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Welcome back to False Flag! The community of “groypers” surrounding groyper-in-chief Nick Fuentes is in turmoil after a groyper-themed convention in Ohio went south over the weekend.
Dubbed “America First United,” this event had everything, including:
A panelist in a Daft Punk-style mask using a voice modulator to hide his identity.
A half-empty audience.
Nonwhite speakers whose presence enraged the groyper nation.
Fuentes, who didn’t attend, has predictably disavowed his supporters over the botched conference. There’s a lot to dig into here, so Sam Stein and I broke it down on our weekly “MAGA Mondays” livestream.
In today’s newsletter, we’re touching on something else. In the wake of the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, conspiracists rushed in with theories about how the event may have been staged to generate sympathy for the president. Much of the speculation seemed to come from the left, which angered the right. But a recent focus group we conducted shows that Trump voters themselves appear to suspect that the attack was a psyop.
We plumb the conspiratorial mind so that you don’t have to. That’s the sort of service that keeps our readers coming back for more—and signing up for Bulwark+ memberships. Sign up today and get fourteen days FREE to try it out:
–Will
Meet the Trump Voters Who Believe He Staged the WHCD Shooting
As his popularity shrivels, some former supporters buy into conspiracy theories about the attempts on his life.
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DONALD TRUMP’S CRITICS ON THE LEFT have taken a lot of heat for suspecting that the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner two weeks ago was a false flag attack—perhaps intended to give Trump a boost in the polls or provide an excuse to build his new ballroom.
But it turns out that Trump supporters, already swimming in a sea of other conspiracy theories, don’t necessarily trust the WHCD shooting story presented by the feds, either. That’s one of the big findings of a recent focus group conducted by Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell’s Longwell Partners of nine people who voted for Trump at least twice (in 2020 and 2024). Those nine people were picked for the focus group because they all now say they disapprove of his presidency. As for the WHCD attack, six participants said they believed the assassination attempt attributed to California teacher Cole Tomas Allen was “a psyop.”
“It doesn’t make sense that somebody should be able to get that close this many times in that way to the president of the United States,” said one member of the focus group.
“I can’t even go to a baseball game and bring in a can of Diet Coke . . . or a concert without a metal detector or them emptying my pockets,” said another.
“I feel like it was a ploy to get his ballroom that he wants, and that’s his reason,” said a third.
To be clear: There’s no evidence to support the notion that the assassination attempt involved anyone besides Allen or was some kind of “false flag” attempt to get Trump his ballroom.
Like other WHCD false flag theorists, the focus group members relied mostly on a belief that too many people were trying to assassinate Trump for this attempt to be authentic—or they cited descriptions of ruthless Washington power games they had seen on TV (such as Netflix’s House of Cards).
Others focused on White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s remarks ahead of Trump’s WHCD speech that “there will be some shots fired” at the dinner (a promise, clearly, that Trump would come in guns blazing rhetorically, not a reference to actual gunfire) as proof that the White House was putting out coded messages about the assassination ahead of time.
“I think Karoline Levitt had made a comment, flippant and could be totally coincidental, ‘Shots will be fired tonight,’” one panelist said. “I mean, it’s almost like they’re toying with us or being playful in the [sense of] ‘We’re literally going to show you what we have done or what we’re about to do.’”
The ballroom, in particular, loomed large over the focus group. Some participants pointed to Trump’s tutelage under cutthroat lawyer Roy Cohn as proof that he would stop at nothing to get his ballroom, while multiple members of the panel were suspicious of how rapidly conservative media moved the discussion of the assassination attempt into a pitch for the ballroom’s construction.
“He had some weird . . . manifesto or something that came out,” one focus group member said of Allen. “And all of a sudden, all the conservative pundits are talking about ballrooms.”
The gang returns to California for two live shows in May. Join Sarah, Tim, and Sam in San Diego on May 20 or in L.A. on May 21 for a night of politics and laughs, and a community built on good faith. Bulwark Live: California is sure to sell out—don’t delay. |
TRUMP HAS BEEN POLITICALLY victimized before by conspiracy theories (including those of his own making), most notably f