Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) may be at odds with President Trump and the MAGA movement she once supported, but that hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm for wild conspiracy theories.
Greene has spent the past few weeks amplifying the baseless conspiracy theory that Trump staged a faked assassination attempt on himself in July 2024. Of course, Green wouldn’t say he’s doing that. In her mind—and the minds of a growing number of MAGA influencers—she was simply asking questions.
“I’m not saying the Butler assassination was a hoax,” Green posted on X on Sunday. “But there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers. I asked Trump why he didn’t release the information about Matthew Crooks … why the cover-up?”
Greene is not the only one who has raised “questions” about Trump’s assassination. Disgraced Fox News host Tucker Carlson claims the “FBI lied about key details of Crooks’ life.” On Tuesday, Carlson went further, formally apologizing for his alignment with Trump’s movement.
“We’re definitely involved in this… We’re going to be haunted by it for a long time, I will,” Carlson said in an interview with his brother, Barkley Carlson, who also dropped his support for Trump. “I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.”
That’s enough to send the MAGA ecosystem of conspiracy influencers into overdrive. Prominent right-wing influencer accounts like Red Pill USA and ThePatrioticBlonde have come forward with “evidence” that the Butler shooting was actually nothing more than a Trump marketing stunt.
Anyone with a few minutes to spare and an interest in absurdity can do some research into how the MAGA movement, steeped in Alex Jones’ industrial power conspiracy theories, got to this point.
Many Trump loyalists have also grown accustomed to the idea that their president is happy to host a variety of public events to maximize viewership. For example, last week’s much-publicized DoorDash delivery to the Oval Office featured MAGA activist Sharon Simmons playing a humble DoorDash grandma.
Most Americans know the MAGA right is crazy. Even more interesting is what prompted so many former Trump confidants to attack him with such unexpected viciousness.
Many clearly believe Trump’s claims that his second term will bring economic recovery “Golden Age” Freed America from the terrifying specter of lefties “Globalism”. Instead, he delivered sky-high consumer prices and the worst job market since the Great Recession, while plunging himself into a war with Iran that cost taxpayers more than $11 billion in the first six days alone.
Die-hard MAGA supporters also believe Trump is a man with hidden agendas. A Navigator Research poll released last month found that more than a quarter of Republicans (28%) and about a fifth of MAGA voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the release of Epstein’s documents. Worse, nearly half of “MAGA” Republicans (49%) believe the White House was covering up wrongdoing related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump and other powerful figures.
Millions of Americans are willing to overlook Trump’s destructive personality and growing authoritarianism when they think his policies will make them rich. Ultimately, these policies merely line their pockets; Enriching Trump’s inner circle of family and friends. The voters who elected him had to pick up the pieces of their own derailed lives as they accepted the fact that they had always been rednecks.
No wonder his biggest supporters feel cheated. If Trump could lie so easily about so many things, including his ties to America’s most notorious child sex traffickers, why wouldn’t he lie about an assassination attempt? Trump’s team belatedly realized that the supporters they encouraged to distrust authority figures and public institutions now distrust him.
MAGA voters have long believed Trump would be elected “Seriously, but not literally.” This is just another way of saying that Trump may lie to others to further his own interests, but he would never lie to supporters of his political movement. At least some loyal Trump supporters are finally ready to admit they were duped and that there’s no way they can believe in fairy tales anymore.
Greene and Carlson’s awakening is just the beginning of a retreat for the MAGA movement, which just a year ago seemed to be reaching new heights of power. After a decade of chaos and disruption, Trump’s transactional politics has finally caught up with him. It’s a shame it took so long.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and the founder of Three Degrees Strategy.
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