Shooting At The 'White House Correspondents' Dinner' Inspires A Host Of Conspiracy Theories

The White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting was a shooting that took place at the 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25th, 2026. The shooting, a reported assassination attempt on U.S. President Donald Trump's life, resulted in one injury and no deaths, and a suspect, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, was apprehended on the scene and taken into custody. The incident brought into question the efficacy of the security at the event, although Trump later stated that the Secret Service did an "excellent job neutralising the shooter." According to a manifesto allegedly sent by Allen to family members prior to the shooting, Allen was targeting Trump because he was "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat [his] hands with his crimes." After the shooting took place, conspiracy theories related to it went viral on social media. These include theories that the shooting was staged or a "false flag" and that Cole Tomas Allen was working with Israel and the IDF, and time travel theories claiming that Allen was a time traveler who previously tried to warn people about Trump prior to the shooting using cryptic methods.