It Could Happen Here - BlueAnon: Assassination False Flag and Liberal Election Denial

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Garrison and Mia discuss the evolution of liberal conspiracy theories, and why people believe the Trump assassination was staged or that Elon Musk stole the 2024 election. Sources: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/nov/07/threads-posts/no-20-million-democratic-votes-didnt-disappear-and/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/08/04/harris-nsa-audit-2024-election/ https://www.wired.com/story/election-denial-conspiracy-theories-x-left-blueanon/  https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/americans-accept-election-results-even-if-some-are-unhappy-outcome https://www.reddit.com/r/houstonwade/comments/1gnwsv0/they_cheated/ https://theplotagainstamerica.com/ https://www.cip.uw.edu/2024/11/18/conspiracy-theory-starlink-election-results/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/nov/12/threads-posts/no-elon-musks-starlink-wasnt-used-to-rig-the-2024/ https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trump_assassination_attempt_online_conspiracy_theories_musk.php  https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/trump-assassination-attempt-polling See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many. cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grasias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music

and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending. with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs.

And, of course, the great Vibras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dresses Come Again on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Our IHeart Radio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu.

Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Adams, Ed Sheeran, Fade, Cholrilla, Jelly Roll, John Fogarty, Lil Wayne, L.L. Cooljay, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McCray, the offspring, Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Call Zone Media Garrison takes a puff of their clove cigarette as slow jazz plays in the background. These sites ain't what they used to be. I've been digging into liberal conspiracy. Theories, that is, they're all the rage where the sky is blue and the book is face.

These lebs think old Donnie Jay's close call in Pennsylvania was a false flag, that the South African Musk stole the election, and that the park service has gone rogue, waging an insurgent information warfare against this corrupt administration. Sending out coded messages on social media. It's called Blue Anon Doll, and it's been Making Me Blue. This is It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Mia Wong for our Blue On On On On episode.

Finally. I never thought. I never thought I would be nostalgic for the days where I was arguing with ISIS on Twitter, but increasingly, increasingly, I am looking back at that as the golden age of the internet. Oh, we were merely dealing. No, it's only gotten more stupid. With right-wing terrorist organizations.

And it's only going to get more stupid from here. Oh, yeah, no. This is the least stupid it's going to be for at least 50 years. And this is the thing that I realized about doing my research for this Bluneon episode is that usually conspiracy research is kind of fun. I have a good time looking into conspiracy theories. I like going to conspiracy conventions. I get joy out of this.

Almost no joy looking into liberal conspiracy theories. Really boring and kind of sad. So that's the intro for this episode. Garrison, can I interest you in some of the bespoke shit? None of this 20, 24 election stolen. Can I interest you in some 2004? will vote total stealing shit. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We'll get to that. So much better. We'll get to that in our last section because, yeah, there has been liberal election done all in the past, not at the same,

I think, scale it exists at now. But yes, it certainly has existed before. And, you know, for a while, conspiracy theories were like a bipartisan or at least like a bi-directional political pastime. Like old conspiracy magazines were not as partisan as conspiracy theories seem today. Think of like, you know, JFK. Everyone gets to have fun with JFK. Except for me. I don't have any fun with that. And conspiracy culture used to like cross over between hippie environmentalism, anti-Semitism, anti-corporatism, anti-authoritarianism. All these things exist, both on the far right and the far left. There was a lot of meshing between different, different polarities of

conspiracy theory. And I think politics on the fringe are slightly more susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. And if you spend any amount of time in like, you know, the communist left, you'll see that they have their fair share of conspiracy theories or even just a conspiratorial way of understanding the world. They all think that we work for the CIA. Yeah, stuff about the CIA and NATO, all kinds of stuff. And though like anti-vaccine and 9-11 truthorism were initially more liberal-aligned conspiracy theories, in the Obama years, conspiracy culture coalesced around the growing far right. Look at people like Glenn Beck and the slide of Alex Jones into the fascist right. Case in point, Obama birtherism. And all this stuff leads to Donald Trump

and QAnon. As of late, liberals have had a conception that, as the more rational of the two political alignments, they were almost naturally immune to conspiratorial thinking. Meanwhile, attacks on consensus reality, fractured information streams, and any larger collective sense of what's real and what isn't started to slip away from everyone. Kirsten, yeah, your camera's flashing. They're trying to silence me. They're trying to silence.

I'm getting too close to the truth. It legitimately looked like a fucking, like, you're being taken off the air and a cyberpunk thing, like your fucking pirate radio is being taken down. No, my cat started to unplug my camera. Really funny shit. Although my cat is named Theodore Katzinski

and Kaczynski was a CIA operative who got M.K. Ultra. So you never know. The right-wing's trailblazing of political unreality allowed space for liberals to dip their toes into the conspiratorial mindset again, but maybe without even realizing that's what they were doing. Exaggerations of Russia Gate was one of the first Trump-era liberal experiments with conspiracy theories. the idea that Russia not only engaged in hacking on a social media disinformation campaign to influence the 2016 election, but that Donald Trump himself colluded with Russia

to get himself elected, and might even be a Russian asset. And even though those allegations were investigated and not concretely proven, the conspiratorial churn continued, emboldened by the media environment that the right has created. As QAnon accelerated during the second half of Trump's first term, so did the decline of American consensus reality, culminating in the Stop the Steel movement in January 6th, which were explosive manifestations of internet conspiracism, which erupted in the physical world. A severe fracturing of reality took place. Any conception of a shared political reality seemed so far gone, and the effects of this loss aren't just contained to Republicans. But this also enables liberals.

and people in the left by opening up space for small reality tunnels to form, regardless of political ideology. The siloing of information channels makes it almost impossible to actually form a consensus reality. As the United States has embraced its political k-fabe, as everything gets more absurd, what loses is political mundanity. Liberals and the left were almost destined to become more conspiratorial in this current moment. And you can even look at how Newsom is like copying Trump's posting strategies.

And even how people like me, memeify and replicate Trump phrases, many such cases. We were all going to be pulled into this at a certain point because it's just more interesting. I'm going to quote from one of Mia's favorite books, the CCRU, quote, Oh, God, no. Conspiracy fictions are spun out of an all-encompassing narrative that can't possibly be falsified, because they want you to believe in their non-existence. To attempt to refute such narratives

is to be drawn into a tedious double game. One either has to embrace an arbitrary and outrageous cosmic plot, in which everything is being run by Jews, Masons, the Illuminati, the CIA, Microsoft, or Satan, or, alternatively, advocate submission to the most mundane construction of quotidian reality. dismissing the hyperstitional chaos that operates behind the screens. This is why atheism is usually so boring.

Both conspiracy and common sense, the normal reality script, depend on the dialectical side of the double game. On reflective twins, belief and unbelief, but disbelief is merely the negative complement of belief, unquote. belief is so much stronger because disbelief is so much more boring. It only exists in comparison to belief in something. I think this is why everyone has this urge to get more conspiratorial. And like American specifically, our whole country is based on conspiracy theory. Like the masons are such a core part of our national identity. I fucking went down that tunnel. I went down

the like, if you ask me to start talking about politics in late 1970s, early 1980s, Italy, I could start talking about how Italy was run by a rogue Masonic lodge. So that actually is true. If you Google Propaganda Dewe, you will find out this was actually this was on the front page of the New York Times.

It was, to be fair to the bases, this was a rogue Masonic lodge. They had been expelled from the masons for being assholes. But this is true. All conspiracies are true, but only about 1970s Italy. But it's more interesting, right? Like, it's so much more interesting. Yeah, it is more interesting. And it makes it

really hard to disprove conspiracy theories when the act of disproving it makes it feel like you're submitting to some all-controlling authority. And people feel like they're losing. And that idea of submission is why people get so pulled into conspiracy theories, because they think that believing in conspiracy theories is itself almost a form of resistance against, you know, quote-unquote them. Yeah, which is very funny because the actual operation of conspiracy is precisely the other way around. Like, conspiracies have been

encouraged by governments forever. Like, the protocols of the elders of Zion were like an op by the fucking czars. Like, this is like this, this was literally a Russian police operation. Right. But all of these people now believe that they're like, oh, I'm like the

anti-systemic person because I fell for this like anti-Semitic police operation. Yeah, so it's a really powerful force. The U.S. government has intentionally stoked, like, UFO conspiracy theories for 80 years. Yeah, because it covers up the thing, you know, if you want to go conspiratorial about it, is because it covers up the thing they're actually doing, which is, like, mundane, but horrifying weapons testing shit. Like, now, the CCRU proposes that, quote unquote, unbelief might be the way out of this cycle by building a plane of potentiality where the annihilation of judgment converges

with real cosmic indeterminacy. I myself try to embrace an unbelief viewpoint for a lot of things, but I think that only gets you so far and might also encourage some of these same problems in a larger scale. Because America has now gotten to the point of unbelief, especially in regards to QAnon.

We've outgrown the need for QAnon because everything is QAnon now. politics are about determining who is and isn't a pedophile. Immigrants are trafficking children. Donald Trump is on the Epstein list, which both doesn't exist and was invented by Democrats. Historical events are staged. Every election was now stolen by the side who won. DHS is posting coded messages on the internet. The FBI and police are faking crime statistics. Everything Trump does is a distraction from whatever the previous thing Trump did, which itself was a distraction from whatever the previous thing Trump did, so on and so

forth. This is just what American politics are now. And while Trump's numerous connections to Epstein are long documented and he appears in Epstein FBI investigation files, discussions around it can feel very the storm is coming.

The pedo elite are always just about to be arrested and removed from office. I'd like to see old Donnie J wiggle his way out of this jam. The logic of Q&ON has perforated almost every aspect of American politics. On Blue Sky, there is this conspiratorial mantra gaining traction among liberals. Quote, he wasn't shot, he didn't win, he's on the list. Oh, don't like that. Oh, no. That's what they believe. Do you know what isn't a conspiracy theory,

Mia? That advertisement is designed to drive consumer demand to replenish capitalism by replacing your desire. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's just the good old truth. Listen to these ads. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him?

Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. From a very rural background myself, my dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not, like...

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack,

where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah. Spain, I'm breaking down the players, from rising stars to legends chasing history, the predictions, will we see a first time winner, and the pressure.

Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court, and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about Icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids?

Or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself. How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an Iheart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you.

On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health, struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed.

Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network Tune in on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. All right, we're back. As QAnon itself became an Uber conspiracy theory over time, linking together a large collection of historical and contemporary conspiracy theories into one overarching story,

BluAnon does not just refer to a single conspiracy theory, but rather is a label that can be a single conspiracy theory. but rather is a label that can be applied to a general assortment of theories or conspiratorial thinking held by contemporary liberals and democratic voters. I myself used a version of this term all the way back in January of 2021 for a since-removed YouTube video due to threats of violence, in which I used the word blue QAnon to describe Portland liberals who believed that Russia was staging Antifa protests to make liberals look bad after Biden's election victory.

And some of the banners used in this video apparently had threats to the president of the United States. So YouTube took down the video, unfortunately, even though the video was just outlining liberal conspiracy theories

about this protest, thinking that Russia probably made this banner. The censorship regime continues a pace. Around this time, 2021, the term blew an on was mostly used to refer to Trump-Russia conspiracy theories. But there were a whole bunch of other liberal conspiracy theories in this era, like how pallets of bricks were being mysteriously dropped off at protests.

And though I will say, this conspiracy theory was used by both people on the right, as well as some centrist liberals. Yeah, and I think this is actually, you know, you were talking about how there is this like QAnon, like this sort of moment of break with consensus reality. And I think the 2020 uprising was one of the most, the single most important events in this entire process. Massively so.

Yeah, because the 2020 uprising was a systemic challenge to both the liberal and the Republican establishment, right? Because if its central premise is true that the United States is a structurally racist state, right, that is based on the oppression of black people, then you can't continue to maintain the state. And also simultaneously, the thing that was incredibly threatening was that people were actually willing to go out and fight the police over this.

And on the right, this obviously causes this massive reality fraction because they have to grapple with the fact that, like, most of the country was fine with burning a police station down. Or were they? Right. Yeah. This is like, oh, no, this was, this was, this was actually like a plan by like Antifa Democrats and like Pritzker's billionaire or like the Jewish billionaire, Soros Jewish billionaires. It was actually the boogaloo boys who planned the whole thing and burned down. the third precinct. Yeah, and this is a very, very, this became the liberal main line on the birding of the third precinct

was that it was a false flag by like the boogaloo boy. People don't remember the boogloos. Far-right boogaloo boys. Yeah, it was like, they were like this very, very weird race war fascists. Trying to encourage a new civil war.

Yes, civil word, weird fascist group. But, like, that became the liberal main line because they had to find a way to explain the fact that the people who were, you know, like a lot of people who are normally supposed to be their base decided instead of doing their sort of just like vote for the president

and like vote for the Democratic president and like nonviolently and passively do nothing people went and fought the police for most of a year and this caused this massive fracturing where people had to believe that instead of there just being construction sites and people taking bricks from construction sites as people have been doing for literally since the first brick was made people have been taking them and throwing them

at enemy authorities, right? Like, Stonewall was a false flag. Yeah, right, because the actual power of that uprising was so dangerous to the fundamental liberal conceptions of reality in the world, and that, like, the marginalized

and oppressed people who they, who they sort of claim to represent, would take it into their own hands, the idea that, yeah, the state is structurally racist, and so it has to be resisted, that caused people to just have to create these, like, just pure reality tunnels of, like, actually any attempt to fight the police

is a false flag that the police want to do or the burning of the third precinct was actually like the fascist attempting to provoke people and that the state actually wants you to fight it because if you fight the state then the state wins and like this is one of the er reality tunnels that creates this sort of conspiratorial mindset we're like the booglu boys at the

third precinct that's not just a thing from like you know online posters that became the main line of the Democratic party because they also had to contain the uprising and from there and once that's the accepted narrative of like the Democrats, then this pure reality tunnel conspiracy shit is now just baked in to the very core of liberalism as it attempts to recuperate and defeat the

energies that were unleashed by 2020. And that's how we're here. That's a large part of it. Flash forwarding a few years, during the first half of 2024, especially in and around Biden's disastrous debate performance, the blue and on term begun being used to refer to a collection of theories that a secret cabal of deep state elites, the news media, high-ranking Democrats and Republicans, were targeting Biden to sabotage his presidency to make him lose the election. There's no such thing as getting old. There is simply being sabotaged by cue cards and camera lighting positions. Now, the blue-in-on-term here is sort of a misnomer.

Because, like, at this point, like, Russia Gate and QAnon had very little in common. Like, one viewed Trump as the Messiah. The other viewed him as basically, you know, an anti-Christ slash Russian asset. In the wake of Trump assassination, Philip Bump penned a Washington Post article declaring, quote, QAnon and BluAnon rhyme, the similarities end there. And I have sympathies for this viewpoint, especially in the wake of, like, January 6th, right? Bluonon doesn't have satanic wayfair child trafficking, but maybe it doesn't need to. In conspiracy theories, it's not just about the substance of the beliefs held, but the function and methodology of the beliefs.

And in the past year, Bluon's function and methodology have started to parallel QAnon's more and more, which leads us to the event that really opened up operating space for the mainstreaming of the liberalism. conspiracy theories, the attempted assassination of one Donald Trump. Americans are particularly susceptible to assassination conspiracy theories. It is kind of been woven into our national identity. Now, of course, Republicans, including elected representatives, developed their own fair share of theories about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, but that's another episode. Here's a viral Facebook video.

Remember Facebook? Oh, no. It's not that bad. Take a look at what happened. Fake-ass shit, man. Stage fake-ass shit, bro. Ain't no bullets flying or nothing, you know what I'm saying? If you know anything about a shoot-offs, seen a shoot-out,

you'll see bullets clines, stuff getting pilted off. Man, there ain't nothing going on, nothing getting hit, nothing getting pilt off. He definitely didn't get hit. He faked it off. The whole thing is. fake, staged, and red, bro. This is how they play y'all. They're going to make y'all vote for them now off the dump, you feel

me? Oh, y'all, oh, he's been shot at. Y'all all going to want to vote for them. Y'all some fucking clowns, bro. The word staged spiked in use by almost 4,000% on Twitter, according to the misinformation tracker Newsguard, appearing 300,000 times the day of and after the shooting.

The term inside. job also rose on social media, up by over 3,000 percent. With bots and inauthentic accounts adding to this chaos, an Israeli disinfo tech firm Cybra found that 45% of accounts using hashtags like fake assassination and staged shooting were inauthentic. Within a day, a post on X questioning the authenticity of the event gained over 50,000 likes, quote, great camera angle, great quality, no secret service agent in front of his head covering the wound, conveniently placed U.S. flag, unquote. Another got nearly 50,000 likes asking users to, quote,

raise your hand and repost if you think this was staged. There was a flood of posts, earning thousands of likes and millions of alleged views, which questioned why Trump was able to or allowed to stand above the crowd after being shot, yelling fight, fight, fight, risking getting shot again. And while it, you know, could have been possible

that there was a second shooter, Trump was only able to stand back up after it was confirmed that Crooks was killed. You can hear it in the video, shoot her down, shooter down. Secret Service was already aware of Crook's position prior to the shooting and had not located any other possible shooters.

But reality does not matter here. Yep. I'm going to play a short clip from a YouTube video, was uploaded just a month ago with over 85,000 views, explaining why someone feels it really easy to believe in this conspiracy now. Ladies and gentlemen, I normally don't go down conspiracy holes. I don't. But we know MAGA does.

MAGA has gone down so many conspiracy holes and brought it to science that we've got people not giving their kids vaccine. We've seen measles rising in Texas. We had people not wanting to get to COVID. We had quarterbacks telling people to take ivermectin. We had people saying take fucking horse tranquilizers to get rid of COVID. And so now I think I've earned the opportunity to go down a rabbit hole. This video was someone who was right there at the Trump rally and they're contending that this whole thing is made of,

which a lot of us felt like it was anyway, because we do know that Trump, he's not afraid to fool around. and shall we say reality or entertainment TV. We know he's not afraid to do that. And I'll show you an example of that in a minute. What example do you think he's going to show? This is a WWE thing. It is the WWE thing.

I remember there were so much WWE like tying shit with this. We'll get to that in a sec. But I find this explanation of why this person feels almost allowed to believe a conspiracy. theories now super interesting. It is specifically because the right has been so willing to embrace conspiracism that now it feels like it's fair game

for liberals to do it as well. And this guy is just almost acknowledging this fact. He's kind of like working his way to my entire thesis here maybe without realizing it. Also, this guy sponsored by an AI company just to make this absolutely perfect. Great stuff. Great stuff happening in the sphere of our political discourse. We love to see it.

But yes, based on the blood smeared across Trump's face after he went on the ground, people postulated that Trump was hiding a razor blade in his sleeve, WWE style, to purposefully cut his face to make it look like he was shot. Yeah, Donald Trump bladed himself. What are we doing here? So should we believe that faking, getting shot, is beyond them? Why would we believe that when this is still Trump, that once was trained by the W.W.E. Wasn't those some convincing-ass right hands he just gave Vince McMahon?

No! Those were the least convincing right hands I've ever seen, and I have watched Hold Colgan throw a punch. Good enough for me. You know what? I think we've solved this whole assassination thing right here. So I'll be like, this stuff doesn't even warrant debunking. Debunking is useless, right? Yeah. All of these conspiracy theories rest from the fact that rally attendees were hospitalized with gunshot wounds and two people died as a sacrifice to sell this event.

And that the Biden era secret service helped facilitate this whole operation. I watched YouTube videos explaining that even if bullets were fired and people at the rally were hit and killed, though just not Trump, the actual footage of the shooting, is actually AI, because the number of targets hit don't match the number of shots heard in the video, and people in the crowd suddenly disappear once shots are fired, as in people get down low on the ground to avoid getting hit. As for the number of shots hit versus shots fired, these videos seem to not realize that bullets travel through objects, like say Donald Trump's ear.

That being the point of a bullet. Also, this was actually Trump loyalist police firing into the crowd as a part of this stage operation, not Thomas Crux. After the shooting, a political advisor to Democratic donor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman named Dimitri Melhorn sent an email proposing that the shooting may have been, quote, encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash, unquote. The next day, Melhorn regretted and apologized for saying. the email. And think about it. While one person was lined up perfectly to get the now historic photo, think of how many other professional photographers at the rally weren't so lucky. There's not just one photographer at the event. There's lots. And yeah, one person got a really compelling shot. It's a campaign event. There's paid photographers there. This is what I

campaign event is. Oh my God, there is a flag that was staged because it was a campaign event. I'm going insane. According to a poll from Morning Consult, roughly one in five voters said that they found it credible that the shooting was staged and not intended to kill Trump, including one third of, at the time, Biden supporters. 33% of Biden supporters and 12% of those who back Trump, which is really funny to me.

That's actually really funny at the top of the... It was an inside job. Good job, guys, good job. mega Trump assassination truthers. The majority of voters, though, 62% said that the unsubstantiated notion is not credible. A statement I've seen from both the conspiratorial left and the right is that we know all about, say, Luigi Mangione or this latest school shooter, but still know nothing about the Trump assassination.

And this just isn't true. We actually know a lot about Thomas Crooks now. Just because you haven't read about it. mean that we don't know. I'll link to a recent New York Times article looking into his online footprint. We know a lot about this guy. Yep. But based on the conception that this failed assassination attempt would in the end help Trump get elected, some people chose to just reject the event entirely. And yeah, it was surreal, a warped manifestation of millions of people's dream. And when things happen that challenge expectations or are just plain weird, some people

reject that reality and substitute to their own alternate realities, which make more sense to them. If a near-miss event like this would help Trump, then it must be Trump's doing. Do you know what Trump has no control over? It's so not true that he doesn't have control of these products and services. We have been reporting on his increasingly... The tariffs aren't real, via. I won't believe the tariffs until I see them with my own two eyes. I'm going to, I'm going to walk you to the port of L.A. We're going to go look at the tariffs together. Why inside sources?

Here's some ads. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him?

Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend, really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. From a very rural background myself, my dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like...

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history. The predictions will we see a first time winner and the pressure? Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open.

The U.S. U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself? How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain. I heart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more. And found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house.

Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All right, we're back. You can't talk about liberal conspiracy theories without the most blatant, example of some libs taking a page right out of the mega playbook, 2024 election denial. Oh, God. Another instance of Trump and QAnon, trailblazing something that used to be on the political fringe and normalizing it as acceptable political discourse.

Early on, after Trump was declared the projected winner, liberals questioned why there were seemingly 20 million missing Democratic votes from the expected 2024 totals, pointing to the higher numbers in 2020. seemingly forgetting that vote totals were still being counted. And in the end, there were only 3 million fewer votes this election, which is extremely reasonable for an election. According to NewsGuard, by Wednesday morning after the election, Trump cheated was trending on Twitter with nearly 100,000 mentions since midnight.

I'll read a few of these viral tweets, quote, I hold a master's degree in political science. I don't yet understand these results, and I don't pretend to. I'm not into conspiracy, but I'd like to know. Did millions across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan really split their vote? Did millions of Democratic voters really stay home? And the answer is... Yes.

Yes. They did. That is what happened. You figured it out. People did split their vote, and yeah, lots of people were not compelled to vote for Harris and stayed home. Congratulations. You've, you stumbled, you stumbled across the reality. Mm-hmm. Another person remarked, quote, I hold a master's.

Again, I love all these people prefacing this by saying that they have degrees. And I want to say two things about the degree thing. One, 80% of the time when someone starts doing one of these things, you can go back and find different degrees they've presented. Have two. I have been around people who get master's degrees in political science. We are not talking about the cream of the intellectual. crop here. Like, this is a discipline that is like economics for people

who like, are even worse at the chain rule than economists. Like, what are we doing here? Ugh. Quote, I hold a master's in political science with a minor in statistics, and I can't make sense of this. Human nature had to completely upend itself for this to happen. Swing states voting straight

blue down the ballot except for the top? Nah, that's not what people do. And yet, it is what happen. Average political science analysis. This is hinged for them. So very quickly, liberals demanded recounts and court challenges, begging that Kamala Harris take this to court with misinformation spreading that she was planning said court challenges. Others alleged that Elon Musk hacked voting machines. According to a report from the University of Washington,

over a five-day period, there were hundreds of thousands of tweets. and retweets about how Elon Musk, working with Trump and sometimes with Putin, used Starlink satellites to steal the election, perhaps by intercepting then changing vote totals through the internet, despite most voting machines not being connected to the internet. No, and the actual thing that he did was like going to places and saying, I'll give you a million dollars if you vote for this election. One of you will win. Like, that's like the actual thing that he did, which is so blatantly. obvious. And, like, basic, like, ground game targeting in swing states. Like, yeah, they mobilized

a shit ton of money. Quote, I'm hearing today that Elon's software starship is the software that handled all the swing state ballots. If indeed, this is true, this is clearly a conflict of interest, and another reason why swing states need investigations. Well, good news. This isn't indeed true. You made this up. This is fake. It's not just Twitter, though, on meta's Twitter alternative threads, there was a hotbed of election denial, with posts like this spreading on the platform and beyond to places like Reddit. Quote, Trump cheats at everything in life. Putin interfered in the past three elections. Musk and Trump talked to Putin a lot. Musk's Starlink uploaded votes in swing states. Swing state voters went to Dem down

But Trump at the top? Unlikely. Starlink satellites exploding, destroying evidence, unquote. This is referencing a conspiracy theory from the time that based on an event on November 10th where a Starlink satellite reintered orbit and blew up, as Elon Musk's technology is known to do, this was itself proof that he was blowing up his satellites on purpose to conceal evidence that Starlink was used to alter election results. SpaceX regularly retires satellites, which then slowly fall to Earth and blow up. This is ordinary practice. This particular satellite, which exploded on November 10th, was decommissioned back in August. This has nothing to do with the election. Still, there were viral tweets calling for a quote-unquote forensic investigation and accounts like Your Enon News, an account pretending to be affiliated with the hacker group Anonymous, which is a real vector point of left-wing conspiratorial thinking. I'm going to put a note here, but it says that the history and relationship of your

end on news is very complicated. This is not our definitive statement on it. Please don't get mad at us. It's a fucking mess. It's a fucking mess. That's what I'm going to say about it. That guy sucks shit. They've been spreading a lot of election misinformation news, especially in November. Quote, some strange statements from Trump and Elon have fueled doubts about election integrity. You can just change one line of code, Elon stated, about the code on electronic voting machines. I don't need more votes. I already have votes. Trump stated repeatedly. So why not take a look, unquote. This alleged quote from Elon cannot be sourced at all. The full version of it is, quote, if you want to steal an election, all you have to do is change

one line of code. Unquote, I have tried so hard to find the original source for this quote, I cannot. It is just liberals saying Elon said this. It may have been something he said. I cannot find it. Even if it is something he said, it's not evidence that he stole the election at all. He does this. Like there's a whole conspiracy on the left that thinks that Elon Musk was behind the coup in Bolivia, which was like something I was accepted by Evo back when he was in the NIS, like in Bolivia, because it was like politically convenient for everyone involved to believe that Elon Musk did this coup in

Bolivia over lithium prices when the actual reality was it was done by a bunch of Bolivian agro barons but people just believe this shit and Elon will just play into it because I don't he probably didn't say that but like even if he did like he did say the shit that he did the coup in Bolivia

but like he didn't he objectively didn't. That's just not true. LOLXD like I okay I'm not I'm not I'm not going to get into the price history of of lithium here and how there was a fucking market glut at that point

which is the exact opposite thing you would want there to be if you're trying to steal lithiums like it's nonsense so people just believe this shit because it fits their version of reality and the right is really happy

to sort of play into this because they just play around with conspiracies and this line from Trump is just breaking about having a lot of projected votes already that's all it is the day before

inauguration day people alleged that Trump may have accidentally admitted to stealing the election in one of his speeches. Oh my fucking God. Let's take a look. Trump just told on himself, he just credited Elon Musk's knowledge of how voting machines work for his victory in Pennsylvania. He said

this during his victory rally in Washington, D.C. the night before the alleged inauguration. Let's listen to the audio. And then he journeyed to Pennsylvania where he spent like a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania. And he's a popular guy. And he was very effective. And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good. It was pretty good. So thank you to Elon. That is from a very popular TikToker. This particular video has 20,000 likes. I can't even find how many views it has. But there's hundreds of comments talking about how the election was stolen.

The same video was spread by people like a friend of the pod. Brooklyn Dad Defiant. Oh, literally, God, fucking, okay, I need to spend five seconds.

No, we don't have time. He's literally paid by a Democratic party. This is not a conspiracy. Yeah, he used to be literally paid by Democratic Party. He was a fucking oil guy. God damn it.

Sorry, okay. He said, quote, is that a fucking confession? No. 23,000 likes. Oh, it's not.

And no. this line from Trump gets referenced a lot in liberal stolen election theories. Trump is not saying he won because Elon knows vote counting computers. Those two statements can be separate statements that are just right next to each other. Or it could be easily interpreted as saying that Elon Musk's computer knowledge helped prevent fraud, ensuring that if Dems tried to steal the election again, Elon would have caught them, as 2020 Republican election denial focused heavily on voting machines. In terms of numbers on how many Democrats don't think the election was legitimate, we do have

some statistics. In 2020, 88% of Democrats thought the election was legitimate and accurate. In 2024, it was only 63%. With 9% saying it was the result of illegal voting or election rigging, and 29% saying they don't know if it was legitimate or accurate. Of course, the Republicans found, this election was extremely legitimate as compared to the last one in which a majority of Republicans thought it was the result

at illegal voting or election rigging. But still, 29% of Democrats in 2024 not knowing if the election is accurate, pretty, pretty damaging. Obviously, a lack of trust in election systems is an extremely damaging thing to the functioning of democracy.

The reason why I decided to finally do this episode, after pulling little research bits over the course of the past like year, is a tweet from August 20th. Quote, two whistleblowers have now confirmed that the NSA conducted an election audit, and Harris was the winner. Don't fucking ignore this. 146,000 likes, almost 30,000 retweets, 5.5 million, quote-unquote, views.

This went super viral. One of the biggest instances I've seen in recent. election denial. This vital tweet links to a substack with over 51,000 subscribers and 3 million views. The focus of the blog is showing how Kamala Harris really won the 2024 election. The recent posts cover how a former CIA operative has confirmed that, based on an NSA audit of the 2024 election, Kamala actually won. This was a, quote, covert, compartmentalized, forensic audit.

unquote. It's literally just stop the steal. They did the same thing. It was completed in December 2024, and based on the findings, the NSA and CIA recommended a hand recount, but the recount was unable to take place before the January 6th election certification, and since then, the findings of the audit

proving a common victory, have been covered up by Tulsi Gabbard and the Trump administration. This blog claims the election was stolen by hijacking voting machines and, quote, illegally copied software, decades of vulnerabilities, and the installation of a backdoor through a last-minute change order right before the election, unquote. Now, there's a few problems with this theory, the first at which being that the NSA doesn't audit elections.

No! What? This substacker also operates a still-growing TikTok account. To prevent being suppressed for misinformation, the user, toxin coded phrases calling elections baking contests. State election results are either red cakes or blue cakes. Moats are ingredients. In her most popular video with about 75,000 views, she claims that Trump isn't giving red swing states FEMA aid because he knows that these states actually voted for Kamala Harris, and so Trump is punishing them by withholding aid. This is her second. This is her second.

most popular video with 50,000 views talking about North Carolina and how Elon Musk and Peter Teal worked together to alter election results. Hey y'all, quick update on the baking contest in North Kakalaki and the cake is in fact, we were able to identify about 197,000 ingredients that were swapped out by the space baker. So he and his friend whose name rhymes with Seal have been up to some interesting things when it comes to these baking contests. So the surveillance seal and the space baker doing some doing some interesting baking. So we need you to let your media friends know and let all the people know. We're going to do an email campaign next week because that seems to be how we get this done. We do have avenues to undo this unholy mess and just hold on

your hope. Run over to my friends at the A-T and of course the Common Coalition. Check out the report. We have more to report on all of the baking contests that we're working on. We're still digging. We got more to go. And blue skies ahead, y'all. There's something specifically, uniquely horrifying about the way that, like, just the sort of TikTok language of suicide or whatever, like, that people say, like, that kind of shit. This stuff just makes me really sad. No, it's so.

Like, I can't have fun with this anymore. God damn it. The same thing when I was watching some of the Trump assassination videos when I realized this is just from people who are unwell. And I can't even have fun with this. And that is also the case with a lot of Q&N stuff. You should be really careful about how much joy you take in the suffering of people and people displaying their suffering on the internet by engaging in this stuff.

But yeah, this stuff's just really sad. Like, in other videos, she's pleading with her followers to contact their state governors, to convince them to change all the voting machines because they've been compromised. And I'll play one more video before we close the episode. It says over 32,000 views. She talks about Trump using tariffs as leverage to get countries to sign deals with Elon Musk's Starlink satellites, which will then be used to control elections worldwide. And the only way to stop this is to impeach Trump and put Kamala in the White House since. She is the rightful winner of the 2024 election. They take from their constituents now to address the space cadet and how.

Look at what he launched last year in record time, 10 months, this low orbit DTC constellation, and look at what they're doing with the countries around the world. To get your tariffs removed, you have to sign a contract with the space cadet. Hello, this is not about any kind of like, you know, internet in the rural areas, blah, blah, blah. Nothing about this is to be nice. No, it is to control future contests. The U.S. was not the end game.

It was the litmus test. So we can get out of this. We have constitutional avenues to get out of this situation, but we need Congress to act. And Congress won't act until the American people know what happened. And they're not going to know what happened until our influencers and our media handle the situation. So, oh, Rachel Maddow, please, Lawrence, um, uh, Midas touch. For heaven's sake, Midas touch, you guys, four million people, you could be blasting this out and letting the American people know what happened.

Do your jobs, please, so we can get the rightful people in the house that they belong in, the big white one. I think one of the things that makes me so insane about these is that, like, if you're actually I guess Garrison you weren't around for this but like I've legitimately have lived through two attempts to steal an election right like there was 2000

which the Republicans just stole and then yeah Donald Trump did try to steal the election in 2020 but he did it by having people try to form mobs outside of polling places and then like his supporters did January 6th that's a real

thing But the thing about these conspiracies is, like, they devour reality. They consume it and strip it for its constituent parts, which is why you see so many, like, you know, you used to see so many conspiracies that would, you know, if you look at their giant conspiracy charts, they're talking about, like, the structure of the World Bank and the IMF, and, like, that's where the Bilderberg group stuff comes out of, right?

They love charts. The builder group stuff is them taking the real structure of the Internet, National Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and then, you know, devouring that structure and spitting back out conspiracy. And that's what these things do. They take real things that happen in the world and just devour them and turn them into just nothing. And it makes it harder to act because, like, yeah, we do live in a world where the Republican Party has, like, attempted to or successfully did steal two elections, but not this one. And if this is your, mode of resistance, of hashtag resistance against Trump.

That's useless. It's completely useless. It's not actually managing any of the effects of Trump on people, like ICE, like attacks on queer people. It's this fully contained non-form of fighting. Yeah. And like you see this too on the left with CIA stuff where it's like everyone is convinced that like the person they're arguing with on Twitter, like is the CIA.

And that the way that you combat CIA influence is. by like spreading, I don't know, posting pro-Assad shit. And it's like that's not actually substantively combating the influence of the CIA. It just feels like it is. And that structure of feeling is so powerful that it prevents you from doing actual action. There's been this new conspiracy theory gaining traction on Blue Sky a lot that the masked people engaged in immigration enforcement, ICE, aren't actually ICE agents. They're secretly, quote, J-Sixers, bounty hunters or thugs, oathkeepers, proud boys. It's a big assumption to even say they're

federal agents. They're not identified. We have no idea who they are, could be proud boys or oathkeepers or three percenters, unquote. This is trying to push the blame away from the U.S. government who is engaging in this action, ICE, onto these non-state actors, which people in their mind think are easier targets. And it's just a complete misunderstanding of power. It's a misunderstanding of the current political situation and it gives you no ability to actually stop the bad things ICE are doing. But I've seen this

theory gain a lot of traction online. And in the same way that QAnon is a product of the cognitive dissonance of Trump supporters having to grapple to the fact that their god king is in power and their lives still suck, this specific one is a product of the cognitive dissonance of like

the fact that these people all supported ICE when Biden was the one, Biden was the run running it when like Biden fucking did his executive order to shut the border down, right? Like when Biden was like doing concentration camps in the desert, they were all pro-ice, and then they suddenly have to deal with the world where ICE is doing an ethnic cleansing.

And they can't process that. And so the way that they attempt to cope with it is being like, well, that's actually not the real ice. That's like J6, proud boys. It's a Groyper-occupied government. They're sending out coded messages on Twitter. It's the same thing me and you did the episode about a few weeks ago in our dog whistle politics

in the hunt for coded. Nazi messaging episode. But yeah, and though some Democratic voters are engaging in election denial, I think one key deference from 2020 Republican election denial is that liberal election officials have, as of yet,

not been willing to participate in this rhetoric openly or pursue these baseless fraud accusations. This is still one difference, but I think it's a ticking clock. I think it's only a matter of time, especially once we see the midterms, that people running for office, that Democrats might start embracing some kind of wing-nuddy stuff, the same way Marjor

Taylor Green, Trojan horse wing-nuddy politics into Congress. And now we see a whole bunch of other representatives being able to engage in conspiratorial thought on the right. There's going to be a few instances of this, I think, in the next midterm election for Democrats, it's something to keep an eye out for because I think it's only a matter of time. Like what I mentioned in that CCRU quote, mundane reality is going to lose because this stuff is just more interesting. People are going to try to buy it and it requires constant pushback. That does it for part one, but there's going to be another episode tomorrow where I talk with Jack of the Alt Watcher Blue Sky account to discuss the latest evolution of Blue Anon and possibly the most QAnon-y extension of Blue Anon we've

seen yet. The Alt National Park Service and their coded messages being sent out on Blue Sky and Facebook. So stay tuned for that tomorrow. And remember, you are not immune to propaganda. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.

Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy?

That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell.

And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.