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By Sofia Rubinson and Juliette Schofield
What’s happening: Immediately after a gunman exchanged fire with law enforcement officers outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25, a cluster of anti-Trump social media accounts began to claim that the shooting was orchestrated by the Trump administration to garner sympathy for the president and distract from his unfavorable news coverage.
Posts advancing the claim generated 80 million views on X alone in less than two days, according to a social media analytics tool used by NewsGuard. Others claimed that Israel was behind the incident and that a video shows the suspected gunman socializing with Second Lady Usha Vance. However, of all the types of claims related to the shooting, the most viral ones by far alleged that the attack was staged.
Many of the same accounts previously claimed that two assassination attempts on Trump in 2024 were also staged. Those making the claims are part of a group that has come to be known as “BlueAnon,” a left-wing mirror of the QAnon conspiracy theory ecosystem.
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A short video circulating widely on social media claims that US Representative Ilhan Omar referred to World War II as “World War 11” while discussing the Alien Enemies Act. The clip has been share...