False allegations of a “deep state” conspiracy spread rapidly in the hours after a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
And an exclusive poll reveals the shocking number of people who believe the shooting was an inside job.
About 21 percent of people polled by Dailymail.com said they believed the FBI was responsible for the attempted murder.
That number includes a third of Republicans.
In contrast, less than half (46 percent) accept the official explanation that the attack was carried out by a lone gunman.
Blood is seen coming out of Donald Trump’s ear where he said he was shot. Online trolls claimed the event was staged immediately after it happened
The results come from a survey conducted last week by JL Partners of more than 1,000 likely voters.
Professor Robert Shapiro, from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, said the numbers of those who believe in conspiracy theories are alarming.
“It’s high, but it’s also not surprising,” he said, “because we found what we call perceptual biases due to partisan conflict and polarization, and we saw the same kinds of things with respect to who won the 2020 election.
“It is mainly Trump supporters who believe these conspiracy theories. It is a well-known phenomenon today.”
In other words, repeated attacks on the FBI for its role in the Trump investigation and subsequent court cases have left his supporters deeply distrustful of federal agencies.
The election campaign was thrown into disarray on the evening of July 13 when a bullet fired by a gunman grazed Trump’s ear as he was giving a speech at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Secret Service agents quickly opened fire, shooting dead the would-be assassin, who was later identified as Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old kitchen worker.
He had been spotted on a nearby rooftop before opening fire. Since then, a series of Secret Service and law enforcement errors have been identified that showed moments when he could have been stopped.
Investigators have not offered a possible motive for the attack, but said they believe Crooks acted alone.
JL Partners asked 1,054 likely voters their opinions on a variety of political issues
Actress Amanda Seales posted a video online claiming the attempted assassination of Donald Trump that killed one man and injured others was staged.
Still, questions about how he could have shot the world’s most protected man sparked a flurry of conspiracy theories suggesting there was more to the shooting than met the eye.
For example, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social media platform X, posted: “Extreme incompetence or it was deliberate. Either way, SS management needs to resign.”
Others went even further. Alex Jones, who falsely claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was not real, said the attack was part of a “failed coup” by the “deep state.”
Some questioned whether the shooting was real.
“He looks very prepared,” said another user on X in a post that quickly attracted more than a million views.
“No one in the crowd runs or panics. No one in the crowd heard a real gun. I don’t trust that. I don’t trust him.”
Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and an expert on conspiracy theories, said he was not surprised by the high number of people who said they believed in a larger plot.
He said it was a mistake to think of conspiracy theories as a “one-off idea” but rather as being spread by people who were already prone to believe them.
‘In this case, believers likely already have a worldview (not measured in their survey, but likely indirectly reflected in support for Trump and RFK) in which conspiracies tend to dictate events and circumstances… for these people, this is simply how the world works,’ he said.
“To them, it makes perfect sense that there was a broader conspiracy behind the attempted assassination of Trump.”
Some theories have been quickly debunked.
A post purportedly written by a sniper at the rally, who claimed to have been ordered not to shoot the shooter, was revealed to be a hoax when it emerged that no one by that name was at the event.
Secret Service agents rushed onto the stage and pushed Trump to the ground after shots were fired.
Other social media users posted an image of an unharmed Trump, but it turned out to be from 2022.
Many Republicans blamed President Joe Biden for creating the conditions for someone to take matters into their own hands, presenting the election as the last chance to save democracy and even saying he wanted to target Trump during a call with donors.
Republican Rep. Mike Collins went further, posting on X that: “Joe Biden sent the orders.”
Meanwhile, some on the left wondered whether Trump might have staged the whole affair to attract sympathy.
An adviser to Democratic donor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman emailed reporters saying “this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and perhaps even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.” Dmitri Mehlhorn later apologized.
And in a now-deleted social media post, actress Amanda Seales said it was a stunt to help Trump show his strength.
“I lived in Harlem long enough to know that gunshots don’t sound like popcorn being made on the stove,” he said.