The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has triggered an explosion in baseless conspiracy theories that the incident was somehow staged by President Donald Trump. These narratives, particularly common among left-leaning accounts on social media, involve no evidence and fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. Yet they’re being propelled by some high-profile prominent commentators, activists and at least one Democratic lawmaker who should know better.
It is understandable that some people believe that Trump — an aspiring tyrant and committed purveyor of disinformation — is capable of doing something crooked to repress dissent and amass power. But theories based on gut-level anxiety and theoretical possibilities are no substitute for evidence and common sense. And there are costs to succumbing to explanations that have no verifiable grounding in reality.
Conspiracy theories surrounding political assassination attempts have become a noxious trend.
Many of the conspiracy theories fixate on the fact that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a red carpet interview ahead of the event, “It’ll be funny, it’ll be entertaining, there will be some shots fired tonight.” “Shots fired” is a common turn of phrase to describe a put-down or call out, and Leavitt was describing anticipating Trump’s address at the dinner.
But “staged” shooting proponents have read this as a sign that the gunman was part of a “false flag” operation — an action orchestrated by Trump’s inner circle and designed to blame his opponents. It takes maybe half a second of reflection to realize that if Leavitt was in on this whole deceptive operation, then she would not have hinted at it, because that would defeat the entire purpose of any secrecy. Her use of the term is a not-particularly remarkable coincidence.
Another “suspicious” data point for the “staged” shooting theorists is that Trump immediately used the event to demand that lawsuits against his expensive and ethically disastrous White House ballroom be lifted to allow presidents to do events there in the future. If that were true, that would be a comically unambitious reason to try to pull off the kind of stunt which, if uncovered, would be ruinous for Trump’s presidency — a presidency that has struggled to cover up scandal after scandal. Remember, Trump used a Department of Government Efficiency employee getting mugged as a pretext to send the National Guard to occupy the streets of Washington, D.C.
Some point to the poor security Saturday night. But such lapses are hardly exclusive to Trump. And on what basis can one attribute to malice what is most easily explained by incompetence?
In addition to providing even one piece of evidence of foul play, “staged” shooting theorists would have to answer many other questions. Why orchestrate such a major event and have it end so anticlimactically? The gunman was apprehended outside the ballroom, and there were no fatalities. And if any behind-the-scenes operators wanted to properly cover their tracks, surely the gunman would not be alive — a clear liability for the planners. And how exactly does an administration that leaks to the press like a sieve and demonstrates breathtaking incompetence daily manage to not just pull off an enormously complicated operation, but also get potentially hundreds of people across different institutions to never speak a word of it to anyone?
Conspiracy theories surrounding political assassination attempts have become a noxious trend. On both the right and the left, there are conspiracy theories that the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 was secretly coordinated by (depending on the theory) Trump, the FBI or some shadowy international cabal. It’s also popular in MAGA circles to claim that Israel was secretly behind right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s death because he was becoming more critical of its government.
The explosion in popularity of conspiracy theories has many sources. Social media is a hotbed for rumors and disinformation, which often blend in seamlessly with authentic news coverage on platforms. Plunging trust in institutions is also a major factor: With less faith in government, law enforcement and media, more of the public is inclined to believe that the truth lies beyond the accounts of authorities and newspapers. And, of course, there’s Trump himself — a leader who has socialized his political movement to mistrust anything that doesn’t affirm its worldview and conditioned his opponents to believe he is capable of any machination to seize more power.
But there is a difference between it being theoretically possible that Trump could be behind a false flag, and positing a conspiracy’s existence without evidence or a logically coherent account. Moreover, the immediate rush to assume a covert ploy neglects the eminent plausibility of multiple attempts on Trump’s life.
America has more guns than people; huge amounts of untreated mental illness and loneliness; and acute political polarization and increasingly violent political rhetoric (including, most notably, from the president himself) that makes people believe that our institutions cannot be trusted to resolve our political crisis. Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated in office and many, many more presidents have experienced several attempts on their lives — including very close calls. There is nothing in and of itself suspicious about attempts on Trump’s life.
It is good and healthy to demand more information about high-stakes events and to question things that genuinely don’t add up. But the threshold for evidence and for rationally explicable accounts is not something that can be set aside because an event makes us feel uncomfortable or may have negative consequences. The reason is simple: If we decide that proof and sound thinking don’t matter, then there’s no way back to rational discourse, and thus no way back to functioning democracy.
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