Dispatch: 5 viral myths as dinner shooting sparks fresh conspiracy theories
From AI-generated shooter videos to mentalist 'secret signals', Eurovision News Spotlight debunks the viral misinformation surrounding the Washington Hilton shooting
U.S. President Donald Trump was evacuated from a gala dinner on Saturday night when a gunman stormed the area inside a Washington D.C. hotel where the event was taking place.
The suspect was identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen. He was charged on Monday with attempting to assassinate the president. The suspect was tackled by agents near a staircase which leads down into a ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel.
Inside the ballroom, the annual White House correspondents' dinner was just getting underway. Hundreds of journalists and public figures were in attendance.
Just as previous assassination attempts have captured the imaginations of social media users, this latest threat to Donald Trump’s life spawned a deluge of fake images, unsubstantiated claims and outright conspiracy theories.
The following fact-checks were analysed by members of Eurovision News Spotlight.
Journalist accused of stealing bottle of wine
One video that received over 10 million views on various platforms showed a female journalist allegedly ‘stealing’ two bottles of wine as she was leaving the ballroom after the shooting.
The video prompted lots of discourse on social media, including false allegations about the woman’s identity (like one that said she was the Ukrainian ambassador). However, the woman is indeed a journalist and there is no evidence that this was a theft.
SVT identified the journalist and spoke to her colleague. They reported: “The dinner is normally paid for by the guests or their organisations, and the woman’s colleague told SVT that the wine had been paid for by the company they work for, and that their bosses urged them to bring what they had paid for.”
The videos also showed many others picking up bottles of wine along with their belongings as they prepared to leave the venue.
SVT Verifierar: Five viral claims after the shooting at the gala dinner
Leavitt’s comments taken out of context
One of the claims that circulated on social media was that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt predicted the attempted attack before it happened, when she said “there will be some shots fired tonight in the room”.
But context is everything. Leavitt was actually referring to Trump’s speech, and the barbs he was expected to throw out in the room full of journalists.
In a pre-dinner interview with Fox News, she said: “[Donald Trump] is ready to rumble. I will tell you, this speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It’ll be funny, it’ll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room.”
‘Shots fired’ is an idiom that is often used to describe a sharp insult or a diss. It’s purely coincidental that it was the term she used ahead of an attempted shooting.
There was another Karoline Leavitt-involved theory. A short clip from Fox News was shared around, in which journalist Aishah Hasnie said that Leavitt’s husband had warned her at the event to be careful. The clip was cut short, with the Fox host confirming that it “sounds like we lost Aishah’s phone”.
Theorists claimed that this was evidence that the attack was known about beforehand. However, Hasnie later confirmed that her calls were dropping “because there is barely any service in that ballroom”.
She added: “To finish the story, he was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy. Which is what my own father and other people have also said to me recently. He was expressing his concern for my safety. I was going to say - before I lost my signal - that it was unfortunate that only a short time later, this all happened.”
ZDF heute: Shots fired at Trump gala - conspiracy theories are now circulating
Video of the running suspect was created with AI
A video circulating on social media was presented as if it were real footage of a suspect running past a metal detector while several guards pointed their weapons at him.
However, the footage is fake and was generated using artificial intelligence, although based on real security camera footage from the Hilton hotel. A frame-by-frame analysis revealed errors typical of AI — like an agent’s hat and jacket changing mid-clip, and gibberish text on police officers’ jackets.
Additionally, the recording circulating on social media showed the CapCut AI watermark in the upper left corner. An X user claimed to have created the video using AI, saying: “I enhanced the security footage from last nights assassination attempt using AI. The footage was extremely low quality and it seems AI made up some things to fill in the gaps, but gives a better view of what took place,” they said.
VerificaRTVE: Hoaxes and conspiracy theories about the attempted attack against Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
The mystery of the man with the piece of paper
A lot of online speculation centred on the man who, shortly before the attempted shooting, showed a piece of paper with something written on it to Donald Trump, Melania Trump, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Weijia Jiang.
In multiple videos, the group was seen reacting to whatever was shown on the paper, seconds before they heard the shots outside the room. Guesswork by social media users surmised that this man was announcing the attack, or that he was giving a secret signal by holding up a card.
However, the man is Oz Pearlman, a mentalist who was there to entertain guests. He has since described the mind-reading trick he was performing at the time — the reveal of Karoline Leavitt’s baby name. She is due to give birth in the coming weeks.
Other, manipulated versions of the image of Pearlman holding the piece of paper showed various writings on the page.
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Conspiracy theories about ‘false flag operation’
Some internet users on both sides of the political spectrum believe that the shooting at the White House Correspondents' dinner could have been a staged event intended to advance the interests of the American president.
CBC’s French-language broadcaster Radio-Canada reported that the theories had even reached the political class. Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas posted on Threads: “Has there ever been a president have this many close ‘attempts’ on their life? Maybe it’s lax gun laws, maybe it’s lack of mental health funding, or maybe it’s fake… who knows …”
There are multiple strands of the conspiracy theory claiming that the incident was staged, including that it was an attempt to boost Trump’s popularity amid his war with Iran — which has been unpopular with parts of his base — or that it was a bid to secure his planned ballroom at the White House.
There’s no evidence that the attempted shooting was fake, but since the weekend, the Trump administration has been citing the security risks highlighted by the incident to further the project, which has up to now faced considerable legal obstacles.
Early this week, in the wake of the shooting, Republicans made a fresh push to secure public funding for the ballroom, and Donald Trump himself commented that the ballroom is needed to hold large-scale events with heightened security.
All of these new ‘false flag’ claims can be added to the pantheon of conspiracy theories about the various assassination attempts on Donald Trump. The 2024 attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, still looms large almost two years later for those who believe, without evidence, that it was a setup.
Radio-Canada: Shooting at the correspondents’ dinner: conspiracy theories flood the web