It was the first attempted assassination of a current or former US president in the era of social media, and the conspiracy theories, finger-pointing and campaign gamesmanship moved at the speed of the internet, far faster than the actual facts of what transpired at former president Donald Trump’s campaign rally.
In the era of memes, X posts, Truths, Threads and TikTok, introspection was never going to be the dominant mood.A picture of Trump, fist aloft, American flag fluttering overhead, became iconic in an instant. Within minutes of the first images of Trump grabbing his wounded ear Saturday, voices on the left were calling it staged. Arch conspiracy theories came from the far-right who suggested that the Secret Service was somehow in on it through the “Deep State Intel Community”.
X posters and internet sleuths even named the shooter — incorrectly. The man was in fact a soccer journalist in Italy. Among younger social media users, an image of Trump’s face photoshopped into a portrait of Vincent van Gogh with a bandaged, partly amputated ear was widely shared.