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Trump Assassination Attempt Ignites Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories; Jews, Israel Blamed for Shooting
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump is assisted by the Secret Service after an assassination attempt on his life during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania, US, July 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump’s life has sparked a wave of conspiracy theories online blaming Israel or Jews for the shooting.
Trump survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles (50 km) north of Pittsburgh, on Saturday, days before he is due to accept the formal 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Trump has said he is in good health after being shot in the right ear — he narrowly avoiding a direct shot to the head by turning his head just as the bullet was approaching.
The FBI identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspect in what it called an attempted assassination. Authorities also identified a rally attendee who was shot and killed as Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pennsylvania. The state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, told reporters that he was killed when he dove on top of his family to protect them from the barrage of bullets.
Following the shooting, prominent antisemitic internet personalities quickly claimed that the Jews and Israel were involved.
Jon Minadeo, the founder and leader of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) — a a neo-Nazi and white supremacist group — hosted a live audio “Spaces” conversation on X/Twitter titled “”The Jews Try to Assassinate Trump!” in which he blamed the Jews for the assassination attempt, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Conspiracy theorists continued to push the narrative throughout the weekend that the Jews and Israel were responsible for the attempted assassination.
Stew Peters, an alt-right internet personality, responded to a post on X/Twitter questioning why police who were notified of a suspicious character on a roof adjacent to Trump failed to react. “The Israeli-based, American War Machine is responsible for the attempted coup on Saturday,” he wrote. “This was NOT a ‘lone wolf’ scenario as the Israeli-funded ‘media’ would LOVE for you to believe.”
Conspiracy theorists also claimed that the assassination attempt was a plot to remove Trump as the de facto Republican presidential nominee and instead replace him with someone more pro-Israel.
In another X/Twitter Spaces meet-up following the shooting, notable internet provocateurs including Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, and Mario Nawful, accused Israel of targeting Trump.
“The [Israelis] tried to discard Trump … it was an attempt to throw him out of there,” said Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier.
Nick Fuentes addresses supporters in Detroit: “Donald Trump is taking a hundred million dollars from Miriam Adelson … she only cares about the Jewish state of Israel.” Photo: Screenshot
The conspiracy, according to the Spaces conversation, is that the Israelis want Trump replaced with “someone like Nikki Haley,” who they view as a strong supporter of Israel.
Anti-Zionist activist Sulaiman Ahmed similar wrote on X/Twitter: Opinion: Israel shot Trump to install Nikki Haley.”
During his first term as president, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; cut aid to UNRWA, the controversial United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees; and helped facilitate the signing of the Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with several Arab countries. He also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria.
Other conspiracy theorists claimed that Trump’s shooter was Jewish or had a Jewish connection.
A widely circulated social media post from an account called Shadow of Ezra showed someone who looks similar to Crooks — who authorities identified as the shooter — wearing a kippah. In the now-deleted post, the account asked, “What do you notice about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump?” The post seemed to imply that Crooks’s alleged Jewish background motivated the shooting.
Authorities have not confirmed Crooks’s religion or motive. According to some social media users, the claim that Crooks was Jewish originated from the Southern Gospel Times, a Nepalese content mill. The Algemeiner was unable to confirm that information.
Some online conspiracy theorists also accused the counter-sniper response team that shot and killed Crooks of involvement in a Jewish conspiracy. Some online posts used grainy, zoomed photos to try to show that one of the snipers was wearing a red “Kabbalah Bracelet” in order to promote a broader Jewish conspiracy.
Since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ brutal terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, antisemitism – including antisemitic conspiracy theories online – have skyrocketed globally to record levels amid the ensuing war in Gaza. The ADL released a report in April showing antisemitic incidents in the US rose 140 percent last year, reaching a record high. Most of the outrages occurred after Hamas’ atrocities across southern Israel last October.
Days after the Oct. 7 onslaught, the ADL and the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats published a survey showed antisemitic Americans are more likely to to support violence to achieve their political goals as well as antidemocratic and conspiratorial beliefs compared to the general population. The data found a strong correlation between antisemitism, support for political violence, and antidemocratic conspiracy theories on both ends of the political spectrum.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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