{"id":15859,"date":"2026-04-28T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T07:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:00:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T07:00:41","slug":"trump-assassination-attempt-sparks-new-wave-of-unfounded-conspiracy-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859","title":{"rendered":"Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"452\" height=\"276\" src=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15860\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62.png 452w, https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62-300x183.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 452px) 100vw, 452px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A fresh wave of conspiracy theories is rolling through social media across the country following Saturday night\u2019s attempted assassination of President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association (WHCA) dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The unfounded theories largely capitalize on short video snippets of those in the room and initial breaking news reports filed moments after a gunman tried to breach a ballroom at the Washington Hilton with Trump and hundreds of other government officials and members of the press inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time Trump had traveled back to the White House to deliver remarks on the incident and posted a photo of the suspected attacker, thousands of social media posts had been circulating online suggesting the episode was \u201cstaged\u201d or somehow faked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reasons users cited for such a hoax were wide ranging, from a desire to distract from the Iran war to a need to justify Trump\u2019s desired ballroom at the White House for hosting large events like the annual WHCA dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s just the latest example of a real shooting prompting false conspiracy theories. The first attempt on Trump\u2019s life at a Butler, Pa., campaign rally in 2024 also sparked false stories, as did the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Experts on disinformation say breaking news is increasingly becoming a breeding ground for unfounded conspiracy theories in part because people are seeing so many things online that turn out not to be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in an information environment where people are just not believing anything they see because they\u2019ve become so exhausted by the steady tide of information everyone is sharing that later turns out to be not true,\u201d Katie Sanders, editor in chief of the fact checking website PolitiFact, told The Hill. \u201cPeople might want to tune all of it out, but that means they\u2019re not in a good position to separate what\u2019s true when breaking news happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kirk\u2019s murder was captured on video that spread quickly online. A man accused of shooting him is standing trial in Utah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that hasn\u2019t stopped theories from spreading that Israel was responsible for Kirk\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Conspiracy theories are also sometimes pushed by figures with large social media followings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the conspiracy theories about Kirk have come from prominent pundits on the right and at least one former top intelligence official in Trump\u2019s administration, Joe Kent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>State actors are also often responsible for spreading conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some social media users on Saturday falsely asserted that the suspect in Saturday\u2019s shooting had Israeli sympathies, a claim that was promoted by the Russian-operated state media outlet RT, The New York Times first reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2022 attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s (D-Calif.) home targeting her husband, Paul Pelosi, sparked days of online conspiracy theories, including from billionaire Elon Musk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the weeks that followed the first assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, many online conspiracy theorists alleged that the shooting was staged to distract from negative headlines surrounding Trump\u2019s candidacy at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such chatter likely \u201cprimed\u201d some of the online skepticism that took place after Saturday\u2019s events, Sanders said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The White House on Monday publicly denounced misinformation circulating online about Saturday\u2019s incident but stopped short of saying what efforts it had taken to work with social media companies to quell the spread of false rumors about the shooting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fresh wave of conspiracy theories is rolling through social media across the country following Saturday night\u2019s attempted assassination of President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association (WHCA) dinner. The unfounded theories largely capitalize on short video snippets of those in the room and initial breaking news reports filed moments after a gunman [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1724,61],"class_list":["post-15859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A fresh wave of conspiracy theories is rolling through social media across the country following Saturday night\u2019s attempted assassination of President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association (WHCA) dinner. The unfounded theories largely capitalize on short video snippets of those in the room and initial breaking news reports filed moments after a gunman [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-04-28T07:00:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-04-28T07:00:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"452\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"276\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Susan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/\",\"name\":\"LISTEN WORLD\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62.png\",\"width\":452,\"height\":276},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859\",\"name\":\"Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories - LISTEN WORLD\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-04-28T07:00:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-28T07:00:41+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/#\/schema\/person\/498ae6e9ab176e1d69d1e7eca8de7977\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"\u9996\u9875\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/#\/schema\/person\/498ae6e9ab176e1d69d1e7eca8de7977\",\"name\":\"Susan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5b524a019e7b5d16b90d0eee2bd96558a7a5ffc499732f852410f53bc0a7e251?s=96&d=wavatar&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5b524a019e7b5d16b90d0eee2bd96558a7a5ffc499732f852410f53bc0a7e251?s=96&d=wavatar&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Susan\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?author=7\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories - LISTEN WORLD","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15859","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Trump assassination attempt sparks new wave of unfounded conspiracy theories - LISTEN WORLD","og_description":"A fresh wave of conspiracy theories is rolling through social media across the country following Saturday night\u2019s attempted assassination of President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association (WHCA) dinner. 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