RIGHT AFTER FORMER president Donald Trump was shot at his campaign rally in Pennsylvania, conspiracy theories exploded online. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we discuss the subsequent calls for violence and civil war, and the way that militias are recruiting off of the incident. Plus, we report from the Republican National Convention on the reaction to Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.

Mentioned this week:

Militias Are Recruiting Off of the Trump Shooting by Tess Owen
Far-Right Extremists Call for Violence and War After Trump Shooting by David Gilbert
Trump Shooting Conspiracies Are Coming From Every Direction by David Gilbert
Elon Musk Among Tech Heavyweights to Rally Behind J.D. Vance VP Pick by Makena Kelly
Influencers Are Racing to Profit From the Trump Shooting by Makena Kelly

Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Leah Feiger: This is WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. I'm Leah Feiger, the senior politics editor at WIRED.

[Archival audio]: If you're just joining us right now, as if this campaign couldn't get more historic and unprecedented, what law enforcement officials are now investigating as a possible assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.

Leah Feiger: On Saturday, a twenty-year-old from Pennsylvania, shot at former President Donald Trump while he was speaking at a campaign rally.

[Archival audio]: What we did see following the shots was we saw the president hit the ground.

[Archival audio]: Secret Service rushing towards a former president, jumping on him and forming sort of a human shield as other law enforcement officers jump on the stage, the former president pumping his fist as the crowd started cheering when they saw that he was okay

Leah Feiger: And immediately after Trump was shot, conspiracies online exploded. At the same time, calls for violence and even civil war spread.

[Archival audio]: We are already seeing this incident being politicized. Some Republicans pointing a finger at the President already arguing, of course, baselessly that the President Biden is somehow to blame for this.

Leah Feiger: Joining me to talk about everything that happened is WIRED reporter David Gilbert, and after we'll hear from WIRED senior reporter, Makena Kelly, who is currently at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. David, you have been incredibly busy since Saturday.

David Gilbert: Yeah, it's been a crazy 48, 72, whatever it's been. I don't even know what day, or time, or week it is at this stage.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, this has been just so wild to watch it all unfold. Conspiracies have been everywhere since the shooting at Trump's Pennsylvania rally. Take us through the major ones.

David Gilbert: So yeah, from the minutes after the shooting it started, and it is probably something I've never experienced before, the volume, and the scale, and the scope of them. And I think what's interesting about this time is that they weren't just coming from one side or the other. They were coming from all sides. So, the most common narratives we saw from the pro-Trump side were that this was ordered by Biden or this was the result of Democrats pushing rhetoric, calling Trump, "Hitler," or this was the result of the media. And one of the later ones was that this was to blame on DEI or women, because they were Secret Service agents who were women as part of his service. So, on the other side, on the left, we don't typically see this, but we saw that again, almost immediately, people started calling this staged or a false flag, suggesting that he had somehow orchestrated this shooting so that a sniper would graze the top of his ear and it would help him win the election. So, just the volume, and the scope, and the scale of the conspiracies that we saw were just unprecedented.

Leah Feiger: It's wild to hear you, David Gilbert conspiracy say that this is unprecedented even for what you've been reporting on for the last couple of years.

David Gilbert: Yeah, it really is. And obviously we've had Stop the Steal and all those election conspiracies. Even more recently after the invasion of Gaza by Israel, and previous to that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we saw this massive volume of conspiracies. But, this time around there was just something different. It was just all pervasive. It was coming from everywhere. It was impossible to get any verified information on platforms, particularly X, but other platforms like Facebook, and Instagram, and TikTok, all this stuff was trending as well. And so, it just felt different. We knew it was coming, because it happened my time, because I'm based in Ireland, it happened Saturday night. I knew when I woke up on Sunday morning that this would be an absolute mess. There would be a flood of conspiracies. And, I think, the main reason for this happening now, obviously because Trump is this divisive figure, but also I think the fact that there is such an information void about how this happened and who this guy who took the shot was. And when there's a void like that, conspiracies are going to fill it.

Leah Feiger: And, the FBI got in there ASAP. There's a part of me that's wondering if this is going to end up being on par with the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, new Moon landing conspiracy theories. Is this joining the Hall of Fame?

David Gilbert: It's getting there, because unless we find out more about the motive, and we may never find out anything about the motive, because right now there is very little digital footprint for the shooter that we know of. We know the FBI has gained access to his phone, so maybe we'll learn something from that or maybe we won't. And if there is no solid... A 10-page manifesto listing out all the reasons why he did what he did, then we're going to be left with the conspiracies to fill the void. We're going to be left with people speculating about this for years. And as you say, it may just become one of these conspiracies that joins the who's who of conspiracy theories like the JFK shooting, like the Moon landing.

Leah Feiger: And this all comes as Republicans in the far right have been placing a lot of blame on Democrats and Biden for the assassination attempt. And at the same time you've been reporting that there've been calls for violence and even civil war from a lot of fun corners of the internet. How quickly did that start and who's spreading this?

David Gilbert: At the same time as the conspiracies began spreading the threats for violence, the calls for civil war began to spread in the normal places you'd expect to find them. So, private telegram channels for militias like the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, active clubs, we saw all these messages where people talked about getting their guns to take retribution, to take up arms against whoever they believed were the enemy, whether it was the media, the left, Biden, whoever it was. And then on pro-Trump message boards like TheDonald, we saw a huge spike once again in calls for civil war taking up arms. Now, that's something that we see or we have seen multiple times over the course of the last two years since January 6th. And that was the big one where we saw people talking about taking action and actually taking action. And we've seen it multiple times since, but not every time. So, you can't say that when you see this spike in calls for violence that we will ultimately see violence. But, on Telegram, for example, I was looking at some data that was sent to me today by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, and it said, "Calls for civil war grew a staggering 1,244% in the 24 hours after the shooting."

Leah Feiger: Wow.

David Gilbert: Just the volume is just incredible.

Leah Feiger: Wow. This does feel new. This does feel big. And separately, this isn't just these corners of the internet either. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia wrote on X right after the shooting that the Republican District Attorney in Butler County PA should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.

David Gilbert: I think that's a very important distinction to make, that the calls and the blame that is being put on Biden or the Democrats is coming from within the house literally. It's coming from elected members of Congress. We saw J.D. Vance who was announced this week as Trump's running mate, he made a comment kind of blaming the left. He didn't go as far as pinning it directly on Biden, but he insinuated that the shooting was a direct result of the left. And it's very important to be clear here, we have no idea what the motive was. We don't know if the shooter was a Democrat or had left-wing tendencies. We just don't know. So, to make those assertions is so dangerous in a febrile environment that America is today, and straight away after the shooting is just so dangerous when it comes from elected officials. Whereas the calls on the left, the conspiracies about it being staged or faked, we're not coming from elected members of the Democratic Party for the most part. It's an important distinction to make I think there.

Leah Feiger: And we have to talk about that this is also now being used, the shooting is being used as a recruitment tool for militias around the country. WIRED contributor, Tess Owen reported a piece this week about how militias are quite literally using this shooting to try and spread their message.

David Gilbert: I think the most incredible thing about this is that a lot of it is happening in the open. Tess has reported for us before about how these groups are organizing quite openly on Facebook. While some are in private groups, some are quite open. And for another story, I was looking into militias, and you just put in militia into Facebook and you will get a whole host of groups. And these groups are talking about organizing, training and recruiting. And as Tess reported, they're now using this shooting to radicalize effectively their membership or to find new members, and talking about that this is a moment where people have to not join a political party but join a militia instead, because that is a more effective use of their time and their resources.

Leah Feiger: And I have to read even just one of the quotes from her piece, but go read it, it's linked in the show notes. But, this quote from a leader of a Kentucky militia on Facebook, "You can sit and enjoy the show or you can join it. There will come a time, you will have no choice." Like you said, it's happening so openly.

David Gilbert: It is, and it's been happening all along, but this seems to be, could potentially at least be a tipping point where it's going to get a lot more people off their seats or off their couches and actually go and do something. Because, I guess, a lot of people view it as because of the way Trump reacted to the shooting in his hands, his fist raised in the air and being defiant, a lot of the chatter you see online is how he is now viewed as this God appointed hero of America, this person who they tried to take down but they couldn't. And people are reacting to that online, people who have been on the fence about Trump. And you thought maybe they did support him, are coming out openly and full-throatedly in support of him now. Elon Musk is probably the best of example, who minutes after the shooting came out and said he fully endorsed Donald Trump, and he's now raising money for Trump as well. So, this is a big moment for Trump and for these groups who are trying to recruit on the back of what happened.

Leah Feiger: I feel like a broken record on this show, but now more than ever this year, it seems like social media companies should be taking this stuff down. Where is the content moderation here, and is it even possible at this point for them to tamp down on all of this?

David Gilbert: Randomly, the only place I saw any type of content moderation around this over the last few days was on TheDonald, this kind of extremist pro-Trump message board where they did delete a couple of messages.

Leah Feiger: That's wild.

David Gilbert: Yeah, it's crazy, with really explicit calls for violence and they deleted them. But, everywhere else that I've seen on X, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, there's just been very, very little content moderation. Either there has been some notes appended to videos about conspiracy theories, but the conspiracies are still spreading. They're getting viewed by millions and millions of people. And it's just what we've seen over and over again. As you said, social media companies have just abdicated their responsibility and are no longer taking this stuff seriously and are just having a free for all for everyone on their platforms.

Leah Feiger: David, thank you so much for all of your hard work on this. When we come back, WIRED senior reporter, Makena Kelly joins us from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.




https://www.wired.com/story/trump-shooting-conspiracies-war/

"With Guns like dis, who needs enemies"


Popcaan

Na wa wool


Winter is coming to America.

Party never start they won start to share groundnut for each other


MOD Abeg move to front page please.

Lol
For US that gun population is way higher than human population?? They will just send each other into extinction