Michael Shermer Reflects on the Trump Assassination Attempt

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Natural Sciences, Science

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, we explore the conspiracy theories surrounding the July 13 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump. Despite the evidence suggesting the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, acted alone, numerous theories have emerged. These include claims that the Secret Service staged the event, foreign governments were involved, and the shooter was part of Antifa or backed by Never-Trumper Republicans. We delve into why such theories gain traction, examining cognitive and emotional factors like event magnitude, proportionality bias, anomaly hunting, personal incredulity, hindsight bias, patternicity, agenticity, uncertainty bias, and teleological thinking. While some legitimate questions remain unanswered, we emphasize the importance of applying the Conspiracism Principle: never attribute to malice what can be explained by randomness or incompetence. Tune in to understand why rational people often believe in irrational conspiracies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. The Michael Sherber Show Hello everyone it's Michael Schirmer and it's time for another episode of the
0:28.2	Michael Schirmer show this is a special solo edition on the attempted assassination of President Trump on Saturday
0:38.1	afternoon, late afternoon. I was in a Uber when I was flying back from Las Vegas at Freedom Fest and I just opened my phone and I'm just
0:50.7	sitting there reading the stuff and the Uber driver turns out to be a Trump fan so he couldn't believe what I was telling him and he called his dad who apparently is also a Trump fan and they were
1:00.5	relieved that he was alive and going strong and they were really going
1:06.8	for him then and I have a feeling there's a lot of people like that we've
1:10.3	already seen Elon Musk and Bill Ackerman and others prominent
1:14.7	figures saying now they're gonna vote for Trump. It's been an incredible just
1:20.1	the last couple of days between what happened to Trump and Biden's cognitive
1:25.7	infirmities the election were held tomorrow I think it would be a massive landslide
1:31.1	for Trump along the lines of Reagan beating Mondale back in the
1:35.8	1980s one of the biggest landslides in American history. In any case I thought I
1:41.0	would just make a few comments about the conspiracy theories already surrounding
1:46.0	the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I will call him an assassin this man Thomas Matthew Crooks, because he did assassinate at least
1:56.7	one person. There's two other people wounded one of them critically, so we'll see if it's a mass
2:02.3	shooting or just the one.
2:04.1	But in any case, it was interesting.
2:07.2	I mentioned I was flying back from Freedom Fest.
2:09.7	At Freedom Fest, the day before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was speaking and I thought I could
2:17.5	meet him. I was hoping to meet him. I wanted to give him a copy of
2:20.1	conspiracy because I think he could use some of conspiracy
2:25.0	he goes way far farther than I do on some
	...

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