‘Vance Wants to Get Rid of Trump’: Donald Trump Mocks Shooting Conspiracies, But Resurfaced Clip Linking Suspect to 2017 Event Sparks New Questions
It seems President Donald Trump is doing all that he can to move past the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but a newly resurfaced clip is raising questions, including whether the suspect has ties to the Trump administration.
The shooting happened Saturday, as Trump attended the event for the first time as president.
Federal authorities say the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from California, charged a Secret Service checkpoint and fired one or two times. The Secret Service fired back, but did not hit him.
CNN reports Allen was taken into custody near a staircase leading to the ballroom.
In an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the president was asked about conspiracy theories swirling around the event.
“I think they’re more sick than they are con people,” the president said, referring to the conspiracy theorists. “But there’s a lot of con in there too.”
Trump claimed he hadn’t heard any of the theories and added that he expects to see them in a few months.
During the interview, “60 Minutes” correspondent Norah O’Donnell asked the president about his opinions on the theories surrounding the attempt on his own life during a rally in Pennsylvania in 2024.
Trump responded sarcastically by saying, “October 7 didn’t happen, World War I didn’t happen, the Holocaust didn’t happen.”
He did not comment on the assassination attempt.
Axios reports Trump has survived a total of three assassination attempts. One suspect, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed in Pennsylvania after a bullet grazed the president’s ear.
The other suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, is serving a life sentence after trying to kill the president while he played golf in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“WWII and the Holocaust definitely happened. Your ‘assassination attempts’ were staged,” commented @leahweir82 on Threads.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters Monday not to believe the theories.
“Hopefully people will believe the truth rather than the lies and the conspiracies that so often do go crazy on social media,” she said.
“Huh, you mean like the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, that Italian satellites switched votes to Biden in the 2020 election, or that Haitians in Ohio were eating people’s dogs?” Brad Reed commented on Threads.
Other commenters also highlighted claims made by the Trump administration that were later proven false.
“Team Trump promoted the claim that China shipped in fake ballots during the 2020 election, leading supporters to search for bamboo fibers in Arizona’s ballot audit,” Bruce Crossing added.
Now, a video from Los Angeles ABC 7 is creating more conspiracy theories.
In the 2017 video, you see the suspect, Allen, at an “Aging Into the Future” conference. The event was an opportunity for college students to try to secure funding for inventions that would help seniors.
Allen explained his invention, a brake for wheelchairs, in the video.
Second lady Usha Vance also appeared briefly in the video, although it is unclear what she was doing there.
“Either Vance wants to get rid of Trump (he was escorted out first), or Usha wants to get rid of Vance,” Mable Stewart commented on Facebook.
She is referring to a viral video of Secret Service agents escorting Vice President JD Vance out before the president.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but all these little things are beginning to give me a healthy dose of skepticism about ‘life,’” Nicola Lopez added on Facebook.
Trump told CBS News he was partially responsible for the delay.
“I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn’t making it that easy for them,” he said. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me see, wait a minute.”
News18 reports that this forced agents to demand that the president and first lady “go down on the floor” and crawl out of sight.
Allen was arraigned on Monday in a Washington federal court on charges of attempting to assassinate Trump and two counts of firearms offenses. He remains jailed pending a detention hearing.