Stop spreading conspiracy theories about the WHCD shooting

The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has triggered an explosion in baseless conspiracy theories that the incident was somehow staged by President Donald Trump. These narratives, particularly common among left-leaning accounts on social media, involve no evidence and fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. Yet they’re being propelled by some high-profile prominent commentators, activists and at least one Democratic lawmaker who should know better.

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It is understandable that some people believe that Trump — an aspiring tyrant and committed purveyor of disinformation — is capable of doing something crooked to repress dissent and amass power. But theories based on gut-level anxiety and theoretical possibilities are no substitute for evidence and common sense. And there are costs to succumbing to explanations that have no verifiable grounding in reality.

Many of the conspiracy theories fixate on the fact that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a red carpet interview ahead of the event, “It’ll be funny, it’ll be entertaining, there will be some shots fired tonight.” “Shots fired” is a common turn of phrase to describe a put-down or call out, and Leavitt was describing anticipating Trump’s address at the dinner. 

But “staged” shooting proponents have read this as a sign that the gunman was part of a “false flag” operation — an action orchestrated by Trump’s inner circle and designed to blame his opponents. It takes maybe half a second of reflection to realize that if Leavitt was in on this whole deceptive operation, then she would not have hinted at it, because that would defeat the entire purpose of any secrecy. Her use of the term is a not-particularly remarkable coincidence.

Another “suspicious” data point for the “staged” shooting theorists is that Trump immediately used the event to demand that lawsuits against his expensive and ethically disastrous White House ballroom be lifted to allow presidents to do events there in the future. If that were true, that would be a comically unambitious reason to try to pull off the kind of stunt which, if uncovered, would be ruinous for Trump’s presidency — a presidency that has struggled to cover up scandal after scandal. Remember, Trump used a Department of Government Efficiency employee getting mugged as a pretext to send the National Guard to occupy the streets of Washington, D.C.

Some point to the poor security Saturday night. But such lapses are hardly exclusive to Trump. And on what basis can one attribute to malice what is most easily explained by incompetence?

In addition to providing even one piece of evidence of foul play, “staged” shooting theorists would have to answer many other questions. Why orchestrate such a major event and have it end so anticlimactically? The gunman was apprehended outside the ballroom, and there were no fatalities. And if any behind-the-scenes operators wanted to properly cover their tracks, surely the gunman would not be alive — a clear liability for the planners. And how exactly does an administration that leaks to the press like a sieve and demonstrates breathtaking incompetence daily manage to not just pull off an enormously complicated operation, but also get potentially hundreds of people across different institutions to never speak a word of it to anyone?