It’s only July, and our already terrifying election season has somehow gotten far worse than even the QAA hosts could imagine. Join Jake, Travis, Liv, and Julian for an emergency recording following the attempted assassination of the former President and the murder of one of his supporters at a Trump rally in Butler, PA. Naturally, conspiracy theories are spreading like wildfires in the wake of such unsettling events, and the hosts must turn to their beloved Travis to separate reality from fiction.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to podcast mini-series like Manclan, Trickle Down, Perverts and The Spectral Voyager: http://www.patreon.com/QAA
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
https://qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, Episode 286, Trump Shot.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Liv Acar, Julian Field, and Travis View.
As one spectacle dies, another, more grotesque spectacle bursts forth from its chest.
At its core, a singular image, that of former President Donald Trump, face spattered in blood, mouthing the word, fight, as Secret Service agents struggle to move him off a rally stage.
Beyond him, a dead man, and another in critical condition, having been hit by bullets shot from a nearby rooftop.
On the rooftop, a 20-year-old man, shot in the face by Secret Service snipers as he clutched the rifle he'd attempted to kill the former president with.
The rally crowd chanting and pumping their fists.
USA!
And the machine shudders into higher gear.
Bitcoin prices surge.
People take to social media to spin bizarre conspiracy theories.
Political opponents prepare words of support for a man they've claimed is a fascist poised to end American elections for good.
And beyond the bloody scene, beyond the body on the rooftop and the body in the crowd, in a deeper set of shadows, the bodies of tens of thousands of Gazans buried in rubble, bodies in pieces and strewn across the ground between tents, the product of bombs provided by the sitting president, currently under siege by his own political party for showing signs of mental decline.
Hello, everybody.
How's it going?
I'm great.
Yeah, everything's fine.
I'm not good, Julian.
This was supposed to be a movie night episode.
Yeah, this was.
We were supposed to do Divination Code 2.
It was having a great weekend.
We were going to watch Nick Cage steal the Declaration of Independence or whatever.
Yeah.
I can't remember which movie.
It's actually Tom Hanks steal the Holy Grail, which is actually not a cup, but the negative space in a painting.
Okay, the point is we were all gonna gather around this cup and you know, whoever Gets their last has to drink it and instead we are all going to be drinking the blood of the moment and Embracing this new madness.
I do have to say that seeing live shaken is fucking me up because usually you are Up there with the most kind of cynical and stalwart and, you know, maybe able to dissociate in these moments, but you're just like, this is bad.
This is really bad, actually.
Yeah, this Trump Trump getting shot specifically was the moment where I do feel just a general like sense of unease that is creeping and that I cannot ignore by doing like fun tasks like, you know, going swimming, going on hikes, really fun things I've been doing this summer.
No fun for you.
No, no, no, no, no, no, the anxiety.
It's like it follows except instead of like, you know, like a weird guy.
It's just like a cloud of anxiety.
I think there are many pieces of content right now produced by the president or the other ex-president or just random people on the internet that like capture the moment because the moment is unfortunately a moment seared into the content of it all.
But this post in a QAnon group by someone named Sheila for me captures the kind of ups and downs and the horrors and madness of the moment.
She writes, "My dog is dying and I am feeling depleted.
This made me laugh though."
It's a photo of President Trump holding up his fist.
Quote, "Donald Trump encourages and protects frightened U.S.
Secret Service members who cling to his massive balls as he leads
them to safety right after failed assassination attempt."
Just the combination of, of grim death, over sexual jokes about this
disgusting guy.
It's just, please save me from this.
Really puts you into the mindset of Republican voter.
I like trying to think of the equivalent of the mindset of the Democrat voter, especially the one who is enthusiastic.
Like, I don't, I don't know.
I have no answer for you.
They almost killed our president who has big fat balls.
He's got big juicy testicles.
Yeah, you know, I feel like, yeah, there are people who just really do process all political news through jokey memes.
No matter how grim or serious or dire or how much evil it portends, you know?
It's like they just process all of reality through goofy memes about massive balls.
Others tragically turned to podcasts.
Anyways, audience, welcome to our emergency episode.
Obviously, we're going to try to cover what is a moving target at this point.
And to be fully clear, we are recording this midday approximately, PST, on the West Coast of the United States.
Anyways, to put his feet in the still hot pie, here's Travis View.
Yeah, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt during a rally near Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.
Truly a day that will go down in history.
The assailant is identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Pennsylvania.
He opened fire while Trump was delivering a speech.
Trump said on social media that the bullet, quote, pierced the upper part of his right ear before agents whisked him off the stage.
So I know that there was some some claims that actually the bullet shattered some glass and that's what actually bloodied his ear but I don't know I guess I guess we don't have any independent verification but I think I think is what looks most likely is the bullet grazing his ear because I didn't see any shattered glass I guess in the images I saw.
Which is what I wanted to believe.
Yeah, yeah.
Because it's like, surely it didn't go right beside his fucking head, right?
Surely that's not the world we live in.
That it whizzed, yeah, that he turned his head so it didn't go through his brain.
Surely that's not the world we live in.
I mean, I'm not here to celebrate, but this is a very American way to pierce your ear.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm definitely not going to Claire's.
My niece got an infection when she went to Claire's.
No, the most fucked up thing, too, is, according to Trump, he claims that the reason that he tilted his head at the last second, which, you know, from images make it look like it put the back of his skull out of the way of the bullet's path, is to look up at, like, an immigration chart that was, you know, plastered on, like, a giant jumbotron at the event.
You know, he's like, if I hadn't looked up at that chart to see how many how many illegal immigrants were coming in, I would have been dead, which is fucking insane.
Also, the fact that we basically there's like a photograph of like a bullet in like Matrix vision where you see the air, you know, like like displaced around the path of the ship.
Like it's it's too much.
It's too much.
I took too much.
I like the idea that he basically was saved by content, like he was trying to take in one of the many information screens all around him and that tilted his head at the content angle and he wasn't able to be shot.
So it's so bad.
Yeah, and we haven't even we haven't even gotten to the fact that JFK jr.
Was in the crowd But no, I like the idea that he was saved by his ADD You know if he was a little if he was able to like pay attention if he was looking forward if he was a little bit less Fidgety a little bit less prone to distraction from colorful images.
He sees in front of him.
He might be dead He truly is the first zoomer president I'm so glad.
I'm so glad he isn't, though, because whatever you're feeling, whatever you're feeling about Donald Trump is, and I know we all have plenty, you know, it's one thing to watch the Zapruder film, right?
But, like, to see it from a hundred different angles in HD of, like, a former president's, like, skull getting, like, blown open, I think it would have, I mean, like, we're different now.
That's no, there's no denying that.
But if it had been That I can only imagine a hundred years, you know, of content of baking of, it would have been worse.
It would have been worse.
This is our nine 11, but it's nine dash 11.
And it's in reference to the millimeters away from death.
I was helping my buddy at a garage sale the other day, he's moving to Hawaii and this woman came in.
And first of all, she asked if she could have his bins for free, the, you know, some bins that he wasn't using.
She walked around and she didn't buy anything.
Then she turned and it was like four of us in there just kind of hanging out.
And she turned to us, she's like, "Well, yeah, you know, it's been so stressful, you know,
you know, since yesterday, all the events of yesterday."
And I thought that she, you know, where she was going with it was,
was that she was going to say, you know, "It's crazy, like, to see that happen.
Like, oh my God, like, we're really, we're really in trouble."
But she was like, "If it could have just been like a couple inches to the right."
And I was like, "Jesus fucking Christ, like, you're saying this,
you're walking into like a stranger's home and like, you know, sort of like hoping for
like death and just saying that to people you don't know."
It reminded me of when I was up in Solvayne in a Christmas ornament shop,
looking at Christmas ornaments and some guy just started talking to me,
like this was years ago about like, uh, Hillary Clinton and the in the tunnels like just like a randomly just extremism to strangers just like no matter who they are is fucking wild.
We'll edit this rant out but it blew my mind that that was sort of like her take on it.
This is important.
We need to know what's going on in your mind before the bullet of this episode grazes it.
It's not a lot?
I don't know.
I definitely can't legally say what I think should happen to Donald Trump on this podcast.
But like, the idea of the bullet going slight is like not a good timeline you want to be in.
I don't want to be in that timeline.
There is no good timeline.
The bullet leaving the gun, I think, is the decisive moment of this timeline more than what happened after.
No, I think Trump's head exploding like a cantaloupe is a substantially worse timeline.
Because first, they're just going to replace him with a candidate that's probably better in terms of like more popular.
People don't like Trump.
He's a historically awful candidate.
You know, if you want, if you want the election to go better, it's not Trump that should be dying.
I don't know if you should, can you edit that out?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Of course not.
I'm trying to put, put myself in like the shoes of, of like an American voter getting all these different messages.
Like, you know, people being like, well, this guy is a fascist.
He is going to end democracy.
This will be the last election if he is elected.
Also, you know, I just want to say, like, political violence is wrong in every way.
Scroll down a little further.
A child's body in multiple pieces on the floor of a Gaza.
And then Trump, you know, making a joke about how the photo is the most iconic photo ever taken.
And then just, like, vote!
Don't vote!
Kill!
Don't kill!
Like, there's no... I'm gonna have ADHD from following American politics.
So yeah, I tell you, amidst all that chaos, yeah, press photographers captured some photos that I'm sure will be seen from generations to come if humanity survives for generations.
And shortly afterwards, the New York Post reported on Trump's comments regarding the photo.
And I thought this was very touching about his reaction.
A lot of people are saying it's the most iconic photo they've ever seen.
They're right, and I didn't die.
Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.
I just wanted to keep speaking, but I just got shot.
Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.
Uh-huh.
Is it usually the picture of you dying, though?
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, there's a picture of the shooter.
It's not iconic.
Yeah.
I think he's confusing something he heard about, like, young musicians who die, you know, in their prime or something.
Yeah.
He's thinking of like, yeah, like a glorious photo of Bob Marley, but that's not the photo of Bob Marley being murdered.
I mean, I like the idea of like him literally being millimeters away from death, but immediately afterwards thinking is like, how good are the photos?
The photos are just so fucking good.
I'm just, no, no, I think he really thinks he's immortal.
And, um, you know, I think maybe living his life, that might seem like a reasonable belief, but like, like the considerations of like, you know, how close he came to, you know, not being anything anymore just didn't quite register for him.
I remember reading something saying that he's like gotten spiritual about this without any context beyond that which
is either like maybe Like I like the idea where he becomes a damn again
But I think it might be the other way unfortunately Yeah
I don't think that that having someone attempt to murder you with the kind of brain that Trump has will lead to
anything good But I don't think anything would lead to anything good
There's no experience you could put Trump through.
You know, there's no like hey Maybe he smoked some weed and plays some video games like the Jake the Jake techniques will not work on him No techniques will work on him and apparently he was knocked out of his shoes by the Secret Service when they jostled him is what he's claiming that he had his shoes tied on tight.
I'm gonna read this.
Read it.
He's so, in the same interview Jake is having that nervous laughter of someone about to be executed.
I'm like half laughing, half crying at how fucked up our reality is.
So in that same interview, he talks about, you know, because you can hear him on the mic saying, wait, I want to get my shoes, which is like such an interesting, you know, in moments of chaos, like you don't act the way that you think you do.
And I don't know, there's something like childlike about this where he's like, hold on my, hold on my shoes.
My wife suggested he probably has like three or four inch lifts so they didn't want to get dragged off this, you know, dragged off the stage looking significantly shorter.
But he said when he was talking about this quote in the same interview, he wrote,
"The agents hit me so hard that my shoes fell off and my shoes are tight."
I mean, awesome, dude.
He's a sneakerhead.
But he says, my shoes are tight.
They hit me so hard that my shoes fell off, which is crazy because my shoes are tight.
Are we sure that there wasn't just like a glitch and at that moment he was supposed to be floating off into heaven with like the little like cartoon angel wings?
He floated out of his shoes and then the Secret Service displaced him?
Like the two weasels in Roger Rabbit?
You know, you had to grab them and stuff them back into their bodies?
Absolutely.
I think that Trump was stuffed back into his body.
Alright, take us to the next stage of this horrifying adventure.
Well, yeah, I think we should also mention that there, at least us here, two rally attendees during the shooting were injured and there was one death.
50-year-old former firefighter Corey Comparatore.
Unfortunately, Corey was not a great guy.
He was posting on Twitter, in response to the death of the Gazans, they'll get over it like the Japanese did.
Well, who we nuked.
We nuked a civilian.
In America, the death penalty for... We don't have the death penalty for shitty political takes, but I get where... I see where you're coming from, but... I'm not talking about that.
I'm just saying, like, the fact that this guy died for this idiot because he went to support him at a rally is fucking sad.
Like, his head was full of trash and rage and wishing violence upon others, as it's happening across the world.
So the shooter, Crooks, was carrying explosives in his vehicle, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Maybe he had further plans.
So little is known right now as of this recording.
He was shot dead and a semi-automatic rifle was found next to his body, which was purchased by his father, according to an official briefed on the investigation.
So immediately.
Now, first of all, I just want to say, like, Twitter is totally useless for really assessing facts about a dramatic unfolding news event.
Oh, yeah.
If you want to fill your head with, like, insane conspiracy theories, that is a great place to go right now.
Yeah.
It's exactly what Elon wanted it to be.
It's functioning completely as intended.
Yeah.
It is such trash.
I went to TikTok and Reddit to see what the, you know, the usual, the usual suspects were sort of saying about this.
And Twitter was far, the theories being tossed around on Twitter were far more accessible, far more prominent, and far more unhinged than what I was seeing on the other sites.
So yeah, so immediately everyone wanted to know the motive.
I was a little worried that this might be a virtually unheard of instance of, like, lone wolf liberal extremist violence.
Partly because that would mean that our political situation is more weird and less stable than I thought.
And partly because I said on a recent episode, I didn't believe that there was any real risk of, like, actual, like, liberal extremist violence.
And if this was the case, then boy, would egg be on my face.
Travis's greatest concern.
Keep Egg away from that face.
He's got too much of a beard.
If the Egg would get caught, it'd be really hard to get out.
There's an Egg coming, like, at Travis.
It clips his ear.
Liv, Jake, and I are holding Travis.
He's saying, where are my shoes?
But, yeah, it looks like there's just another instance of a weirdo with, you know, just scrambled, unclear politics and motives, which is, I don't know, I feel like it's par for the course for modern political assassins.
You know, I was watching Manhunt recently about the Lincoln assassination.
I thought, boy, you know, John Wilkes Booth, he had a clear motive for that assassination.
He had, you know, he had, you know, an evil political ideology, but God damn it, it was at least coherent.
It was something you can grab onto.
and understand he was part of a conspiracy of confederate sympathizers
who wanted to end the top ranks of the U.S. federal government.
That's evil, but at least makes sense.
Feels like for the last hundred years or so, political assassins have mostly had like incoherent
politics and motives.
It would be funny if Booth had access to YouTube.
Yeah, I'm sure his political ideology would be much more melted if he was posting on Twitter.
So we know that Thomas Matthew Crooks was a registered Republican.
His father is a registered Libertarian and his mother was a registered Democrat.
Real mixed household.
He also apparently donated $15 to a progressive super PAC in 2021.
Some people are trying to claim that that wasn't him.
It was a different Thomas Crooks, but apparently like the only other like Thomas Crooks in that in that state is a 69 year old man who is in a different zip code.
So based upon the information that we have, it looks like it's actually him.
A lot of people know that the donation happened to take place on the day that Biden was inaugurated.
So that's a little odd.
Some people speculate that might be, you know, might be him like donating to a because of a bet, you know, because it happened to happen on the inauguration day.
Others thought that he might have donated it in response to a spam fundraising text.
And he's just a dumb kid who is impressionable to these kinds of things.
I don't Yeah, because apparently the organization he donated to is kind of like a scammy one anyways.
It's not like he donated directly to a candidate or through ActBlue or whatever.
It's like some scammy-ass pack.
Yeah, so he might have just got caught in the marketing funnel and just whatever.
I'm just glad he's cis and white, because I mean, if that wasn't the case, like, yeah, yeesh.
Yeah, yeah.
I agree.
Lots of horrifying identity politics that could have taken place if that wasn't the case.
They'll still happen, by the way.
They don't really care.
They tried it, but it didn't seem to stick all that much.
I know, like, Paul was trying to say that he's Jewish, but I think they do that for everything.
And I don't think much of it has stuck, the identity stuff.
I'm reading a tweet here that says he was Liv Agar coded.
There was one photo where you can see that he's got, like, long blonde hair and circle-framed glasses.
I was like, oh no.
Oh no.
Oh no.
Liv, you're gonna have to change your entire style.
I'm gonna have to grow my hair out.
He graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.
He received a $500 Star Award from the National Math and Science Initiative.
The New York Times interviewed a former classmate of Crook's named Zach Bradford.
Bradford said that Crooks appeared to be, quote, incredibly intelligent and that his views in high school seemed slightly right-leaning.
Bradford said that he remembered a couple instances in which classmates gave Crooks a hard time, but was shocked when he heard that Crooks had been identified as the shooter.
The Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed a few former classmates of his, one of which claimed that Crooks consistently took up conservative positions.
This is what that report said.
It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate.
Smith recalled the mock debate in which their history professor posed government policy questions and asked students to stand on one side of the classroom or the other to signal their support or opposition for a given proposal.
Quote, the majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side, Smith said.
That's still the picture I have of him, just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.
Christ.
It's just crazy how this is like a unique historical moment for me because I really feel like I don't have anything to say about that.
Like what do you what do you want me to fucking say about that?
What is there to say about that?
I mean I think that it's fair to say that politics have grown irrelevant.
Like that what we can see a pattern of here that he maybe fits into is young disturbed men taking a giant gun they purchased legally and shooting people with it.
But shooting Donald Trump?
Yeah, well sometimes you want a bit of panache.
Sometimes a school shooting is just not good enough.
You want to be a little more famous.
It is crazy that he probably knew he was going to lose his life that day.
I mean, if he had any kind of realism about what was happening.
But he didn't leave any note.
He didn't make any statements online.
He has three names.
Save me!
Save me from becoming a conspiracy theorist.
ABC News spoke with two former members of the Rifle Club of Bethel Park High School, and they said that he was rejected from the club.
One former member was quoted as saying this.
He was asked not to come back because of how bad of a shot he was.
He was considered, like, dangerous.
Crooks had been working as a dietary aid at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Marcy Grimm, the facility's administrator, said that the organization was shocked to learn of his involvement in the shooting, saying that he had, quote, performed his job without concern and his background check was clean.
One other interesting detail is that Crooks is wearing a t-shirt from Demolition Ranch.
This is a YouTube channel known for its firearms and demolition content.
I haven't seen it personally but apparently it boasts millions of subscribers and it's really more about the capability of firearms and explosive devices and it's not particularly political.
He also had a Ridge wallet.
He had Bluetooth in his system.
I mean, that's that's the information we have so far.
And this is what's like aggravating.
It's like, it's like why why we still don't really have a clear idea of a motive.
This is also seems like par for the course, though, for like the, you know, horrible events.
I think about like the largest mass shooting ever.
The 2017 Las Vegas shooting and Steven Paddock.
So, according to multiple investigations, the motive for the shooting is officially undetermined.
Undetermined!
Just shooting, just murdering dozens of people for unknown reasons.
Just horrible, grim, violent things happen, and we can't even, like, dig down and see, like, why?
What was going on in the individual's head that made them want to do this?
It's kind of maddening.
Deeply psychotic country.
Sure, and the lack of why and the lack of understanding is just going to lead people, as it already has, to come up with their own why.
Sure.
I mean, yeah, that's the other element that's distressing, is that because there are all these information gaps, you know, you can make up things.
You can create stories.
You can invent conspiracy theories that sound pleasant.
Because there's one thing that people just can't stand.
It's just being at peace with not knowing.
Being at peace with their ignorance.
They have to fill in those gaps in order to function day to day.
Well, we're also trying to fucking explain reality.
It's not just some sort of, I don't know, weakness.
It's the natural human tendency to try to create narrative in an increasingly confusing world.
And on the other side of things, to re-enchant what is a horrible reality.
Immediately after the shooting, I mean like immediately, people started to suggest, without evidence, that the shooter was somehow motivated by President Biden's rhetoric.
Which is a funny image to me.
Of confusing presidents.
Incredible.
That's why he tried to kill the candidate of the apparent party that he should be supporting, is because he did a Joe Biden and was like, oh, I mixed him up.
Oh, whoops, Vice President Trump?
Representative Mike Collins of Georgia said on Twitter, quote, Joe Biden sent the orders.
That's insane that a fucking goddamn congressman said this.
You can just say anything.
I mean, I guess that is the, especially with how little actual content, like information we have about this, you can just say anything.
I like that you just said how little content we have about this.
It's a Freudian slip.
This is apparently what they're trying to do is that they're trying to kind of like hype up a reference to this recent phone call that Biden made with hundreds of Democratic donors in which it said that he was done talking about the debate and said, quote, it's time to put Trump in the bullseye.
But in that call, Biden went on to express frustration that Trump wasn't answering questions about topics like Project 2025, Roe vs. Wade, Social Security or prescription drug prices.
And so Yeah, I don't know.
It's like, do you have any evidence that he was even like Joe Biden?
Do you have any evidence that he was aware of this obscure phone call that Joe Biden made with, you know, with less than a thousand Democratic donors?
Why would you connect this statement to the actions?
It's just the connections are totally made up.
Biden was trying to radicalize just like specifically rich Democrat donors, turn them into like super soldiers that will fight.
Not like the general base, the ones that are paying, giving him the most money.
Yeah, he's not stuttering.
He's not fucking up his words.
He's doing activation for all his Manchurian candidates.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, this incident inspired someone to post on 4chan as an insider anon, and I think that's very quaint that still, in the year 2024, insider anons on 4chan are still happening.
Of course, someone made a screenshot of this 4chan post and then elevated it to Twitter, which it actually received a more credulous audience on Twitter than it did on 4chan.
People were questioning the post on 4chan, but they were so much more receptive on Twitter, which is horrifying.
That's how QAnon works!
Yeah.
So the 4chan post was titled, they wouldn't let me take out the shooter.
And of course, none of it is true.
It's just a troll pretending to have inside information.
But here's what it said.
My name is Jonathan Willis.
I'm the officer in the famous photo of the two snipers on the roof at Trump's rally.
I came here.
To inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least three minutes but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp.
100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots at President Trump.
I like the idea that, like, the top Secret Service guy has to say, you're allowed to shoot the guy who's pointing a gun at Trump.
Like, they have to say that.
The procedure says you can't just shoot to protect him.
Permission to shoot guy with rifle on roof.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like the idea.
It's like, no, permission denied due to wokeness.
As if, like, all law enforcement, like, doesn't shoot first and then try to, like, figure out how to, figure out how to justify it after the fact.
You must wokely shoot above his head and warn him first.
You must shoot the rifle out of his hand like Sniper Elite 5.
Yeah, you know, I think that, I mean, this is playing into a lot of like, perhaps legitimate questions and like how
and why the Secret Service allowed this shooting to happen.
But, you know, of course, a big part of it amongst the right is that this is all caused by like, wokeness or DEI
or something.
On the station NewsNation, the former New York City police officer Bill Stanton suggested that the agents protecting Trump were merely diversity hires.
What does DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, have to do?
You know, was it the best agents or was it DEI that placed those agents there?
I hate to say it.
I saw some agents that looked like they didn't have a clue.
Does he think DEI is like a three letter agency?
But you know who else happened to be in the crowd?
None other than Pennsylvania-based Trump superfan Vincent Fusca.
Now, he is instantly recognizable by his black fedora, stubbly beard, and shoulder-length dark hair.
And some QAnon followers also happen to believe that he is the living JFK Jr.
He was right behind the former President Trump when he got shot, which means that, you know, there's somehow Vincent Fusca has earned an even greater place in the history books.
Images of him will be printed for centuries.
Good stuff.
And, you know, some conspiracists took note of Vincent Fusca's placement during this event.
Guys, here's the shot, but we should be paying attention to that guy right there, Vincent Fusca.
Everybody knows JFK Jr.
Yes, this happened, but we gotta be focused on right here.
That guy, look up, Vincent Fusca.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm just saying, look him up.
Yeah, as a Kennedy, that's why he's like barely phased, looking around confused.
Vincent Fusca, whose natural style just, like, comes off as a disguise.
This guy, naturally, without doing anything, he looks like he's got a disguise on.
One of the funniest bakes in relation to Fusca being there kind of relates to the fact that he was, like, looking so confused there, which happened on the poll board of 4chan, where there are at least a few threads comprised of users who saw Fusca in the crowd, didn't know about the JFK Jr.
stuff, and baked the fact that he didn't move around much.
So one user says, Who is this guy, and why was he absolutely unfazed by the shooting happening directly in front of him?
He did not react at all, to none of the shots.
And someone says, Autistic Crisis Actor!
All is staged and gay.
Okay.
Exactly my thoughts.
He behaved like Biden.
Okay.
So Fisker catching strays, of course, because everything in this needs to be interpreted.
There's no coherent meaning.
Are you sure that's how you want to phrase it, Liv?
That is a command.
Everything needs to be interpreted.
Yeah.
Surprisingly, two different conspiracy theories not interacting with one another, just sort of kind of bouncing off each other.
Yeah, because there's just so many of them.
Everybody is going crazy.
The dominant conspiracy theories have really just been, like, just dispersed into the wind.
Everyone makes what they want of this.
And of course, there are still people in the threads who have not given up hope, like we saw in that video, with one user responding to a thread asking who Vincent Fiske was by saying, He's our new VP.
He was going to run for New York State Senate against carpetbagger Hillary, but he got arkansided when his plane went down along with his wife and her sister, and the bodies never recovered.
That's the official story, minus the arkanside part.
But White Hats, including DJT, did a switcheroo beforehand and put the three of them in protective custody for the rest of their lives.
They've all been spotted at Trump rallies.
It will be 25 years this week, and Trump is going to do the big reveal this week at the RNC convention.
That's the hope, anyway.
Try to catch up.
It'll be really funny if Trump brings out Vincent Fusca at the RNC convention.
At this point, who knows?
He tries to sell a $40 hat.
Because I think the the rumor is that it's JD Vance.
Yeah, which is also fucking insane Like normal things are not allowed to happen anymore.
No, there's no way I thought it would get this weird and stupid by saying it's July No, no fucking chance.
This is way more fucked up We made it we made we did a melted election season episode and we had no idea and it's been days of Yeah.
I was doing a little work last night and I sat just staring at that folder in the Dropbox from July 3rd when it was like, melted election conspiracies.
I was like, you fucking fools.
You had no idea.
You had no idea how dumb and scary shit would get.
I really hope we're not in another moment like that.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I can't even.
Where do they go from here?
I don't know.
I'm so numb about this whole thing.
I just remembered like two months ago being like, wow, everyone's kind of bored of politics.
Like the election season is coming up and no one's talking about anything.
I mean, I was spending some time with family.
And I had a family member of roughly the 65 plus age range ask me if this was staged and saying that in the WhatsApp groups they're joking that the blood is like michelada or you know some other like fake red goop or whatever.
I mean it's so widespread it seems.
I figured this out because I was like literally walking to a party and I saw the QA group chat where you guys were talking about it and then I just had to like hang out normally at a party, not knowing much of the details.
Trump almost got shot.
Yeah, you were that meme of the person in the corner.
People were at like, you know, people like, what's your job?
And it's like, oh, what's what's the most interesting like conspiracy stuff that you've covered?
I'm like, well, Trump just got shot.
So maybe that.
And I definitely heard a couple of people be like, maybe it was fake.
Who knows?
I think people are inclined to fake.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's why yeah, like very shortly after the assassination like the word staged started trending on Twitter because so many Anti-Trump people they their knee-jerk response that it was fake.
It was not real It was the it was an assassination attempt that was made to look that way But he Trump wasn't and really I was like it was always short in specifics I don't know exactly what the hell they're talking about but this is basically like And suggesting that it was some kind of false flag attack in order to increase sympathy for Trump.
It was orchestrated by Trump and his people, which is totally ludicrous.
This is like Alex Jones territory.
You're starting to creep into.
Yeah, I was telling the relative, no, no, no, that's a conspiracy theory.
That is not true.
This young man is dead.
He killed somebody else.
And she's like, there's bodies.
And she said, well, well, you don't think that like Trump could have like hired this kid?
I'm like, no.
The crisis actor.
Hired a kid to, like, commit suicide?
You think the fucking Home Depot just has 20-year-olds, like, outside, just waiting to go do political hits?
Yeah, they keep them in the sort of sheds, you know, the plastic sheds that you see outside a Home Depot?
If you open those sheds, there's just, like, a group of, like, 20, 20-year-old guys, single, loners, and, yeah, like, $4.99 gets you one.
Now I know what to do about Travis.
So, uh, like one tweet about this topic on Twitter, which had nearly 3 million views, it was a popular one, said this.
I'm gonna be so real and say this, but that shit looked staged.
No way they missed with that many shots and just nicked his ear?
And then the fist pump and all the pictures of him with the flag!
This is propaganda.
So I think what they're falling into a kind of like a common conspiratorial reasoning, which is flawed, which suggests that if a group of a person or a group of people benefit from an event happening, that means that they orchestrated it, which isn't necessarily the case.
Nope.
No, what's way crazier to think about is that seconds after, you know, almost losing your life, that this motherfucker, like, had the idea that, like, to still create propaganda.
You know what I mean?
That his brain is still like, wait, wait a minute.
I gotta fucking use this.
This is, this is good.
This is good.
This is good.
Uh, this added production value.
I gotta take advantage of this.
Oh yeah, no, that's what's so crazy is that immediately he thought about content.
And it went viral, 3 million views.
And it went viral, and it's a fucking great picture.
I mean, it's like the Time Magazine's gonna be the Time Magazine cover.
So, I mean, it's like, it's so absurd on his face.
I mean, well, think about it.
So, like, the Trump camp, the Trump, like, people, they found this 20-year-old guy and said, man, you're such a good shot.
I know you were ejected from the shooting club at school, but you're such a good shot.
I believe in you.
We're going to trust you to shoot close enough to Trump that you, like, nick him without killing or seriously injuring him.
It's like, we believe that you're really one of the best riflemen on planet Earth.
Uh, but what we'll have to do is, you know, we're going to have to kill a Trump supporter in attendance.
So if you could shoot them up, that would work for us.
And then we'll get Trump in position so an associate press photographer can make a cool photo.
And then of course, Secret Service will shoot you dead where you lie.
But that's the plan.
That's not what happened.
That's cannot, it was like, that's on its face, ludicrous.
Yeah, I don't, I just, it's, we are so cooked.
We are so doomed.
I know, it's like, it's really, I mean, I think that if you are somebody who feels compelled to pay attention to politics regularly, or if you feel like it's just something you enjoy, or something that's important to you, you need to expand your capacity for terror.
Because I feel like what's happening is that a lot of people, they're witnessing what's unfolding, and they're getting so terrified that they're disassociating.
They're rejecting it.
They're saying, this isn't happening.
This isn't real.
And so they're replacing what is actually happening with their fictional stories.
And that's just not a productive way to engage with political media, is just entering into your own mind space in fantasy land.
Oh, great, Travis.
Just fucking add some RAM to the system.
Yeah, your capacity to take in the increasingly insane spectacle of violence and insanity.
Yeah, awesome.
Upgrade your graphics card.
Upgrade your fucking system, buddy!
Upgrade your graphics card.
Oh, wow, it sounds like you're operating on the old processing unit, buddy.
I mean, this is a product of a very irrational society.
The public discourse is just incredibly stupid and it's getting stupider.
The only kind of conceptual framework you're giving people to understand these very scary things are just very stupid.
Of course people are going to latch on to these sort of ideas.
Yeah.
People also don't want to feel bad for a guy that they hate, right?
They don't want to feel bad.
They don't want to feel sympathy.
I don't know.
It seems like the Democrats are fucking ready.
It seems like they're lining up to be like, oh wow, we must respect this beautiful man.
I feel like when a politician or political candidate is the target of an assassination attempt, there's a protocol to follow.
It's like the opposing candidate suspends their campaign, there are all these statements, there are public decries of violence, there's a playbook for what to do.
And you're right, that playbook seems a little strange in light of the apocalyptic rhetoric, I think rightfully apocalyptic rhetoric, about the potential damage and threat of a second Trump term.
If this happened to Joe Biden, Trump would be like, I hear sleepy Joe.
He got pierced in the gay ear.
Well, I think, Travis, you make a good point, is that maybe the people who are saying or posting the rhetoric don't believe it's actually as extreme as they're saying.
That the political class, at the end of the day, Hey, hey, hey, we don't want him to die.
He might be a fascist, he might end a democracy as we know it, but look, we don't want the guy to get killed over that.
Well, no, because then it's fucking open season and what are they?
Politicians.
It's like, no, we have to not have our class of human being be in any kind of violent danger.
Which is why you see insane statements by people who've been like rubber stamping a genocide
I mean giant bombs dropped on civilian populations, whatever next and then oh
Trump was almost shot. Oh, man. A violence is so wrong you guys
I mean, I'm not saying it isn't wrong. It is wrong, but like Jesus fucking Christ the hypocrisy
Yeah, I feel you You know
I saw that some people went even further with the like the whole stage
Conspiracy theory to suggest that like Trump's ear wasn't bloody due to the shooting but rather when he dropped to
the ground He bladed his ear in the style of a professional wrestler
So this is a technique where the wrestler intentionally cuss themselves to get more blood flowing to for for like dramatic effect.
Yeah, he had a little razor blade under his gum.
But you can see his, like, hand and ear are bloody before he drops.
Yeah, no, it makes no sense.
So it doesn't work.
Nope.
Debunked.
Thank you, Liv.
It would be disturbing enough if the staged conspiracy theory or, like, just pushed, like, by, like, internet randos or just, like, social media influencers.
But worse than that, this theory was advanced by a major Democratic strategist, according to the publication Semaphore.
Dmitry Melhorn is the top political advisor to Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman.
He is a guy who controls the flow, or influences the flow at least, of many millions of dollars to Democrats.
And after the shooting, Melhorn sent an email to sympathetic journalists which said this.
This is a classic Russian tactic.
Such as when Putin killed 300 civilians in 1999 and blamed it on terrorists to ride the backlash to winning power.
Others have embraced this tactic of committing raw evil and then benefiting from the backlash include Hamas on October 7th.
Of course, it can't be Americans.
Americans don't do violence.
It has to be a Russian-style shooting by a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania on fucking President Trump.
It's Russian-style.
It's Hamas-style.
It can't be us.
We're not the fucking bad guys.
You see, like, an active shooter situation, and you're like, what are we, a bunch of brown people?
Like, what's going on?
Insane!
Oh, get fucked!
If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack, that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.
I know I am prone to bias on this, but this is a classic Putin play, and given the facts, seems more plausible.
Look at the actual shot.
Look at the staging.
Look at how ready Trump is to rally.
This pampered baby shit his pants when an eagle lunged at his food.
Look at how quickly Trump protects himself at the expense of others, but showed few of those lifelong instincts in this moment.
And consider how often Putin and his allies run this play.
Ask the question, people.
I mean, Jesus Christ, man.
This is what has happened to people's fucking brains!
This is the actual downside of this dumbass Russiagate, like, Russian exceptionalism in reverse thing, where it's like they are uniquely evil, their DNA has deceit deeply built in it.
Russia invented the concept of a false flag.
Oh my god!
Also, the idea that you can predict how somebody is going to act when they are shot at or in a moment of total terror and just unbelievability is crazy!
People act!
You can't look at how somebody's reaction to a totally insane moment and go, you know what?
I would have done it differently.
In fact, they would have done it differently based on another video I saw of an evil Legal!
This is... We are so cooked.
I am so cooked.
I don't even know.
I can't even form an opinion.
I can't even form an opinion.
I remember Julian once told me, like, when all opinions are shit, have an enjoyable one.
I can't even have an enjoyable one about this anymore.
I just have to listen.
I just sit back and listen and just keep going.
Cooked.
I'm cooked.
It's cooked?
Yeah.
No, we are all a crypto stock.
It's like...
We're not gonna make it!
We're not gonna make it!
Boys, we're going to the moon!
We're going to the moon!
We're not gonna make it!
We're not gonna- Oh my god, it's over.
It's so fucking over.
We're going to the moon, folks!
Everything's great!
We're- we're f- oh my god.
One component of things being so melted, and like, oddly, I feel like people are- they feel politically disunified.
We don't feel like we're in control.
It's like, it doesn't feel good to have history happen to you.
It feels- doesn't feel good to just feel like you're flailing.
And like, what do you organize?
How do you organize as a result of this?
It's like, I don't know.
I guess you should vote for the guy who's like actively complicit in crimes against humanity and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians that he could have stopped.
Like, that's the answer for you having political agency.
It's like, how are you supposed to deal with that?
I don't know.
I don't have an answer.
How are you supposed to like hold those two things in your brain?
And then Biden made a statement about this in which he said, former Trump was not seriously lingered.
I mean, what are we fucking doing?
What are we doing?!
I feel like the underappreciated, most melted component of this is that the calls for Biden to step aside are gone now.
Like, he's the candidate.
Well, yeah, that's because there's been some reporting from Axios about how Democrats have basically resigned to losing the election, which has led people on Twitter who are pro-Biden to be like, Axios is fucking fake news, Jake Tapper is in the tank.
I mean, oh.
Oh, folks.
I was talking about this before the show, but I think it's worth mentioning.
On air!
You see all of these calls from people who are reading news that they don't like, you know, saying, cancel your New York Times subscription, cancel your Washington Post subscription, the fascist New York Times, all this stuff.
And my question is, who are you going to subscribe to now?
Like, the Lincoln Project?
I mean, who is it?
Is it going to be just essentially like Bush-era advertisers who tell you what you want to know and traffic in their own conspiracy theories?
What happens now?
We're in our fake news era.
Where does it go from here?
Online devs are turning into conspiracy-pilled, never-Trump Republicans.
Everyone is just shifting to the right.
And it's like, oh, I guess we're all doing conspiracies now.
Sure, why not?
Folks, we urge you, in conclusion, to trust the plan.
Everything is fine.
Melhorn apologized for his remarks after Semaphore published this story and said his email laying out his claims was, quote, drafted without consultation from team members or allies.
Really?
Oh, good.
So we just got to see an insight into your fucking actual brain.
Great.
Yeah, I was like, that's just weird.
It's like, in my defense, I didn't ask a normal person if this was weird or not.
In defense, I am fucking gone, okay?
I'm gone off them Mai Tais, I'm gone off them Russiagate pills, I am fucking high as hell.
To add fucking bizarre vibes to the entire thing, and we'll put this in the autocue, Melania Trump wrote maybe the weirdest, most dissociative poem about the moment.
So yeah, enjoy that as the end of the episode.
I mean, we are really, we are in a bad place.
This is not good.
And also, I think like the unreality is just manifesting in every facet of everybody, because everyone's trying to find an explanation for this.
There is none, really, that I can see, other than we are watching, you know, just the kind of erosion of an entire country's mental health.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think like upsurge in conspiracy theories.
One takeaway I see from this that I guess we already knew is that the upsurge in conspiracy theories broadly come from people who feel like they don't really have much political say.
Yeah.
Things are kind of incomprehensible and difficult to understand.
And because you feel like your opinions on the subject don't really matter outside of just like getting likes or not.
It's like, yeah, sure.
Let's come up with the most absurd and definitive bake about this situation.
We can say this is, you know, this is a false flag.
We know this guy, his identity.
We can determine it.
These are the actors that were planning this.
It can't just be this absurd random thing that happened that shook the country and its trajectory into the future in just a way that just makes no sense.
And then we have to deal with that.
That's too much when you feel like you don't have power or say in anything that's going on.
If you're looking for a useful framework to understand this, folks, maybe use the crypto market.
Because after this happened, Bitcoin started pumping.
A Trump-based meme coin gained 60% in value.
And I read a trader saying, Trump surviving the assassination is bullish as fuck.
So not all is lost, folks.
There's a gold lining to the cloud.
You have a population where our brains are so cooked that everything is so unserious.
And then an elite political class where everything is heavy and measured.
It's total dissonance all around.
And what's in the middle?
I don't know.
Not a soft, chewy center.
Maybe, actually.
Maybe a soft, chewy center.
Maybe a piece of bubblegum.
I'm not sure.
You, nude, rolling around.
Folks, thank you so much for listening to another episode.
If you'd like to support us and get a second episode every week, you can go to patreon.com slash QAA.
You'll get access to our miniseries as well, and you'll allow us to continue to lose our minds on air and perhaps do some more investigative work.
And, you know, hopefully we didn't say anything that'll get us in big trouble.
If you are mad, though, go to the Patreon comments, of course.
Yes.
We appreciate those.
You have to go to the Patreon comments.
And if you don't have access to the Patreon, and you want to leave a comment, then definitely pay for the Patreon so you can leave the comment.
You know, obviously that's the most important thing here, is that you sign up for our Patreon.
I will say that a lot of the Patreon episodes are a lot, are fun.
You know, they're a little bit less, I mean they're cooked in different ways, but not so, they're not so depressingly cooked, at least as of late.
So, if you like us, but think the main show has gotten old, A little bit scary.
Uh, the Patreon is a great way to still enjoy us, uh, talking about things that maybe aren't so, um, detrimental to, uh, you know, your brain and, and our brain.
Or get liquid cooling.
Fucking upgrade your RAM, uh, new processor, uh, get some good, uh, fucking heat conduction paste or whatever, or dissipation, whatever.
Do whatever you need to do so that, uh, we can continue to have a wonderful democracy.
Definitely vote.
Also, go to my newsletter, Vivegar.com.
LivAgar.com, Pokemon Go to Liv Agar's newsletter.
Travis View Photography.
Travis has some lovely nature photography.
He's touching grass more than anybody.
Yeah, Travis does lovely nature photography.
Julian, Julian Field at Twitch TV.
Liv is also on Twitch.
People stream.
I'm just gonna, I'm, I'm cooked.
Jake is on Wikifeet.
Check his feet out on Wikifeet.
All right, folks, that's it for us this week.
We will be back soon.
We love you.
Take care of those you love.
And don't forget to touch grass.
Yes, yes, yes.
And until next week, next episode, next life, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
(upbeat music)
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[BLANK_AUDIO]
From the Office of Melania Trump, July 14th, 2024.
I am thinking of you now, my fellow Americans.
We've always been a unique union.
America, the fabric of our gentle nation, is tattered.
But our courage and common sense must ascend and bring us back together as one.
When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband Donald, I realized my life and Barron's life were on the brink of devastating change.
I am grateful to the brave Secret Service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives to protect my husband.
To the families of the innocent victims who are now suffering from this heinous act, I humbly offer my sincerest sympathy.
Your need to summon your inner strength for such a terrible reason saddens me.
A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to wring out Donald's passion, his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration.
The core facets of my husband's life, his human side, were buried below the political machine.
Donald, the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times.
Let us not forget that differing opinions, policy, and political games are inferior to love.
Our personal, structural, and life commitment until death is at serious risk.
Political concepts are simple when compared to us, human beings.
(laughing)
And fundamentally, instinctively, we want to help one another.
American politics are only one vehicle that can uplift our communities.
Love, compassion, kindness, and empathy are necessities.
And let us remember that when the time comes to look beyond the left and the right, Beyond the red and the blue, we all come from families with the passion to fight for a better life together while we are here in this earthly realm.
Dawn is here again.
Let us reunite now.
This morning, ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence.
We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends.
We can realize this world again.
Each of us must demand to get it back.
We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships again.
I am thinking of you, my fellow Americans.
The winds of change have arrived.
For those of you who cry in support, I thank you.
I commend those of you who have reached out beyond the political divide.
