What to Know
NBC reporter Julie Tsirkin became a meme overnight thanks to her viral response to the shooting outside of the White House on May 23, 2026. Now, she has responded on X (formerly Twitter) to what people have said about her on social media. She also responded to the fact that she is officially a meme. How could she not be after the reaction she had to the shooting live on camera?
In the original video, Tsirkin looks at the cameraman off-screen with a frown and asks what the gunshots are. She then looks behind her and appears to look around where her camera is set up as the gunshots continue. Then, the video ends. What seems obvious in the video, and what we know now is that there was an active shooter nearby. But for Tsirkin, the danger didn’t seem to clock with her at all.
She has embraced being a White House meme.
I'm glad I could take one for the team with @nbcsnl on summer break
— Julie Tsirkin (@news_jul) May 24, 2026
Thanks for the memes, internet! Hope you'll stick around for the reporting 🙇♀️ pic.twitter.com/m4a5xGmvIa
In Tsirkin’s X post, she shared a photo of herself at her desk with a meme on the screen of her monitor. She wrote, “I’m glad I could take one for the team with @nbcsnl on summer break. Thanks for the memes, internet! Hope you’ll stick around for the reporting.” You have to appreciate her humor with everything, especially since she was made fun of following the viral video.
Later, she told NBC News that she did run for safety after she realized that what she was hearing was, in fact, gunshots. But this particular video doesn’t capture that. Instead, she seems confused and honestly pretty unbothered by the gunshots that sound like they’re pretty close by. Even if she was a little shocked in the moment, the video definitely doesn’t reflect that.
“I ended up running after that happened,” Tsirkin told NBC News. “I saw a Secret Service agent come out of the security booth, guns drawn, telling the few of us who are out there to ‘run inside the press briefing room.'”
The reporter couldn’t quite identify the gunshots.
This reporter has the survival instincts of a lemming. pic.twitter.com/LV2tIJ8QAM
— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) May 24, 2026
Because the viral video shows Tsirkin unable to identify the gunshots at first, people on social media quickly made memes about her and shared the video ad nauseam to poke fun at her instincts. Or, to be more exact, her lack of instincts.
“This reporter has the survival instincts of a lemming,” one user on X wrote when they shared the video in a post.
“This has to be AI. Right????” Someone responded to the post.
Another person on X wrote, “Her producer told her it sounds like fireworks. Good thing bullets didn’t fly in their direction. They could’ve been killed by not ducking and laying face down on the ground.”
“When you hear a single gunshot, it’s easy to second guess what you just heard,” someone else commented. “If it sounds like you’re standing in 2004 Fallujah, it’s pretty easy to tell wtf you’re listening to.”
Some people questioned if she was standing in front of a green screen.
After the video was shared to TikTok (one of the many, many times), some users commented to say that the scene behind Tsirkin actually looks like a green screen. Given the clear image of the White House and lawn behind her, and the way the lighting is, it does look pretty fake. But, it seems, Tsirkin was really at the White House.
“She looking at the green screen like it’s real, I’m so lost,” a TikTok user commented.
Another commenter added, “Why does the background look so fake?”
It just so happens that she was at the White House on a day where recording something about Donald Trump from a studio might have been a tad bit safer.
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