“Both sides do it!” And in this incident, that is actually factually true.
Almost immediately after the 20-year-old, registered Republican, Thomas Matthew Crooks, tried to take out FORMER (p)resident, Donald J. Trump, the conspiracy theories from the far sides of both political spectrums began.
“Incidents of political violence spawn conspiracy theories and false narratives when people try to spin the event to suit their various agendas,” Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told The Washington Post. “This incident is no different, with people concocting ‘false flag’ conspiracies and even blaming innocent people for either committing this crime or inspiring it.”
Conspiracies from the Left:
- Some accounts from the left of the political spectrum immediately claimed that the shooting was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by Trump’s own supporters.
- Thousands of people retweeted unsubstantiated claims that the shots came from a BB gun.
Conspiracies from the Right:
- More broadly on social media, a TikTok user who posts under the handle @theoldermillenial.1 told his 1.2 million followers, “I guess because the court cases weren’t going so well, they decided to try a different avenue. Guys, don’t forget, this is what the left is capable of.” Shadow of Ezra, an anonymous conspiracy theorist account on X, wrote that “The Deep State tried to assassinate Donald Trump live on television,” in a post that received over a million views, according to data gathered by Junkipedia, a repository of social media content. A follow-up, describing the shooting as “the price you pay when you take down elite satanic pedophiles,” was viewed more than 2.5 million times.
- “They want a CIVIL WAR. We MUST WIN,” wrote Jackson Lahmeyer, the Oklahoma-based head of the far-right Pastors for Trump group, in an email to subscribers within a couple of hours of the incident.
- Pastors for Trump said in the email that the “Deep State FAILED. God’s Hand of Protection is on President Trump.”
- Conservative influencer Laura Loomer and radio host Erick Erickson blamed Biden for the shooting, citing his comments days ago to donors that it was time to put Trump “in a bull’s eye.”
