ANALYSIS: Trump exaggerating the shooting to ‘create violence against his rivals’?
A pair of professors used FBI Director Christopher Wray’s Wednesday testimony before Congress to question whether Donald Trump actually was shot during July 13’s assassination attempt.
This speculation really took off on social media after Newsweek tweeted out its story titled “Donald Trump Might Not Have Been Shot After All” (later edited to “Donald Trump May Not Have Been Hit By Bullet, FBI Director Says”).
Western New England University’s Jennifer Taub, a law professor who hosts a YouTube show called “Morning Jen,” asked as her July 25 Question of the Day “Did Donald Trump fake, or take, a bullet?” (Video below.)
For Taub (who does note the overall seriousness of the assassination attempt several times), Wray’s comments about the Trump shooting were “absolutely the most charitable thing he could have done.”
She says what Wray really said is that “it wasn’t a bullet” that hit Trump, and claims there is “no way” a shot from the rifle in question would not have taken off Trump’s entire ear.
The professor also believes Trump “is fabricating” what actually happened, and that the press “has done nothing to follow up” on the issue. Further, Taub claims Trump wants to turn himself into a “martyr,” and is exaggerating the situation to “turn this around and create violence against his rivals.”
A bit later in the video, Taub claims the “most likely idea” is that a piece or pieces of a shattered teleprompter are responsible for the blood on Trump’s ear and face: “It makes a lot of sense.”
Roughly halfway through her program, Taub sermonizes that Americans should be able to work through disagreements, and that she and her friends and family do this all the time. However, she adds “we cannot continue united as a nation with someone like Donald Trump at the helm” because his only desire is to be an “authoritarian dictator.”
MORE: Prof posts ‘Let’s hope today’s events inspire others’ after Trump assassination attempt
Regarding Joe Biden’s Wednesday address to the nation, Taub says it was hard to make it all the way through with “dry eyes.”
Elsewhere, Harvard Kennedy School’s Juliette Kayyem tweeted Thursday that she “waited a while to say this but the burden is now on Trump to show he was shot.”
“I can condemn the assassination and still demand truth, especially since Trump is now politicizing taking a bullet,” Kayyem said. “Wray has now opened the door; this is not a conspiracy theory. Wray, known for exact phrasing and being careful, didn’t say this on accident. He is begging us to ask.”
According to her faculty page, Kayyem “has been described as CNN’s ‘go to’ for disasters” and previously worked in Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.
MORE: Trump assassination attempt ‘was staged,’ Carnegie Mellon professor says
IMAGE: Mary Trump Media/YouTube
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