Did President Donald Trump post about the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting two hours before it took place? No, that's not true. Truth Social shows timestamps based on your device's time zone and updates them automatically to match when you view them. The incident occurred at about 8:36 p.m. in Washington, D.C., which is in the Eastern time zone. The president's post appeared online at 9:17 p.m. ET, about 40 minutes later. For a viewer in the Pacific time zone, the post would show a 6:17 p.m. timestamp -- two hours before the incident, which occurred at approximately 5:36 p.m. PT.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the mickyvee8 account on Threads on April 26, 2026. It read:
So it appears Donnie and his team have staged another shooting, this time to get his ballroom over the line. He posted this 2 HOURS BEFORE the 'gunman' the event started firing.
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by mickyvee8 on Threads.)
Lead Stories viewed the president's original post (archived here) from April 25, 2026, in the Eastern Time Zone. It was published at 9:17 p.m. ET and appears below:
(Image source: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social.)
Adjusting for time zones
Social media apps handle time zones by converting all posts to Coordinated Universal Time and then converting that time to your phone's local settings when displaying content. Your phone acts as the source, telling the app, for example, "I'm in New York," and the app adjusts accordingly.
When President Trump made his post in the Eastern time zone on April 25, 2026, it read 9:17 p.m. For a person reading it in Los Angeles, or anywhere in the Pacific time zone, it would read 6:17 p.m. And, if a person saw it in London, the timestamp for the post would be April 26, 2026, 2:17 a.m., accounting for the five-hour difference between Eastern and GMT.
