CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane revealed on a podcast that he had been diagnosed with PTSD, not even 48 hours after the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Not because of the shooting itself, but because of the reaction of the crowd.
He told Chuck Todd that "They were coming for us. If [Trump] didn't jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us!"
CBS's Scott MacFarlane claims that after Trump was shot "I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but because, you could, you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people. They were coming for us. If he didn't… pic.twitter.com/MfrQxN9mvh
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) July 17, 2025
Later in his account, he added that this was a belief shared by many of the reporters present at the rally. "Many of us on press row, as we talked about this on our text chains for weeks after, were quite confident we'd be dead if he didn't get back up," he said.
MacFarlane claimed that right after the shots were fired, before anyone even knew if the President was alive, people turned to the press and said it was their fault. That they’d be the reason this happened
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He also jumped at the chance to connect the supposed reaction towards the press to January 6th.
I can't eliminate from my mind's eye the look in their faces. That's what America is right now. It's not rational. It's an irrational thought to think the media shot somebody from the top of a building, but the lack of rationality is what connects January 6 to this.
The President was nearly assassinated, and a CBS reporter has turned it into a story about how he and the press were the real victims. Not because of the bullet, but because the crowd could have blamed the Presidential candidate's death on the media.
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