Did Ilhan Omar Stage Her Attack? Of Course Not. But Trump Thinks So.
A real false flag story for your favorite False Flag newsletter.
Ilhan Omar Nuttiness
AT A TOWN HALL GATHERING in Minneapolis on Tuesday night, a troubled man sprayed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) with a mysterious substance from a syringe. It was a scary moment, one that underscored how widespread political threats and acts of violence have become. But on right-wing media, it quickly became something else: a false-flag assault designed to let Omar aura farm.
MAGA media figures spent much of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning insisting that Omar had somehow made the suspect, Anthony James Kazmierczak, spray her with the mysterious substance, which they concluded was likely apple cider vinegar. Much of the suspicion focused on the fact that Omar appeared ready to fight her assailant, before her security guard pulled the man away.
Popular MAGA X user “Zeek Arkham” (484,000 followers) wryly declared the incident “totally, totally wasn’t staged.”
Breaking down the incident as if it were the Zapruder film, Arkham wrote: “She then bravely runs towards him, without reflexive safety reaction as most people would do, to tune him up as her security gets there, without concern for her own safety. Then, instead of taking her to a hospital to get checked out regarding this unknown liquid, she continues her speech as if nothing happened.”
Lest you think this is just the musings of a hyper-online rando, the president of the United States—himself hyper-online but hardly a rando—picked it up too.
“She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” Donald Trump told ABC News.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) had the same thought, declaring the attack “staged” in an appearance on Benny Johnson’s show.
In a world where the January 6th riot happened—and elected officials are regularly the targets of violence—the idea that a kook would attack Omar doesn’t seem far-fetched. That’s especially true considering how much Trump and fellow conservatives have verbally attacked the congresswoman in recent weeks, accusing her of corruption and criticizing her home city of Minneapolis.
But to acknowledge that Omar was, indeed, threatened would require the right to grapple with the possibility that Trump’s rhetoric may have inspired the threat. And so, they’ve chosen to reflexively argue that Omar concocted the entire thing.
Conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler claimed Omar made some kind of “head nod” toward the suspect before the incident, even demanding an investigation of the congresswoman. Many others, perhaps revealing more than they’d like about their own fortitude, questioned Omar’s decision to charge at the man even after he sprayed her (the congresswoman told MSNow on Wednesday that she thought he had spit on her and that she “instinctively tried to, like, punch him.”) Some online accounts noted that the alleged assailant appears to have goth kids—a non sequitur to people outside of the right-wing media bubble but taken as proof within it that Kazmierczak must be a member of Antifa.
Hyperpartisans on both sides of the aisle are prone to act in ways that are defensively conspiratorial in these types of moments. In the immediate aftermath of the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt on Trump, there was a flood of social media posts claiming that it was fake.
But the new Omar conspiracy theory is being pushed by the actual president and a sitting U.S. senator. And that’s not the only reason it stands out. It also reflects, like so many other things in the Trump era, the right’s refusal to grapple honestly with news events whose implications they don’t like. School shootings are false-flag attacks meant to promote gun control. Wildfires have to be started by lasers fired from outer space to fan fears about global warming.
With Trump promoting the same ideas, it’s quite unlikely that things will get sane in right-wing media anytime soon.
Ben Shapiro spent how much for this?
FOR THE FIRST HALF of the 2020s, Daily Wire CEO and self-proclaimed “god king” Jeremy Boreing was trying to build a conservative Hollywood in Nashville, with himself as the studio magnate running it. Boreing’s pet project was a Game of Thrones–style take on the King Arthur legend, called The Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of Merlin. And, for a while, the right’s long-running dream of having more influence in entertainment seemed like it just might happen.
But the project hit multiple delays and Boreing abruptly and mysteriously stepped down last March and went into a sort of exile. Layoffs hit Boreing’s entertainment division and the dream of cool Hollywood conservatism lay in ruins.
But now, Pendragon is finally here. Though Boreing is gone, the first two episodes of his dream project are available. I had to know: Was it worth all the turmoil?
I watched the first episode. And, I concede, I was excited to roast it. But I have to admit: This show’s not bad! Sure, there are moments where the devil appears as a bull and growls at some protagonists in a silly way. And I don’t see the show connecting with audiences like Game of Thrones did.
Still, I found myself sucked into the adventures of young Merlin. Production-wise, Pendragon has the look of a quickly forgotten second-tier streaming show—which is . . . not bad, certainly when you consider where it’s coming from.
Unfortunately for Boreing, he was and is no Ted Sarandos, the Netflix honcho hoovering up the competition. Instead, his dreams of bringing Pendragon to life appear to have deeply complicated his own career and the status of the Daily Wire itself. Investors in the conservative news site long ago began to wonder why they were paying so much to make a fantasy TV show when that money could have gone to, say, another dozen podcasts.
Boreing is vague about how much Pendragon cost, but the answer appears to be a whole lot. Several parts of just the first episode, including a castle siege and complicated battle scenes in racy outfits, were clearly expensive. They even invented a new language for the Atlanteans! (Merlin is half Atlantean.)
In an interview with Deadline, Boreing said the show cost “eight figures” total, with “seven figures” spent on each of the seven episodes.
By comparison, Am I Racist?, the 2024 documentary put together by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh in an attempt to skewer social-justice warriors, reportedly cost just $3 million and went on to become the highest-grossing documentary of 2024. If we assume conservatively that each episode of Pendragon cost $2 million, that’s $14 million total.
Candace Owens, a former Daily Wire host and longtime Boreing nemesis, claimed on her show Wednesday that the price was actually much higher, saying Pendragon was rumored to cost around $67 million.1
In the Deadline interview, Boreing also touched on his apparently soured relationship with Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, declining to describe it as “amicable” and saying he came to an arranged “‘separation” with the site.
Either way, Boreing seems more focused on the world of movies now. He told Deadline he wants to launch “a conservative alternative to A24.” He said Hollywood treats conservative viewers “as though they’re anathema. It takes them for granted.”
Will he unite with Shapiro so the podcaster can star in a conservative take on The Smashing Machine? Perhaps. After all, the sky’s the limit for Boreing’s conservative-film ambitions—as long as he is willing to cut the check this time.
We can’t trust Candace. Still. . .
As good as a signed confession that trump’s assassination attempt in PA was staged.
He accuses her because that's what he does. He staged and paid? for two attempts. He paid protesters. Every accusation is an admission.