MILWAUKEE—An influential Democrat who ran against President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary condemned his fellow compatriots on the Left for indulging in conspiracy theories that the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was “staged,” and he praised Trump’s bravery in the shooting’s aftermath.
“I’ve seen so many people, whether it’s the mainstream media or on the Left, saying crazy things like it was staged,” Cenk Uygur, founder of “The Young Turks” talk show, told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday interview at the Republican National Convention. “You’re really going to stage shooting you in the ear, and if they miss by a centimeter, they’re dead? Are you insane? Who would stage that? That’s just nuts.”
Uygur also faulted some on the Left for saying, “He has to cool down the rhetoric.”
“Brother, he just got shot,” he said. “When you get shot, you’re allowed to say anything you want. I would have said worse.”
“I think they’re just in la-la land,” Uygur added.
He spoke three days after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire at a Trump rally, wounding the former president and fatally shooting Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former local fire chief who reportedly dove on family members to protect them.
After sustaining the wound, Trump stood up, raised his fist in the air, and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” before Secret Service escorted him offstage.
Uygur praised Trump’s bravery in that moment.
“I think that Trump acted brave, and that was an amazing moment there—not just in this campaign but, let’s be honest, in American history,” the Democrat said.
“When Trump raises his fist and says, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’—that is a brave moment I did not expect from Trump, and then when the crowd started chanting ‘USA! USA!’ I got proud,” Uygur said. “I got proud of this country and I got proud of that moment—that he survived it, he was brave, and that was his audience saying ‘We love you, brother, and thank you for still fighting for us.’”
“This brother’s been shot, and here he is standing back up and saying to his crowd, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, and we fight on,’” Uygur noted. “I think that was his best moment in his life. And so, if you can’t acknowledge that, you just don’t live in the reality-based world.”
Uygur remarked that he is not considering supporting Trump or the Make America Great Again movement.
“I’m not changing,” he said. “People think, ‘Are you going toward MAGA or are you going toward Trump?’ I’m just acknowledging reality. That moment for Trump during the assassination attempt was super brave. Anyone who says otherwise is just crazy.”
“The Young Turks” founder said he condemned violent rhetoric, getting in a jab at Republicans but acknowledging that it affects both sides.
“I think the violent rhetoric is really damaging—and honestly, I think the Republicans have done it way more, infinitely more. But this affected President Trump, and it was a disaster,” he said. “Any form of violence is intellectual surrender that’s saying, ‘I cannot beat you with my ideas, so I give up, I’ll just do violence instead.’ And I loathe it. I think it’s the worst thing that can happen in this country.”
Uygur told The Daily Signal that he rejects Trump, whom he accuses of “fake populism.” Yet he noted that inviting Sean O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to speak at the Republican National Convention “is definitely bold and definitely smart.”
“If you actually deliver on protecting average American workers, progressives are open-minded,” he insisted. “Maybe loyalist Democrats who are corporatists and just want to serve their donors, they’re not open-minded. Both corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats will always serve their donors, but progressives are open-minded.”
He dismissed Democratic leadership as “a bunch of chuckleheads.”
