A wave of misinformation has surged online in the aftermath of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday.
Donald and Melania Trump, as well as top Cabinet officials, were abruptly evacuated from the black-tie event on Saturday evening after shots rang out outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton.
The suspected gunman, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, was stopped after rushing past a security checkpoint armed with two firearms and multiple knives, apparently intending to attack Trump and members of his Cabinet.
Moments after the shooting, social media began being flooded with conspiracy theories from influencers about whether the incident was pre-planned.
Some social media users felt the attack was “staged” to distract from Trump’s bad polling numbers or his deeply unpopular war with Iran, or to justify his contentious vanity ballroom after court appeals.
Polls have put Trump’s approval rating at an all-time low for his second term, showing that Americans are broadly negative on the handling of the war in Iran, which has seen oil and gas prices spike.
There is no evidence to suggest the shooting was staged. Still, the word “staged” surged past 300,000 posts on X by Sunday afternoon, according to TweetBinder data.
Alongside the spike in conspiracy chatter, users began attributing motives to the attacker without evidence, including claims linking him to Israeli causes. Some posts circulated alongside apparent AI-manipulated images supposed to support those theories. Russian state-linked outlet RT also amplified several of the claims on X.
False information also spread widely, including claims that the suspect had been killed at the scene when he was in fact arrested.
The confusion was compounded by high-engagement posts from influencers, who benefit from virality and revenue-sharing systems that reward attention, even when content is speculative.
For example, influencer Mario Nawfal, who has previously been accused of amplifying Russian-aligned narratives, shared a thread on X on Sunday that compiled multiple unverified theories about the incident. He later distanced himself from the claims within the same post. “My position: I don’t believe any of the theories, definitely don’t think it was staged,” he wrote.
The post attracted more than 300,000 views.
During an extended Sunday evening interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell, Trump was asked about the growing theories, from the “left and the right” that the shooting was “staged” or that it “didn’t happen.”
The president said he had not heard any of the theories until O’Donnell asked him.
“I think they’re more sick than they are con people,” Trump said of conspiracy theorists. “But there’s a lot of con in there too.”
“I haven’t heard that last night didn’t happen... usually takes a little bit longer. Usually, they wait about two or three months to start saying that.”
