Following the April 25, 2026, shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton, social media users alleged (archived) a photo showed U.S. President Donald Trump watching the scene unfold from behind the stage curtain of the hotel's International Ballroom.
In the picture's foreground, a Secret Service agent guides Stephen Miller — the deputy White House chief of staff — and his pregnant wife, Katie Miller, to an exit. Users sharing the image claimed that Trump supposedly standing behind the curtain in the background proved his administration staged the shooting, purportedly as part of a "false flag" operation.
In short, users miscaptioned the image. The photo was genuine in that users did not alter its contents with artificial intelligence or other digital editing. However, the image showed another man — not Trump — as revealed in a video recorded in the same moments by Pancho Bernasconi, Getty Images' vice president of global news.
A high-resolution version of that original video — as well as a stabilized and zoomed edit of the clip — showed the man users misidentified as Trump, featuring him walking forward into a better-lit area.
Although it was not clear who that man is, he did not closely resemble the president. The man behind the curtain had a slimmer figure and a different facial appearance, and he wore white accessories on his left lapel — such as a pocket square or handkerchief.
Snopes zoomed into but did not otherwise alter this still frame from Bernasconi's video, displaying the sharpest possible image of the man standing in the background.
Numerous videos from the moments following the shooting showed Secret Service agents removing Vice President JD Vance and then Trump from the stage, each exiting on opposite ends. No photographic or video evidence indicated either man — or the law enforcement agents helping them to evacuate — stopped to turn around.
Snopes contacted the White House to ask about the photo users shared, as well as to inquire about users believing the Trump administration staged the shooting. We will update this article if we receive further information.
Researching the rumor
Readers searched Snopes for more information about the rumor about the photo showing Trump watching from behind the curtain on the ballroom's stage.
Search engine queries for Trump's name and the words "curtain," "backstage" and other terms located users sharing the false rumor on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram, Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived).
One user's misleading video collectively received more than 5 million views across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok (archived) and YouTube.
In one of the more popular videos featuring the rumor, an Instagram user with more than 2 million followers shared her take in a video (archived) posted the day after the shooting.
That user's video displayed text matching that of a misleading Facebook post (archived) shared earlier that same day, reading, "Riddle me this. There's an active shooter threat within yelling distance of the President of the United States of America & Secret Service evacuates him to backstage so he can get a better view? What protocol is this?"
(Adrienne Promotes/Facebook)
For further reading, we previously investigated whether an image shows Stephen Miller using Katie Miller as a "human shield" during the evacuation.