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In the immediate aftermath of the attack on the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner on Saturday night, influencers, pundits, and random posters lit up social media platforms like X, Bluesky, and Instagram with conspiracy theories about the attack and the alleged shooter.<\/p>\n
Both left and right-wing accounts claimed, without evidence, that the attack was staged.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and dozens of other high-profile administration officials and journalists were attending the dinner at the Hilton hotel in Washington, DC, when a suspect, later identified by media reports as Cole Tomas Allen from California, allegedly ran past security towards the event. He was detained by law enforcement while the president and vice president were evacuated. Police said that they believe Cole acted alone, but did not expand on who his intended target was or what his motive may have been. \u201cWe believe the suspect was targeting administration officials,\u201d acting attorney general Todd Blanche told NBC\u2019s Meet the Press<\/em> on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n On Bluesky, which has a predominantly left-leaning user base, many people simply wrote the word \u201cSTAGED\u201d over and over again, echoing the response to the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024.<\/p>\n On X, many claimed the shooting was staged as a way to bolster support for Trump\u2019s plan to build a new ballroom in the White House. The president referenced the ballroom in a press conference after the incident and a Truth Social post on Sunday morning. Many prominent online Trump boosters echoed the need for the ballroom, including far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec, Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, and Tom Fitton, the right-wing activist who runs Judicial Watch.<\/p>\n Their quick response, conspiracy theorists claimed, was evidence of a coordinated campaign following the shooting. \u201cIs this another staged event,\u201d one X user asked in a post that has been viewed more than 5 million times.<\/p>\n Other social media users who claimed the incident was staged pointed to a Fox News clip that featured the station\u2019s White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie speaking from the Hilton hotel. Hasnie told viewers that prior to the shooting, press secretary Karoline Leavitt\u2019s husband allegedly told her \u201cyou need to be very safe,\u201d before the call was cut off.<\/p>\n \u201cFox News just cut one of their reporters off as they seemed to indicate the shooting was a pre-planned false flag,\u201d one X user wrote in a post that has been viewed more than 2 million times. Hasnie later clarified in an X post that her cell service had cut out in a location with notoriously bad service, adding: \u201cHe was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy. He was expressing his concern for my safety.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t want to be fomenting conspiracies,\u201d wrote Angelo Carusone, the chair and president of Media Matters, on Bluesky about the Fox News interview. \u201cBut I mean…this was super weird. Super weird.\u201d<\/p>\n Leavitt herself was also the focus of conspiracy theories after she said \u201cshots will be fired\u201d in an interview ahead of the dinner, referring to the jokes Trump was scheduled to deliver. Following the attack, X users claimed the comment was \u201cstrange,\u201d \u201csus,\u201d or a \u201ccurious choice of words,\u201d while sharing memes that suggested the shooting was staged. At least one mainstream outlet appeared to amplify the conspiracy theory as well, describing Leavitt’s comment as \u201ceerie\u201d and \u201cbizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n