Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is ushered off the stage during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
Getty Images
Hours after a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday, videos of an individual alleged to be the suspect spread rapidly on TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Telegram. The videos were shared by each verified and unverified social media accounts, in addition to handles purportedly belonging to the gunman, identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks was shot and killed by the Secret Service on the rally.
“My name is Thomas Matthew Crooks,” said a viral clip that circulated Sunday and was liked, viewed or shared 1000’s of times on posts across all platforms. “I hate Republicans, I hate Trump, and you know what? You got the wrong guy.” (Some versions of the video then cut to footage of President Joe Biden.) Crooks, nevertheless, was a registered Republican records show that he donated $15 to a liberal voting group in 2021.
BBC Verify uses open source intelligence and investigative techniques to detect false and disinformation on the web. reported that the person within the widely viewed videos will not be the shooter. UC Berkeley professor and deepfake expert Hany Farid reviewed the clips and said Forbes they don’t appear to have been generated by AI.
The videos, which have also landed on 4chan and 8chan, purport to indicate the 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, describing his motives, which aren’t yet known to the general public (Biden said Sunday afternoon there was “no information” on that yet). They also sow confusion about whether the person whose image was used is definitely the true suspect.
Photos apparently showing the identical man circulated on X on Saturday and were shared by outstanding accounts including former CNN anchor Don Lemon and far-right activist Laura Loomer. Forbes found no less than one blue-check account from a verified news organization with 124,000 followers on TikTok sharing the video early Sunday, in addition to nearly a dozen small but growing TikTok and Instagram accounts using that man’s name and face. Some of the videos and accounts have since been removed, but as quickly as they’re removed, recent ones are popping up featuring the identical person and making the identical claims.
Meanwhile, a post circulated on Gab purporting to be written by a Secret Service agent who was instructed to not shoot Crooks. However, there isn’t a evidence that the post was actually written by a Secret Service agent.
The storm of false or misleading information that followed the assassination further inflames some of the unprecedented moments in modern American politics. Conspiracy theories have spread quickly on social media and blamed the so-called deep state for the attack.
With thousands and thousands of individuals turning to TikTok and Twitter (now X) for breaking news and political commentary, social media platforms can in a short time spread unverified claims and introduce outright falsehoods into public discourse. Forbes has also posted the identical video on the Internet 2.0 blogging platform LiveJournal and a Catholic social platform called Gloria.TV.
TikTok, X, YouTube, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Reddit, LiveJournal and Gloria.TV didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment. Telegram couldn’t be immediately reached.
On TikTok, users are also using so-called algospeak — code words that help evade detection by TikTok’s algorithm — to speak concerning the suspected gunman and Saturday’s shooting. Many are using the words “pew pew” to check with guns or gunfire; “unalive” or “d3ath” to explain those killed; and “sh00ter” or “sh0t” to speak concerning the suspect.
