thank you for doing some brainstorming on this, i likewise strongly considered the possibility of a staged assassination attempt.
hollywood 2.0 is quite good nowadays, yet even they suck and make mistakes/bloopers when asked to perform in real life.
another surprising observation is that people do not really care about the event, otherwise at my last night's dinner with the conservative boomers there would have been no discussions other than the supposed shooting.
i feel pretty bad for the public. they have been duped so many times, so hard, and for so long that to tell apart what is a lie and what is truth, let alone explain how, is now a gargantuan task. no one uses their brain anymore, it's problem-reaction-solutiom all the way.
focus on what u need to do in ur immediate life, get things done, prepare for the worst, hope for the best.