On 25 April this year, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen was stopped by Secret Service agents while trying to rush into the White House correspondents’ dinner with a gun. He was apprehended on the scene and later charged with attempted assassination in what was the third apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life.
Immediately, conspiracy theories proliferated wildly on social media. Thousands of posts claimed the event had been staged – a “false flag” orchestrated by Trump to gain sympathy. On X, “Today was another false flag pushing for the funding Congress refused to pass this week for the Felons Ballroom,” one user wrote. “EXPOSED: The ‘Gunshots’ at WHCD Were a Classic False Flag Op… Not ‘Leftist Violence,’ But Elite Puppetry,” wrote another. Extremism analyst Tristan Mendes measured that in the 24 hours following the attack, the word “staged” was mentioned in 1.1 million posts, and the phrase “false flag” in 227,000.
This is now an inevitable phase of any major news event. After a previous attempted shooting clipped Trump’s ear with a bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024, the same conspiracy theories also exploded online within minutes, on the left as well as the right.
