Bulwark Takes - Trump Is WAY Too Stupid To Pull Off a False Flag

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Tim Miller unloads on the wave of “false flag” theories spreading after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner incident, calling out how quickly people abandon basic facts when politics takes over.Exclusive $25-off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the Bullwork, and I've been ranting and raving and blue in the face since Monday, talking about the various conspiracy theories and false flag theories that have propped up around the latest, I guess we could call it an assassination attempt. It was very far away from that at the White House correspondence dinner. And so, you know, the YouTube minions here at the Bullwark were hoping that I would do a standalone video. where I debunk every conspiracy theory around, whether it be Trump or the White House Correspondents' Dinner or anything else related to our president. And I was like, you know, I've been doing it all week. I've been ranting.

And so what we're doing is just like when I was a child and when the actors wanted to have a week of vacation in the summer and your favorite sitcom would do a clip show, we're going to do a clip show of all of my rants about this. why this is important. Here's why I think I want to do this and I hope you didn't just turn it off when you heard you're going to get a clip show of me talking about conspiracies, about Trump assassinations. There was a Manhattan survey

institute that came up that I saw today. They talked to, I guess it was, people in the Democratic coalition. I'm not sure exactly how they define that, but broadly speaking, people that might vote for Democratic candidates. And they gave a series of things

and said, is this thing definitely true, probably true? Not sure, probably false, definitely false. And on the question of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July 24 was orchestrated by his supporters to increase sympathy for him, 46% said true, more than false. 39, about 3839 said false. This is just, I think this is a real problem. And, you know, it's going to hurt some people's feelings for me to say this.

But I feel like I have a responsibility and an obligation to try to drag people out from this because I'm not saying that the 46% who believe that are the type of people who would storm the Capitol. But I am saying that there is a parallel. And I lived it on the right. And I lived and watched as people truly believed that the 2020 election was stolen, truly believed that there was a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza parlor. And you saw the results of that. It doesn't mean all 46% of these people would do something crazy, but it's like if 0.1% of that 46% get radicalized into doing something crazy, that could cause unimaginable damage. We don't know what kind of damage it could cost. And, you know, I just, you can't be in the pro-democracy movement and also support just attacks on the truth.

speaking the truth and understanding the truth is a bedrock principle of democracy. Because if we don't have that, if we don't have a free press, if people aren't able to educate their fellow Americans, then everyone becomes susceptible to demagogues and dictators. And I think that there's a good reason. We could do a whole seminar and why I think the rights is much more susceptible to demagogues. There's no doubt about that. That doesn't mean that the pro-democracy movement, that the left broadly defined shouldn't be protecting themselves from sliding down a path that leads, you know, somewhere not exactly the same, but somewhere where they're also susceptible to, you know, someone that takes advantage of their disreality. And so, anyway, you'll get to see all my rants, but just on Butler one more time. Because it's so important.

like we literally have there's a New York Times reporter not a White House reporter not a MAGA reporter not a Trump person was sitting underneath Trump and he sat there with this camera and as the bullet came by he went

and you can see in the pictures the bullet in front of Trump you see him turn his head you can see it whooshing in front you can see it whooshing by him then you see him

him grab his ear and then you see him go down and then you see and not in Doug mills's pictures but then you know from other vantage points because there are a lot of other media people you see corey you know uh go down and and and he ends up dying of course and and and then trump gets taken the hospital the nurses there it's just like we see we saw it we saw it you know the thomas crooks are there are there are there is there more information that could be gathered Okay, maybe, you know, maybe. But what we know is, you know, like, it wasn't ketchup. If it was ketchup, the photographer from the New York Times that was right there would have caught the ketchup.

And when Trump went to the hospital, the nurse that was at the hospital would have looked at the ketchup on his face and said, this is ketchup. It's not blood. like that it wasn't we don't have a crisis actor at the butler hospital like it's a real nurse she's been interviewed by people so anyway now look at me you've got me all riled up again if you have somebody in your life that is susceptible to this kind of stuff and you just want to say hey give us give the other side of chance i understand trump is a liar you can't put anything past him i get i'm with you trump is a fucking liar you can't put anything past him And we call him out on a lot of his lies because you know what?

We're based in facts and we can identify the lies because we look at evidence. We look at facts. We say what you're saying is not true. This is what it's true. And so, yeah, Trump is a liar. Trump is a charlatan. Trump is, you can't put anything past him if he's trying to engage in fuckery. I'm with you on all that.

But you can't say, okay, Trump is a liar. and now I don't believe my eyes anymore because I just can't anything the Trump says can't be true. That leads, that's the path towards Crazy Town. And we don't want anybody going to Crazy Town. So if there's somebody in your life, you feel like you can help, you know, attach themselves a little bit to the real world. Find a clip from this that you like, something that you find compelling and send it along. I would really appreciate that. And if you watch all this and you say, Tim,

you're a stooch. Okay. Let's keep, send me your evidence. Send me the evidence because I've been replying to people. I've been getting emails from people who are sending me their evidence. And unfortunately, what I'm getting from you almost say an email is this looks fishy. That looks fishy. And like, okay.

Like things looking fishy is different from here is some evidence that this didn't happen. And I'm happy to reply to your theory. to your feedback and engage in good faith. So that's what we got. Stick around the best damn clip show you ever did see. Subscribe to the feet. Tell your friends. We'll see you soon.

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That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code, bulwark-takes. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. In terms and conditions do apply. It's an interesting just kind of reporting on there are a bunch of conspiracy theories floating around about all of this and, you know, everybody's been listening to too many true crime podcasts and are analyzing the different videos that they see. And one of the things that was going around was like, why was Vance evacuated? before Trump. And you explained that. And I thought it was just kind of interesting. I thought you

may even share it with the listeners. So you know what? I feel bad about this. I'm going to let you into my reporting world. So, you know, lots of times you hear something official and it sounds super sketch and suspicious. And then you realize two things can be true at the same time. So in this instance, a senior official told me that the reason Vance got moved so quickly and Trump just ever so slightly less quickly was because agents all clambering around him and mostly his detail, the shift. They were trying to make sure on their radios, do we have the presidential walk as hardened and all the poststanders agents protecting that at all of of the junctures where someone could get in.

Do we have that hardened before we take Trump back through that walk to a holding room? Then the president himself said yesterday that it was a little bit his fault that he got removed a little later because he had a couple questions like what's going on and that that may have delayed things. Both things I think are true. I think that Trump doesn't like the optics. of looking like he's being taken to the bunker. You know how angry he gets about that?

He doesn't want to look weak. Yeah. But I think both things are true. Yeah, got it. This one maybe is going to end up being more of a comment than a question, but I just know. I'm so surprised. While we're doing the conspiracy theories, the suspect has been now detained. We have him.

Oh, yeah. We've got the suspect, right? Alive? He's alive. He's alive and in custody. So the idea that he was an agent of Cash Patel or this was a false flag that Trump wanted this, it breaks down a little bit when he's in custody, right? Because it's like he's about to go to jail for life.

And it seems like if he wanted to get out of that, he could just tell his lawyer like, hey, this was a false flag attempt. Cash, I was drunk one night and Cash offered it told me to do this. And I did it on a lark and then I could get out. Like that seems like a weakness of the false flag theory. Again, more than a question. You know, the problem with you, Tim, is you're so logical. You know, it's hard to talk to such logical people.

Yeah, this is not a false flag. This was not staged. Let me repeat. This guy, we don't know his mental health status, but I will tell you every single person who tries to kill a president has usually suffered a mental health devolution challenge and has started getting angrier and angrier. Their rhetoric is ramping up and they believe that they have been anointed to solve this problem and solve it by killing someone. We'll see what happens with Cole Allen and what we learn about him, but I'll tell you what I'm hearing this

morning, which is that his family is cooperating with investigators, and they are sharing with the FBI that they had seen some signs of him kind of coming unhinged about Trump and his rhetoric getting very scary and strange. It is just funny. I mean, you're logical, but also funny. It is just funny that he says in his letter writing that the one person he doesn't want to kill in the administration is Cash Patel. I assume that's because Cash Patel is a very high profile figure. He read a lot of stories about him and for some reason fixated on that. Or maybe he thinks Cash is so incompetent that it's not worth, not worth it. You know, he's too drunk.

Are you commenting again? I'm just suggesting. I don't know. Or maybe this family's in on it. I don't know. I'm just joking. This is, it's silly.

Because it's one thing, I think, for people to watch all this stuff and look at it and say, that looks suspicious. That looks weird. Are you, I read this. And this looks a lot. It seems illogical. It's not what I would write if I was, you know, going to write a manifesto.

And it's like, well, you're not an insane person that wants to go the president. So, so, yeah. So your manifesto wouldn't be like that. Every time some kind of event like this happens. And I agree with Tim, like all political violence is like pretty horrible for the like social fabric and everything. But every single time, they very transparently and cynically try to, you know, exploit these kinds of events for some kind of boost in the polls or some kind of political benefit. And it never works.

Like, you know, Charlie Kirk was largely kind of like out of the news maybe like a week or two later. Trump, I think, only got a boost of two or three points after Butler and that evaporated with a couple of weeks. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much would help them. I mean, he only won by two points. Oh, no, no, that's true. Yeah, yeah. No, but I'm saying, like, when you track the polls,

like he went up, like a few points and then went right back down. But, you know, it is kind of pathetic and sad that these guys can't even manage to, you know, cultivate sympathy from voters after events like these. Yeah. Yeah. Who is the voter that's going to change their mind about Donald Trump because of a shooting attempt, though? Like, you know, people have other concerns that they're focused on. And you can understand, you can see.

sympathy assessment in the poll, somebody calls you three days afterwards, you don't feel like you don't want to be a dick or whatever. Say you have an unfavorable view of the person that was just shot, but I just don't think it's going to fundamentally change people's perspectives, which is why one of my other things, I feel like if I'm on the live and learn pod, I should rant about the libs a little bit. One of the other things that annoys me about the discourse this weekend is like the false flag nonsense. People are like, he did this. He did this because of Iran and his polls were. flagging and I was like well no that wouldn't work like that's not going to work and number two he just was about to enjoy like the like this gift that for some reason the DC journalists gave him was which was to allow him in front of cameras to shit on them for an hour and a half why would he do the false flag attack right before that I

would think that he would have done it after he had a chance to get his you know get a couple shots off no pun intended but I just the whole thing is dumb. I went in a rant about this on the podcast today and I have inboxes full of listeners being like, are you sure it seems fishy? There's some things that seem fishy, but you can't put anything past Trump and I'm like, well, yeah,

I guess you can't put anything past Trump, but these guys also haven't demonstrated like a lot of deftness in hiding their behavior. Yeah. You know what you want about Trump, but like all of his malfeasance is pretty much right out there in the open. Like he's not a big secret

keeper. And I just Fash Patel is getting like absolutely hammered and we're getting like leaks about it and all sorts of insides reports. Or like he's getting flat. No, I mean, he's getting wasted all the time. Apparently he's drinking a lot. And I actually agree with you, Tim. I think one saving grace perhaps for the lives is the administration really has lost all

credibility to say anything factual. You know, their relationship with the truth is ephemeral at best. That said, there's like no evidence to suggest that this was a false flag. It really does feel, though, with advent of AI, with the right wing all embracing like the Candace Owens style conspiracy theory, you know, sloc for a better word, it does feel sometimes that there's like no limit to what people are allowed to allege without evidence. Yeah, I mean, like none of these conspiracy theories survive like past a few questions. Like it's all the people messaging me that are like, well,

Maybe they recruited a disgruntled guy. And like, he was, like, again, he was posting on Blue Sky about Will Stancel, like, last week. Like, you know, this is all part of an elaborate plot. Like, this was a CIA thing. They recruited him. And they're like, okay, your cover stories, you're going to go into Blue Sky for four years, you know, and post Lib Slop. And, like, then you're going to go try to kill Trump. And we're going to tackle you before you can do it.

And you're going to go to jail for life. Like, why would he sign up for that? Like that is a more compelling theory than like a guy went fucking kind of crazy and we have too many guns in this country and he tried to do something nuts. Like I just that seems like a much more, you know, much, you know, much more likely from an Occam's Razor standpoint. Like the Butler thing that people always talk about his ear and stuff. Like we have the photos from the New York Times guy. They're unbelievable photos right underneath them. They take the picture and it's like a.

you know, kind of rapid fire, like, multi-click, click, click, click. And you can see, like, Trump turn his head. Then you see him put his hand up. And then you see him put his hand to his ear. And then you see him go down. And then a guy dies. And they all go to the hospital and nurses and doctors see them. All these people are in on the cover up.

Like the nurse at the Butler Hospital that did the intake on Trump was part of the CIA plot to do this. Like, these guys can't even get the fucking straight of where who's open. And they can't do anything. Like they're like, they're totally incompetent. They haven't arrested a single one of their political enemies. The last thing that I wanted to rant about on this topic is, as there's some stupid discourse coming from in our own ranks about this. You saw this immediately after the shooting, which is that this was a false flag attempt.

This was fake. The president did this himself because he wanted the attention. For starters, just for starters, the idea that Donald Trump would want to want to, to do this right before he had the chance to stand on stage and do his favorite thing, which is insult the press for an hour, I find that very hard to believe. And I think Donald Trump was champing at the bit to have that evening. And if you want any evidence of that, he wants to do it again in a month. So I think he was very excited to dunk on all the journalists that stupidly dressed up in

tuxedoes to like smile and giggle with him. So just this is a practical matter. I also just am very annoyed about this because I made the joke over the weekend that like people on the internet have successfully identified 300 of the last two false flag attempts. Like everything now is a false flag attempt. And I'm just, I'm sorry. Like, people don't know what that is. It's basically when somebody in power fakes an event, fakes a shooting in order to get sympathy for themselves, essentially, or in order to advance some other policy agenda item that they have.

It used to be the right wing crazies that always said this. Alex Jones said every shooting was a false flag attempt in order to get us to take their guns. And now, like, there are people on the left. They're like, everything's a false flag attempt in order to make Donald Trump more popular or let him get more power or whatever. And it's just like we have to live in reality. Okay. Like every once in a while, there has been a false flag attempt. I think there's pretty good evidence that Russia did want in Serbia in order to try to influence the Hungary elections.

But, guys, again, what is happening here is that crazy people have easy access to firearms in the country. Like that is that is what is behind almost all of these shootings and almost all of this violence. And that is a thing that we should be addressing. And it just doesn't it doesn't serve anybody's purpose to descend into like total fantasy land, you know, where everything is a scheme. These guys aren't that smart. It's just like these guys can't do anything. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House, the only person getting anything done? It's like these guys are incompetent on all levels.

You think that they can keep this secret? Donald Trump can't keep any secrets. He blurts everything out. Like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the Butler thing was a false flag. And one of the pieces of evidence was that Crooks doesn't have a long internet history. This guy, Cole Allen, has a huge internet history. Like, you can see everything.

He went to a good college. You can see back in, you know, in 2017, you can see everything that he's posted. He posts a lot on blue sky. Ken Clippenstein interviewed some of his friends. you know, he had a psychotic break and easy access to guns. Like the idea that, I mean, what, the CIA planted this guy 10 years ago and had him post a lot of anti-Trump stuff, you know, as part of this cover story, because maybe Donald Trump would get elected 10 years later and they could use him as part of it's not, it's all,

it's all nonsense. Like, it didn't happen. Free yourself from it. Truth is important part of democracy, I guess is, it will be what I'm trying to say. Truth is an important part of democracy. And if you let yourself get sucked up by a bunch of lies and crazy, it's going to lead to negative impacts on democracy. We've seen that very clearly on the right. So there's my rant about that, Bill.

I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add. Yeah, I kind of just ignored all that false flag stuff that you're right to call it out. And others should, because in the sense, we should all say that is not part. That is not a sane or healthy part of the Defraud Democracy movement. And if people should fix that in themselves, or we should just say, as you just said eloquently, that that is wrong. It was an attempted act of violence, and we deplore that, you know. I did see one piece of pushback on me on this that I want to address,

which is that I also say often that it's not good for the pro-democracy movement, that all the cranks and conspiracies are on the right. And then that point, they're like, well, then aren't you being inconsistent, Tim? Like, shouldn't you be encouraging the conspiracy theories? And I'm not trying to create new cranks in conspiracy theorists. Of the existing cranks and conspiracy theorists, I think that we should engage with them on issues where there is agreement, like, such as how Donald Trump sucked us into the Iran War and various types of malign influence that was involved in that. I think we should engage with them on Palantir and the security state and the way that they're spying on people and going after. There are areas of overlap with cranks that I think that it's important for the Democrats to engage on.

but the bulwark is not the place for like cultivating new new cranks. Okay, this is a place for radical candor and truth and honesty. To the degree that one engages with cranks, one engages to try to lead them out of, to say, look, this is this thing here is a reasonable point because there is evidence for it. Right. And it's an attempt to lead them out of being cranks,

not to double down on being a crank. Okay. I'm done with this. Do you have anything else you want to say about the dinner? Let's move on. Okay.