Even Donald Trump's base doesn't believe him anymore

Jackie Calmes, Tribune News Service

It's not generally admirable to take pleasure in someone being targeted, troubled or taunted in some way. But schadenfreude is exactly what I've felt in recent weeks, unapologetically, about President Donald Trump finding himself for once on the receiving end of a dark conspiracy theory, including from some of his most prominent (former) supporters. They're suggesting that he staged an assassination attempt against himself at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2024, to supercharge his reelection prospects.

So central is the Butler moment to Trump's narrative as president that he was saved by God to save the country, he prominently hung a painting of the now-iconic photo of himself — pushing above a scrum of Secret Service agents, blood running from his injured ear, pumping a fist and urging, "Fight!, fight!, fight!" — in the White House's Grand Foyer soon after he moved back in. It replaced a portrait of former President Barack Obama, the relocation of which in turn pushed George W. Bush up a staircase.

Yet here's how Trisha Hope, a Trump delegate from Texas to the 2024 Republican National Convention, described that Butler tableau in a social media post last week that former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reposted: Secret Service agents "allowed President Trump to stand up, exposing multiple potential kill shots, as the flag is gently lowered. Interesting that the other SS agents lower their heads as the perfectly time(d) ICONIC photo is taken. Honestly, it couldn't have been scripted better if (it) were to have been done in a studio."

For such former allies — together with the likes of MAGA celebs Greene, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, comedian Tim Dillon and former Trump counterterrorism advisor Joe Kent — to now suggest that Trump's tale of divine salvation could well be a hoax, that it was rigged, perhaps reflects something else rooted in spirituality: karma. What goes around, comes around. It is also a measure of Trump's lost credibility, after years of incessant lies and policy reversals, that even once-cheerleading allies would question both the Butler shooting and a second thwarted assassination attempt two months later at his Florida golf club.

Their belief that Trump would stage a shooting — which did in fact leave the alleged shooter and one rally attendee dead — is the most extreme manifestation of the president's credibility gap in his second term. What's more normal is that foreign leaders, business chiefs and average Americans have come to openly discredit much of Trump's bluster.

It would be comical if it weren't so serious, and destabilising for the nation and the world. The fact that Trump's public support is continuing to slide — recent polls released this week show two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his job performance — is reassuring only so long as you don't fear what a humiliated Trump on the ropes might do. To be clear, I do not subscribe to the Butler shooting conspiracy theory. Just as I've never bought Trump's own conspiracy theories, least of all his Big Lie that Democrats defrauded him of reelection in 2020.

Trump not only keeps that lie alive, but his administration continues to investigate the long-ago election and to purge any career employees who helped prosecute the Capitol attackers trying to overturn Trump's defeat on Jan. 6, 2021. His nominees for high posts, notably including for federal judgeships that demand independence, refuse to answer simply "yes" at their confirmation hearings when Democratic senators test them by asking whether Trump lost the 2020 election. In rote fashion, one nominee after another fails the test, uttering legalese they've plainly been coached to say by administration handlers, about how Congress and the electoral college certified Joe Biden as the winner. As recently as Tuesday, troublingly, that was the response of Kevin Warsh, Trump's pick to be chair of the Federal Reserve System that Trump seeks to dominate. Thus the otherwise qualified Warsh showed he lacks the political independence that's fundamental for a Fed chair.

It was a Trump-promoted conspiracy theory that first attracted the far right to his side 15 years ago: his racist claim that Obama faked his birth certificate, was actually born in Kenya and thus was not a legitimate president. So, yes, there's nothing wrong in now enjoying that Trump is himself the butt of a crazy conspiracy theory from onetime backers with big megaphones.

Play with fire, get burned. Lie down with dogs, rise up with fleas. On his podcast Monday night, Tucker Carlson and his even more conspiracy-oriented brother Buckley Carlson shared doubts about both Trump assassination attempts. "I know that those investigations have been stymied. Fact," Tucker said. "Yeah. Stymied from the very top," answered Buckley. Kent, the promoter of conspiracy theories who resigned last month as Trump's director of the National Counterterrorism Center, afterward told a receptive Carlson on his show, "We still don't know what happened in Butler."

"Just admit you staged it in Butler," MAGA-friendly comedian Tim Dillon said this month on his own podcast. "Of course, a real person died, and that's terrible. RIP." Hang with conspiracists, be hung out to dry by conspiracists. Tell lies, be discredited.