After an armed man attempted to breach the ballroom where Donald Trump was set to speak to White House journalists on Saturday, conspiracy theories immediately spread about whether the event was staged.
The rhetoric has become a common refrain from both sides of the aisle in an era of deeply fractured politics and intense distrust in political institutions and media, and in the president himself.
The conspiracy theories about the White House correspondents’ dinner gunman came as some of Trump’s former allies had been discussing a conspiracy theory publicly, for weeks, about a prior assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania during his 2024 campaign being staged.
Conspiracy theories are a frequent response to significant political events, including assassination attempts, said Scott Radnitz, a professor at the University of Washington who has written on conspiracism as its own theory of power. Online conspiracy theories especially receive more attention in the immediate aftermath of an event, when the truth is unclear and algorithms fuel sensationalism. People who distrust Trump will be suspicious of any political development he’s a part of, Radnitz said.
“The administration does not have the best record of honesty and transparency when it comes to communicating with the public,” Radnitz said. “People who already believe the worst about what Trump is capable of can easily tell a story about the latest event to conform to their existing views.”
Trump’s quick pivot to claiming that the shooting incident confirms the need for a more secure ballroom at the White House, and rightwing pundits’ near-uniformity in messaging along the same lines in the immediate response, heightened the conspiracy framing.
The fact that most major news organizations were inside the event and reported on it should help strengthen confidence in the story of what happened, Radnitz said.
“But people who have tuned out the ‘legacy media’ will have plenty of alternative accounts to choose from,” he said.
Extreme rhetoric, which often accompanies conspiracy, has been normalized amid a rise in political violence, said Clionadh Raleigh, founder of Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a non-profit that tracks violent events globally. She pointed to the Iran war’s early days, where it was mainstream to make “casual references to assassinating political leaders”, which lowers the threshold for violence.
“The US is facing a particularly volatile mix: widespread access to firearms, persistent lone-actor threats, and an increasingly hyper-radicalized political culture,” Raleigh said in a statement. “Disorder in the US is decentralized, opportunistic, and difficult to predict. And the risk extends across the political spectrum, to anyone in public office.”
While many of the immediate conspiracy theories about the incident at the White House correspondents’ dinner came from the left, neither political party is immune to conspiracy theories in an era of declining trust in government . A YouGov poll in December 2025, for instance, found the majority of Republicans did not believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election – but also that about half of Democrats didn’t believe Trump legitimately won in 2024, either, though the false elections claims on the left haven’t been elevated by the Democratic party or elected officials.
Trump has also faced a wave of conspiracy theories in recent months from his own, loudest former supporters.
The revolt by leading Maga personalities comes as Trump’s hold over the Republican party weakens and others, with financial incentives to weave tales, angle for prominence after the president leaves office.
Trump, some on the right have hinted or directly claimed, is showing signs he is the antichrist. He should admit, some have suggested, that he staged the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, where an attender was killed. Israel is blackmailing him for untold reasons, perhaps related to the Jeffrey Epstein files, and dragging the US into war in Iran.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who now has a podcast said he regretted voting for Trump and persuading others to do so. While his split was motivated by the war in Iran, he also intimated in recent weeks that Trump – after an expletive-laden post on Easter, an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus and an ongoing feud with the pope – is waging an attack on the Christian faith.
“Could there be a spiritual component to what we’re watching?” Carlson said in an episode of his podcast. “Could this be the antichrist? Well, who knows? At least that’s my conclusion. Who knows?” he said in a subsequent episode.
Carlson has also pushed the idea that FBI lied about the Butler shooter, and the theory that the shooting was staged has gained prominence in recent weeks, Wired reported. Tim Dillon, a comedian and podcaster who previously supported Trump, said this month that people maybe didn’t know the “full story” about the assassination attempt. “Maybe it was staged. Maybe it was faked. I think now is the time to just come out and say we staged the assassination attempt in Butler,” he said.
Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories, said that for years, the president had been able to hold power while claiming he was a victim of power, advanced by a deep state, political opponents and the media.
“That can only work for so long,” Uscinski said days before Saturday’s assassination attempt. “So eventually, like moths to a flame, these conspiracy-minded people in this coalition are going to turn their ire towards him, and that’s what we’re seeing happening. And it should not be surprising that a coalition built with a bunch of cantankerous personalities at some point can’t get along with each other.”
But Uscinski said the topic of the theories being talked about was not the point.
“We shouldn’t be focusing on the conspiracy theories themselves,” Uscinski said. “We have a coalition of conspiracy-minded people, and we should not be shocked that they believe conspiracy theories.”
Radnitz added that when people are motivated by conspiracy theories, they tend to see conspiracy theories.
“In their worldview, the only explanation for why Trump hasn’t fulfilled his promises is because he’s also now part of the system. He is the system.”
