A disturbing conspiracy theory is trending online Read more: 👇👇

The Karoline Leavitt interview
A widely shared Reddit post on r/allthequestions, which accumulated over 2,500 upvotes within 24 hours, laid out a list of reasons why users believe the shooting was a fabrication. It is worth walking through these claims — not because they are credible, but because they are spreading widely and each one has a specific answer.

The most viral claim centres on White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Before the dinner, Leavitt gave an interview on the Fox News red carpet with comedian and host Jimmy Failla, Yahoo reports.

In it, she said: “This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It will be funny. It will be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room. So everyone should tune in.”

Posts on X and Instagram have circulated this clip with captions suggesting she had foreknowledge of the shooting, with some asking: “What did Karoline Leavitt know?”

Fact checkers at both Snopes and PolitiFact have addressed this directly. The phrase ‘shots fired’ is a widely used figure of speech meaning pointed jokes or jabs — entirely standard in the context of discussing a president’s comedy speech at a correspondents’ dinner.

Leavitt’s full remarks, in context, were about Trump’s planned comedy routine. Failla had just said to her: “This man is ready to rumble, is he not?” — a reference to the event’s tradition of presidential roasts.