts, including InfoWars, a far-right internet show, in the last few days, appearing as the expert of the second shooter theory. Cullen’s most popular proof is a shaky video of the blue water tower, a zoomed-in segment from a livestream of the rally from Right Side Broadcasting Network, a conservative media company that streams Trump rallies. The low-quality video, which Cullen said came from a QAnon believer with the username MAGA-JUICE, shows a black fuzzy spot at the top of the tower. Text on the video claims the spot is a “crouching agent.”
Cullen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Catalin Grigoras, director of the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado, Denver, said the video quality was too low for a forensic analysis.
Hany Farid, a professor who studies digital forensics at the University of California, Berkeley, agreed, and said nothing could be discerned from the video with any confidence.
“If you watch throughout the video, the entire tower and surrounding area changes dramatically due to compression and camera motion and so there is no reliable or consistent signal here,” Farid said. “Even for X, this is pretty dumb.”
NBC News analyzed other videos of the water tower, from the day of the rally and before, including a 2019 promotional video for the Butler County farm show. Magnifying a still from the videos showed the same dark spot on the tower’s right side as in the clips from conspiracy theorists, which suggests their evidence is a shadow, not a second assassin.
Sophistication notwithstanding, these posts on X alone have been viewed millions of times, and shared tens of thousands of times, acting as evidence in an evolving theory.
Uscinski, the University of Miami professor, noted that the evidence didn’t need to be particularly polished or convincing to become a building block for the conspiracy-minded.
“That’s the thing, you don’t need AI-generated video and you don’t need fake content,” Uscinski said. “You can have a video of anything and say, ‘Hey, that looks out of place.’ And of course, a two-second video of anything is going to look out of place if you’re inclined to think that something was funny to begin with.”
Today we use ballistics, real distances and high speed cameras to debunk myths surrounding the attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump
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