A fresh wave of conspiracy theories is rolling through social media across the country following Saturday night\u2019s attempted assassination of President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association (WHCA) dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unfounded theories largely capitalize on short video snippets of those in the room and initial breaking news reports filed moments after a gunman tried to breach a ballroom at the Washington Hilton with Trump and hundreds of other government officials and members of the press inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time Trump had traveled back to the White House to deliver remarks on the incident and posted a photo of the suspected attacker, thousands of social media posts had been circulating online suggesting the episode was \u201cstaged\u201d or somehow faked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reasons users cited for such a hoax were wide ranging, from a desire to distract from the Iran war to a need to justify Trump\u2019s desired ballroom at the White House for hosting large events like the annual WHCA dinner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s just the latest example of a real shooting prompting false conspiracy theories. The first attempt on Trump\u2019s life at a Butler, Pa., campaign rally in 2024 also sparked false stories, as did the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts on disinformation say breaking news is increasingly becoming a breeding ground for unfounded conspiracy theories in part because people are seeing so many things online that turn out not to be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in an information environment where people are just not believing anything they see because they\u2019ve become so exhausted by the steady tide of information everyone is sharing that later turns out to be not true,\u201d Katie Sanders, editor in chief of the fact checking website PolitiFact, told The Hill. \u201cPeople might want to tune all of it out, but that means they\u2019re not in a good position to separate what\u2019s true when breaking news happens.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kirk\u2019s murder was captured on video that spread quickly online. A man accused of shooting him is standing trial in Utah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that hasn\u2019t stopped theories from spreading that Israel was responsible for Kirk\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conspiracy theories are also sometimes pushed by figures with large social media followings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the conspiracy theories about Kirk have come from prominent pundits on the right and at least one former top intelligence official in Trump\u2019s administration, Joe Kent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
State actors are also often responsible for spreading conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some social media users on Saturday falsely asserted that the suspect in Saturday\u2019s shooting had Israeli sympathies, a claim that was promoted by the Russian-operated state media outlet RT, The New York Times first reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2022 attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s (D-Calif.) home targeting her husband, Paul Pelosi, sparked days of online conspiracy theories, including from billionaire Elon Musk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the weeks that followed the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, many online conspiracy theorists alleged that the shooting was staged to distract from negative headlines surrounding Trump\u2019s candidacy at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such chatter likely \u201cprimed\u201d some of the online skepticism that took place after Saturday\u2019s events, Sanders said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House on Monday publicly denounced misinformation circulating online about Saturday\u2019s incident but stopped short of saying what efforts it had taken to work with social media companies to quell the spread of false rumors about the shooting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important to us that we get the truth and the facts about this case and any case out there as quickly as possible, to dispel some of that crazy nonsense that you see running rampant online,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs far as we\u2019re concerned, [we want] to provide maximum transparency. And hopefully people will believe the truth instead of the lies and the conspiracies that so often do go crazy on social media,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sarah B. Rogers, under secretary of State for public diplomacy, said Sunday she had spoken with at least one journalist who \u201clamented mass-hysteric brainrot among their readers\u201d about the incident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor self-serving or myopic reasons, some people try to pigeonhole this sort of malicious, motivated conspiracism as a partisan phenomenon. It isn\u2019t,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cWhat matters is how we react to it, especially given that censorship is (rightly) off the table.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump and his allies have pointed to a manifesto left by the suspect in Saturday\u2019s attack espousing anti-Christian and anti-Trump rhetoric as they blame Democrats for criticism of the president that they say inspires such attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, speaking from the White House podium just minutes after the attack, suggested the security breach was evidence of the need for White House ballroom. This may have further fueled unfounded speculation the attack was \u201cstaged,\u201d particularly among social media accounts and users critical of the president. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The progressive pundit Don Lemon posted a video of himself interviewing people on the street about the incident, some of which told him they \u201ccould believe\u201d Saturday\u2019s attack might have been faked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others pointed to the ongoing fight in Congress over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, a point that Republicans have harped on since Saturday\u2019s incident as they warn America and top U.S. officials are less safe without proper security funding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re willing to die to assassinate, imagine what they will do if they gain political power,\u201d wrote Musk, the billionaire owner of social platform X who has a history of sharing false or misleading information online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others on the right, including conservative pundit Matt Walsh, mocked such theories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m officially convinced. It was a hoax. The Trump Administration recruited a leftist Kamala Harris voting Trump hater to participate in a staged assassination that would include the shooter getting shot at and then locked in federal prison for the rest of his life,\u201d Walsh wrote in a sarcastic post on X. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some observers say people buying into conspiracy theories stemming from politically motivated acts of violence is a way for Americans to cope with unexplained, traumatic events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conspiracy theories are only likely to gain steam in an increasingly volatile American political climate, these people say. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShootings or reports of shootings are chaotic environments, and the chaos is what attracts the conspiratorial thinker,\u201d said Geoff Dancy, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. \u201cPeople who seek out conspiracies are often looking for comfort or order among disorder. It could be a comforting thought to think this is all planned. It sort of allays your fears to think this isn\u2019t just some person who had access to weapons and snapped \u2026 that\u2019s scary.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n