I will continue to voice my opposition to this take.

People in the crowd got hit and one died, there's a picture of Crooks' head split open by sniper fire. There is no proof it was a setup beyond how Trump and his campaign leveraged it, which isn't really proof.

Clinging onto this theory feels like the same kind of smarmy double speak Holocaust deniers use. "It didn't happen, but I wish it did."

They gave everyone hope that the shooter just missed, but he was never going to hit, since he shot nothing. That ear scrape was so fake leaving zero scar or scab after just a week.

That would be really dumb. What happens if they hit Trump in the head? There are so many factors like wind. With the large anti Trump movement I'm not really shocked someone decided to take things into their own hands. He definitely leaned into the whole victim thing but to say that the entire thing was staged is a bit extreme.