A bizarre 'time travel' theory is among the conspiracies spreading about the DC shooter
DRAMATIC EVENTS OFTEN prompt dramatic speculation. And in the hours after what appears to be an assassination attempt at a dinner Donald Trump was attending, speculation ran wild.
On Saturday night, a lone gunman was captured as he ran toward the doors of a ballroom where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was being held at the Hilton hotel in Washington, DC.
In the immediate aftermath, it was unclear whether the suspect had been killed (he was not), and how close he got to the US president (not very).
While some of these claims were easily disproven, wilder theories involving cryptic images, time travel, and mysterious social media accounts spread unchecked.
Many of these were spread on social media sites where the users can make money for generating clicks — most notably X, where posts that remain unflagged by X’s crowdsourced factchecking programme, Community Notes, have been viewed many millions of times.
Rampant speculation about the motivation of the attempted attack has not been helped by the posts of X’s owner, Elon Musk, which regularly feature even in the feeds of users who do not follow him.
Since the attempted attack, many of his posts have consisted of spurious claims that “the left” or the US Democratic Party was responsible for the shooting.
The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, had previously donated $25 to the Democratic Party in 2024. Little more evidence of his connection to the party has been reported.
Trump himself, and officials in his administration, have further spread confusion by claiming that the suspect had left writings indicating an anti-Christian motive for the attack.
“When you read his manifesto,” Trump told Fox news, “he hates Christians. That’s for sure. He really hates Christians.”
Excerpts and descriptions in US media of a note left by the suspect contradict this. They instead indicate that he explicitly identified as a Christian and defended his actions as being in line with Christian teachings.
Such contradictions between claims from the White House and US mainstream media have come to be expected while Trump serves as president.
So too should it be expected that the internet will find even weirder theories to latch onto.
An old X account
On the social media platform X, one claim stands apart for how odd the theories built on it are, as well as how much it has been spread.
In short, an X account was created in 2023, made one post with the suspect’s name, and then appears to have never posted again.
“Cole Allen,” reads the full 22 December 2023 post, which has now been viewed directly more than 51 million times, as well as millions more times in screenshots.
The account’s profile picture shows a frog in a tuxedo, a variation on the Pepe the Frog meme that is often associated with fringe politics. And its background header is an abstract colour piece. Both these details have fuelled further conspiracy theories.
A screenshot of the account.
The latter detail has been the particular focus, with internet sleuths tracing it back to an Austrian history mapping project called Time Machine, leading to speculation that the message was left by a time traveller.
(The same abstract background had also been used on religious, artistic, and financial websites — though these were not mentioned by those theorising about prophetic social media posts).
Further cementing these eerie beliefs was the strange fact that the name of the social media account, Henry Martinez, was also the name of a researcher who wrote a paper for NASA (specifically about a spaceship component on behalf of Lockheed Martin).
(Henry Martinez is a common name. It is also shared by Venezuelan musician and an MMA fighter).
The abstract background image was also speculated to be an exact match for the famous photo of Trump raising his fist above his head after a previous failed assassination attempt in 2024.
This involved social media users skewing the photo, superimposing it on a portion of the abstract image, and then using transparency tools to view both images together.
“COLE ALLEN”
El nombre quien ayer supuestamente intentó asesinar a Trump.Eso es lo único que publicó esta cuenta el 21 de diciembre de 2023.Y que tiene esta imagen de portada.Después quieren que no creamos en conspiraciones.
https://t.co/GXecd4lVLb pic.twitter.com/E6lapjMFr4
— Jack__Pierre :yellow_heart: (@Jackes_is_back)
April 26, 2026
While some outlines do match, one suspects the same could be true of almost any image compared to part of the mass of abstract shapes.
The claim that the Henry Martinez X account foretold the event exactly appeals to both believers in the time travel theory, as well as the theory that the latest attack was a “false flag” — a fake intended to give Trump the moral authority to move against his enemies.
False flags
Even disregarding the wackier theories involving time travel, an analysis by the New York Times found that, on the day following the incident, more than 300,000 posts were published on X using the term “staged,” indicating mass scepticism that the attack was real.
Some of these theories also suggested that the entire event was an Israeli ploy.
These claims largely spread on the back of unverified photos, supposedly from the suspect’s social media accounts, which appear to show him wearing a hoodie with an Israeli Defense Forces logo. However, these claims were also met with extreme scepticism, with many countering that the pictures were AI fabrications.
It was not the only AI fabrication. Real security footage of the suspect running past security was released on Trump’s social media. However, the video is recorded off a screen, and is of low quality.
In an effort to make the footage cleaner, one social media user used that blurry footage as an input for an AI to generate a clean version of the same video — a technique known to introduce new, often false, details into the footage.
SETH WEATHERS / X (Formerly Twitter)
This quickly spread online, with some people using the AI footage to make observations on the suspect and the security personnel that stopped him.
“Look at the absolute lightning speed of this Secret Service agent drawing his weapon,” said one 26 April post featuring the fabricated footage.
That post, which was viewed more than 874,000 times, also prompted speculation that security staff had accidentally shot each other as the suspect ran past, based on unusual movements in the video.
Conspiracy theories also swirled online following an assassination attempt against Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024.
These theories, which often accused Trump of staging that event too, have recently begun to gain traction among the president’s own supporters.
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