The Swirl of Conspiracy Theories and Suspicions about the Assassination Attempt on Trump have already Started.

by Rod Williams, July 14, 2024- Thankfully President Trump survived the assassination attempt on his life yesterday. Like so many have already said, political violence should have no place in America. My thoughts and prayers are with President Trump and the family of the rally participant who was killed and those wounded.

We don't yet know much about the shooter except his name and that he was a registered Republican. Already people are jumping to conclusions and peddling conspiracy theories. This is not surprising. I was a high school student when John Kennedy was assassinated and remember the theories about it. Many people refused to believe Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman and not part of a wider conspiracy. There were a lot of different explanations of who was behind the assassination. Some said it was the Communist, some said the anti-communist, others said the mafia, some accused the CIA, and some accused LBJ. There are many who still do not accept the official version.

The climate in which we live today is much different than when JFK was assassinated, and information can travel faster. With the rise of social media, there are no gatekeepers to filter out the weird stuff and many will believe what they read on Facebook or hear on some podcast and will place as much trust in some uncredentialed blogger or Facebook stranger as they do in a major legitimate news source. Also, partisan divisions are deeper. We live in an era in which many people think of those of the other party not as just mistaken or people with a different point of view but as the enemy and evil people. Many are prepared to believe the worst.

With 68% of Republicans and 35% of the American people still believing the 2020 election was stolen, despite lack of evidence, a large segment of the American people are ready to believe lies. They are predisposed to believe the worst about this assassination attempt on the life of the former president. It doesn't matter what the evidence shows, they are ready to believe the "deep-state," or "the globalist," or the establishment tried to take him out. The argument will be that they tried to discredit him, tried to smear him, tried to bankrupt him, and tried to jail him and when all of that failed, they decided to kill him.

Certainly, there should be a full investigation of the attempted murder and a review to determine if there was a security failure. We should try to determine if the shooter had accomplices and what were his motives. We should follow the facts where they lead. I hope people can get a grip and look at what the facts show and not be ready to believe wild unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories. I don't expect what I hope.

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