Within minutes of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, conspiracy theories began swirling online.
An adviser to a Democratic mega-donor apologised on Sunday after suggesting the incident was “staged” – a word that was quickly trending as hordes of social media users claimed it was not an assassination attempt at all.
Instead, they claimed it was an attempt to boost Trump‘s election chances.
At the same time, actor and director Tim Robbins was forced to condemn false claims which drew parallels with one of his films.
Mentions of Trump were up to 17 times higher than average in the hours after the shooting, according to PeakMetrics, a cyber firm that tracks online narratives.
Conspiracies claiming foreign governments were behind it, or it was a set-up by political rivals – even that it was planned by Republicans themselves – began to flood social media, said Paul Bartel, senior intelligence analyst at PeakMetrics.
Everyone was “just speculating”, he said.
This speculation spawned a raft of theories from across the political spectrum, ranging from questions about the actions of the Secret Service to false claims about the shooter’s identity.
‘Staged’
Close to one million posts including the word “staged” were made on X in the 24 hours after the attack, social media monitoring tool Talkwalker shows.
For some, the image of a defiant and bloodied Trump, fist raised against the backdrop of an American flag, seemed too perfectly composed to be a coincidence.
Pic: AP
More than 92,000 people liked a post claiming the photo was staged: “Great camera angle; great quality; no Secret Service agent in front of his head covering the wound; conveniently placed US flag.”
In the comments, another user debunked each point: “Great camera angle; photographers and press get front row yes. Great quality; have you held a expensive camera before? No secret service agent in front of his head covering; yes they stand on the sides; Conveniently placed US flag; yes it’s there for photos.”
“How did the USSS [US Secret Service] allow him to stop and pose for a photo opp if there was real danger??” wrote one user.
Meanwhile, Democratic strategist Dmitri Mehlhorn said in an email to supporters at the weekend there was a possibility “this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash”.
He backtracked the next day, apologising “for allowing my words to distract from last night’s central fact: political violence took yet another innocent American life”.
Social media bots helped amplify the false claims on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, according to an analysis by the Israeli tech firm Cyabra.
It found 45% of the accounts using hashtags like #fakeassassination and #stagedshooting were inauthentic.
Tim Robbins condemns conspiracy theories linked to his film
People claiming the shooting was staged were quick to draw a parallel with Tim Robbins’ 1992 film Bob Roberts, in which a right-wing politician stages an assassination attempt in order to sway the election.
In a post on X, Robbins condemned the people making comparisons.
He wrote: “What happened yesterday was a real attempt on a presidential candidate’s life. Those that are denying the assassination attempt was real are truly in a deranged mindset. A human being was shot yesterday. Another killed.
“They may not be human beings that you agree with politically but for shame folks. Get over your blind hatred of these people. They are fellow Americans.
“This collective hatred is killing our souls and consuming whatever is left of our humanity.”
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Blame on Biden
From establishment Republicans to far-right conspiracy theorists, entirely unsubstantiated conjecture emerged that suggested Joe Biden had laid the groundwork for Saturday’s shooting by casting Mr Trump as a threat to democracy.
They pointed in particular to a comment Mr Biden made to donors on 8 July, saying “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye”.
“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” US Representative Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, wrote on X.
“Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”
Mr Trump’s pick for vice-president, senator JD Vance, said on social media over the weekend that Mr Biden’s earlier rhetoric “led directly” to the attempted assassination.
Republican House member Mike Collins was unequivocal on X, quoting the president’s “bullseye” comment and declaring: “Joe Biden sent the orders.”
A community note giving context to the post refutes this, telling readers: “There is no evidence that Joe Biden was involved in the shooting of Donald Trump.”
Secret Service under scrutiny
The Secret Service has come under fire for not securing the area where the gunman shot from, around 150 metres from the former president.
Some Trump supporters suggested the Secret Service intentionally failed to protect the former president, on the White House’s orders – a claim for which not a shred of evidence exists.
On Monday, images of security agents on a roof were shared widely alongside the same copied phrase claiming they were looking at the shooter for 42 seconds before he fired.
“The ‘counter snipers’ didn’t take the shot at the shooter sniper,” the post reads, indicating this points to an “inside job” by the CIA – again something for which there is no evidence.
The day after the shooting, the Secret Service pushed back on claims circulating on social media that Trump’s campaign had asked for greater security before Saturday’s rally but had the request rejected.
“This is absolutely false,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
“In fact, we added protective resources, technology and capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”
A reporter for RealClearPolitics claimed on X that “Secret Services resources were diverted to Jill Biden’s event and away from Trump’s because they followed agency protocol applying to Trump as a former president, according to two sources within the Secret Service community”.
A Secret Service spokesperson responded: “We did not divert resources from FPOTUS (former president of the United States) Trump and protection models don’t work that way.”
Pic: AP
Misidentifying suspected shooter
Before authorities identified the suspect, photos of two different people circulated widely online – falsely identifying them as the shooter.
An Italian sports journalist called Marco Violi was falsely named as the suspect in a now-deleted post by X user Moussolinho.
A photo of him was shared in a post saying “Antifa extremist Mark Violets” – a translation of Marco Violi – had been identified by the Butler Police Department as the shooter.
The posts were shared by verified accounts on X including Wall Street Silver, an account with 1.3 million followers that is known to spread misinformation
Russian propaganda accounts, MAGA and Proud Boy channels on Telegram also spread the claim.
Mr Violi set the record straight on Instagram, saying he was woken in the middle of the night in Italy by notifications about the “totally baseless” claims.
“I strongly deny being involved in this situation”, promising to file a complaint “against the X accounts that invented this fake news”.
Money-making spins
Others tried to exploit the event financially. On X on Sunday morning, an account named Proud Patriots urged Trump supporters to purchase their assassination-attempt themed merchandise.
“First they jail him, now they try to end him,” reads the ad for the commemorative Trump Assassination Attempt Trading Card.
“Stand Strong & Show Your Support!”
Read more:
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US politics is laced with malevolence and division – it needs a reset
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How Trump attack unfolded – all angles
Moments like this are ‘cannon fodder’ for extremists online
Extremists jump on events like this, using them to advance their own ideologies, according to Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Moments like this are cannon fodder for extremists online, because typically they will react with great confidence to whatever has happened without any real evidence,” he said.
“People will fall into spirals and will advance their own ideologies and their own conclusions.”
Conspiracy v the official story
Dylan Reeve, author of Fake Believe, Conspiracy Theories in Aotearoa, writes in his newsletter Number 8 Haywire that we need to apply the theory of Occam’s Razor – that going with the simplest solution is usually best.
One narrative is that it was staged: “A complex conspiracy played out in front of the world’s media and engineered by a former president along with his inner circle and, possibly, members of law enforcement, the Secret Service and Pulitzer Prize winning photographers.
The second is the official story: “A chaotic event that could easily have gone in any number of different ways, captured by expert photographers and camera operators in which an image-obsessed former president made sure to use the moment to build his brand.”
He says: “One is complicated, vulnerable to multiple points of failure, and requires the involvement of many individuals, all of whom must be trusted to never disclose what they were a part of.
“The other is a horrifying event with a fluke outcome that still took the life of one innocent bystander, left two others with critical injuries, and ended the life of the person who set it in motion.”
He argues that even though the outcome favours Mr Trump and may be used to further his election campaign, detractors’ claims that he was responsible are “implausible at best, and viciously callous at worst”.