New developments in the most recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump are drawing comparisons to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.
The claims began swirling this week after the son of Ryan Routh, the man who was arrested near Trump's Florida golf course for allegedly attempting to assassinate Trump, was also arrested, charged with possession of child sex abuse material.
Law enforcement in North Carolina say they discovered "hundreds" of files containing illegal content at the home of Oran Routh while conducting a search “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation.” It remains unclear if the search was related to the arrest of Oran's father.
Yet in response, some Trump supporters are claiming that Oran was framed as part of a grand conspiracy against the former president.
In comments on the pro-Trump message board Patriots.win, users noted that the brother of Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 people during a mass shooting in Las Vegas, was similarly arrested for child abuse material.
Paddock's brother, Bruce, had reportedly been on the radar of law enforcement since 2014 after authorities discovered 600 explicit images of minors at a property where he stayed at.
After the shooting, police discovered Bruce's location and took him into custody. Despite Bruce catching the attention of police well before the shooting, conspiracy theorists think the similarities between Vegas and Florida are more than coincidence.
The comparisons push the idea that because Oran spoke out in defense of his father, saying he "wouldn't do anything batsh*t crazy," the government needed to silence him, much like the feds did with the Vegas shooter's brother.
But the theory is missing a key fact. Bruce Paddock didn't speak out to defend his brother. Another brother, Eric, did.
"Just like the last Vegas shooters brother," one user on the message board wrote. "Somehow the feds never catch anybody on their watch list. But after the fact they will find 20 tb of illegal porn like that."
Others referred to both Bruce and Oran as government "plants" before arguing that the government could never be trusted, even if it was building a case against a would-be Trump assassin.
"Don’t buy when the feds claim some one has child porn. It’s the easiest thing to fake and they won’t show you the evidence," another said. "There are creeps in the world but the feds have no interest in stoping them."
The user went on to incorrectly claim that Bruce was arrested just one day after the shooting.
"Remember when the Vegas shooters brother said it didn’t make sense that his brother would do that?" the user added, referring to comments made by Eric. "The next day the Feds found CP on his computer and he surely shut the fuck up. NEVER TRUST THE FEDS."
Unsurprisingly, the claim was also prevalent among conspiracy theorists on X.
"I know it's easy to knee-jerk react and say that it's just leftists being pedos again, but Ryan Routh's whole situation is extremely suspicious and the feds use CP to control people and prevent them from running their mouths," a user named Gigachad Brick said. "Happened with the Vegas shooter's brother too."
Whether the conspiracy theory will spread further remains to be seen. So far, the imagined connection has not been highlighted by any prominent right-wing users.
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