There comes, in the wake of every mass shooting or terrorist attack, a spasm of wild Internet rumor and misinformation. And so the lies and paranoia that circulated in the chaotic aftermath of Sunday night's horrific shooting in Las Vegas were not unexpected. But what is new, in the Age of Trump, is how much of the misguided news comes suddenly from sources that've earned the White House's seal of approval.

The attack—which killed at least 59 people and injured hundreds—was more than the worst mass shooting in American history; it was a test of sorts for the outlets that have been elevated by Trump and his team. A few of these newly prominent voices did not fare so well.

By Monday morning, Alex Jones, the host of Infowars, whom President Donald Trump has praised for his "amazing" reputation, was pushing the conspiracy theory that the shooting was a "false flag" operation—an attack meant to look like it was carried out by someone other than the actual perpetrator—and predicting that the shooting would set the nation on the path to civil war.

When he announced the news of the shooting on his show, Jones, who claims some 5 million daily listeners, declared, "Ladies and gentlemen, the October Revolution is here." He suggested that the shooting was orchestrated by shadowy global forces fomenting war in America. The Infowars website also floated a conspiracy theory that the timing of O. J. Simpson's release from a Nevada prison—scheduled to occur on Sunday—was orchestrated to draw national media to Las Vegas in time for the shooting. (Jones, it should be noted, has stated in divorce proceedings that he doesn't always believe what he says on his radio show and that he is playing a character. Though, if he was joking on Monday, he made no indication.)

Overnight, while news of the shooting was still breaking, Wayne Allyn Root, a right-wing radio host who introduced Donald Trump at a 2015 campaign rally, took to Twitter. He announced that Las Vegas was in the throes of a "coordinated Muslim terror attack" and explained that shots had been fired at seven landmarks on the strip. In fact, gunfire was confined to the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

The flawed facts that Wayne Allyn Root, a Nevada resident, began to share after the shooting seem to be based on Twitter chatter he claimed he was picking up from friends near Las Vegas as well as people in the law-enforcement community. He combined the unsubstantiated reports and raw intel with his own suppositions, broadcasting his ideas apparently as fact to his 110,000 followers.

After the shooting began, Root informed his followers that a coordinated terrorist attack was taking place across the Las Vegas strip, tweeting:

He added:

Fans of Trump could be forgiven for taking the tweets of Root, an occasional contributor to Breitbart News, to be reliable information. He was invited to introduce Trump at a campaign rally in Vegas a week before the presidential election, and used the occasion to fantasize aloud about Hillary Clinton committing suicide.