Podcaster Sam Harris spreads hoax that President-elect Trump wasn’t actually shot

“I’m surprised that a rifle round making any degree on contact with an ear wouldn’t do more damage. I think a shattered piece of shrapnel from a teleprompter is far more likely to do that to his ear than a rifle round,” Harris says, before Maher interjects by saying that this theory is “silly.”

“If it just hit it by the slightest possible degree, it makes much more sense," Maher replied.

“There’s no question that rifle rounds went flying. Someone was killed," Harris replied, referring to firefighter Corey Comperatore. "I’m not debating that at all. Just, if in fact, a teleprompter was hit by a rifle round and we know there was shattered glass, that makes more sense to me.”

“Oh, that he didn’t get hit at all. It was the teleprompter… But that doesn’t change the basic narrative,” replied Maher, who then agrees that the shooter could have “missed him completely.”

Harris goes on to say that this does not change the fact that Trump survived an assassination attempt.

A photo posted by X user Brick_Suit, who attended the Butler rally that day, shows that no teleprompter was hit.

The same conspiracy theory was repeated by MSNBC host Joy Reid.

Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec tweeted in response to Harris’ claims, posting to X: “The reason Sam Harris has to spread hoaxes about the Trump assassination attempt is that it was hate and lies like his own that caused the attempt in the first place. Deep down he knows this and thus has a psychological need to deny the attack took place, even when a man died.”

Harris’s resistance to President-elect Donald Trump goes back years. In 2022 while speaking to Triggernometry, Harris said that the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election was in fact a left wing “conspiracy” to help Joe Biden win the election, and that that corruption from the Biden family was infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in."

"We could just go down that rabbit hole endlessly and understand that he's getting kickbacks from Hunter Biden's deals in Ukraine or wherever else right? Or China. It is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in," said Harris.

"It's like a firefly to the sun. Right? I mean, like there's just, it doesn't even — it doesn't even stack up against Trump University. Right? Trump University as a story is worse than anything that could be in Hunter Biden's laptop, in my view, right," he continued.

Earlier in the conversation, Harris had noted that "Hunter literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared."

Towards the end of 2022, Harris released a 2.5 hour-long podcast explaining why he would leave Twitter, after the website was purchased by billionaire mogul Elon Musk: "I've heard that many people are interpreting my leaving Twitter as an act of protest over what Elon is doing to the platform. In particular, his reinstating of Trump. It really wasn't that,” Harris said.

“… Elon can do whatever he wants with it," Harris said. However, its ubiquity in society and politics has led to governments attempting to control what can and cannot be said on the social media platform, and even to use the platform to help fulfill political desires.”