So much information, streaming out in so little time. And still: Within minutes, wild conspiracy theories flooded the internet.
The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner attended by President Donald Trump on Saturday night played out in front of some of the nation’s top mainstream media reporters and editors who provided real time, detailed accounts from the scene.
Despite this, unfounded conspiracy theories among liberals went wild, chief among them that the shooting was staged. Some spread in spite of the facts, while others used real information to create false narratives.
Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies conspiracy theories, said a lack of trust in institutions and an inability to sort fact from fiction create a “textbook recipe” for such rumors. But, she said, even when an abundance of information is available the entertainment value of conspiracy theories can still prevail.
“The thing about conspiracy theories that makes people enjoy them, even if they’re not politically extreme, is that you get to go looking for breadcrumbs,” she said. “It’s a way to feel smart and accepted when you come up with a nugget to contribute and people like it.”
Live reporting both helped and hurt
Some possible avenues of speculation were shut down before they could begin because of the live reporting being presented — and corroborated in real time — by hundreds of professional journalists at once. Plenty still made it through.
The most popular conspiracy theory: The shooting was somehow staged, either as a distraction from issues such as the Iran war, or as a push for the completion of Trump’s White House ballroom. After Trump pointed to the incident as evidence his ballroom is needed, liberal social media users claimed the president’s Justice Department staged the attack to try to pressure preservationists into dropping a lawsuit over the $400 million project.
Others conspiracy theorist climed that the Israeli government or military played a role — an allegation often used as an antisemitic trope. And press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during an interview with Fox News before the dinner began that “there will be some shots fired tonight in the room” — a metaphorical reference to Trump’s planned speech that was used as evidence she had prior knowledge about the shooting.
An unhinged Karen is calling the White House Correspondents dinner shooting a hoax to get Trump's ballroom built and of course the EPstEin fiLeS!
These people are radicalized beyond repair! pic.twitter.com/eTOdRRR2fq
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) April 26, 2026
Some connected it to Butler shooting
Many social media users claimed there’s a connection between the attack at the correspondents’ dinner and the attempted assassination of Trump in July 2024 during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, such as the fact that after both shootings there was a delay before the president was safely removed from the scene. Some cited video of Vice President JD Vance being escorted out of the room first as evidence that Trump and the Secret Service knew the shooting was going to happen.
Emily Vraga, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies political misinformation, said that sometimes more information is not necessarily better, especially in such a polarized time when people can pick and choose the facts they like and assemble their own narrative puzzles.
“We just can’t process that much information,” she explained. “And so when there is just this flood of information and it’s contradictory and ever-changing as new information comes in, that can actually reinforce this tendency to go to a simplified, understandable narrative. And that narrative can include conspiracy theories.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.