Donald Trump assassination bid: Can ‘Deep State’ theories be ruled out?

Donald Trump assassination bid: Hours after Thomas Matthew Crooks' vain attempt to assassinate former US President Donald Trump on Saturday, unconfirmed information linking the incident to the ‘deep state’ flooded social media. Although false conspiracy theories often emerge in politically volatile environments, experts stated that tempers often run high during elections.

In 2024, an assassination attempt was made on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. Two years back, the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, was assassinated. 

Manoj Joshi, a former member of India’s National Security Council Advisory Board, told LiveMint that these assassination attempts might be mere coincidences.  “They are similar events but coincidences. Deep State is a myth,” said Manoj Joshi. 

Despite the FBI identifying the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, conspiracy theories continue to brew. Some left-wing accounts suggested Donald Trump staged the attack on himself, while accounts from the far right called it a hit on a political rival, reported The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, Indian economist Sanjeev Sanyal hinted it wouldn’t be surprising if past assassinations were connected. “I would not be surprised if there is a link between the assassination of Abe, the attempt on Fico and now Trump. The world is now in a very dangerous place,” wrote Sanyal on his personal account on X.

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“It looks very staged,” posted one user on X, which garnered over a million views. “Nobody in that crowd heard an actual gun. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust him,” wrote the user about the Trump rally shooting incident.

Experts, however, ruled out Deep State theories. “Incidents of political violence spawn conspiracy theories and false narratives when people try to spin the event to suit their various agendas,” Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told The Washington Post.

Manoj Joshi shared a similar view. He said, “During election time, rhetoric and tempers are often high, and self-control is needed.”

The political dynamics continue to excaberate amid such theories, blurring the lines between what is and what is not, reported The Washington Post.