Arizona GOP Legislator Wendy Rogers Suggests Buffalo Shooter Was a Fed in Deranged Conspiracy Theory

Screenshot via Wendy Rogers on Facebook.

Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers (R) is no stranger to offensive, unhinged comments but an utterly bonkers Telegram post she made on Saturday about the shooting at a Buffalo grocery store truly stands out in the parade of inanities and insanities she’s spouted over the years.

Saturday afternoon, 18-year-old Payton Gendron allegedly opened fire in a grocery store, killing 10 and wounding 3 others. Local news reported that the gunman live-streamed the attack on the Twitch gaming platform. Eleven of the 13 victims who were shot were Black, and the gunman had posted a long manifesto containing racist and anti-Semitic views. Gendron eventually surrendered to police and was taken into custody.

NBC News reported on Sunday that Gendron was investigated by New York State Police last June for making a violent threat, and was taken to an area hospital for a mental health evaluation before being released.

It’s a terrible but sadly all-too-familiar tale of an angry young man whose hate allegedly festered online before devolving into deadly violence.

But for Rogers, it’s an opportunity to spread the kind of fetid nonsense that indicates she should switch out her red MAGA hat for one constructed of tin foil.

“Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo,” she posted shortly before 10:00 pm ET on Saturday, implying that the gunman was some sort of government agent.

Screenshot via Telegram

Rogers is far from the only denizen of the far-right to baselessly suggest that the mass murder allegedly perpetrated by Gendron was a false flag event.

White supremacist Nick Fuentes, who organizes the annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), posted on his Telegram account a link to a news report about the shooting shortly after it occurred with the comment “New false flag.”

Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer posted on Truth Social a similar sentiment Saturday, sharing a news article and commenting that it was “[i]nteresting timing in how this seems to happen every single election season, during midterm elections like clockwork when Democrats are in power.”

A short recap of Rogers’ not-so-greatest hits includes posting an anti-Semitic meme on her Gab and Telegram accounts hours before she spoke at the White nationalist AFPAC conference, getting censured by her fellow Republicans in the Arizona Senate, praising Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and railing against “traitors who hate America” in another tweet, retweeting a push to celebrate Confederate generals on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day days after speaking at a rally for former President Donald Trump, and a raging tweet storm calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons.”

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