"Operation Gotham Shield was billed as a "false flag" by some conspiracy theorists, who predicted it was designed to cover up a planned, actual nuclear weapons attack against the New York metropolitan area, or as distraction from a planned U.S. nuclear weapons attack against North Korea.The British tabloid "Daily Express", meanwhile, propagated a different take on the conspiracy theory which hypothesized that "a major incident will happen to US President Donald Trump on Wednesday" (the date of the first day of Gotham Shield).