MAGA Sources Mispresent a Newspaper Photo and a Quote to Claim Alleged FSU Shooter Was an Anti-Trump Leftist
By Macrina Wang and Sarah Komar
What happened: Pro-Trump social media users are misrepresenting a protest photo and a comment in a January 2025 college newspaper article to falsely claim that the alleged perpetrator of the April 17 mass shooting at Florida State University, Phoenix Ikner, was a vocal critic of President Donald Trump.
Context: On April 17, a gunman opened fire at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, killing two people and wounding at least six, before he was apprehended by police, according to local law enforcement officials. In a news conference, Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil identified the gunman as Ikner, the son of a deputy sheriff.
A closer look: Trump supporters soon shared a photo, originally published in a Jan. 19, 2025, FSUNews.com article, of a protester at a Jan. 14, 2025, anti-Trump demonstration on FSU’s campus holding a sign with slogans including “Fight Trump and the GOP agenda!” and “Stand with Palestine!”
Conservative X user @OcrazioCornPop shared the photo and stated, “BREAKING: FSU shooter was an anti-Trump pro-Palestine radical leftist.” The post garnered 795,600 views and 6,300 likes in one day.
Pro-Trump X user @dittletv posted the photo with the caption, “BREAKING NEWS: Florida State University shooting suspect was a MASSIVE anti Trumper.” The post received 351,000 views and 1,100 likes in one day.
Actually: Ikner does not resemble the student in the photo.
The profile photo on Ikner’s Instagram account — which has since been taken offline — showed him as having a different hair type and facial features than the person in the photo, including a wider face.
NewsGuard determined that the FSU student in the photo is actually Oliver Cheese, who serves as planning chairperson for Tallahassee Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which describes itself as a local chapter of the national far-left organization SDS. Cheese did not respond to NewsGuard’s request for comment sent via direct message on Instagram.
To confirm Cheese’s identity, NewsGuard compared the photo with images of Cheese posted on Tallahassee SDS’s Instagram account and Cheese’s personal Instagram. Fact-checking website LeadStories.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 100/100) also reported in an April 18 article that the demonstration photo showed Cheese, not Ikner.
Out-of-context comment: While the photo did not actually depict Ikner, he was quoted in the same story, fueling another false claim about the alleged shooter’s supposed political orientation.
In the FSUNews.com article published on Jan. 19, 2025, Ikner was quoted discussing the Jan. 14, 2025, anti-Trump rally on campus, stating: “I think it’s a little too late, he’s [Trump’s] already going to be inaugurated on Jan. 20 and there’s not really much you can do unless you outright revolt, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”
Conservative political commentator and Trump confidante Laura Loomer shared a screenshot of Ikner’s quote and stated: “The alleged shooter at FSU today. Hated Trump. I know the media was salivating over the thought they could blame it on a Trump supporter.” Her post received 697,000 views and 21,000 likes in one day.
Actually: Ikner’s full quote and the context in which it was provided suggest that he was criticizing the protesters, not lamenting that Trump was soon to be inaugurated.
In the article, the quote comes directly after a sentence stating that “groups of onlookers began to form” as the anti-Trump protesters marched through campus — implying that Ikner was one of the onlookers rather than a protester.
Ikner also told the student newspaper, in an apparently critical reference to the protesters, “These people are usually pretty entertaining, usually not for good reasons.”
Multiple people who knew Ikner when he was a student at Tallahassee State College before transferring to FSU in 2025 said he often expressed support for Trump and his policies.
Reid Seybold, an FSU senior who previously attended Tallahassee State College and headed a political discussion group there, told NBC News (Trust Score: 100/100) on April 17 that Ikner was asked to leave the group because “he espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric and far-right rhetoric.”
Ikner sometimes expressed conservative political opinions during class discussions and came to class wearing a MAGA hat after the November election, former classmate Ian Townsend told The Ledger (Trust Score: 100/100), a newspaper in Lakeland, Florida.