Law enforcement is still investigating the attack, but no evidence has surfaced that the Trump administration staged the shooting. Yet the conspiracy theory is spreading fast online, building into a widespread narrative that President Donald Trump and his associates planned the event to drum up support for the president, his party — and the planned White House ballroom, an event space he has argued could prevent future attacks.
A popular theory claims that Trump staged the event to generate public support amid falling approval ratings and predicted Republican losses in the midterm elections. Some say it’s intended to build support for his ballroom project, which has come under criticism for bypassing congressional approval.
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.
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