00:00Conspiracy theories abound after the White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting
00:09Leaders across Europe have condemned the shooting that took place at the White House Correspondents'
00:14Dinner on the 25th of April, which US President Donald Trump attended.
00:18European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X that she had spoken to and
00:23expressed solidarity with Trump following the attack, which has sparked plenty of speculation
00:27and numerous conspiracy theories. In the aftermath of the incident, influencers and social media
00:33users flooded X, Blue Sky and Instagram with allegations that the attack was staged, despite
00:39multiple journalists reporting first-hand on the incident. But there is no evidence that the
00:44shooting was staged, despite this conspiracy theory taking hold of mainstream media platforms with
00:49millions of views. Some of these posts refer to an image that shows Trump's reaction after the
00:54shooting, while others suggest that Fox News abruptly cut off a reporter as she began to
00:59imply that it was a false flag and was told to stay safe. The Fox reporter, who supposedly
01:04had her call cut, Ayesha Hasni, later posted on X that her call only dropped because there
01:09was little signal in the ballroom and that she was only told to stay safe in general terms,
01:15not as a warning of the attack that was to come. A separate post showed a clip of a man
01:19standing
01:20next to Trump briefly holding up a card. Seconds later, shots can be heard in the background.
01:25Social media users claim that the person holding up the card may have been giving another person a
01:30signal. But the cardholder was Oz Perlman, a mentalist and performer. According to an interview
01:36he gave to CNN, he was performing at the moment this clip was taken. Despite a complete lack of
01:42evidence, these theories were amplified online and even tied without evidence to Israeli causes.
01:47Others were amplified by Russian state media.
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