Amid a shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner venue that appeared to target U.S. President Donald Trump and senior administration officials, conspiracy theories related to the incident are spreading on social media.
The New York Times (NYT), a U.S. daily newspaper, reported on the 26th that “as soon as reports of the shooting incident emerged the previous day, social media was flooded with conspiracy theories and blame-shifting,” adding that “influencers are filling information gaps with speculative remarks to gain attention.”
A prominent conspiracy theory is the rumor that the incident was staged. The claim is that President Trump fabricated the event to divert attention from his low approval ratings in polls or negative public sentiment regarding the Iran war. According to data from TweetBinder, a subsidiary of social media analytics firm Audiense, by noon on the 26th, posts containing the word “staged” on X (formerly Twitter) had surged by over 300,000. However, some of these posts also refuted the staged theory.
For instance, some netizens cited an interview conducted by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt with Fox News before the event as evidence for the conspiracy theory. At the time, Leavitt said, “Tonight’s speech by President Trump will be exciting. There will be some ‘shots fired’ tonight in the room. So everyone should tune in.” While her use of the phrase “shots fired” to describe Trump’s blunt remarks was coincidental,...
What happened? The owner of this website (www.khmertimeskh.com) has banned your IP address (64.62.158.116). Please see https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/troubleshooting/http-status-codes/...