The assassination attempt on Donald Trump earlier this month sparked a flurry of baseless conspiracy theories from both the left and the right, suggesting that the shot was manufactured by the former president to gain sympathy and the election, or that it was a part of a deep state coup. Nonetheless, a single conspiracy theory has supported both: the idea that a second shooter was stationed on a nearby water tower.
The water tower theory is a contemporary take on the debunked grassy knoll conspiracy theory, which suggested that another shooter on a nearby hill assisted Lee Harvey Oswald in killing President John F. Kennedy. Like that theory, it has its own witnesses and hundreds of images and videos captured by news cameras and protesters that are being examined by vloggers and TikTokers to create a conspiracy theory in real time.
Even for believers, the conclusion derived from the theory is not always evident. Some claim it shows that Thomas Crooks, the gunman, was a patsy, put up to take the blame, and that another shooter was on the water tower to silence him later. Federal authorities have stated that Crooks was a lone gunman with no apparent political motive. Some argue that Trump was shot by a second shooter, who was a skilled marksman who could create a gory display for a false flag operation while also plausibly grazing Trump’s ear.
Conspiracy theorist Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami, said, “The fact that people are discussing second shooters is not surprising.” “Really, there’s nothing fresh to report.”
A few hours after Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the second shooter idea was created. It gathered traction with a few Congressmen in less than a week.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin who is already well-known for peddling debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and COVID, stated on Fox News on Sunday, “I’ve come across some really intriguing expert videos on the internet that seriously challenge the FBI’s claims about a lone gunman.” “I’m not sure, but we can’t rely on the FBI and the Secret Service to conduct a fair, transparent, and honest investigation. It’s just a really depressing truth. As a result, in order to truly learn the truth, we must rely on other, independent sources.
Johnson’s communications director, Kiersten Pels, responded in an email to a question about the “extremely convincing video online” he had watched, saying, “The senator is merely asking these authorities to provide more proof and information so that we can conduct an exhaustive and open investigation that considers all options.”
One day after the shooting, the FBI released a statement stating, “According to the inquiry thus far, the gunman worked alone.” The Secret Service’s Anthony Guglielmi stated this week that there was no proof of a second gunman.
Guglielmi stated that numerous investigations were still underway and added, “In order to make sure that the previous President Trump assassination attempt never occurs again, we are dedicated to learning more about what transpired prior to, during, and following it.” “That entails full collaboration with the FBI, Congress, and other pertinent inquiries.”
Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., brought up the “rumors rampant online that there are several shooters” during a hearing on Monday before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. He chastised Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for her lack of action in dispelling false information that has been going around.
Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after giving testimony at the session. Secret Service agents had not been stationed on the water tower, she informed Congress members, since it “is not something that a security plan would cover.” “I don’t know anything about any second shooters,” she added.
This idea, like the Kennedy assassination theory, depends in part on eyewitnesses at a chaotic scene.
An unidentified woman claimed to have heard about the multiple shooter scenario on Fox News three minutes later. “I heard one by the fence and one in the water tower.”
Following the eyewitness claims in both cases, the correspondents issued cautionary notes, pointing out that the situation was developing, that people were shocked, and that the specifics of those accounts were still pending confirmation. Influencers who spread conspiracy theories, however, omitted the cautions.
PeakMetrics, a company that measures online threats, supplied NBC News with a study showing that within days, tens of thousands of daily posts on X were generating and exchanging speculations about a second shooter from the water tower.
One of the first comments was on TikTok the day after the shooting, from Nashville, Tennessee-based singer and YouTuber Ryan Upchurch, who questioned why “they kept covering up the water tower.” Upchurch told NBC News over the phone that he was only inquiring about the tower because it appeared to have been edited out of the internet recordings he was seeing. However, he added he didn’t believe there had been any more shooters up there because they would be obvious and would find it difficult to descend covertly. He declared, “It wouldn’t make sense.”
Other users were prompted by Upchurch’s post to add images of the Butler County fairgrounds from Google Earth to his questions. Soon after, these posts were referenced by well-known conspiracy theory accounts, such as SGT News on Telegram and on X by John Cullen, a self-described researcher who amassed a following by putting out ludicrous and unverified theories about Covid and the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.
In recent days, Cullen has been making the rounds on YouTube and podcasts, including InfoWars, a far-right internet program, presenting himself as an authority on the second shooter hypothesis. Cullen expanded on the theories with the assistance of his followers. The most widely used evidence in support of Cullen’s claims is a shaky video of the blue water tower, which is a close-up from a Right Side Broadcasting Network livestream of the event. RSN is a conservative media outlet that broadcasts Trump events. Cullen claimed that the low-quality footage, which features a black, fuzzy patch at the top of the tower, was sent in by a QAnon believer going by the nickname MAGA-JUICE. The video’s text describes the location as a “crouching agent.”
Cullen did not answer a request for comment right away.
The University of Colorado, Denver’s Catalin Grigoras, head of the National Center for Media Forensics, stated that the video quality was insufficient for a forensic examination.
According to Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics, nothing could be concluded from the video with any degree of confidence.
According to Farid, “As you can see, there is no continuous or dependable signal here since during the movie, compression and camera movements produce significant changes to the tower and its surroundings.” “This is pretty dumb, even for X.”
A 2019 advertising video for the Butler County farm fair was among the videos of the water tower that NBC News examined, both before and on the day of the demonstration. When a frame from the videos was magnified, it revealed the identical dark area on the right side of the tower as in the conspiracy theorists’ clips, indicating that their evidence is a shadow rather than a second assassin.
Despite their complexity, these posts on X alone have received millions of views and tens of thousands of shares, providing proof for a developing theory.
The professor from the University of Miami, Uscinski, pointed out that the data didn’t have to be very well-polished or compelling to serve as a foundation for conspiracy theorists.
The truth is, neither artificial intelligence-generated video nor phony content are necessary, according to Uscinski. “You can say, ‘Hey, that looks out of place,’ after watching a video of anything.” A two-second video of anything will obviously seem out of place if you’re the type of person who finds humor in things in the first place.