After being wounded by a gunman at his campaign rally on July 13, 2024, did Donald Trump fly to Denver, Colorado, to watch an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout along with UFC President Dana White? No, that's not true: White posted to social media that he was flying to Europe at the time of the incident. When the rumor started to spread on social media shortly after the shooting, Trump was still being treated at a medical facility in Pennsylvania, before flying to New Jersey.
The story appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, where it was published on July 13, 2024. It opened:
HOLY SHIT. DONALD TRUMP HAS ARRIVED AT UFC DENVER WITH DANA WHITE SHORTLY AFTER BEING SHOT
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 17:29:29 2024 UTC)
The claim started to circulate on X and TikTok (archived here) shortly after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump (archived here) during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Such entries on social media reused old videos of Trump. One was from March 9, 2024 (archived here); another was from June 1, 2024 (archived here).
The post that is the focus of this fact check was published 2 hours and 11 minutes before the UFC fight scheduled to start at 10 p.m. EDT in Denver, Colorado. At the time, Trump was still at the hospital.
The shots were fired at 6:11 p.m. EDT (archived here) on July 13, 2024. Three minutes later (archived here) the Trump motorcade left the scene. At 7:30 p.m. EDT, Bloomberg reported (archived here) that Trump was being treated at a medical facility.
At 8:42 p.m. EDT, the former president thanked the Secret Service and law enforcement on Truth Social, posting his first statement after the shooting (archived here). It said nothing about any Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fights.
Since then up to the time of this writing, Trump hasn't written anything corroborating the claim in question (archived here).
UFC President Dana White who was claimed to have been in Denver, wrote (archived here) on Instagram that he was on a plane to Italy at the time of the shooting. White added that the next time he planned to see Trump would be during the Republican National Convention on Thursday -- July 18, 2024.
The first reports about Trump leaving Butler Memorial Hospital emerged between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. EDT. At 10:27 p.m. EDT, the update appeared on the Bloomberg website (archived here), later cited by Reuters (archived here).
The flight time between Butler, Pennsylvania, and Denver, Colorado, is over three hours, as seen on Google Maps (archived here). Though there is a time difference between the two locations, the 10 p.m. start of the fight was listed in the same Eastern Daylight time zone as in Pennsylvania. This additionally rules out the possibility that Trump could have teleported himself to Denver to make it in time.
In reality, he returned to New Jersey (archived here) after midnight, as planned. The scene of Trump getting off the plane in that state was recorded on video (archived here), too.
This claim was also previously reviewed by Newsweek and Sportskeeda.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Donald Trump can be found here. Stories about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
