Misinformation spreads swiftly in hours after Trump rally shooting

Law enforcement officials quickly launched an investigation into the Saturday night shooting of Donald Trump as an assassination attempt, offering few details. That did not stop a torrent of unsubstantiated theories from flooding social media and other channels shortly after the event.

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 where Americans increasingly cannot agree on a common set of facts and exist in alternate — and separate — realities.

Minutes after shots were fired, right-wing social media influencers and elected Republicans began insinuating 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.”

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.

Many others held Biden, the left wing and the media responsible in spirit for the violence. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), whom Trump has mentioned as a possible running mate, said the attempt was “aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media.” Nicole Shanahan, the running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a critic of Trump’s, blamed the “DNC and legacy media” for inciting hysteria, which, she wrote, led to the violence. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X that Democrats have “wanted Trump gone for years and they’re prepared to do anything to make that happen.”

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 instantly 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 claimed to be 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.”

Conservative influencer Laura Loomer and radio host Erick Erickson blamed Biden for the shooting, citing his comments days ago to donors that it was time to put Trump “in a bull’s eye.”

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 claimed that “antifa extremist Mark Violets” 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 [their 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 night 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. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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.

As more details about the shooter emerged throughout the evening, seemingly 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.”

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 to 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 reporting.