Hey,
I’m glad you’re here. In a world gone mad, what you and I have in common is the fact that we are level-headed. We’re skeptical of the media narratives we’re told to believe — but we’re not crazy. Most importantly, we value discernment.
I’m saying this because we’re in another period of mass hallucination and groupthink. We saw how scary this could get during the pandemic — billions of people just taking the narrative they were fed.
Now people are going crazy again, this time in the opposite direction: not believing anything they are told.
We’ve already covered the most recent assassination attempt thoroughly. We know a 31-year-old named Cole Allen rushed a security checkpoint outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a shotgun, a handgun, and a bag of knives. He shot a Secret Service agent in the chest. The vest saved the agent’s life. Ten minutes before the attack, Allen emailed his family a 1,000-word manifesto signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.”
But look what happened next — from elected politicians, the largest social media “influencers,” and everyday people:
By 2:51 a.m. Sunday — about six hours after the shots — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)posted on Threads asking whether the attempts on Trump’s life might be “maybe it’s fake … who knows.”
Keith Olbermann, posting to nearly a million followers on X, wrote: “I’m not saying it was STAGED… YOU’RE saying it was staged!”
An X account with roughly half a million followers (@ProudSocialist) summed it up in three words: “False flag confirmed.”
A theory involving time travel passed 1.2 million views by Monday morning.
An AI-generated video of Tucker Carlsonmade the rounds, with the fake Carlson saying “Was this a coincidence? Or another staged incident” while running a clip of Karoline Leavitt’s pre-dinner “shots fired” line — which was a reference to the speeches.
Russian state media amplified the staged narrative. A pro-Iran propaganda accountpiggybacked. On Bluesky, accounts spammed the word “STAGED” through the night. On the right, the mirror version went up: Trump orchestrated the whole thing to push his $400 million ballroom project through the courts.
And Cole Allen — the actual shooter — had spent years on social media amplifying this same kind of conspiracy. After Butler in 2024, he retweeted a post arguing that Trump was “quite capable of having staged a fake assassination attempt” on himself.
There are many reasons to explain this viral delusion. People are right to distrust the media. The legacy outlets earned it. And a generation of online influencers learned that conspiracy and outrage are the fastest path to clicks, followers, and the brand deals that come with them. Some of them get paid, directly or indirectly, to keep their audiences locked in permanent suspicion of everything.
We should be skeptical — but having nothing to believe is dizzying, psychologically unhealthy, and the grounds on which entire populations get brainwashed. During the Korean War, Chinese and Korean troops successfully brainwashed American prisoners of war to hate America and support communism. Their strategy, according to journalist Edward Hunter, was simple:
“No man has ever been brainwashed whose mind has not first been put into a fog.”
We need to be able to trust. And we need to be grounded in reality.
Our service at Upward News is simple. Every morning, a small team (Brandon and Ariel) gives you the news — honestly, quickly, without trying to scare you or spin you or overwhelm you. That’s it.
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That’s how we earn your trust — by being accessible, being honest, and being accountable for what we publish. And we have to earn it, because without it, we don’t get your support. And without your support, we don’t exist. We don’t have corporate backers or hedge fund money. We just have you.
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RJ Hamster 