Shooting conspiracies and Dana White's cortisol spike — Top Comment

[0:00] Dana White, the CEO of UFC and longtime Trump ally, [0:05] this was so cringe. [0:06] He was interviewed afterwards and he was like, [0:09] they told him to get down. [0:10] I didn't get down. [0:11] They were screaming, get down. [0:12] I didn't get down. [0:13] It was awesome. [0:14] I literally took every minute of it in. [0:16] It's like, okay, tough guy. [0:17] Like you didn't get down when like the secret service [0:20] was telling you to get down because an active shooter. [0:22] It reminded me of those joke videos about like [0:25] not giving a girl the ick when the plane is crashing, [0:28] you know, like trying to like make it [0:29] really cool, make yourself look really cool. [0:32] Like, so you, it's like, yeah, like I wasn't even scared. [0:34] Just shut up, get down. [0:35] Like there's a shooter. [0:36] You're not, you're not being tough by being like, [0:38] I stayed standing. [0:40] Yeah. [0:40] Yeah. [0:41] And he said it was awesome. [0:42] The White House correspondence dinner is always held [0:45] at the Hinkley Hilton, the Washington Hilton. [0:48] Um, because it is a, an event about press freedom. [0:52] It isn't something that's held in the White House. [0:54] But right after this happened, a bunch of MAGA influencer [0:57] accounts began posting in unison, don't anyone question the need [1:02] for a ballroom now. [1:03] Right? [1:04] So the, the, the timeline. [1:05] And this is because Donald Trump has said he wants to build [1:08] this ballroom. [1:09] Yes. [1:10] Um, and it's like one of his sort of legacy projects. [1:12] The interesting thing here is the speed and the unity of this [1:16] right-wing message about the ballroom. [1:18] And from MAGA influencers with reach. [1:20] Exactly. [1:21] And the timeline of this is, is interesting. [1:23] The news of the shooting broke out at around 9 p.m. [1:26] Um, the shooter was, uh, in custody, announced to be in custody [1:30] around 9.55 p.m., 10.30 p.m., Trump goes on C-SPAN and starts [1:36] saying, like, we really need this ballroom. [1:39] The military demanding this ballroom. [1:40] It's very secure, et cetera. [1:42] Now, throughout that whole time period from 9 to 10.30 p.m., so many [1:47] different right-wing accounts, popular right-wing influencers on, on Twitter [1:50] and elsewhere, were talking about the ballroom. [1:53] It seemed coordinated and we have no evidence to suggest that they are, but [1:56] Ashley Sinclair, a former conservative influencer said that a lot of, uh, these [2:02] right-wing influencer accounts, these MAGA accounts are in a chat group called [2:06] fight, fight, fight with members of the administration, which could indicate that [2:12] there is some coordination going on around this, uh, this ballroom message. [2:17] So, last week, I told you guys that all of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their [2:22] messaging in lockstep via group chats. [2:25] And what do you know? [2:27] All of these people came to the conclusion that after they saw what happened at the [2:32] White House Correspondents' Dinner, their first thought was all independently, [2:37] Trump needs his ballroom. [2:39] If we are to stipulate that these people, uh, are not coordinated, the statistical [2:44] likelihood of this happening, that they all came to the same conclusion, not probable. [2:51] Okay. [2:51] This is what's so hard. [2:52] I often think about when we're investigating particularly kind of coordination or [2:57] allegations of coordination on social media, because ultimately if you're one of the [3:00] accounts that is in say an alleged group that exists, like you're not going to then [3:04] be like, yeah, cool. [3:05] Yeah. [3:05] We're in this group and we organize ourselves. [3:07] So you're basically reliant on someone who's in that group deciding to share around a screen [3:11] grab and it being verified and it getting, getting in the right hands. [3:15] And the irony here as well is that the whole point of this White House Correspondents' [3:18] Dinner is that the president isn't hosting it. [3:20] Like the president is the guest. [3:21] So ultimately the White House wouldn't be hosting anyway. [3:24] This is an event about press freedom. [3:26] This is why they have it in the Washington Hilton, because it's, it, you can't have [3:30] the White House control it. [3:31] And there's like 3000 journalists there. [3:34] The ballroom can only fit around 600 people. [3:36] There are loads of reasons why these kinds of events, particularly attempted [3:40] assassinations because there've been several now, um, in the time just before [3:45] Donald Trump got elected, uh, this time around an hour afterwards. [3:48] But one of the reasons why they spawned so much conspiratorial content and [3:52] disinformation is because of some of how Donald Trump reacts to this stuff. [3:56] It's like the fact that he so quickly comes out and says, right, let's talk [4:00] about the ballroom. [4:01] It's not dissimilar to in a different way, but when he was shot at in Butler, [4:04] Pennsylvania, before the election. [4:05] And he stood up and put his arm in the air and said, fight, fight, fight. [4:08] And people almost can't believe that like his reaction to that kind of event. [4:13] He he's either so quick to kind of politically strategize and be like, right, [4:16] what am I going to do? [4:17] Um, or he manages to kind of make lemonade out of lemons type approach. [4:23] And I think that a lot of people online will then seize on that as like, this [4:26] is abnormal. [4:26] This makes me think it's not real or it's staged because of how he's responding. [4:30] When actually, if you look at Donald Trump as a, as a politician and a [4:34] president, this is what he does, this is what he does. [4:36] Yeah. [4:36] It's like his whole MO. [4:37] In fact, it would be more bizarre if he wasn't doing this kind of thing. [4:40] This is not the first time that there have been accusations that, uh, Donald [4:45] Trump's team, the administration are coordinating with pro-MAGA social media [4:49] accounts that have built really big followings. [4:50] If you were in Donald Trump's administration or any political team nowadays, that [4:54] would be a method that you'd consider like messaging them saying, right, well, we [4:57] want to put a message out there or we want to create a certain vibe or whatever. [5:01] The issue here is that there's not a level of transparency, right? [5:04] A lot of them don't claim to be connected in any way to the administration or having [5:08] conversations with the administration and claim to be completely independent. [5:12] They also do have access to a suspiciously large scale of accounts. [5:16] I mean, lots of the pro-Trump MAGA accounts have been shown to be based outside of the [5:21] US. [5:22] It's lots of them are in Asia, um, and lots of them have been shown to be AI as well. [5:27] I think it is worth saying, one of the reasons why Donald Trump ran successful election [5:31] campaigns, both when he got elected in 2016 and then this time around, is because he [5:36] was incredibly good at, um, encouraging like these grassroot accounts. [5:43] And so his team have always been very adept at how do we use genuine accounts that is muddied [5:48] with other accusations of influence operations at play here. [5:52] And how does the president choose to, or not choose to interact with that stuff? [5:55] All of which is actually really hard to evidence. [5:57] Although one of the first accounts to post about the ballroom was Mike Cernovich, who [6:01] was very involved in Trump's first campaign in orchestrating all of the crazy right-wing [6:06] online Twitter and social media accounts to come out in support of Trump. [6:10] Let's just get a few things straight about what actually happened. [6:14] Um, because there has been all this conspiracy theory content and you know, it's worth remembering [6:19] that this is, um, this shooting attempt occurred, um, at an event which was full of journalists. [6:26] 2,600 journalists, including journalists from the organization that we work for. [6:29] So the BBC, so we know that it happened. [6:34] Like we know that there was an attempted shooting. [6:35] We know that there was a suspect, the suspect was apprehended. [6:38] A lot of the content that is suggesting that the shooting was shooting attempt was staged [6:42] in some way, isn't actually alleging that it didn't happen at all. [6:45] That it was like somehow like entirely fabricated, like the suspect didn't exist. [6:50] What they're suggesting is that the event was somehow like staged or curated, that it did [6:55] occur, but it was like set up to be clear. [6:57] There's also no evidence, which there's no evidence of either, but no one's saying shots [7:01] weren't fired. [7:02] I think it's worth saying. [7:03] I mean, we've just chatted loads about MAGA accounts, posting loads about the assassination [7:06] attempt, but there is a huge swell of left-wing anti-Donald Trump accounts that are convinced [7:13] that this assassination attempt was staged. [7:16] That the previous one, the one in Butler, Pennsylvania, then the one that happened is golf [7:19] course, that all of these are staged. [7:21] And actually, each time one of these events happens and the assassination is not successful, [7:27] they use that as further evidence of their conspiracy and they'll be like, right, here [7:30] we go again. [7:31] Have you heard the term Blue Anon? [7:33] Yeah, Blue Anon. [7:34] This is Blue Anon. [7:35] It's like QAnon, but the Democrat version. [7:36] But the Democrat version. [7:37] Yeah. [7:38] And a lot of these are accounts that were previously outraged at the idea that Donald Trump's team [7:43] and supporters would say the election had been rigged or any accusation that COVID was a hoax [7:48] or stuff was staged and yet they're using the exact same language to say, actually, this [7:54] was staged and here's why. [7:55] I mean, in this case, most of the really viral posts suggesting it was staged are basically [8:00] saying his approval ratings aren't looking as good at the moment. [8:02] So this is why it's happened. [8:04] One account was Joyce Carol Oates, who's one of the biggest kind of left-wing accounts. [8:08] She's been one of the main people calling into question the Butler assassination attempt [8:12] against Donald Trump, not this one, but it's, you know, she's amplifying that hugely. [8:18] And it's like, someone died at that, that event, you know, this is something that really [8:21] happened. [8:22] It ended in a death. [8:23] I've messaged quite a few of these anti Donald Trump accounts that are sharing this kind [8:26] of content. [8:27] And most of them say to me, oh, well, because lots of the other big accounts that I follow [8:30] and believe and agree with are suggesting this. [8:33] I'm inclined to also have doubts about the authenticity of these assassination attempts without any evidence [8:39] at all. [8:40] And it doesn't help when there are comments made that then become a sort of hostage to [8:44] fortune. [8:45] So Caroline Leavitt, for example, the press secretary, she made these comments before [8:50] she went into the dinner saying essentially like, you know, Donald Trump's not going to [8:55] go that easy on the journalists here. [8:57] It's not going to be that it's, you know, it could get hostile shots. [9:00] Shots are going to be fired. [9:01] I will tell you this speech tonight, classic Donald J. Trump. [9:07] It'll be funny. [9:08] It'll be entertaining. [9:09] There will be some shots fired tonight in the room. [9:12] So everyone should tune in. [9:13] It's going to be really great. [9:14] And it's like everyone's clipping up that clip and saying, oh, my gosh, she knew it's [9:18] like if she knew, why would she say it? [9:20] Yeah. [9:21] Before going in? [9:22] Exactly. [9:23] And it's like that. [9:24] Also, let's be real. [9:25] This is America. [9:26] Like the chance of someone using the word shot or gun. [9:27] It's like very high in any word and in a speech. [9:30] And also just this idea that everyone becomes all of a sudden a forensic medical expert every [9:36] time one of these things happened on social media. [9:39] And they're analyzing all the pictures. [9:42] It's the sort of like sleuth disease again. [9:45] It's the sleuth disease. [9:46] It happened with Charlie Kirk. [9:47] You know, always. [9:48] I saw this one tweet that was hugely popular. [9:50] That's a picture of the attempted assassin Cole Allen on the ground. [9:54] It says, where did the agents shoot him? [9:56] What stopped him? [9:57] Where's the blood? [9:58] Why is his super trochlear vein not indicating that he is in any pain or distress? [10:02] It's like, when I see a guy with like crypto entrepreneur in his Twitter bio and he's using [10:09] the word super trochlear vein, like I know we're in trouble. [10:12] Red flag, red flag. [10:13] Dude, you do not know anything about super trochlear veins. [10:15] Okay. [10:16] You know nothing about that. [10:17] You're not a medical professional. [10:18] I love how he will now get in touch and be like, I'm actually a surgeon. [10:22] Yeah, exactly. [10:23] Yeah, potentially. [10:24] If you are, I apologize. [10:25] You know, please, please get in touch. [10:26] But one of the most, I think, concerning side effects is people then like genuinely not knowing [10:31] what to believe. [10:32] And I've had quite a few DMs about this. [10:34] So I had one from Martha McMahon who said, is this real? [10:37] Thought it would be good to cover on top comment. [10:39] And it's a TikTok of someone talking about the manifesto of the shooter who is alleged [10:47] to have carried out the assassination attempt. [10:49] It does seem to be authentic and real, but you can so see how everyone's like, has someone [10:54] just made this up as well? [10:55] Particularly because this manifesto where he basically outlines the sort of ethics of who [11:00] he's going to go after. [11:01] The rules of engagement. [11:02] Yeah, the rules of engagement. [11:03] So he's like, basically you can go after any of Trump's top team, except Kash Patel. [11:10] Why is that? [11:11] Why did he? [11:12] Well, it seems to be because Kash Patel looks like he's not that long for the administration. [11:16] So you think that this shooter had like the wherewithal to be like, my rules of engagement, [11:21] I can go for Trump and any of his cabinet except for Kash Patel because I predict that he [11:25] will be fired soon. [11:26] Well, I don't know why else. [11:28] But that's the thing is stuff like that makes people think it's not real because they're [11:32] like, really? [11:33] That's really random. [11:34] But people have also been used that. [11:35] Yeah. [11:36] Use that. [11:37] Yeah. [11:38] Now, the other thing is I'm getting a lot of this. [11:40] Framing Kash Patel. [11:41] No one's found the bullets that the secret service person was meant to have shot at this [11:45] guy. [11:46] But the absence of evidence is not proof that your conspiracy theory is true. [11:50] The burden of proof is on the much harder to prove thing that there's this massive conspiracy [11:54] that no one has leaked the details on in the entire Trump administration. [11:57] The 2,600 journalists that were there didn't notice. [12:01] And the other thing is bullets often disappear in structures. [12:05] Like sometimes they go into your body and don't leave. [12:07] You know, lots of weird things happen. [12:09] Yeah. [12:10] There's been new evidence that's been released showing a selfie that the suspect took seemingly [12:15] in the hotel room before they then went to do the shooting. [12:18] What I think is really interesting is when you look at like the, when you look at the [12:22] Butler assassination attempt, one of the reasons why it spawned so many conspiracy theories [12:26] is because there was a real like deficit of information about the shooter who was killed. [12:32] And then like, no one really quite understood, still really understands why, like what he was [12:37] driven by. [12:38] Was he politically motivated? [12:39] Whereas in this case, there seems to be a manifesto that outlines quite a clear political [12:43] motivation from the suspect. [12:45] Yeah. [12:46] And even that's not enough. [12:47] Yeah, exactly. [12:48] Just on the, the Butler thing. [12:50] Um, you know, this, this is that conspiracy has also been becoming popular amongst Trump's [12:56] supporters now too, that the Butler assassination attempt was staged. [12:59] So recently, um, Joe Kent, who's the U S national counter-terrorism center director previously, [13:06] um, resigned from his position of the Iran war. [13:08] He was on Tucker Carlson's podcast. [13:09] He claimed without prouting any evidence that investigations into the Butler shooting have [13:14] been shut down the day before they finished. [13:17] Carlson questioned why Israel has had so much control over our government and claimed that [13:21] one of the clues is the Butler shooting. [13:23] So like it, it's, it kind of tips into this anti-Semitic conspiracy as well. [13:30] That like Israel is controlling the government. [13:31] That's why they're not investigating the Butler shooting. [13:33] Candace Owens has now echoed that. [13:35] She said, um, that the Butler shooting was orchestrated by an Israeli American political [13:41] donor. [13:42] So MAGA now is starting to think that the Butler assassination attempt wasn't real. [13:46] It should not be hard to believe the real truth that's at play here, which is that political [13:52] assassinations have always been big in America. [13:55] America is clearly at a point where rhetoric has driven it to, to, uh, to extreme violence, [14:00] seeming like a viable option. [14:02] Um, we've had a number of assassinations recently assassination attempts. [14:05] There was obviously Luigi Mangione. [14:07] There was an assassination attempt on Trump already. [14:10] You know, Sam Altman has had two attempts on his life recently. [14:13] Charlie Kirk, um, stats show that 20% of Gen Z are up for political violence. [14:18] Now, a lot of these, these political assassins are often idolized on social media. [14:22] Like with the Sam Altman thing, like a lot of the responses were, you know, praising this, [14:26] this attempt on his life. [14:28] Um, lots of people were empathetic to obviously Luigi Mangione. [14:33] It does seem like this, this suspect, according to the manifesto, really didn't like Donald Trump [14:37] and his team and felt like he needed to take political action. [14:40] But a lot of the people engaging in these kind of attacks, we think of the, the Charlie Kirk, [14:45] um, uh, assassin and so on seem to be sort of motivated by almost this, like, I've spoken about it before, [14:53] but like this ideology of engagement, like they care more about the kind of reaction that they subsequently trigger in the online world. [14:59] Think of like the trolling, um, like meme references on the bullet casings around Charlie Kirk and like taking the selfie as well. [15:06] It's like, they know that the digital footprint that they will leave and they actually curate it in such a way to kind of like troll. [15:13] It's, it's really interesting. [15:14] And that's why often I think that it's almost like a, a generalized violent ideology with no real, like political sort of basis. [15:22] Yeah. [15:23] Quite so much as perhaps people want to ascribe to it. [15:26] Yeah, exactly because Cole Allen seems relatively centrist. [15:30] Thomas Crooks, who attempted to assassinate Trump in Butler also seemed strangely kind of centrist in a way. [15:37] Um, it's not as though there's one radical right wing or left wing, um, ideology behind these killings. [15:43] Although both sides will try and claim that there is, um, but they'll use the clues to come up. [15:49] They'll use the clues and those clues are now being left behind by the killers. [15:52] It's the Gen Z-ification of assassination attempts. [15:56] So you've got the, the suspects or the shooters kind of leaving clues, taking pictures, knowing that their social media profiles and everything else will be poured over. [16:04] Um, and then you've also got like the Gen Z, um, people who are in attendance at these shootings, guess the survivors of the shooting. [16:11] So if we think of, um, what happened at the correspondence dinner, you've got, um, you've got loads of established journalists in the room. [16:18] Um, you've also got, uh, members of the white house press pack who are like MAGA influencers, who that's one of the changes that Donald Trump made, right? [16:25] Like bringing, allowing these people to come into the briefings, ask questions and so on. [16:29] And quite a few of them were posting pictures and images. [16:32] And there was one influence in particular who shared this selfie. [16:35] And it just felt like the sort of pinnacle of like, there was one tweet about the internet, wasn't it? [16:40] It was like, she's just there in her dress, basically being like the shooter is dead. [16:44] The shooter wasn't dead. [16:45] So it's not true. [16:46] Um, like, thanks so much to the security services. [16:48] Like, like it's like everything about it is tonally like completely inappropriate, but yet on social media, it's kind of like entirely appropriate. [16:57] Yes. [16:58] So, so this is like an, an influencer taking, like trying to look hot, it appears in a selfie. [17:04] After there's been an assassination attempt. [17:06] Yeah. [17:07] Pouting to the camera and saying shooter's dead, but it's, but also that selfie was taken before the shooting happened and she had since left. [17:14] So that's the other way things like she, that selfie wasn't even after this shooting. [17:18] It was like something from before she then, um, uh, did another post saying, I accidentally shared fake news. [17:24] She said shooter was not dead. [17:26] Breaking news is always the first draft of history. [17:30] That's her justification. [17:31] And this is the problem with letting influencers into the white house correspondence dinner. [17:34] And you know, now the white house is holding influencer briefings as well is they aren't journalists. [17:40] One thing I was quite intrigued by was watching like how people responded because the nature of an event like the correspondence dinner is like everyone's dressed up and they've like, they look amazing. [17:51] And they've got loads of pictures and like, you can tell that everyone before the event has taken all these lovely pictures that they plan to post. [17:57] And then obviously this attempted shooting occurs. [18:00] And then like my Instagram feed the next day, mainly cause I follow lots of journalists was loads of journalists kind of posting the nice pictures. [18:07] But then with these like earnest captions. [18:09] Yeah. [18:10] They're putting themselves in the story. [18:11] Like pro tip. [18:12] It's like, oh, this is before the really bad thing happened. [18:15] But like, anyway, I look really nice, which also feels like part kind of wider influencer culture, like the influencerfication of journalism. [18:24] Yeah. [18:25] Like there was an attempt on the president's life and you're like, I was in a cute dress. [18:29] So I think that this is a great chance to post it. [18:31] And like, I don't want to not post it. [18:32] Cause like, I can't, I can't do it in my end of month dump. [18:35] I mean, the funniest thing for me was Dana White, the CEO of UFC and longtime Trump ally. [18:42] This was so cringe. [18:44] He, he was interviewed afterwards and he was like, they told him to get down. [18:48] I didn't get down. [18:49] They were screaming, get down. [18:50] I didn't get down. [18:51] It was awesome. [18:52] I literally took every minute of it. [18:54] It's like, okay, tough guy. [18:55] Like you didn't get down when like the secret service was telling you to get down cause an active shooter. [19:00] It reminded me of those joke videos about like not giving a girl the ick when the plane is crashing, you know, like trying to like make it really cool. [19:08] Make yourself look really cool. [19:10] Like, so you it's like, yeah, like I wasn't even scared. [19:12] Just shut up. [19:13] Get down. [19:14] Like there's a shooter. [19:15] You're not, you're not being tough by being like, I stayed standing. [19:18] Yeah. [19:19] Yeah. [19:20] So that's gonna happen. [19:21] Now I am. [19:23] I am. [19:24] Awesome. [19:25] So. [19:29] Awesome. [19:30] I am. [19:44] Awesome.