Trump Faked His Assassination Attempt, His Supporters Say

A pro-ICE and pro-Trump journalist has been deported, drug companies who promised Trump they would lower drug prices have instead raised them, and a new Tennessee law threatens free speech

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump’s own base is now convinced he staged his assassination attempt. A Spanish-language journalist who spent 22 years praising ICE has been deported by ICE. The drug companies that shook hands with Trump on pricing deals have raised prices on hundreds of medications. And Tennessee just passed a law named after Charlie Kirk that protects the right to invite controversial speakers while expelling students who walk out on them.

Before we get into it: No billionaire bought us. No advertiser needs us to soften anything. No parent company is doing quiet deals with the people we cover. We don’t have a broadcast license the FCC can yank or a board of directors with opinions about what you should and shouldn’t know. What we have is readers, and we need them to pay for this. If you’ve been reading for free, we’re asking you to become a paid subscriber today. Independent journalism doesn’t survive on goodwill.

Let’s dive in.

MAGA Fanatics Are Convinced Trump Faked His Assassination Attempt

Trump has spent years telling his supporters to question everything — and they have arrived, predictably, at him.

As criticism of Trump from his own supporters reaches new levels amid the Iran war, a new conspiracy theory has taken hold. Some of the president’s biggest backers are now claiming that Trump staged the 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Conservative podcaster Tim Dillon said on his show last weekend that he thinks the shooting may have been staged, then suggested Trump should come out and admit it. Tucker Carlson has been floating the possibility for months that the FBI lied about the shooter’s online activity. Emerald Robinson went further, posting on X that the FBI simply “did it.”

A prominent QAnon promoter asked his 100,000 Telegram followers how they felt about the official account of the incident, and the overwhelming majority of responses from Trump supporters said they believed it had been staged and the truth would never come out.

The theories have also accelerated alongside MAGA influencers floating the possibility that Trump is the Antichrist following his Iran war conduct and social media posts comparing himself to Jesus Christ.

So: the president is either a god, a fraud, or a false prophet staging his own death for votes. The base is working through which one. They’ll circle back.

ICE Deported the Journalist Who Spent Two Decades Praising ICE

Mario Guevara is a Spanish-language reporter who defended immigration crackdowns and backed Donald Trump. He spent 22 years in the U.S. building a media career on sympathetic coverage of immigration raids and strong support for Trump’s border measures.

He was just removed from the country after spending 110 days in ICE custody.

Guevara was arrested in June 2025 by DeKalb County while livestreaming a “No Kings” rally. Prosecutors dismissed the charges after confirming he was complying with law enforcement. Gwinnett County then filed reckless driving charges, which the county’s solicitor declined to prosecute. ICE took custody of him anyway.

While in custody, Guevara was placed in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day. He lost weight. He sank into a depression. He said the lights in his cell were on 24 hours a day and that he could never tell what time it was.

His 21-year-old son Oscar, a U.S. citizen, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2021 and suffered a stroke during surgery. Guevara was in a cell with the lights on when it happened.

Before his arrest, Guevara had a standing relationship with ICE. They gave him ride-alongs and allowed him access to report from inside jails and even from a deportation flight. When he was finally deported, he was given his bulletproof vest, his watch, and his belt, and put on a plane.

He was not allowed to say goodbye to his family. He is now in El Salvador planning his next story.

Drug Companies Signed Trump’s Pricing Deals Then Raised Prices Anyway

Trump spent months announcing he’d finally beaten Big Pharma by getting companies to lower drug prices. Big Pharma spent those months raising prices on hundreds of drugs. Someone’s math is off.

A report released Thursday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, ahead of a Senate hearing on drug prices, found that the companies that signed Trump’s deals to lower prices have instead raised the cost of hundreds of medications. New ones launch at an average price of $353,000 a year.

Johnson & Johnson’s cancer drug Inlexzo launched at about $1 million per course of treatment. AbbVie’s cancer drug Emrelis came in at around $719,000. AstraZeneca’s Datroway: $419,000. Novartis launched a gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy at $2.59 million. A second Novartis gene therapy increased in price by nearly $200,000, to over $2.5 million.

As part of the deals, drugmakers agreed to offer some products at a discounted cash price on TrumpRx.gov. Many of those discounts are identical to what’s already available on GoodRx.

American patients continue to pay by far the highest drug prices in the world. Sanders said that the situation is worse than it was before Trump took office. The drug companies issued statements. The prices stayed the same.

Tennessee Named a Law After Charlie Kirk That Punishes Students for Protesting

Tennessee has passed a bill called the Charlie Kirk Act that protects free speech on college campuses by expelling students who use it.

Under the bill, universities cannot disinvite speakers based on viewpoints or because of threatened opposition. Students who disrupt a guest speaker by protesting or staging a walkout could be suspended or expelled.

A Democrat in the chamber noted the irony that Tennessee had already disciplined professors who failed to sufficiently mourn Kirk’s death, and that calling this free speech was a creative use of the word.

A second bill honoring Kirk, the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act, allows schools to teach students about the so-called positive impacts of religion on American history.

Tennessee has now passed two laws in Charlie Kirk’s name: one that forces universities to host any speaker regardless of viewpoint, and one that expels students who protest them. This is being called a free speech bill.

To be fair, it’s a fitting tribute for the man who spent his career compiling lists of professors he wanted fired.

Free speech, it turns out, is doing fine for the people Republicans agree with. For the rest of us, the outlets that might have covered these stories are getting quieter. Networks are killing segments. Newspapers have new owners who golf with the people we write about. The ones that are still loud are loud in the right direction.

We don’t have any of that. No advertiser needs us to find the charitable interpretation. No board of directors has opinions about tone. No billionaire bought us and then discovered he didn’t like the coverage.

What we have is readers, and we’re asking you to pay for this. Not because it would be nice, but because it’s the only way it exists. If you’ve been reading for free, subscribe today.

That’s all. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tomorrow.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

85-year-old widow detained by ICE returns home, France’s foreign minister says. An 85-year-old French widow of an American military veteran was thrown into ICE detention this month after her stepson, a U.S. federal employee, allegedly called immigration authorities on her amid a dispute over her late husband’s estate. France’s foreign minister had to get involved to secure her release, which is one way to settle a family inheritance dispute.

Trump DOJ loses again, now 0 for 5 on voter roll cases, as court rejects Rhode Island lawsuit. A federal judge rejected the DOJ’s attempt to seize Rhode Island’s voter rolls Friday. The Trump appointee ruled that the administration was misusing a civil rights law designed to combat Jim Crow to instead purge voter rolls. The DOJ is now zero for five in these cases, with 25 more to go, which is the legal equivalent of a bird flying into the same glass door over and over.

Justice For Grandmother Arrested Over ‘No Dick Tator’ Penis Costume At Trump Protest. A 62-year-old Alabama grandmother was acquitted this week on all charges after being tackled, handcuffed, and prosecuted for wearing a seven-foot inflatable penis costume to an anti-Trump protest while holding a sign reading “No Dick Tator.” The officer who arrested her wanted to know how he would explain the costume to his children, which a judge has now answered.

New Orleans aquarium rescues 35 of the world’s most endangered sea turtles. The Audubon Aquarium Rescue in New Orleans rehabilitated 35 of the world’s most endangered sea turtles this winter after they were found cold-stunned and stranded along the New England coast. They released 29 of them back into the Gulf in March, with eight more still recovering. The aquarium named them all after rocks, which means somewhere in the ocean right now there is a sea turtle named Quartz who has no idea what a week the rest of us are having.