Experts say improbable trajectory was purely coincidental.
Magic Bullet
© Kevinโ€™s Newsletter
The simultaneous assassinations of leading 2024 presidential contenders Donald J. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have stunned the nation. Perhaps inevitably, conspiracy theories have been circulating on social media almost as fast as they can be removed by trust-and-safety experts.

All scientists and fact-checkers agree that those conspiracy theories are baseless and unsubstantiated. According to ballistics experts, the bullet that traversed Trump's skull at Mar-a-Lago, turned 180 degrees, and traveled over 2500 miles to Malibu, California, shattering RFK Jr.'s kitchen window and penetrating his chest, has been recovered from a stretcher and subjected to painstaking analysis. That bullet, it turns out, was fired from one of the worst rifles ever manufactured by a mediocre marksman crouched in the window of the School Book Depository building in Dallas, Texas. The lone assassin โ€” a Palestinian anti-vaxxer and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist named Sirhan Oswald Sirhan โ€” hated Trump and Kennedy because they loved Israel.

Speaking from his home in San Francisco, political assassination expert Gerald Posner supported the ballistics experts and attacked conspiracy theorists as "paranoid lunatics." Posner explained: "Everyone knows that bullets can traverse human bodies, make sharp turns, and traverse other human bodies. The bullet that killed Trump and RFK Jr., as it turns out, wasn't even that special. Other bullets, like the one that struck JFK and Governor Connolly in Dallas sixty years ago, have made multiple sharp turns in order to pierce different people in numerous anatomical areas. This one only had to turn twice. It also only had to go through human flesh and bone twice. As magic bullets go, it was pretty ordinary."

Asked about the seemingly improbable distance the bullet had to travel, Posner explained that if Oswald could hit JFK from 265 feet, and Sirhan could put a powder burn around the bullet hole in the back of RFK Sr.'s head from ten feet in front, it shouldn't be surprising that assassins occasionally manage to shoot their targets from distances and positions that seem surprising to the untrained observer. "The important thing is that the experts agree that it happened. And if it did happen, that means it could happen," Posner said. "Case closed."

The assassination expert added that people who find it odd that the two leading anti-Establishment candidates were struck down at the same time, by the same bullet, are victims of a well-known psychological phenomenon involving the need for order and security: "Crazy, random stuff happens all the time. But some people can't handle randomness. Their powerful desire for meaning and order leads them to imagine conspiracies where, in reality, there are only coincidences."

Conspiracy theorists, whose internet and phone service has been coincidentally cut off, could not be reached for comment.