President Donald Trump has been confronted by online claims that the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was “staged.”
Trump, 79, hit the floor and crawled out of Saturday night’s event surrounded by Secret Service agents. Moments before shots were fired, the family of Cole Tomas Allen, 31, were sent a manifesto saying from the suspected gunman.
However, shortly after the security breach, social media erupted with conspiracy theories that the shooting was part of a plot to distract from Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, his falling popularity, or to justify his contentious vanity ballroom after court appeals.
By midday Sunday, data from TweetBinder indicated that the term “staged” appeared in more than 300,000 X posts.
In bonus footage from an extended Sunday evening interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell, Trump was asked about the growing theories, from the “left and the right” that the shooting was “staged” or that it “didn’t happen.”
The president said he had not heard any of the theories until O’Donnell asked him.
“I think they’re more sick than they are con people,” Trump said of conspiracy theorists. “But there’s a lot of con in there too.”
“I haven’t heard that last night didn’t happen... usually takes a little bit longer. Usually, they wait about two or three months to start saying that.”
O’Donnell also mentioned previous Trump-related conspiracy theories, including that the attempt on his life during a 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, “didn’t happen.”
The president’s ear was grazed by a bullet, and the suspected gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by the Secret Service.
Trump added more conspiracies to the list, suggesting some believe Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel “didn’t happen” and that “World War II didn’t happen and the Holocaust didn’t happen, and many things didn’t happen.”
O’Donnell pressed Trump further, asking if he knew where the rumors that the shooting at the Washington Hilton hotel was staged were “coming from.”
“I think that’d be a tough one,” Trump said of believing the event was faked. “I think that would be a tough sell.”
The president is no stranger to promoting conspiracy theories, from his repeated claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to suggesting Michelle Obama used President Joe Biden’s autopen to issue pardons in his final days in office.
Trump has also called the Epstein files a “Democrat hoax” and a criminal conspiracy designed to damage him.
During the 60 Minutes interview, O’Donnell presented Trump with excerpts from Allen’s manifesto, where he stated he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” the president replied. “Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
“Oh, do you think he was referring to you?” O’Donnell asked, before Trump continued.
“I’m not a pedophile. Excuse me. Excuse me. I’m not a pedophile. You read that c--p from some sick person? I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview and they’ll probably’—I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”
