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Another Assassination Attempt, More Fertilizer for Conspiracy Theories

Rep. Jamie Raskin responds to his Dana Bash interview, plus journalist Mike Rothschild on the world of political conspiracies.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend became the site of the third failed attempt to assassinate President Donald Trump. “I remember the feeling was very similar to when it was clear that the House had been invaded on January 6, 2021,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who was in attendance, tells The Intercept Briefing. “Everybody was afraid that somebody had come in with an AR-15 or something like that.”

This week on the podcast, host Akela Lacy speaks to Raskin about his experience at the dinner and later being asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about whether he’s thinking twice about his “heated rhetoric” toward Trump. “It was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that she would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Trump talks,” says Raskin. “He calls people crazy, insane. He calls people evil, wicked. He will buttonhole reporters and tell them that they’re stupid, they’re ugly. … But we try to keep it at the level of policies and their actions.” Some examples, which Raskin discusses, is his forthcoming investigation into Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s role in the administration and conflicts of interest, and his fight in Congress to stop the reauthorization of warrantless surveillance on Americans.

After this latest assassination attempt on Trump’s life, claims that it was staged flooded the internet, from comments section to social media posts to videos of influencers dissecting alleged evidence.

“We are so conditioned to distrust what we are being told by authorities that people immediately began concocting conspiracy theories about it even before we even knew what had happened. Whether it was a shooting or just dishes breaking,” says journalist Mike Rothschild. He’s the author of “The Storm is Upon Us,” the first complete book on the QAnon conspiracy movement, and more recently, a 200-year history of conspiracy theories called “Jewish Space Lasers.”

Rothschild joins Lacy to unpack the growing world of conspiracy theories that question whether the multiple assassination attempts against Trump were staged. They also dive into other conspiracy theories currently capturing the public imagination, such as the dead and missing scientists and a wildfire in Georgia. “This is one of our more fun and disturbing interviews,” says Lacy.

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter for The Intercept.

Katherine Krueger: And I’m Katherine Krueger, the Voices editor at The Intercept.

AL: Katherine, do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about what Voices is before we jump into the show today?

KK: Voices is basically The Intercept’s op-ed section we run. Things that are more narrative, things that are a little more first-person-driven, things that advocate for a specific point of view.

AL: An Intercept editorial board, if you will.

KK: Yes, I’m a one-woman editorial board. [Laughs.]

AL: Speaking of opinions on the news of the day, I am going to throw several topics at you. [Laughs.]

AL: On Thursday morning, news broke that Janet Mills is dropping out of the Maine Senate race. Katherine, what was your reaction to seeing that? 

KK: So Janet Mills is the current governor of Maine, former attorney general, running against Graham Platner in the Democratic primary to be the next senator of Maine.

She was neck and neck with the upstart, insurgent, more-left candidate Graham Platner, who has certainly had his share of controversies during this race. But my jaw dropped when I saw the news that she was dropping out. It feels like all polling that I had seen was that her and Platner were pretty close in the polls.

In a statement she put out, she’s blaming a lack of money for not continuing the race, which is also strange to me because she had all of the backing of the Democratic Party. No one at DNC national was pulling for Platner.

AL: Yeah, this was pretty shocking to me. I also got an AP alert on Wednesday evening. The title was “Underdog Governor,” and the dek was “Democratic Maine Governor Janet Mills says she’s used to being underestimated even as she runs for Senate at age 78.”

Literally 12 hours later, Janet Mills is dropping out of the race for U.S. Senate.

Democratic Leaders Wanted to Control the Maine Senate Race. Their Pick Just Dropped Out.

I was also pretty shocked at the statement that Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand put out after she dropped out of the race, which was “[Maine Sen. Susan] Collins has never been more vulnerable” — what? “We will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, to defeat her.” [Laughs.]

KK: Yeah, it’s a bit strange. Also, I just love the framing in that headline, which is “underdog governor” — don’t those things pull in opposite directions? Also, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer were fully behind Janet Mills. It all strikes me as a bit strange. It also seems Platner had been in general polling ahead of Mills, but it does seem like the race was quite close. My jaw dropped when I saw the news. It seems out of nowhere.

AL: Also in midterms and voting rights news, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a decision that rolled back voting rights. This was focused on a case in Louisiana. After that decision, Louisiana postponed its May 16 primary. Which is kind of insane, considering that that was supposed to happen in two weeks.

KK: It does seem like an existential threat for the Democrats to respond. Gerrymandering has been an issue for a long time. The Republicans are fully aware that without gerrymandering, the force of the electorate is against them. Democrats need to respond as other states, I’m sure, will look to redraw their maps in even more draconian ways.

“The Republicans are fully aware that without gerrymandering, the force of the electorate is against them.”

“The Republicans are fully aware that without gerrymandering, the force of the electorate is against them.”

AL: In that vein, Democrats are also facing intense scrutiny over a series of key votes in the house this week, including on extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which 42 Democrats voted to support and 22 Republicans opposed on Wednesday. This version would authorize warrantless surveillance of Americans.

Ron Wyden Is Pissing Off the NSA’s Biggest Backers. Tom Cotton Warns There Will Be “Consequences.”

There’s also been some developments in the fight to end the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. After a monthslong shutdown, the House passed legislation to reopen DHS on Thursday.

After federal immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year, Democrats had attempted to block additional funding for DHS until the agency could make some very modest reforms to ICE and Border Patrol. Democrats’ demands have so far gone nowhere. Though some places are framing the vote on Thursday, which did not fund ICE, as a win for Democrats. Katherine, what do you make of all of this?

KK: Well, it does seem that the Republicans are pretty desperate to restore this funding. You know, as an op-ed editor — Democrats need to hold the line on this.

AL: It’s my understanding that this bill will pay for DHS operations except ICE and parts of Border Patrol through September 30. Those agencies are already being generously funded by the Trump so-called Big Beautiful Bill that approved a record $85 billion for immigration crackdowns. 

KK: Right. So for now it appears to be all eyes on the Democrats to see what they can do, if anything, to gum up the works on billions in new funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

AL: And of course, this is all coming on the heels of the third assassination attempt against President Donald Trump over the weekend, which we talk about with Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who was present at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner during the shooting attempt.

Later in the show, we hear from journalist Mike Rothschild about the world of conspiracy theories swirling around the shooting and other recent events in the U.S.

KK: Akela, you got really great details from Rep. Raskin from inside the Correspondents’ Dinner. So let’s listen to that conversation now.

AL: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing, Rep. Raskin.

Rep. Jamie Raskin: Great to see you, Akela.

AL: So you were at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday evening. Tell us what you witnessed.

JR: I entered maybe 10 minutes before the incident happened and the violence and the confusion and the melee and the chaos. All of a sudden, we heard the loud noises, boom boom boom, glasses flying, plates flying — horrific noises taking place. And then people yelling, “Get down, get down.” Somebody, I think it maybe was a Secret Service agent or an officer, somebody threw me to the ground.

Then we stayed on the floor for two or three minutes before people started saying they got the guy, or it’s OK, you can get up. But there was a lot of confusion.

I remember the feeling was very similar to when it was clear that the House had been invaded on January 6, 2021, and everybody was afraid that somebody had come in with an AR-15 or something like that.

It was a scene of crowd chaos and fear in America, which means people are going to be thinking about the possibility of an assault weapon or some kind of deadly gun attack.

AL: The day after the shooting, you spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash about the incident in an interview where she asked you about the responsibility of Democrats whose rhetoric toward Trump she described as “heated.” Let’s hear that clip.

Dana Bash: And you have, and as many of your fellow Democrats have, used some heated rhetoric against the president. And do you think twice about that when something like this happens?

Rep. Jamie Raskin: What rhetoric do you have in mind?

DB: Just talking about some of the fact that he is terrible for this country and so on and so forth. I understand that’s your democratic right, but overall, do you have no responsibility?

JR: I have no personal problem with Donald Trump at all. I talk about the policies of this administration. The authoritarianism, like we saw on display in Minneapolis where two of our citizens were gunned down in the streets simply for exercising their First Amendment rights; Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and others have died in custody. I’m talking about policies. I don’t personalize it, and I certainly have never called the press the enemy of the people. I think the press are the people’s best friend, and that’s why it’s written right there into the First Amendment.

We need the press to be a vigilant watchdog against every level of government, federal, state, local, all of it.

AL: I also want to note that on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats who have criticized Trump for the shooting, naming several members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

What did you make of Bash’s question to you and the idea behind it, that somehow the real problem here is criticizing the president and his policies, no matter what those policies are?

JR: The freedom of speech has to be wide open, vigorous, and uninhibited in America. But the point I was trying to make was that we should keep to policy matters and political matters, and not personalize it.

So I literally didn’t know what she was talking about. I do not use, or at least I try not to use, the kind of rhetoric that President Trump routinely and habitually uses where he calls people communists, he calls people terrorists. He calls people crazy, insane. He calls people evil, wicked. He will buttonhole reporters and tell them that they’re stupid, they’re ugly, all those kinds of things.

I just thought it was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that [Bash] would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Trump talks, because we are indeed very vigorous and aggressive in standing up to violent insurrections and attempts to overthrow elections. And we’re very vigorous and aggressive in opposing illegal wars because Congress has been cut out and so on. But we try to keep it at the level of policies and their actions.

“It was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that she would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Trump talks.”

“It was curious that, in the wake of this terrible episode, that she would try to equate the way that Democrats talk and the way that President Trump talks.”

AL: A letter that you sent a few weeks ago to the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner opened by saying, “You are now reportedly participating as ‘Special Envoy for Peace’ in negotiations on behalf of the United States government to address the roiling conflicts in the Middle East. At the same time, you are soliciting billions of dollars from Gulf monarchies for your private business ventures while already managing billions of dollars of their money in your international investment firm.”

The letter is meant to notify Kushner about a forthcoming investigation into his role in the administration and conflicts of interest. What do you hope to investigate here, and can you talk about what you find most concerning about Kushner’s role in trying to negotiate an end to the war in Iran and being involved in other foreign policy........

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