White House reporter Molly Martinez responded after a White House livestream glitched and caused her eyes to look completely white for a split-second—prompting conspiracy theorists to go wild and claim she is a "lizard person" who is secretly controlling the government.
Martinez, a Washington-based journalist for local TV chain Gray Television, appeared on camera June 19 in the White House press room, smiling at a friend. A glitch in the original footage made her eyes look entirely white—something conspiracy theorists seized on as “evidence” she’s a lizard person.
The clip initially went viral about a month ago but gained renewed traction recently after large social media accounts like Concerned Citizen (which has millions of followers) shared it.
You can see the viral moment in the video below.
When the video first spread, Martinez was mistakenly identified as a congressional staffer who became a conspiracy target in 2023 after being caught on camera mouthing words during remarks by Stacey Plaskett, the delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Not wanting that staffer to keep getting doxxed, Martinez revealed her identity with a post reading:
“This is objectively the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
You can see her post below.
In an interview with HuffPost, she said she believes conspiracy theories like this one come "from a place of fear":
“I empathize with people who turn to conspiracies, because I feel like that’s a way for people to find community in chaos and [the conspiracy theories] can really feel like a life raft, like it’s empowering. ‘We have this knowledge that no one else has, and everyone’s turning this blind eye.’"
"I think ultimately it comes from a place of fear. So I never want to punch down on somebody who I think genuinely is afraid, so I’m trying to sort of keep that in mind. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it obviously makes perfect sense to them.”
Martinez has been a good sport about the whole thing—and the commentary is hilarious.
The reptilian conspiracy theory has been around since at least the 1920s but was popularized by David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, who claims a race of reptilians gained political power to manipulate world events and keep humans living in fear. Icke has claimed many world leaders are, in fact, reptilian beings.
Several years ago, a video of a Trump supporter accusing Queen Elizabeth II of being a "reptilian shape-shifter" went viral. The man said "You can see it in their eyes... the evil. Ship... ship-shaper... shift, yeah, shift-shapers. They change their shape and shift."
If that's not concerning enough, a 2013 survey found that 4% of Americans believe lizard people secretly control the world.
Yikes.
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