American politics is rife with false-flag conspiracy theories – the idea that a newsy event was carefully orchestrated to serve some political goal. But the rush to judgment after Saturday’s shooting was marked and potent. The theory has bounded the political spectrum, from the pro-Trump right to staunch critics of the president, such as Crockett. Disinformation experts say the theories underscore Trump’s waning popularity in Maga circles – as well as the left’s hostility to him and people’s natural desire to make sense of crises when little reliable information is available.
About a fifth of the left-wing and liberal influencers and politicians who posted about the shooting used conspiratorial language, according to a Post analysis of social media posts and podcasts.
Some onlookers interpreted a clip of a Fox News White House correspondent getting cut off live on air as evidence of the network attempting to stop her from exposing the incident as staged. (The correspondent, Aishah Hasnie, corrected the narrative in an X post. “Our calls were dropping, because there is barely any service in that ballroom,” she noted.)
The White House rejected the conspiracy theories. “Anyone who thinks President Trump staged his own assassination attempts is a complete moron,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement provided after publication. Crockett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s logical to construct a narrative in an effort to understand strange things, said Whitney Phillips, a University of Oregon professor who researches the politics of information. Still, in a fractured information environment, the effort is likely to create a disjointed picture.
“Collective sense-making is one of the first things that happens when there is some sort of crisis or event where the answers are not clear, or where there’s any kind of ambiguity. And these days, there’s always ambiguity,” Phillips said.
These conspiracy theories are rising as Maga supporters revisit similar false theories that Trump staged his own 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. While the theories are part of a months-long splintering within the Maga media landscape, taken together, those forces mean “there’s more of an incentive and permission structure for these kinds of claims”, Phillips said.
Some, like former Maga influencer Ashley St. Clair, have pointed to other moments in the aftermath of the shooting to suggest a different kind of coordination. After dozens of conservative influencers and Trump supporters made similar posts on X saying the incident showed the need for a new White House ballroom, as Trump has requested, St. Clair argued that many of them had probably shared the talking point in private groups, so as to boost its appeal. “Everything in Maga is fake, staged and coordinated,” she said in a TikTok video.
“If Maga does not like that people are creating conspiracies, because of their utter lack of transparency, from ballrooms to Epstein files, perhaps they should do some introspection regarding the environment they created,” St. Clair said in response to a request for comment.
The black-tie dinner turned to chaos shortly after 8.30pm on Saturday, when a man rushed a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton in an apparent attempt to reach the ballroom, where the White House correspondents’ dinner was underway – the first time Trump was attending as president.
While the chaos in the ballroom was brief – the hubbub ended within minutes – the chaos on the internet has persisted.
One problem with conspiracy narratives in the early days after a news event is their staying power, said Joan Donovan, a Boston University professor who researches media manipulation. “What we know about conspiracies is that they’re incredibly sticky, and they keep people on, and they keep people coming back,” she said. “People do fall into these traps all of the time.”
Still, conspiracy theories are also bolstered when they strike a familiar nerve: Trump really, really wants to build his ballroom, and he has spun the shooting as evidence for why the ballroom is needed.
“We need the ballroom,” Trump said at a White House press briefing Saturday after the shooting. About 10 hours later, he went even further in a Truth Social post, saying the shooting “would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House”.
By talking about the ballroom so soon after the incident, Trump probably created an uncomfortable sense of cognitive dissonance for some people, according to Phillips, which they then resolved by jumping to conclusions. “It’s like conspiratorial Mad Libs,” she said.
Trump’s statements seem to have fanned the flames. “It’s absolutely wild that there is a non-zero chance that the Trump administration would stage a shooting to manufacture public support for a ballroom,” independent journalist James Li wrote in response to Trump’s Truth Social post.
“Public sentiment is a by-product of long-standing government rot,” Li said in response to a request for comment. “Then there’s Trump’s response – justifying a new ballroom and expanding surveillance on Americans, which only reinforces the idea that the incident was staged.”
After the Butler assassination attempt, factions of liberals and Trump critics theorised that the attack had been staged to generate support and sympathy for Trump during his presidential campaign. Last week, a growing number of Maga supporters began posting about the same thing, which Phillips believes highlights how Trump is losing his grip on his supporter base.
“There’s an audience for anti-Trump content within what otherwise would have been pretty stalwart Maga networks,” Phillips said. “Now, anti-Trumpism is increasingly becoming a branding opportunity for these right-wing influencers.”
– Ence Morse contributed to this report.
