Misinformation spreads swiftly in hours after Trump rally shooting (2024)

Even after investigators identified the shooter and confirmed some details of the attack, conspiracies that were born Saturday evening hardened into narratives that further politicized the violence.

Some accounts from the left of the political spectrum immediately claimed that the shooting was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by Trump’s own supporters. Some on the far right accused President Biden of ordering a hit on a political rival.

“Incidents of political violence spawn conspiracy theories and false narratives when people try to spin the event to suit their various agendas,” Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told The Washington Post. “This incident is no different, with people concocting ‘false flag’ conspiracies and even blaming innocent people for either committing this crime or inspiring it.”

The dynamic is only exacerbated, experts say, by the current political environment, in which Americans increasingly cannot agree on a common set of facts, and increasingly exist in alternate — and separate — realities.

Minutes after shots were fired, right-wing social media influencers and elected Republicans began suggesting that powerful figures were responsible, directly or indirectly, for the attempt. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) posted to X that “Joe Biden sent the orders,” garnering over 4 million views, and later called for Biden to face charges for “inciting an assassination.”

Such rhetoric, while not directly advancing specific conspiracy theories, added thread for those already inclined to embroider the narrative.

More broadly on social media, a TikTok user who posts under the handle @theoldermillenial.1 told his 1.2 million followers: “I guess because the court cases weren’t going so well, they decided to try a different avenue. Guys, don’t forget, this is what the left is capable of.”

Shadow of Ezra, an anonymous conspiracy theorist account on X, wrote that “The Deep State tried to assassinate Donald Trump live on television,” in a post that received over a million views, according to data gathered by Junkipedia, a repository of social media content. A follow-up, describing the shooting as “the price you pay when you take down elite satanic pedophiles,” was viewed more than 2.5 million times.

The word “staged” trended on X in the hours after the shooting, as people online speculated that the scene was fabricated. Thousands of people retweeted unsubstantiated claims that the shots came from a BB gun.

In the heated aftermath, misinformation experts urged the public not to share unconfirmed information online.

“In any fast developing event, there is inevitably a high influx of false or unverified information, especially on social media,” said Graham Brookie, the Atlantic Council’s vice president for technology programs and strategy, in a post on X. “Please exercise empathy and caution as events unfold.”

But far-right channels on encrypted platforms were abuzz with a mixture of shock, rage and conspiracy theories. Triumphant slogans (“You missed!”) and calls for civil war captioned the instantly totemic image of a bloodied but defiant Trump raising a fist with the flag in the background. Without any clear word from authorities on suspects or motives, MAGA extremists embraced the idea of a politically motivated assassination attempt. Disinformation swirled as trolls looked for easy clicks by sharing uncorroborated footage and information about people they asserted had been the assailant.

Some blamed militant antifascists — antifa — while others concocted elaborate explanations involving the “deep state” and demons. Several white supremacist accounts held an online discussion on X about how Jews had attempted to assassinate Trump.

“They want a CIVIL WAR. We MUST WIN,” wrote Jackson Lahmeyer, the Oklahoma-based head of the far-right Pastors for Trump group, in an email to subscribers within a couple of hours of the incident.

Pastors for Trump said in the email that the “Deep State FAILED. God’s Hand of Protection is on President Trump.”

The right-wing account Il Donaldo Trumpo posted a photo of John F. Kennedy from the day he was assassinated with the caption, “NOT TODAY, DEEP STATE!!!”

A number of accounts falsely blamed the shooting on an activist they labeled as being a member of antifa, a loosely knit group of far-left activists. These accounts claimed that he was the shooter at the rally and that he had discussed his plan earlier in a YouTube video. But the video showed the image of a different person who had nothing to do with the shooting.

Internet platforms often struggle to contain viral misinformation about catastrophic events soon after they happen because of the lack of credible information and the time it takes to respond to them, said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook public policy director who is now chief global affairs officer at Duco Experts, a tech consulting firm. “Breaking news situations like this are the hardest for platforms to moderate as facts of what happened are still becoming known and you have to retrain [the algorithms] to look for specific content and let human reviewers know what is or is not okay,” she said.

Among the measures online platforms might be pondering right now include fielding any potential requests from law enforcement for information and looking at images of the shooting to see if any would violate the company’s standards against gruesome content. Policy officials will most likely keep an eye out for information regarding the identity of the shooter in order to lock down his or her account, Harbath added.

AI chatbots had not yet caught up with the events of Saturday when queried by a Post reporter. Asked whether someone tried to shoot Trump, ChatGPT said “there has not been a recent attempt to shoot” the former president. On Sunday morning, OpenAI told The Post it would warn users to “check other sources for the latest information” when they asked queries related to the assassination attempt.

“ChatGPT is not a real-time product and may take time to update,” said a disclaimer on the chatbot.

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant had mixed results. It correctly responded to a query about whether Trump was shot by citing a report from Reuters and The Post about the gunfire at the Pennsylvania rally. But when the question was phrased slightly differently, it referenced a 2016 campaign rally event where a man tried to grab a gun from a police officer in an attempt to shoot Trump.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

While social media platforms strained to manage the conspiracy theories that blossomed Saturday, at least one tech owner fueled the false notion that the Secret Service had possibly engineered the attack.

As more details about the shooter emerged throughout the evening, identifying a man who was perched on a rooftop outside the Trump rally, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, posted that either the Secret Service suffered from “extreme incompetence” for allowing him to position himself there or “it was deliberate.”

Other accounts, such as the alt-right @Clownworld, with 2.5 million followers, posted a photo of police positioned on the roof of a building, with the caption: “Something ain’t adding up,” an echo of other posts suggesting that the shooting happened with the assent of the authorities and was an “inside job.”

Matt Wallace, a right-wing figure online, posted, “Rumors are circulating that the Trump assassination attempt was an inside job after the release of this angle,” and included a clip that appeared to show Secret Service agents hesitating slightly before rushing to the stage following the sound of shots fired.

Other influencers blamed the shooting on the Secret Service’s efforts to include more women and minorities. “There should not be any women in the Secret Service,” Matt Walsh posted on X. “These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women,” he wrote, echoing a sentiment that gained momentum into Sunday morning.

Former Secret Service agent turned conservative host and influencer Dan Bongino called for the resignation of Secret Service director Kim Cheatle, claiming she had been warned “about this, and she ignored the warnings.” Bongino, a frequent critic of the Secret Service, continued his attacks Sunday.

A spokesman for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, posted on X on Sunday morning to rebut false claims that a member of Trump’s team had requested additional security and that those requests had been denied.

Bongino retweeted him and replied, using an expletive, to claim that the spokesman was lying.

Paul Penzone (D), the former sheriff of Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, where conspiracies and doubts about elections and democratic institutions have flourished in recent years, said that false theories and misinformation significantly affect public emotion and perspective, “and ultimately human behaviors — to the detriment of civil discourse.”

Penzone frequently directed beefed-up security for county officials, election workers and county buildings amid a hostile environment toward public officials in the battleground county. Threats and harassing communications were often traced to conspiracies fueled by misinformation, he added.

Hannah Allam, Yvonne Wingett-Sanchez, Naomi Nix and Susie Webb contributed to this report.