X marks the plot: Trump assassination attempt triggers online conspiracy theories
X marks the plot: Trump assassination attempt triggers online conspiracy theories
X users point to the lack of blood, crowd's calm, and campaign photos as evidence of a fake event.
Hours after the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump, conspiracy theories are already flooding social media, including claims that the event was faked. These theories are being promoted on the X Hot Topics list (formerly Twitter).
The assassination attempt on Trump, the first time in nearly 45 years that an assassin has attempted to kill a president or former president, is expected to become the central issue of the election campaign. The image of Trump swinging his fist after being shot (and very slightly wounded) will likely become one of the iconic images of American history. It is already spreading widely on social networks and will most likely be at the center of Trump's campaign in the coming months.
The controlling owner of X, Elon Musk, announced following the assassination attempt that he supports Trump's candidacy for the presidency "fully." However, at the same time, X also serves as a platform for spreading fresh conspiracy theories around the incident.
In the hours after the incident, two issues related to the assassination attempt that trended in the Hot Topics list on X dealt with conspiracy theories: #staged and #falseflag. At the center of both is the claim (without evidence) that the event was staged. "Pay attention to the lack of urgency and the crowd's reaction," wrote one uesr. Another user wrote: "If someone shot me in the head, I wouldn't stop for a campaign photo."
Another user added: "Crisis actors should be paid better. They've never looked so unconcerned." One user offered a pseudo-physical analysis of the shooting: "How come a bullet supposedly grazes Trump's ear but everyone behind him is fine?" he wrote. "And he touches his ear, and there is no blood on his hand?"
The posts on the topic have gained between several tens of thousands and several hundreds of thousands of views each. As of the time of writing this news, they are all still available on X. None of them offers a comprehensive theory of the conspiracy; they are only short posts that point to the apparent unreliability of the event. However, their inclusion in the list of Hot Topics increases their circulation and can make them the core of a new broad conspiracy theory that will play a significant role in American politics in the coming months.
X's promotion of these fresh conspiracy theories is not surprising, given the broad free speech Musk has championed on the platform since acquiring it. Not least because Musk himself is also spreading a conspiracy theory around the assassination attempt, claiming it indicates extreme incompetence or that it was a "deliberate" move by the Secret Service.
The situation on other social platforms seems less dire. The query “Trump” on YouTube mostly provides videos and live broadcasts of major news networks. Trying to search for conspiracy theories with the query “Trump conspiracy” only displays information from reliable sources. On Facebook, “Trump” mainly provides posts from news site pages, and “Trump conspiracy” mostly reports critical of the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination attempt. However, one of the first results there was a post that claimed it was an attempt by "the most powerful forces in the world" to prevent Trump from becoming president.
