On July 13th, at 6:11 PM during a campaign event, an attempt was made on former president Donald Trump’s life. In the hours and days since, much has been revealed about this heinous and violent act, including the perpetrator, events leading up to the attempt, and everything that transpired after.

Yet on the same day, at 6:52 PM, manipulated images from the event were published to X (fka Twitter), eventually garnering millions of views according to the platform’s own visible statistics. One of these images, depicting Evan Vucci's now-famous photo of the president flanked by Secret Service members with his fist in the air, warps the looks of concern from those protecting the former president into joyous, laughing expressions. These manipulated images, viewed by Reality Defender researchers, were far from the only manipulations spreading online minutes after the event: a video purporting to portray the “confession” of the (fake) suspect was boosted by prominent TV personalities, as well.

Viral Deepfakes on Demand

As we track the proliferation of these deepfakes and other forgeries, our team continues to notice a mix of traditional deepfakes, face swaps, and photoshopped images, as well as real videos that are purportedly (and often dubiously) depicting the shooter at a time before or after the shooting. Across all major social media platforms, we are witnessing the aforementioned media be used to justify conspiracy theories, as well as real videos of different people being used as claims of depictions of the shooter in younger days. 

Deepfake detection companies (like Reality Defender), independent fact-checking organizations, and news media platforms have engaged in a thorough process of identifying which of the many images claiming to portray the attempted assassination and its aftermath are manipulated. Yet the openness of social media and users’ tendency to view them as news platforms allows fringe actors from opposing ideological corners to spread their theories regardless of the efforts to debunk them.

Understandably, in the hours and days following this horrific event, people sought understanding, community, and comfort at a rate that the slow and methodical nature of a federal investigation and journalistic process cannot satisfy. Deepfakes and manipulated media can help disinformation soar in such an environment, providing sensory affirmation that makes wild theories appear legitimate, backed by “evidence.”

The manipulated media deployed in efforts to take advantage of an attack on our democracy show that we are truly in a perilous era for facts. We seek information instantly, and digital platforms fulfill this need. But at a time when it takes mere seconds to generate sophisticated digital forgeries twisting historical events to anyone’s purposes, the need to wait for the conclusions of methodical investigations and analyze every piece of media we encounter for manipulation is more important than ever.