Bhubaneswar: At a time, when the Joe Biden’s US presidential candidature is under scrutiny and shrouded with doubt, the coveted photo of a bloodied Trump with a raised fist against the backdrop of the US flag sparks conspiracy theories about the Saturday’s alleged assassination attempt on the former president at a rally in Pennsylvania. The attack raises suspicion of an attempt to gain sympathy as Trump was scheduled to accept the Republican nomination for a third time soon. The enforcement agencies haven’t come up with the motive behind this attack allegedly by a 20-year-old from the rooftop so far.
In such a scenario, the hashtag #staged and #stagedbytrump kept trending on social media. The trend was not only confined among groups of political supporters. But, these hashtags were being recommended to users frequently in their ‘For You’ feeds.
Moreover, such social media posts were shared and re-shared by people with blue-ticked profiles. Some users shared photographs and videos of Trump teeing it, apparently immediately a day after the attack. A blue-ticked user on X, who goes by the name Mike Lee, shares a similar photograph, allegedly of Trump on the golf course, wrote: ‘Gets Shot, Gets up the next day, Goes golfing.
’ Resharing the same, another user by the name Alex Cole wrote: “Imagine going golfing while one of your supporters was just killed and 2 more are still in the hospital.” A user, identifying himself as Olarich, posted the photograph—which i.
