00:00There's a wild new conspiracy theory percolating among the fact-averse radical left. You may have
00:06seen social media posts suggesting that the recent assassination attempt on the president's life
00:10was part of an elaborate scheme and, in short, was staged. In fact, that word right there,
00:16staged, hit Google Trends with more than 300,000 posts on X, using the term in the hours after
00:22the incident. So what exactly are these off-the-wall claims? The Post's senior reporter
00:28Chris Neesey filled me in. Caitlin, the tinfoil hat crowd is out in full force again after Saturday's
00:34shooting, just as we saw after the previous two attempts on President Trump's life in the last
00:38two years. Call it paranoia, call it Trump derangement syndrome, whatever you call it,
00:43there are some truly deranged takes circulating on social media from angry Trump haters.
00:48Just searching for the word staged on X, like you mentioned, surfaces thousands upon thousands of
00:54posts by people saying the whole thing is a false flag operation, whether to distract from
00:58the Iran war or the Epstein files. A lot of people are saying it was a hoax to gin up
01:02support
01:03for the $400 million White House ballroom that Trump wants to build. Basically, they're combing
01:08over every little detail from that night as supposed evidence of it being staged, from Secret Service
01:14agents' reaction times to a man who was seen seated at the dais on stage filming the chaos with his
01:20iPhone instead of ducking for cover. No crumb is too small for these people to seize on and read
01:25meaning into. Another popular piece of evidence that lunatics are clinging to is a picture of
01:31members of President Trump's cabinet who were smiling in a briefing room before the press conference
01:35that was held in the shooting's immediate aftermath. Amazingly, CBS anchor Nora O'Donnell even asked
01:41President Trump about the rumors the attack was staged during his appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday,
01:46which, intentionally or not, lent credibility to the outrageous claims that it was a hoax.
01:50Trump, in characteristically Trumpian fashion, said of those perpetuating that the assassination
01:57attempt was staged were sick people, and joked that usually they wait about two or three months
02:02months to start with the rumor mill.
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