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Fox News host Maria Bartiromo has peddled a wild, baseless conspiracy theory that connects the arrest of Sean “Diddy” Combs with the latest attempt on Donald Trump’s life.
The 54-year-old hip-hop mogul was arrested on Monday and is now being held in a notorious Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
His arrest came just over 24 hours after suspected gunman Ryan Wesley Routh is accused of aiming an assault rifle through the fence of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf resort while the former president enjoyed a round on the course.
Despite there being zero evidence of any possible connection between the two events in any way – not to mention the fact that the Diddy probe had been ongoing for months – Mornings with Maria host and staunch Trump supporter Bartiromo couldn’t resist pushing a wild theory about the timing of the events.
Speaking on her show on Wednesday, Bartiromo claimed that Diddy was only arrested to distract from the alleged assassination attempt and take it “off the front page.”
“The timing of the P Diddy arrest? Please,” said the known conspiracy theorist, who last year claimed China unleashed Covid to remove Trump from the White House.
“They must have had the P Diddy arrest on the shelf waiting to take it off the shelf for when they needed it.”
She added: “And yesterday, boy, oh boy did they need it because the questions were spiking everywhere as far as how it is possible that another assassination attempt happened, that another would-be assassin was within a couple of hundred yards of President Trump.
“As we’re all asking these questions, boom, they take P Diddy in and now we’re all talking about that, take it off the front page. This [is the] strategy over and over again. I saw right through it as soon as it happened.”
According to the indictment unsealed on Tuesday morning, Diddy is accused of abusing and coercing women “to fulfill his sexual desires.” Diddy has pleaded not guilty to all three charges against him.
His bid to be released on house arrest has been denied with the rapper instead ordered to be held in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center until he stands trial.
The charges come after his homes in LA and Miami were raided earlier this year and after multiple accusers have filed civil suits against him.
Despite Bartiromo’s scathing story of some sort of orchestrated plot, Trump has praised the Secret Service for its handling of Sunday’s incident.
“Actually the Secret Service did a great job. They saw a barrel of a gun – big gun. And it came out through the bushes, and how many people would see that?” Trump told Fox News host Greg Gutfeld on Wednesday.
An agent spotted the barrel of the gun and opened fire, prompting the suspect to flee, authorities said. The suspect was arrested along the I-95.
The incident – marking the second assassination attempt on Trump in two months – has raised fresh questions for the Secret Service.
On Monday, the Secret Service’s Acting Director Ronald Rowe – who has taken over after Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned following a backlash over the agency’s response during the first assassination attempt – said that the agency needs a “paradigm shift” in how it protects its presidents.
