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Following the reported new assassination attempt on Donald Trump at his Florida golf club on 15 September 2024, two familiar and recycled narratives have quickly resurfaced: “Democrats are responsible” and “Ukraine played a role.”
As the FBI is investigating an attempted assassination and conspiracy theories are flooding social and traditional media, revisiting the previous disinformation patterns is crucial to understanding how these narratives exploit political instability and public opinion.
In light of U.S. officials’ announcement of new sanctions against Russian state media and the scrutiny of RT‘s covert information warfare operations worldwide, these patterns merit even closer examination.
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Assassinations and Hybrid War
On 15 September 2024, while former US President Donald Trump was golfing at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel near a fence and fired at a suspect in the bushes. The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, fled the scene and was later apprehended. Law enforcement recovered an AK-47-style rifle, backpacks with ceramic tiles, and a GoPro at the scene, indicating a high level of pre-planning.
Routh, 58, expressed support for Ukraine and visited the country in 2022. He also had contacted Ukraine’s foreign legion several times, but was never part of the unit, according to a representative who described Routh’s messages as “delusional.”
In 2023, Routh used social media to encourage foreigners, including Afghan conscripts, to join the war, falsely presenting himself as a liaison for the Ukrainian government. Immediately, a Zealous Ukraine supporter tried to kill Trump with an AK-47 article appeared in Moskovsky Komsomolets, owned by Pavel Gusev, sanctioned by the UK and EU in 2022 for supporting Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.
As the new investigation unfolds, disinformation surrounding the assassination attempt continues to spread online, repeating the familiar pattern. Just two months before the second alleged assassination attempt, former President Donald Trump sustained a light injury during a campaign speech in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired three shots before being killed by security.
One rally participant was killed, and two were injured. As authorities were investigating Crooks’ background and motive, false claims and conspiracy theories flooded mass and social media. Over 600,000 posts alleged that the Biden administration and Democrats incited the shooting. Social media bots spread misinformation on social media platforms, including X, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
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The Kremlin, known for swiftly adopting and weaponizing conspiracy theories, is once again using these narratives to further its own long-term goal of sowing discord and weakening U.S. democracy, while also aiming for Trump’s victory in the short term. Russian officials and state media openly back Trump, who has pledged to end military support to Ukraine, broker a peace deal on the Kremlin’s terms, and lift economic sanctions on Russia.
History of Global Information Space Attacks
Assassination myths are not new. In 1964, a KGB front group assisted former Newsweek reporter Joachim Joesten in publishing a conspiracy theory about John F. Kennedy’s assassination, according to revelations of the leaked KGB files, Mitrokhin Archives.
In 1964, Joesten, an American journalist of German descent, published a book, suggesting a conspiracy behind JFK’s assassination. He argued that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a discarded CIA and FBI agent chosen to shield the real perpetrators.
The book established two recurring themes for the next thirty years: a plot by the right wing and the involvement of the CIA. The publisher, Carl Aldo Marzani, an American Communist and Soviet agent, was funded by the KGB, according to the Mitrokhin Archives.
Notably, in this second alleged attempt on Trump’s life, narratives echoing “a plot by the CIA” immediately appeared on social media.
As the USSR covertly influenced Western political dialogue for decades, the KGB developed methods to plant false stories in newspapers. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin has continued funding a network of propagandists, state media, social media, paid trolls, and bots to spread digital disinformation. While stories can be fabricated, more often the propaganda machine is repackaging real events and public reactions to serve Moscow’s goals.
Narratives and Methods
Exploiting the first failed assassination attempt on Trump and its coverage, Russian officials and Kremlin-controlled media pushed two main narratives: “Democrats are responsible for Trump’s assassination” and “Ukraine’s trace in the assassination.”
Several tactics used may cause physiological changes in the brain, altering individual and collective behaviour.
Repetition is a fundamental and effective propaganda method. Disinformation spreads through seemingly unrelated sources and echo chambers, creating credibility and an effect of omnipresence. People become accustomed to messages and start accepting them based on faith rather than critical thinking.
The “rapid fire” (“firehose of falsehoods”) technique overwhelms the audience with a flow of triggering words and images, causing stress. Quick plot switching and inconsistency aim to induce panic, fear, and confusion, impairing critical thinking and rational action. At the height of the perceived crisis, propagandists offer their solutions, readily accepted by the targets.
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Kremlin Officials and Rotten Herrings
Back in July, after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, employed the “persuasion by suggestion” tactic. While dismissing the unsupported claim that US President Joe Biden and the Democrats were behind the assassination attempt on Trump, he implied the opposite, blaming “the atmosphere around candidate Trump” as something “created” by Biden’s administration.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the US of financing “Ukrainian attempts” to assassinate Putin, citing Ukrainian intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, who admitted to a “failed assassination.” She said that Washington supported Ukraine’s “malicious activities” through military aid and “created a terrorist structure in Ukraine.”
Additionally, Zakharova claimed that US Democrats openly advocate for “the need to kill” Trump, misquoting Congressman Dan Goldman. Speaking live, Goldman said, “He [Trump] is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be eliminated,” using the word “eliminate” in the context of removing Trump from consideration or defeating him in competition.
Russian State Duma deputy Sultan Khamzaev claimed that “a Ukrainian trace can easily be found in the assassination attempt.”
The method used to discredit the US current president and Democratic party used by the Kremlin officials is known as Rotten Herring. It links a person or group to a false, scandalous accusation spread in the public information space. Repeated exposure forms a negative emotional response, and even after the statement is debunked, the negative association lingers, like a bad odour.
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Russian State Mass Media
Kremlin-controlled mass media and Russian-language news agencies joined in, amplifying the statements of Moscow government officials across Russia and the former USSR. Major state news agency TASS and RIA Novosti published a letter to Trump from Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch-politician handed over to Russia in a prisoner swap and a personal friend of Putin. Medvedchuk claimed that “a Ukrainian link may appear in the assassination attempt case.”
RIA also published an article God Saved Trump—But Not America, blaming Democrats for the assassination attempt, “the ‘kill Trump’ scenario becomes the preferred, if not virtually uncontested, scenario for the ‘Washington swamp.’”
On the Russian state-controlled TV Channel One website, an article appeared, stating that “such bloodthirstiness is not at all surprising, given that the liberal media continues to call Trump’s re-election a direct threat to the United States. And it is obvious that this propaganda had a serious impact on many. It is possible that the shooter himself was one of them.” Channel One anchor Vladimir Solovyov’s personal channel, Solovyov Live, directly linked Ukraine to the attack.
Argumenty and Fakty, a newspaper owned by the Government of Moscow, quoted reserve Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Ivannikov who said that “the political assassination of Trump would be beneficial not only to the Democrats, who are losing the elections, but also to their subsidiary project in the form of Ukraine.”
Echo Chambers and Amplification
To plant these narratives in the international information space, Kremlin-funded media used English-language mass media.
The English-language Russian state-owned news outlet Sputnik quoted the account of Ukraine’s 79th Air Assault Brigade, which “appeared to jokingly claim responsibility for the shooting.” Sputnik host Garland Nixon commented, “Was it crazy for me to think that it could have been Ukraine immediately without any information?”
Next, social media accounts, such as a network of over 270 accounts belonging to Russian embassies and consulates worldwide on X (formerly Twitter), amplified the Kremlin’s narratives in many languages. In hybrid war, physical reality is often changed by digital disinformation campaigns. Awareness and literacy about propaganda tactics such as repetition, rapid-fire, rotten herrings and echo chambers, used to manipulate individual and collective behaviour, are essential in defending global security.
Understanding these methods can help build resilience against psychological manipulation and protect democratic processes from foreign interference. Understanding how Russian propaganda infiltrates global media is essential to countering its influence.