Business · Wired
Both exited- and right-wing accounts asserted, without evidence, that the attack was staged
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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…
Key facts
- I don't want to be fomenting conspiracies,” wrote Angelo Carusone, the chair and president of Media Matters, on Bluesky about the Fox News interview
- On Bluesky, which has a predominantly left-leaning user base, many people simply wrote the word “ STAGED ” over and over again, echoing the response to the Trump assassination attempt in Butler
- Other social media users who claimed the incident was staged pointed to a Fox News clip that featured the station’s White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie speaking from the Hilton hotel
- Fox News cut one of their reporters off as they seemed to indicate the shooting was a preplanned false flag,” one X user wrote in a post that has been viewed more than 2 million times
Summary
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on the White House Correspondents’ 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. Both left- and right-wing accounts claimed, without evidence, that the attack was staged.