Pulse Nightclub Attack
Walter from Tampa/Wikimedia CommonsOutside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., following the shooting. 2016.
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a terrorist attack inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Those suspicious of false flag attacks suggest this was a planned tragedy designed to disarm Americans. The Pulse shooting also targeted LGBTQ revelers, which led some to imply that then-President Barack Obama enlisted the help of a so-called gay mafia to ensure the fall of the Second Amendment.
“[Obama] doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other….There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable.” Donald Trump said in a phone interview with Fox and Friends. While he merely hinted at a secret agenda, others went further.
The “alternative news” website State of the Nation implied a group of gay people was complicit in the attack, saying “the POTUS et al. have decided to conscript the most powerful political force in the nation — the Gay Mafia.”
As their theory went, “no one gets the job done” like the Gay Mafia. With its infiltration of the mainstream media, “they will now take up the anti-gun cause like there’s no tomorrow.”
dhsgov/FlickrSecretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson visits Pulse Nightclub on the three-month anniversary of the shooting, which left 49 people dead in Orlando. Sept. 12, 2016.
But the facts contradicted this theory at every turn; the shooting was clearly the result of one man’s radicalization.
Mateen, the shooter with Islamist ties who died at the scene, wrote on his Facebook page the morning of the attack, “Taste the Islamic state vengeance. In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic State in the usa.”
Moreover, FBI interviews conducted after prior altercations with Mateen showed he was angry because he thought he was being discriminated against for being Muslim. During the attack, he told police he was a soldier for ISIS. These facts make this false flag theory particularly unlikely.
