The Correspondents' Dinner Shooting, Time Travel, and Solomon's Temple: Conspiracy Roundup

The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner over the weekend was disturbed, deranged, twisted. In obligatory 2026 style, the fallout might have been weirder still. Ostensibly perpetrated by 31-year-old California teacher and self-styled “Friendly Federal Assassin” Cole Thomas Allen, the incident in the public consciousness quickly descended into false-flag, time-traveling, Mossad-agent bizarro land. A few conspiratorial theories already flying about the WHCA shooting: Cole Allen traveled through time. Yes, you read that right: an instantly viral theory described an elaborate “Timeline War” plot: An X account by the name of Henry Martinez made one post in 2023, reading only — “Cole Allen.” It’s the sole post on the account, which garnered 52 million views less than 48 hours after the WHCA shooting. The Martinez account features an odd banner image, seen right, and a Pepe the Frog meme in a tux for the profile picture. The banner image for the account @HenryMa79561893 is pulled from the Time Machine project, an EU-based company that uses data to build a digital archive of European history. The colorized banner looks, to some, like a distorted image of Trump raising his fist after the 2024 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. To others, it’s a classic example of pareidolia, the phenomenon that leads people to see Jesus cleaning trout in tree stumps or wall mold. The latter group is less important to the conspiracy theory, of course. Cole Allen also interned at NASA in 2014, the same year NASA published a paper on rocket systems by a lead author named… Henry Martinez. Therefore, a NASA-linked scientist, Martinez, knew about both the Butler shooting and the WHCA shooting in 2023. Throw in the recent string of disappearing scientists, and as @BGatesisaPsycho put it: Either time travel is real, or more than likely you are simply watching a scripted movie. Still-sane journalist/fact-checker David Puente theorized that this was a “well-known” technique: the Martinez account may have been previously private, posted many names or events, then deleted everything else and gone public to create the illusion of having made a prediction: Either way, the Time Machine banner and the Butler images have captured the public’s imagination, and the results of the mass-Rorschach test are telling. Conspiracists quickly turned to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s unfortunate choice of words before the event, where she tried to hype up Donald Trump’s speech. “He is ready to rumble… This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It’ll be funny. It’ll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight.” Oops. Minus the context, the clip went beyond-viral, with a single post racking up over 16 million views since the shooting. To some, of course, this was an admission of prior knowledge. Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, nephew of Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, reposted the clip of Leavitt, writing “what did she know?” Countless others joined the chorus, calling the clip an obvious confirmation of the false flag. Another “smoking gun” came during a FOX News segment. Correspondent Aishah Hasnie called into the show from the dinner, but the connection dropped while she was describing a conversation with Karoline Leavitt’s husband, who told the correspondent, “You need to be very safe … there are some…” That’s when the call cut off. This too went viral, and again was taken as obvious evidence of FOX trying to hide an admission of the “staged event.” Some zeroed in on an image of the assembled cabinet during the press conference following the shooting, calling their cheery demeanor another sign of foreknowledge. Tweeter @BonkDaCarnivore did a “pop quiz,” asking if the people below were “a group of people who survived a traumatic, credible event on their lives” or “a group of people who knows everything went according to plan.” False flag, sure — but for what purpose? Obviously, to catalyze support for the ever-important White House ballroom. Posts like these from blue-leaning think-tanks like Meidas Touch garnered millions of views, catching the cascade of prominent Republicans, including ousted AG Pam Bondi, who called for the ballroom to be built following the shooting: Critics not only theorized the shooting was orchestrated to force the ballroom project, but that the construction was linked to — you guessed it — the Mossad. Some said the ballroom has been infiltrated by the Israelis and is a replica of Solomon’s Temple. “Hey @Grok, what’s the first name of Trump’s new White House ballroom architect? Just the first name,” asked one post (with millions of views). Grok replied, “Shalom.” While we’re on the subject of Israel, many viral posts showed Google search traffic in Israel over the past seven days (the “spike in search traffic” meme has become a popular conspiracy-mongering tool) purporting to show the search term “Cole Tomas Allen” spiking on the day of the shooting. Allen was also said to be seen in old photos wearing an Israeli Defense Forces sweatshirt. Asked @NotOpCue: Why Did Cole Allen Have The Same Sweater As MOSSAD Pedophile Trafficker Jeffrey Epstein? None of this bled into conventional news, but how far off can that be?