Footage Revives Conspiracy that Trump Assassination Attempt was Staged
By Sam Howard
What happened: A year after President Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, liberal social media users are again citing fake evidence alleging the incident was staged.
Context: Almost immediately after Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet at the Butler rally on July 13, 2024, anti-Trump social media users claimed the shooting was a “false flag” staged to create sympathy for Trump, Reality Check previously reported.
A closer look: Liberal accounts are now sharing a video of what they say is a “new angle” of the shooting that supposedly proves that photographers were purposefully ushered into place so they could capture the now-iconic photos of Trump waving his fist into the air with blood running down his face.
Liberal TikTok user @devinpolitics posted a July 17, 2025, video featuring a caption saying that a Trump campaign staffer “ushers photographers in from the left side of the stage.” Commenting on the footage, @devinpolitics said: "This couldn't be more obvious. It really couldn't. The question we need to be asking ourselves is who orchestrated this event? Who organized this campaign photo op?" The post garnered 485,200 views and 61,400 likes in three days.
Bluesky user @cwebbonline.com stated in a post: "Watch and decide, but I was never fully convinced he was shot in the first place. … From this angle: you see the photographers guided into place." The post received 17,600 likes and 8,200 reposts in two days.
Actually: The footage is neither new nor evidence of a conspiracy.
The footage was apparently first posted by pro-Trump X user @Brick_Suit four days after the attempted assassination, on July 17, 2024.
Photojournalists interviewed at the time about their experience covering the rally said they were not ushered into position.
New York Times photographer Doug Mills, said in a July 2024 New York Times video that he went to that spot under his own volition: “I've always known which way [presidential candidates] come onstage and which way they go off. And the closest stairs were to my right, so I ran over to that side and witnessed him being helped to his feet."
Another photographer, Evan Vucci of The Associated Press, told PBS in July 2024 that he was trying to anticipate Trump’s next move. “I knew that he was going to go down the steps and into a waiting vehicle,” Vucci said. “So I ran to the steps as quickly as I could, and I started framing up what I thought was going to work.”
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