Moments after the FBI confirmed on Sunday that former President Donald Trump was the target of a second assassination attempt, theories and misinformation flooded social media.
It’s the new norm: Before the full story has even been pieced together, social feeds fill up with speculation and conspiracy theories presented as facts. Experts told Yahoo News that a lot of it stems from conspiracy theorists taking advantage of the public’s expectation to get information as fast as possible — regardless of who or where it’s from.
“What we see after these events are certain actors taking advantage of the information lapse — the period of time between when an incident has been reported and the announcement of investigative findings,” Katherine Keneally, the director of threat analysis and prevention for the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Keneally argues that this time allows spectators to shape their own narratives “to fit their worldview” without the constraints of facts or reality. In fact, in many cases, people have already decided what their opinions and theories are before events have even happened, Mike Rothschild, a journalist and conspiracy theory expert, explained.
“We already know that we’re either going to blame the incidents on the anti-Trump deep state or Trump himself,” Rothschild told Yahoo News. “By the time we do know the facts of a case, our opinions have been set in stone.”
Shortly after news of the assassination attempt broke, many rushed to question the validity of the threat, with the term "staged" even trending on X. These conspiracy theories gained steam even as the FBI publicly characterized the situation as “what appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump.”
Across X, other theories included that the assassination attempts were an inside job, that the FBI is behind it all and that Time Magazine knew what was going to happen — all claims without any evidence to support them.
The first assassination attempt against Trump in July only fanned the flames of these conspiracy theories the second time around. In mid-July, Republican political figures kept referring to a "they" who was allegedly responsible for trying to kill Trump, suggesting a grander conspiracy behind the attack rather than a lone gunman, as law enforcement officials have determined.
That line of thinking carried over into Sunday's attempt. X owner Elon Musk, for example, tried to sow doubts in the aftermath of the second assassination attempt, tweeting “No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”
While Musk deleted the tweet, claiming it was a "joke," it was still shared with his nearly 200 million X followers. X did not respond to Yahoo News’ request for comment.
Trump himself even waded into the narrative.
“[Ryan Wesley Routh] believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said during a Sept. 16 interview with Fox News. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out."
While voting records report Routh is unaffiliated with any political party, he allegedly has a history of anti-Trump posts on social media and has donated to Democratic causes. Officials have not disclosed a motivation for the alleged assassination attempt.
A global threat
While conspiracy theories certainly predate the internet, the current climate is arguably as bad as it has ever been. A 2024 report from the World Economic Forum ranked "misinformation and disinformation" as "the most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years" with the consequence "furthering widen[ing] societal and political divides."
The combination of powerful, automated algorithms, rapidly advancing technology like AI, a lack of moderation on social media platforms and an unprecedented news cycle all combine to fuel disinformation and confuse the average reader.
“Algorithms on these platforms favor more extreme content, further enabling the reach of conspiracy theories,” Keneally explained.
Rothschild also argues that rare events, such as two presidential assassination attempts in two months, are a natural jumping-off point for conspiracies to thrive.
The snake is eating its tail at this point. Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies at Boston University who researches misinformation, describes the "life cycle of a media manipulation campaign" as a feedback loop. "Media manipulators," as Donovan calls them, plant stories across social platforms that are then picked up by activists, politicians and journalists. This causes changes to the information ecosystem — while journalists are held to an ethical standard in their reporting, media manipulators on social media are not, which means an average reader searching for information can easily come across these conspiracy theories. As platforms and outlets try to moderate and combat this misinformation, manipulators adjust their tactics.
The situation could get only worse as the November election nears, with election officials already facing an onslaught of disinformation.
It's what happened with the baseless theory that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. While the rumor has been around for decades as a form of xenophobia towards Haitians, it was a Springfield woman's Facebook post that thrust the claim into the national spotlight. Blood Tribe, a national neo-Nazi group, started promoting it on Gab and Telegram, social platforms that are popular with right-wing extremists. Then it spread to X.
Vice presidential nominee JD Vance shared the story to his 1.9 million X followers where it was shared over 31,000 times. It was later reported by the Wall Street Journal that a Vance staff member asked the Springfield city manager about the rumor after Vance had tweeted, only to be told that the claims were "baseless." It did not deter Vance.
Trump then brought it up during the presidential debate, pushing back against moderator, ABC News anchor David Muir’s fact-checking by saying he’d seen “people on television [saying,] ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’”
As with previous MAGA-fueled misinformation — that the 2020 election was rigged and "birther" conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama, Harris and former Gov. Nikki Haley — the conversations around the second assassination attempt are building a feedback loop that conspiracy theorists are feeding into and that prominent figures can amplify.
There are some attempts underway to correct this. On Tuesday, Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner sent a letter to major tech companies asking them to take "decisive action" against disinformation as the November election nears. But unless companies take action, it may be too little, too late.
“The current social media ecosystem does not currently have effective guardrails to mitigate the spread of mis- or disinformation online,” Keneally said. “We have long been past the point of no return when it comes to expecting the platforms to act in good faith and self-regulate.”