Shooting conspiracies, breakup texts, and Dana White's cortisol spike

0:00Okay, Marianna, why were you late today?

0:04Marianna Spring:Professor Shea. I've been busy doing a new documentary that's all about AI and the kinds of stuff we talk about on Top Comment. That sounds very exciting. So today on Top Comment, we're going to talk about mainly the White House Correspondents Dinner assassination attempt, some of the conspiracy theories behind it, the MAGA line around it, and why the story may be deeper than everyone realizes on that. Yeah, and speaking of conspiracy theories, we're going to be getting into a new breed of conspiracy theory that's going super viral about Lyme disease and ticks. And we're going to talk about a new trend on TikTok where people are using AI to turn text messages from their ex into emo songs.

0:46Marianna Spring:Yeah, which are actually really catchy.

0:54okay so my social media has been flooded with these conspiracies about ticks yes there is a rise in ticks this is true what people think is that these ticks have been released by the government and there are three different reasons for this one because pfizer is about to release a vaccine for Lyme's disease. So this is kind of like creating a need for that vaccine, which also ties into the kind of RFK promoted conspiracy theory that Lyme's disease was created by the military during the Cold War, which isn't true because it's been around since the ice age. They're using ticks as bioweapons. This is Plum Island, where they're genetically modifying ticks and other animals to release them upon us as bioweapons.

1:40And the third one, and this fits so perfectly into the right wing conspiracy wellness sphere slash manosphere is that they're being released to make us allergic to meat. And it's no surprise that Bill Gates is a funding a lab grown meat that does not affect alpha gal and B he is funding research to create a vaccine for Lyme disease. So here he is again creating the problem, creating the solution and profiting on both ends. Now it is true that there has been a rise in a tick borne infection that causes an

2:11Marianna Spring:allergy to meat that is true but this is how this stuff always works isn't it there's something that's true and then yeah the entirety of the rest there's a lot of ticks some of them are making you allergic to meat but the government isn't doing and it's true that the vaccine is a thing right this line and pfizer's coming out with a lyme disease vaccine now lyme disease has always been a fertile ground for conspiracy theories wellness conspiracy theories because its symptoms are so wide-ranging it just makes you feel like shit basically and it's very difficult to diagnose So anyone who has felt like they have a series of unexplainable symptoms, there have been these snake oil salesmen who are saying, what you have is Lyme disease.

2:48It's a conspiracy. Here's the solution. Justin Bieber thought he had it at one point. You know, this is a real, Lyme disease has always been.

2:54Marianna Spring:Justin Bieber, you'd get him in whenever you can. But I think that's a really important point that this specific disease spawns a lot of misinformation on social media because of the unknowns and often difficulty in diagnosis. And then also because it can be really hard to live with and it's not always super straightforward working out how to be treated. And a lot of people have complained about being taken seriously when they go to be diagnosed by medics and so on, which is where the wellness influencers you mentioned step in both on the left and the right to kind of say, here's all the ways you can either diagnose yourself or treat your Lyme disease.

3:27Marianna Spring:And so it's not a huge jump in the world of health misinfo that the idea that a vaccine is going to be rolled out to deal with this would then trigger a load more conspiratorial, baseless and evidence-free stuff. And now I'm seeing, you know, on Instagram, farmers are finding boxes of ticks from the government and it's clearly AIM. I love from the government. Yeah, and I'm seeing people like going like in the woods and they're flicking ticks off them being like, not today, government. I know what I don't feel on my leg, Bill Gates. I've been outside for five seconds and I see a tick. oh no it's happening it's here it's so funny it's so funny but this is the thing is like a lot of this content is you think surely if this comes up on your feed you wouldn't take it seriously no the problem is is vaccines can have side effects and when there's a new vaccine in particular and it's being rolled out people don't always you know that there's still kind of data being gathered and that's often where anti-vaccine activists start but the government isn't releasing boxes of ticks onto your because but then it just gets completely allergy yeah and you might have people turning down a vaccine off the basis of like all of these TikToks.

4:34Anyway, all of which is to say, just be careful next time you open TikTok because you could be in for a tick shock. Crickets.

4:46Speaking of conspiracy theories, the White House Correspondents Dinner.

4:50Marianna Spring:When that broke, that there had been an attempted shooting, we were actually all together because we'd been at CastFest. People can go and listen to the episode that we did from CastFest in the feed. But we were all together and immediately, I feel like we were like, this is going to be... Like you, we could have, I think, have predicted every genre of content that was going to arise. Except for the ballroom. Yeah, true. Because the White House Correspondents Dinner is always held at the Washington Hilton. Because it is an event about press freedom, it isn't something that's held in the White House.

5:23But right after this happened, a bunch of MAGA influencer accounts began posting in unison, don't anyone question the need for a ballroom now?

5:32Marianna Spring:And this is because Donald Trump has said he wants to build this ballroom. Yes. And it's like one of his sort of legacy projects. Yeah. The interesting thing here is the speed and the unity of this right wing message about the ballroom. From MAGA influencers with reach. Exactly. And the timeline of this is interesting. The news of the shooting broke out at around 9 p.m. The shooter was announced to be in custody around 9.55 p.m. 10.30 p.m., Trump goes on C-SPAN and starts saying, we really need this ballroom. The military demanding this ballroom. It's very secure, etc. Now, throughout that whole time period from 9 to 10.30 p.m., so many different right-wing accounts, popular right-wing influencers on Twitter and elsewhere were talking about the ballroom.

6:16It seemed coordinated, and we have no evidence to suggest that they are. But Ashley Sinclair, a former conservative influencer, said that a lot of these right wing influencer accounts, these MAGA accounts are in a chat group called Fight Fight Fight with members of the administration, which could indicate that there is some coordination going on around this this ballroom message.

6:39Marianna Spring:So last week, I told you guys that all of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their messaging in lockstep via group chats. And what do you know? All of these people came to the conclusion that after they saw what happened at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, their first thought was all independently. Trump needs his ballroom. If we are to stipulate that these people are not coordinated, the statistical likelihood of this happening, that they all came to the same conclusion, not probable. OK. This is what's so hard I often think about when we're investigating particularly kind of coordination or allegations of coordination on social media.

7:21Marianna Spring:Because ultimately, if you're one of the accounts that is in, say, an alleged group that exists, like you're not going to then be like, yeah, cool, yeah, we're in this group and we organise ourselves. So you're basically reliant on someone who's in that group deciding to share around a screen grab and it being verified and it getting in the right hands. And the irony here as well is that the whole point of this White House Correspondents Dinner is that the president isn't hosting it. The president is the guest. So ultimately, the White House wouldn't be hosting it anyway. This is an event about press freedom.

7:48This is why they have it in the Washington Hilton because you can't have the White House control it. And there's like 3 ,000 journalists there. The ballroom can only fit around 600 people.

7:58Marianna Spring:There are loads of reasons why these kinds of events, particularly attempted assassinations, because there have been several now in the time just before Donald Trump got elected this time around and now afterwards. But one of the reasons why they spawn so much conspiratorial content and disinformation is because of some of how Donald Trump reacts to this stuff. It's like the fact that he so quickly comes out and says, right, let's talk about the ballroom. It's not dissimilar to in a different way, but when he was shot at in Butler, Pennsylvania before the election and he stood up and put his arm in the air and said, fight, fight, fight.

8:29Marianna Spring:and people almost can't believe that like his reaction to that kind of event he's either so quick to kind of politically strategize and be like right what am I going to do or he manages to kind of sort of like make make lemonade out of lemons type approach and I think that a lot of people online will then seize on that as like this is abnormal this makes me think it's not real or it's staged because of how he's responding when actually if you look at Donald Trump as a politician and a president this is what he does this is what he does yeah it's like his whole mo in fact it would be more bizarre if he wasn't doing this kind of thing.

9:01Marianna Spring:This is not the first time that there have been accusations that Donald Trump's team, the administration are coordinating with pro-MAGA social media accounts that have built really big followings. If you were in Donald Trump's administration or any political team nowadays, that would be a method that you'd consider, like messaging them saying, right, well, we want to put a message out there. We want to create a certain vibe or whatever. The issue here is that there's not a level of transparency, right. A lot of them don't claim to be connected in any way to the administration or having conversations with the administration and claim to be completely independent.

9:33They also do have access to a suspiciously large scale of accounts. I mean, lots of the pro-Trump MAGA accounts have been shown to be based outside of the US. Lots of them are in Asia and lots of them have been shown to be AI as well.

9:46Marianna Spring:I think it is worth saying that actually one of the reasons why Donald Trump ran successful election campaigns, both when he got elected in 2016 and then this time around, is because he was incredibly good at encouraging these grassroots accounts. And so his team have always been very adept at how do we use genuine accounts? But then some of that is muddied with other accusations of influence operations at play here. And how does the president choose to or not choose to interact with that stuff? All of which is actually really hard to evidence. Although one of the first accounts to post about the ballroom was Mike Cernovich, who was very involved in Trump's first campaign in orchestrating all of the crazy right-wing online Twitter and social media accounts to come out in support of Trump.

10:35Marianna Spring:Let's just get a few things straight about what actually happened, because there has been all this conspiracy theory content. And it's worth remembering that this shooting attempt occurred at an event which was full of journalists. 2 ,600 journalists. Including journalists from the organization that we work for. So the BBC. So we know that it happened. We know that there was an attempted shooting. We know that there was a suspect. The suspect was apprehended. A lot of the content that is suggesting that the shooting attempt was staged in some way isn't actually alleging that it didn't happen at all.

11:07Marianna Spring:That it was somehow entirely fabricated. Like the suspect didn't exist. What they're suggesting is that the event was somehow staged or curated. That it did occur, but it was set up by... To be clear, there's also no evidence. Which there's no evidence of either. But no one's saying shots weren't fired. I think it's worth saying, I mean, we've just chatted about MAGA accounts posting loads about the assassination attempt. But there is a huge swell of left-wing anti-Donald Trump accounts that are convinced that this assassination attempt was staged. That the previous one, the one in Butler, Pennsylvania, then the one that happened is Golf Course.

11:41Marianna Spring:That all of these are staged. And actually, each time one of these events happens and the assassination is not successful, they use that as further evidence of their conspiracy. And they'll be like, right, here we go again. And what I have found... Have you heard the term Blue Anon? Yeah, Blue Anon. This is Blue Anon. It's like QAnon, but the Democrat. But the Democrat version, yeah. And a lot of these are accounts that were previously outraged at the idea that Donald Trump's team and supporters would say the election had been rigged or any accusation that, like, COVID was a hoax or stuff was staged.

12:08Marianna Spring:And yet they're using the exact same language to say, actually, this was staged and here's why. I mean, in this case, most of the really viral posts suggesting it was staged are basically saying his approval ratings aren't looking as good at the moment. So this is why it's happened. One account was Joyce Carol Oates, who's one of the biggest kind of left wing accounts. She's been one of the main people calling into question the Butler assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Not this one. But, you know, she's amplifying that hugely. And it's like someone died at that, that event. You know, this is something that really happened.

12:40It ended in a death.

12:41Marianna Spring:I've messaged quite a few of these left wing accounts, anti Donald Trump accounts that are sharing this kind of content. And to be honest, most of them say to me, oh, well, because lots of the other big accounts that I follow and believe and agree with are suggesting this. I'm inclined to also have doubts about the authenticity of these assassination attempts without any evidence at all. And it doesn't help when there are comments made that then become a sort of hostage to fortune. So Caroline Levitt, for example, the press secretary, she made these comments before she went into the dinner saying essentially like, you know, Donald Trump's not going to go that easy on the journalists here.

13:15Marianna Spring:You know, it could get hostile shots. Shots are going to be fired. This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It'll be funny. It'll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight. So everyone should tune in. It's going to be really great. And then it's like everyone's clipping up that clip and saying, oh, my gosh, she knew. It's like, if she knew, why would she say it before going in? Exactly. And it's like that also, let's be real, this is America. Like the chance of someone using the word shot or gun, it's like very high in any speech. And also just this idea that everyone becomes all of a sudden a forensic medical expert every time one of these things happen on social media.

13:55And they're analyzing all the pictures.

13:58Marianna Spring:It's the sort of like sleuth disease again. It's the sleuth disease. It happened with Charlie Kirk. So I saw this one tweet that was hugely popular. That's a picture of the attempted assassin Cole Allen on the ground. It says, where did the agents shoot him? What stopped him? Where's the blood? Why is his super trochlear vein not indicating that he is in any pain or distress? It's like when I see a guy with crypto entrepreneur in his Twitter bio and he's using the word super trochlear vein. Like I know we're in trouble. Red flag, red flag. Dude, you do not know anything about super trochlear veins, okay?

14:29You know nothing about that. You're not a medical professional.

14:32Marianna Spring:I love how he'll now get in touch and be like, I'm actually a surgeon. Yeah, yeah, potentially. If you are, I apologize. Please, please get in touch. One of the most, I think, concerning side effects is people then like genuinely not knowing what to believe. And I've had quite a few DMs about this. So I had one from Martha McMahon who said, is this real? Thought it would be good to cover on Top Comment. And it's a TikTok of someone talking about the manifesto of the shooter who is alleged to have carried out the assassination attempt. It does seem to be authentic and real. But you can so see how everyone's like, has someone just made this up as well?

15:05Marianna Spring:Particularly because this manifesto where he basically outlines the sort of ethics of who he's going to go after. The rules of engagement. Yeah, the rules of engagement. So he's like, basically you can go after any of Trump's top team except Kash Patel. Why is that? It seems to be because Kash Patel looks like he's not that long for the administration. So you think that this shooter had like the wherewithal to be like, my rules of engagement, I can go after Trump and any of his cabinet except for Kash Patel because I predict that he will be fired soon. Well, I don't know why, but that's the thing.

15:34Marianna Spring:Stuff like that makes people think it's not real because they're like, really? That's really random. But people have also used that. Yeah, used that to then say... I felt like the FBI staged it. Now, the other thing is I'm getting a lot of... Framing Kashmatel. No one's found the bullets that the Secret Service person was meant to have shot at this guy. But the absence of evidence is not proof that your conspiracy theory is true. The burden of proof is on the much harder to prove thing that there's this massive conspiracy that no one has leaked the details on in the entire Trump administration.

16:03The 2 ,600 journalists that were there didn't notice. And the other thing is bullets often disappear in structures. Like sometimes they go into your body and don't leave. You know, lots of weird things happen.

16:15Marianna Spring:Yeah, and there's been more evidence that's been released by the authorities. So showing like the weapons, but then also showing a selfie that the suspect took seemingly in the hotel room before they then went to do the shooting. And what I think is really interesting is when you look at the Butler assassination attempt, One of the reasons why it spawned so many conspiracy theories is because there was a real like deficit of information about the shooter who was killed. And then like no one really quite understood, still really understands what he was driven by. Was he politically motivated? Whereas in this case, there seems to be a manifesto that outlines quite a clear political motivation from the suspect.

16:49Marianna Spring:And even that's not enough. Yeah, exactly. Just on the Butler thing, that conspiracy has also been becoming popular amongst Trump's supporters now, too, that the Butler assassination attempt was staged. So recently, Joe Kent, who's the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center director previously, resigned from his position over the Iran war. He was on Tucker Carlson's podcast. He claimed without providing any evidence that investigations into the Butler shooting had been shut down the day before they finished. Carlson questioned why Israel has had so much control over our government and claimed that one of the clues is the Butler shooting.

17:26So like it kind of tips into this anti-Semitic conspiracy as well that like Israel is controlling the government. That's why they're not investigating the Butler shooting. Candace Owens has now echoed that. She said that the Butler shooting was orchestrated by an Israeli-American political donor. So MAGA now is starting to think that the Butler assassination attempt wasn't real. It should not be hard to believe the real truth that's at play here, which is that political assassinations have always been big in America. America is clearly at a point where rhetoric has driven it to extreme violence, seeming like a viable option.