Conspiracy theories about the attempts on Donald Trump’s life during the last election campaign? Yeah, they started about ten seconds after the first shot was fired. I have to confess that on occasions while strolling down a golf course I have indulged in idle chatter about the matter. However, I dislike conspiracy theories, and so I decided to do a little thinking and reading about the two attempts on Trump’s life. What might a person reasonably believe about these events?

There are two flavours of conspiracy on sale here. The first is the “Dems done it” version offered by the MAGA world. The second is the “Fake Blood” scenario in which there was no real assassination attempt and it was all staged to draw votes for Trump. 

Some of the curious aspects of the Butler Pennsylvania attempt are applicable to both of those conspiracy scripts. How in heck did the Secret Service manage to let a sniper get alone on a roof well within range of the President? Did the Secret Service look the other way? If yes, was it because they’d been instructed to make Trump vulnerable (Dems did it) or because they’d been brought into the theatre ploy (Fake blood act 1)? 

There is a briefing note available on Congress.gov which tells us that the shooter, Thomas Crooks, was seen with a range finder 20 minutes before the shots were fired, and was seen on the roof overlooking the stage 10 minutes before shots were fired. Members of the public sighted Crooks on the roof with a rifle clearly visible “bear crawling” to his shooting position and identified that fact to local police. Nevertheless, Trump was allowed onstage, whereupon Crooks began shooting and was eliminated by snipers within 15 seconds. Questions about the Secret Service program include:

• Why was the USSS not monitoring that roof, which was only 135 meters from the podium?
• Why was Trump allowed to go on-stage?
• Why was Crooks not intercepted if he was seen on the roof ten minutes before the shooting?

Numerous investigations in the year since the event highlighted breakdowns in the Secret Service procedures. There were deficiencies in advance planning, site security decision-making, resourcing, and especially in communications and control. It was unclear who was fully in charge. There were no face to face briefings of local police by Secret Service. The Secret Service and local police weren’t even using a shared secure radio network – communications were by cell phone (Hello, directory assistance? Can you give me the number for secret service control centre please?)

In fact, a local sheriff’s deputy tried to get on the roof to confront Crooks shortly before the shooting started. “The officer was alerted to a suspicious person and was hoisted by another officer to the roof where Crooks was positioned. The officer let go and dropped off the roof when Crooks pointed his rifle at him, according to the report. Crooks then began firing into the crowd…” So, you stick your head up over the roof and you’re looking at the business end of an assault rifle and you let go and drop to the ground. Hero? No. Smart cop? Yes, he’s having dinner with his family still. But the intriguing thing about that little story is that the deputy thought there was something significantly wrong and didn’t alert the USSS  – presumably because he didn’t know exactly how to do that. 

I’ve read through some of the interrogation of USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. It was sickening reading – the amount of grand-standing and blame-throwing and sound-bite engineering was absurd. It was one of those rare moments of bi-partisan agreement, as both parties hastened to throw Ms. Cheatle under the bus. She was forced to resign the day after that hearing. She “refused to answer” some of the questions, often because the question was a trap. But I wondered if she was holding back some information so as not to taint the FBI investigation that was already underway and that led me to believe that she thought there was possibly something there to investigate. But now, more than a year later, nothing has come out of the investigations except those organizational faults within the USSS. No third parties have been identified, no trail of money uncovered, no communications revealed between the assassin and anyone in either the MAGA world or inside Democrats central.

Is there anything in Thomas Crook’s background to tie him into a conspiracy? No, not at all. Crooks was an intelligent young man who’d gotten a $500 prize for math and science at his high school graduation. He took a degree in Engineering Science (so he can’t be all bad). Interviews with people from work, school, college aren’t unanimous, but they generally tend to paint him as a bit of a shy loner. He may or may not have been picked on or bullied. He was a member of a shooting club but was not a noted marksman. Investigations of his computer showed that in addition to researching the Kennedy assassination, he’d done some research on mental health and depression, for whatever that’s worth. No motive has been identified in his computer profile.

Did the Democrats set it up? No evidence has been produced to support that claim and I have to believe that the MAGA world would be screaming it from the rooftops if there was anything there at all.

 Evidence suggests that the USSS was something of a neglected agency after 911. Homeland Security and FBI grew tremendously, but the Secret Service became a small agency in comparison. I’ve suggested in the past that I find ineptitude more believable than intricate conspiracy, and I buy that again. Dems didn’t set this up. 

OK, what about the other possibility? Was this a faked assassination attempt? People who point at this possibility tend to point to these key factors:

• Trump was allowed to go onstage even though people had raised concerns about a possible shooter.
• There’s no scar on Trump’s ear.
• There’s no way on God’s green earth that the USSS would have let him stand up and raise his fist to the crowd after a real assassination event. 

So, let’s look at those considerations. Items 1 and 3 are both about the same issue – the competence and response of the USSS. And really, when you think about it, at the time of this attack, Trump wasn’t the President. He wasn’t even officially the Republican nominee yet, since the attack happened before the convention. The Secret Service A team was on then-President Biden. The B team was with VP Harris. No doubt Trump had coverage, but it was perhaps not as intense and as vigilant as it would have been if he were the President at the time. And given that the man is a complete and utter A-hole, it’s possible that some of the agents had problems taking the whole thing seriously. Once again, in a choice between explanations that rely on the brilliant execution of a well-concealed treacherous conspiracy, and an explanation that relies on bumbling inefficiency, I find it easier to believe in the latter.

OK, but what about the scar-free ear? The doctor who treated Trump described the wound as being in the cartilage on the outer edge of the ear. A reporter for the New York Magazine (a slightly left-leaning publication, so not necessarily a fan of the orange idiot) inspected his ear and described it as follows: “on the tiniest patch of this tiny sculpture of skin, a minor distortion that resembled not a crucifixion wound but the distant aftermath of a sunburn.” So, she saw a scar. Tiny, but a “distortion”. In the picture, taken at his inauguration, that accompanies this article, you can see a minor blemish at about 11 o’clock on the outer edge of his ear. So, the lack of scar? Sorry – the fact that the scar is extremely small doesn’t matter. There is a small scar. I’m convinced that a bullet nicked his ear, and that he was luckier than the rest of the world on that day.

The other thing that makes the “staged” shooting improbable was that real bullets were indisputably fired that day. One person was killed and two others were seriously wounded. 

“Wait!” Says the conspiracy enthusiast. “how do you know that? Are you sure somebody was killed, or is that just fake news – part of the staging? And if somebody really was killed, how do you know it wasn’t some poor bastard chosen by the Republicans to be sacrificed to make the story compelling?”

I’ve relied mostly on news articles from the BBC and from PBS in my researches into this stuff. At some point I think it’s necessary to accept that main stream media is still valid and multiple reports from multiple organizations buttress the story. So yes, I believed spectators were killed and injured. Were they set up to be victims, or did the conspiracists not care about collateral damage? The former is improbable. A conspiracy with four chosen victims, two of whom remain alive afterwards has zero probability of remaining a secret. 

So, did the assassin have orders to shoot random people near Trump but not hit Trump? Intensive sturdy of Thomas Crook’s online presence shows that he did his own research. No suspicious communications with third parties were unearthed. 

I’m convinced there’s nothing to see here. You can believe in the conspiracy theories around Thomas Crook if you like, but in my opinion it’s all specious nonsense.

What about the second attempt? That one was attempted by a 58-year-old fellow named Ryan Wesley Routh. Routh has had a chequered past, with numerous interactions with the law including several weapons charges. He had an incomplete engineering background, and self-published a book in 2023 (you can’t trust those self-published authors). The book was revealing – it showed Routh to be a former fan of Trump who found himself disappointed in many ways, but mostly by the situation in Ukraine. In fact, Routh tried to sell himself to the Ukrainians as a source of a mercenary force that could help them fight off the Russians.

The Ukrainians were unimpressed. “The best way to describe his messages is — delusional ideas,” said Oleksandr Shaguri, an officer of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Land Forces Command. “He was offering us large numbers of recruits from different countries, but it was obvious to us his offers were not realistic. We didn’t even answer — there was nothing to answer to.” A weapons enthusiast with delusions about being able to save Ukraine.

Routh’s possessions included notes and plans for his assassination attempt. He has since been tried and convicted. His trial was…unusual. He represented himself, though not well. “Routh made a series of bizarre steps and statements throughout the proceedings. Those included challenging Trump to a game of golf; requesting access to a putting green; and delivering an opening statement that touched on the history of human evolution, the “need to be kind to one another”, and references to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin.”

Reports from the investigators make it clear that this was a lone nut-case with an axe to grind. Nothing in his history, his behaviours, or his legal efforts would lead you to challenge that assessment.

Does all this matter? Not a lot, no. But I would say this. Every person who believes in any flavour of conspiracy theory associated with these events sets up a belief system within themselves in which divisiveness is the logical outcome. If “those people” are so cynical, so evil, that they would plan something like this, clearly you could never trust or associate with such people. So, conspiracy theories are unfortunate. The don’t help anyone, and they have the potential to cause harm. These were the works of lone actors and the American populace should put this nonsense behind them.