The seminal moment of Tuesday night’s presidential debate may have come when Donald Trump, staring angrily into the camera, went all-in on a racist conspiracy theory that had been heavily pushed by running mate JD Vance.
“In Springfield, they're eating the dogs,” Trump snarled. “The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there.”
They’re not. They’re really not.
But the way that Trump immediately accepted and spread this dangerous and dehumanizing lie is symptomatic of a movement that will simply believe anything as long as it supports existing bias. MAGA isn’t just gullible, it’s hungry, always seeking out a new reason to Hate Thy Neighbor.
Trump fed their xenophobia with the story about immigrants in Ohio gobbling down pets. And while it’s not known if the Trump and Vance lies are directly connected, a bomb threat Thursday morning has warranted a major police response in Springfield, Ohio.
Now he’s leaning into another conspiracy theory that could lead to a second Jan. 6 … or worse.
On July 13, a 20-year-old man fired a rifle at Trump from a rooftop as he was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. That man was shot and killed seconds later by members of a Secret Service counter-sniper team. The attempted assassin was a nursing home employee who reportedly investigated the schedules of both Trump and President Joe Biden before settling on an event that was taking place close to his home. Trump appears to have been a target of convenience for a shooter more interested in making himself infamous than who he put in his sights.
The Washington Post reports that in the immediate aftermath of that shooting, Trump called for “unity” and thanked law enforcement for their quick action.
However, right from the outset, surrogates and supporters began blaming Biden for Trump’s near miss. Some of that blame came in the form of saying that the Biden campaign had raised the stakes in the election so high that it inspired the shooting.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote on social media. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
But senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita (engineer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack on John Kerry in 2004 and the source of vile statements about a worker at Arlington National Cemetery a few weeks ago) went further.
“They tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this …” LaCivita wrote in a tweet that was later deleted.
Melania Trump
That implication that Biden or others in the administration were involved in Trump’s attempted assassination has never completely gone away, even if Trump’s ear bandage has faded from the headlines. This week, as she promoted her upcoming book, former first lady Melania Trump stepped into the issue, insisting that there was more to the story and opening the door to every form of conspiracy theory.
“Now, the silence around it feels heavy,” Melania said in a promotional video. “I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story. And we need to uncover the truth.”
As the weeks have gone by and the media’s attention has shifted from Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris, the way that Trump has talked about this issue has shifted significantly.
“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” Trump said during the debate.
That statement, like Vance’s immediately after the shooting, puts the blame on Biden and Harris for their warnings over the threat Trump represents to American democracy. In part, it’s intended to silence critics by making any complaints about Trump equivalent to attempted murder. But that’s the lesser of the two effects.
Because this kind of statement can also be seen as justification for taking similar measures in response.
Trump and Vance’s statements shift the blame for the attempted assassination to Democrats in a soft way. But there are also right-wing sources making much more direct accusations. And Trump is increasingly leaning into those claims.
For example, this was Trump in an Aug. 29 interview with right-wing podcaster Monica Crowley.
Crowley: The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks. It looks like the three-letter agencies are slow-walking a lot of this evidence, a lot of the videos, etc. Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious, maybe even inside job?
Trump: It’s very suspicious. The more you see it, the more you start to say, ‘There could be something else.’
Trump has already made several moves toward building out the Big Lie 2.0, starting with mail-in voting. And suspicions that a losing Trump could inspire more violence directed at the government has caused Biden to ensure that Capitol Hill has greatly increased security on Jan. 6, 2025, for the electoral vote certification.
But if the polls run away from Trump following his miserable debate performance, he may not wait until Jan. 6. Trump has already been insisting that the election system is corrupt. It would not be hard for him to move to insisting to his supporters that they need to take action before ballots are cast.
If Trump begins to fully voice the idea that the shooting in Butler was an “inside job”—an open attempt at assassination directed by Biden or others in the government—all bets are off.
This hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully, it will never happen. But Trump appears to be moving toward such a claim. Trump has never hesitated to embrace conspiracy theories, especially those where he is the victim, and that is not changing.
Trump’s lies are likely to grow along with his desperation. And so will the threat those lies represent.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a direct, outright appeal in hopes you’ll send $5 to the Harris-Walz campaign. Because the only thing worse than a lying Trump is a lying Trump holding the power of the U.S. government.
