For the elite Secret Service Agents, it took just a minute to "neutralise" the shooter, who made an assassination bid on former US President and Republican candidate for the upcoming US elections Donald Trump.
While the Secret Service confirmed on X that the shooter was dead, his identity has not yet been confirmed. But, federal investigators have tentatively identified the shooter as a male in his 20s. He hails from Pennsylvania, according to five senior U.S. law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
However, the NY Post has named 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the assailant. Crooks positioned himself 130 yards away from the stage where the presidential campaign event was under full swing.
Why Crooks fired on Trump is unclear. He was shot in the head by SS agents. "The Secret Service blew his head off," the supporter told the reporters.
Amid this, conspiracy theories began doing rounds on social media. Many took to social media in the US to peddle wild theories about the attack, including whether or not the shooting was staged. Though most of them had little information about the identity of the shooter or what unfolded at the Butlet event, it did not stop netizens from pushing unverified or unsupported claims on X.
Interestingly, along with the video of the incident that went viral, the words "Trump" and "staged" too began trending. "Staged” became the second-highest trending topic with over 228,000 posts on the platform using the word, according to NBC News.
Posts suggesting that the shooting was staged were viewed several millions of times on X, while the same sentiments were echoed in Meta's Instagram and Threads, though to much smaller audiences.
Another topic that went trending on X was "Antifa" after social media posts misidentified the gunman responsible for Saturday’s shooting. The posts blamed a "prominent Antifa activist" Mark Violets for the shooting. Antifa is a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement in the United States.
One account went overboard with a photo of a man in sunglasses and a black hat, stating it was a screenshot from a video posted to YouTube before the attack in which the man claimed "justice was coming." The man, Marco Violi, was actually an Italian YouTuber who vlogs about football.
The post went viral so much that Violi had to clarify that the news was fake. He wrote in Italian on his Instagram account, "I strongly deny I was involved in this situation. I was awake in the middle of the night ( 2 am in Italy to be precise) from the many notifications I received on Instagram and on X. I am in Italy, I am in Rome and I had no idea what happened".
