In a surprising twist, a recent poll revealed that 34% of Democrats believe former President Trump faked an assassination attempt, a theory dubbed “BlueAnon.” This idea, reportedly pushed by Democratic powerbroker Dmitri Mehlhorn, suggests the shooting was a false-flag operation for political gain. Despite evidence of the attack, including photos and eyewitness accounts, some left-wing commentators and influencers are fueling the conspiracy, questioning the authenticity of Trump’s injuries and the details surrounding the incident. The theory has gained traction online, sparking debates.

Approximately 23% of Republicans stated they agreed with the premise that Donald Trump is up against a group of demonic, sex-trafficking pedophiles in 2021, during the height of the “QAnon” frenzy.

According to a Morning Consult poll released on Monday, 34% of Democrats believe Donald Trump staged his attempted murder last Saturday. These left-wing conspiracy theorists have been called “BlueAnon,” and according to the Washington Free Beacon, Democratic powerbroker Dmitri Mehlhorn, who has visited the Biden White House at least ten times, is the source of this specific theory, which holds that Trump staged the assassination attempt.

Mehlhorn, an adviser to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (who made jokes about killing Trump the week before the attempt), sent a memo to reporters hours after the shooting on Saturday, advising them to paint the shooting as a false-flag operation straight out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook, to give Trump a memorable photo opportunity.

Writing, “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,” Melhorn ignored several photos, including the one that showed a bullet passing right past Trump’s head, the clear wound that a bullet caused across his right ear, and the death of rallygoer Corey Comperatore, who was shot while defending his family from bullets.

Oh?

According to the Free Beacon, a conspiracy idea is going viral:

Jeff Tiedrich, a liberal social media influencer with 1.1 million followers who attended an Oct. 2022 White House influencer summit to coordinate midterm election messaging with the Biden administration, on Monday posted a Substack screed “connecting some weird dots” surrounding the shooting.

“Did the extreme right want this to happen?” Tiedrich wrote, speculating the shooting could have been connected to a plot to replace Trump atop the GOP ticket with former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Tiedrich, who did not return a request for comment, on Thursday mocked the Washington Post for describing the shooting as “Trump’s near-death experience” and said there was no hard evidence that a bullet grazed the former president’s ear.

“What the fuck is going on under that bandage?” Tiedrich asked. “And why is the press so disinterested in finding out?”

Liberal MSNBC commentators have adopted a subtler approach to fanning the conspiratorial flames, suggesting in recent days that Trump could not have been shot in the ear by a high-caliber rifle bullet and that the former president is hiding something by not releasing detailed medical records about his wound.

“If he was shot by a high-caliber bullet, there should probably be very little ear there,” MSNBC host Michael Steele told viewers on Tuesday.

Steele’s fellow MSNBC host Joy Reid on Wednesday joined him in asking questions about Trump’s injuries.

“I have many questions!” Reid wrote on Threads. “Like where are the medical reports? What caused Trump’s injury and what was the injury? Sheapnel? [sic] Glass? A bullet?”

Reid doubled down on her baseless conjecture Thursday morning, posting a video to TikTok in which she said that “we still don’t know for sure whether Donald Trump was hit by a bullet,” glass fragments, or something else. She then suggested something nefarious was behind the Secret Service’s having “allowed” Trump to pump his fist as agents led him off the rally stage.

John Harwood, a veteran CNN correspondent who acknowledged he is “not familiar with ballistics at all,” suggested that if an AR-15 bullet had touched Trump’s ear, it shouldn’t have existed.

Therefore, it seems reasonable to de-platform and debunk those that propagate conspiracies. Which script are we using?

Explore exclusive GGI coverage of Donald Trump’s assassination attempt.