Immediately following the attempted assassination of ex-US President Donald Trump, various conspiracy theories emerged online.
An adviser for a prominent Democratic donor apologized after he said that the incident was staged.
The word “staged” quickly became a trending topic on social media, where many people claimed that the assassination attempt was not real.
Instead of focusing on the assassination attempt, the conspiracy theorists claimed it was carried out to boost Trump’s chances of winning the upcoming election.
Tim Robbins, an actor and director, had to dissociate himself from the false claims made by these individuals.
According to PeakMetrics, the mentions of Trump spiked significantly following the shooting.
According to Paul Bartel, a senior analyst at PeakMetrics, the claims that foreign governments or political rivals were behind the assassination attempt immediately gained widespread attention on social media.
Even though the incident was allegedly planned by Republicans, it also led to a variety of conspiracy theories from different political groups.
These theories ranged from fake claims about the identity of the shooter to questions about the Secret Service’s actions after the shooting.
According to Talkwalker, a social media monitoring tool, close to a million posts about the incident were made on X within 24 hours following the shooting.
Many of these revolved around the image of Trump, who was bloodied and defiant.
Over 92,000 individuals liked a post that claimed the photo was staged. It featured a great camera angle and was taken with the US flag placed on top of Trump’s head.
A user then refuted many of the claims made by the post.
The quality of the photo was great. There was no Secret Service agent in front of Trump’s head covering, and the US flag was conveniently placed on top of his head.
One user questioned the actions of the USSS, which allowed Trump to pose for photos while facing real danger.
In an email to his supporters, Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic strategist, said that the shooting was possibly staged to benefit Trump and gain the backlash.
He then backtracked a day later, saying that he should have focused on the innocent American lives that were lost due to political violence.
An analysis conducted by Cyabra, a social media analysis firm, revealed that the actions of the bots on various platforms helped increase the number of false claims about the shooting.
It found that 45% of the accounts were inauthentic. Some of the hashtags used by these accounts included “fake assassination” and “staged shooting.”
