A Democratic candidate for the Maine House of Representatives wrote on social media that Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump “was staged.”
Brian Blake, who is running against Rep. Amanda Collamore, R-Pittsfield, in November for the House District 68 seat that covers several towns northeast of Waterville, embraced false conspiracy theories in response to several posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, that claimed Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was staged.
Federal officials said they are investigating it as an attempted assassination of Trump, who was speaking on an outdoor stage when shots rang out around 6:10 p.m. Saturday. A 20-year-old gunman with an AR-style rifle fired from a nearby roof, with Trump grazed in the ear before Secret Service agents took him off the stage.
The gunman killed Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old father in the audience who officials said dove on his wife and daughter to protect them, and two other attendees were injured. Secret Service agents shot and killed the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican who reportedly made in the past a small donation to a Democratic fundraising apparatus, and who packed explosives in the vehicle he drove to the campaign rally an hour from his home.
The FBI has not yet identified any motive, threatening writing or social media posts from Crooks, who had no past criminal cases against him. The FBI believes Crooks acted alone.
“This whole thing was staged,” Blake wrote in a reply on X to a comment from another account that asked, “Where is the shooter!?”
In response to a News Center Maine tweet that linked to a story on the shooting, Blake wrote: “Looks staged, bunker boy would have hit the floor.”
Blake also tweeted a reply to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, after the senator wrote Sunday “he was so distraught over the tragedy at President Trump’s rally yesterday.”
“Senator, this is called the ‘chickens coming home to roost,’” Blake tweeted.
Blake, a Troy Select Board member, is running for the district held by Rep. Amanda Collamore, R-Pittsfield, who represents the candidates’ hometowns as well as Burnham and Clinton. Blake said in a brief interview Monday morning that “it was a knee-jerk comment.”
Collamore, who is seeking a third term at the State House, is heavily favored to win the race with Blake. Trump won the district by more than 20 percentage points in 2020.
“How dare he, or anyone else, say this was staged,” Collamore, an education and outreach manager at the University of Maine, said. “A man … lost his life and others are still in the hospital fighting for theirs. Violence is never the answer and we should be coming together to stop anything like this from happening again, not allowing it to further divide us.”
Trump was released from a hospital later Saturday and said he still planned to speak at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.
“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand united, and show our true character as Americans, remaining strong and determined, and not allowing evil to win,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
President Joe Biden, who faces a rematch with Trump in November, said he had a “short but good” conversation with Trump after the shooting. The Democrat condemned the shooting in an Oval Office address Sunday night while touching on “the need to lower the temperature in our politics.”
Biden also ordered the Secret Service to review security surrounding Saturday’s shooting as well as the Republican National Convention.
“We can’t allow this violence to be normalized,” Biden said. “I believe politics ought to be an arena for peaceful debate.”
