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It’s not generally admirable to take pleasure in someone being targeted, troubled or taunted in some way. But schadenfreude is exactly what I’ve felt in recent weeks, unapologetically, about President Trump finding himself for once on the receiving end of a dark conspiracy theory, including from some of his most prominent (former) supporters.

They’re suggesting that he staged an assassination attempt against himself at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., in the summer of 2024, to supercharge his reelection prospects.

So central is the Butler moment to Trump’s narrative as president that he was saved by God to save the country, he prominently hung a painting of the now-iconic photo of himself — pushing above a scrum of Secret Service agents, blood running from his injured ear, pumping a fist and urging, “Fight!, fight!, fight!” — in the White House’s Grand Foyer soon after he moved back in. It replaced a portrait of former President Barack Obama, the relocation of which in turn pushed George W. Bush up a staircase.

Yet here’s how Trisha Hope, a Trump delegate from Texas to the 2024 Republican National Convention, described that Butler tableau in a social media post last week that former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reposted: Secret Service agents “allowed President Trump to stand up, exposing multiple potential kill shots, as the flag is gently lowered. Interesting that the other SS agents lower their heads as the perfectly time[d] ICONIC photo is taken. Honestly, it couldn’t have been scripted better if [it] were to have been done in a studio.”

For such former allies — together with the likes of MAGA celebs Greene, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, comedian Tim Dillon and former Trump counterterrorism advisor Joe Kent — to now suggest that Trump’s tale of divine salvation could well be a hoax, that it was rigged, perhaps reflects something else rooted in spirituality: karma. What goes around, comes around.

It is also a measure of Trump’s lost credibility, after years of incessant lies and policy reversals, that even once-cheerleading allies would question........

© Los Angeles Times