New Poll: 42% of Democrats Think Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump was Staged
“For each attempted assassination, a majority of Americans said either that it was staged or that they were not sure — averaging 54 percent across all three.”
A newly released NewsGuard/YouGov poll found that nearly one-quarter of respondents believe the assassination attempt targeting President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet at last month’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was staged. 45% believed it was real, and 32% were unsure.
Broken down by party affiliation, 34% of Democrats said they believed the incident was staged, compared with 23% of independents and 13% of Republicans.
The national survey of 1,000 Americans was conducted by YouGov from April 28 to May 4. It was commissioned and published by NewsGuard, a company that rates online media outlets for reliability.
About 1 in 4 Americans think the April shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner was staged according to a new survey.
Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans. https://t.co/h30QujSIO2
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 11, 2026
The survey also asked respondents for their views on the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump at the infamous rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as well as the second attempt two months later at Trump International Golf Club.
Perhaps the most striking finding was that 42% of Democrats said they believed the Butler shooting was staged.
Among independents, that figure fell to 21%, while just 7% of Republicans said the same.
Overall, 24% of those surveyed believe the attack was staged, 47% thought it was real, and 29% were unsure.
According to the survey results, Ryan Routh’s attempt to kill Trump in September 2024 was the most credible. Overall, just 16% of respondents thought it was fake, while 48% saw it as real and 36% were unsure.
By party affiliation, 26% of Democrats, 14% of independents, and 7% of Republicans thought the incident was fabricated.
42 percent of Democrats believe the Butler, PA assassination attempt on President Trump was staged.
This isn't a small group. Massive numbers of Democrat voters are living in a complete state of delusion. https://t.co/DtDEfP71pK pic.twitter.com/jgoCPp58EW
— Vince Coglianese (@VinceCoglianese) May 11, 2026
In an article that accompanied the survey results, NewsGuard reported:
Nearly one third of Americans (30 percent) believe that at least one of the three attempts on President Donald Trump’s life over the last two years was staged, according to a new NewsGuard/YouGov poll. For each attempted assassination, a majority of Americans said either that it was staged or that they were not sure — averaging 54 percent across all three.
Only 38 percent of Americans believe that all three assassination attempts were authentic.
I would add that in none of these cases did the proportion of respondents who believed the attacks were genuine reach or exceed 50%.
In what world could any of these attacks have been orchestrated? There is simply no credible evidence behind those claims. From a practical standpoint, staging any of these events would be impossible. Each would have required the coordination and the silence of hundreds of people.
In the case of the Butler shooting, all publicly available evidence — eyewitness testimony, video footage captured from multiple angles, the immediate response by the Secret Service, forensic findings, the injuries sustained by Trump, and the death of rally attendee Corey Comperatore — points overwhelmingly to a genuine act of violence.
The alternative theory quickly collapses under scrutiny. Are we really expected to believe that Thomas Matthew Crooks was such an expert marksman that he could fire live rounds at Trump in a crowded outdoor setting without risking a fatal strike? And, more implausibly still, would the Trump campaign willingly endanger innocent lives — allowing a 50-year-old former volunteer fire chief and father to become a sacrificial lamb — merely for the sake of a photo-op?
Additionally, each of the three would-be assassins appeared to have histories marked by political alienation, ideological extremism, or deep personal instability — the kind of combustible mix that has increasingly fueled acts of political violence.
Events involving live gunfire, real casualties, and chaotic public conditions are not realistically controllable in the way a “staged” theory would require.
So, why do so many Democrats believe (or at least say they believe) that the assassination attempts were faked or that they’re unsure? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may have provided a clue in a Monday morning appearance on Fox & Friends.
During a discussion about the Democrats’ dramatic response to the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to strike down the party’s redrawn congressional map, Gingrich said, “Democrats are now crazy. And so, this is a race between weak, woke, and crazy Democrats, and Republicans. Even though the Republicans may not be perfect, they’re not nuts.”
He may have hit the nail right on the head.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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Comments
They don’t really think it. They’re conditioned to say it.
Stupid people listen to lying mass media, come to stupid conclusions, and are compelled to share their stupidity.
They believe they’re “informed.” The rest of us are the “low-information voters.”
“The problem isn’t the things you don’t know. The problem is the things you do know that ain’t so.”
Ah, yes. Democrat confirmation bias—where their existing beliefs prevents them from seeing the truth.
“The problem is the things you do know that ain’t so.”
These people are like Zombies, for the things they “know” aren’t even their own—they are downloaded scripts that they can no longer distinguish from their own thoughts.
They think they are “educated” as well. Given that this bunch thought Biden was “the best he’s ever been,” and that Harris was even remotely competent, and still believe that PRESIDENT Trump colluded with the Russians and raped a “woman” according to a TV script, they aren’t exactly the “go to guys” for rational thinking, logic or accepting evidence to the contrary.
Use of the “blue pill” is off the charts
Morons each and every one of them.
This is why we get such rotten elected officials. Only free, white, propertied, Christian men, aged 21 or over should be allowed to vote.
Troll Alert.
If so, the Founders were trolls.
(The Christian part wasn’t there, but the rest was.)
Key word being ‘was’. E Howard ‘was’ and ‘is’ a troll. A poor one but a troll never the less.
Back then, the Christian part was assumed.
It is interesting to me that we have removed several of the protections originally designed into the system, and arguably to our detriment each time.
Originally many states required property ownership – you had to have “skin in the game”.
The same was true for literacy tests- which didn’t completely die until the mid 1900’s.
The change to direct election of Senators (rather than by each state’s legislature) sharply altered the focus of the Senate, removing its equivalency to The House Of Lords. It was intended to be isolated from the whims of the mob and consider things from the perspective of State’s Rights.
I am also going to mention giving women the right to vote as an alteration to the original intent of the founders. While it is logically correct, and objectively and obviously and fundamentally fair I don’t think that anyone can argue that voting patterns and priorities are different among between men and women.
None of this can be undone, but I do believe that we are not served well by these alterations to the Founders’ design.
Your statement brings to mind that the salient demographic that put the obama thing in the White House TWICE was white females .
You mean like Tucker Carlson or the nazi in Maine?
If it were fabricated, it would have appeared closer to succeeding and more dramatic. It doesn’t even pass the muster of the motive that the left is pushing.
How much closer could it have been without being successful. A hole in his ear seems like it would take a really, really, fantastically proficient shooter to put one that close, especially since Trump was turning his head. We’re talking Butler here, not the one at the golf course or the idiot who tried a full frontal assault through security.
I don’t belt 13% of republicans think it was staged
Polls
It has been my experience that about 10% of the population just likes to screw with poll takers.
That result is just bizarre. If anything, the Ryan Routh attempt would likely have been the easiest to engineer since IIRC it was isolated on the golf course and never resulted in any gun fire. But Democrats think it is less likely to have been faked than the one where the two people died and the WHCA dinner where shots were fired by the secret service and the assassin? This isn’t just two movies on one screen, Democrats are living on a different planet.
No, it’s not bizarre in the least. The democrats have to claim to believe that these assassination attempts were fabricated otherwise they’d have to admit their violent rhetoric incited these people to make attempts to assassinate Trump. You know, calling Trump Hitler, a fascist, and stating that he must be removed by “any means necessary” or to use “maximum warfare” to oppose Trump and his administration. They’d have to admit that all of it contributed to these assassination attempts and continuing threats against the sitting president of the United States of America. And the democrat party leadership isn’t willing to make that admission. So the talking points have gone out, these assassination attempts were all fabricated by Trump. Nothing we (democrats) did incited or contributed to these attempts to kill the sitting president. Look here’s some rigged polls that support our claims. And yah, yah, yah.
It’s all just democrat gaslighting so that they can attempt to avoid taking responsibility for their violent rhetoric and the consequences of that rhetoric. That is all.
The Democrat brain explained: Their brain acts as a filter, automatically prioritizing information that supports their existing views while dismissing or ignoring anything that contradicts them.
A Secret Service agent fired four shots at Routh after he saw Routh’s rifle’s barrel.
TDS is real – and active – even if the cited poll numbers exaggerate the number of deniers.
Many of the knee-jerk anti-T folks (both (D) and (R)) are – like Moon Landing or Flat Earthier’s or Holocaust deniers – too marinated in their delusional echo chamber juices to ever see the fallacies and plot armor in the stories they WANT to believe.
And of the above mentioned examples, TDS inspired “it’s staged” stupidity most closely corresponds to Holocaust Denialism – in that it’s not just mostly harmless stupidity but mostly evil stupidity.
Because it also includes the provision “It never really happened – but I would have supported it if it had”.
As I have said before: this crisis is a spiritual crisis and not a political one. Whether or not you believe this particular poll it is clear a large percentage of the American population is demonic in nature.
And since they are demons you will never persuade them to give up their dreams of genocide.
Guilty dogs bark loudest, and our canine friends may end up chasing a chuckwagon off a cliff.
Democrats are just assholes. They believe Trump would stage a shooting where he was grazed by a round, another man was critically injured and another man lost his life so he could stage a photo-op? Their response says a lot about who they are.
Not the incident asked about in the poll. Don’t let the photo mislead you.
Yes, that is the incident asked about in the poll, that produced the result in the headline.
You’re describing a shift where people trade critical thinking—the messy, difficult process of human intelligence—for a scripted response.
I call it the Ketanji Brown Syndrome: Instead of looking at a situation and reasoning through it, they simply match the situation to their pre-conceived narrative.
From the tweet…so both were being talked about. You’re still losing the plot.
About 1 in 4 Americans think the April shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner was staged according to a new survey.
Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans.
They claim he cut the ear this a blade or used a blood bag. They think he would gladly kill two people for the event. It tells us a lot about them.
Since they kill so many more…. this would be logical to them.
So it looks like if you combine Democrat politicians with Democrat voters, they are both the evil party AND the stupid party.
Somebody oughta get Comperator’s wife into an interview in the next 24 hours and have her drill all those stupid Democrats a new one.
Oh, yeah. It’s the followers who are stupid, being led by the evil. The leaders know and understand what they’re doing (destroying “traditional” America). The followers believe their leaders are trying to make it better. They are not. They’re trying to make it different. They’ve said so – they want to “fundamentally change” America. Nobody thinks an object or subject of their love requires “fundamental change.” Something or someone that requires “fundamental change” isn’t loved, what is loved is the prospective replacement of that thing or person.
Of course the lock-step Dumb Dems believe this lie. God Save America from this reprehensible traitorous party from ever usurping power again.
You misspelled disingenuous.
The same knuckle draggers also think BUYden was sharp as a tack and the jugeared overlords race war was in their best interest. When the electorate is that u informed how long can the system survive.
I believe the attempts were possibly staged, by Leftists consumed by TDS trying to get rid of Trump. Thankfully, they’ve been unsuccessful
God put President Trump in office for a reason. God always has a plan. If God is not responsible for him being elected, he would be dead. Three attempts by democrats and failed.
and 100% of the dems believe that the staging done against trump by cheny and pelosi etc was not staged
I have a college-educated grandchild who not only says the attempts on Trump were staged but that the Charlie Kirk killing was fake and that he is still alive somewhere pulling the stings.
Sorry. “pulling the strings”.
42% of Dems? Perhaps, but 99% of that same 42% also believe that Mao would have made a great U.S. President. Is anyone surprised?
The only way this could have been staged is if the shooter was a brain washed “Manchurian Candidate.”
Where is the evidence?
No. Even with a fanciful concept as a brainwashed patsy, there simply isn’t a way to accomplish a deliberate ear nick with the rifle used against a moving target at that distance. The rifle isn’t accurate enough to pull that off.
We are awash in a sea of MORONS.
It’s gonna get worse before it gets worse.
It’s called mass psychosis: twisted delusional “thinking.” Except how do brain dead Democrats even think? They don’t. They read and suck up the lies –kind of like osmosis.
Before electronic media, we would have never heard from these nut jobs. Now with all the sites available to any loon, they can get like morons to agree with them and then their numbers grow. There has always been a flat earth crowd but when they came out after the moon landings, they had no avenue to express their stupidity. Now they have many such avenues and along with other nuts joining in. I don’t believe any of the numbers quoted in any online poll and neither should any of you.
I posted this somewhere before, perhaps here…
In 1956, Samuel Shenton (Britain) founded the International Flat Earth Research Society.
By the mid-1990s, it had peaked at about 3,500 members.
A 1995 house fire destroyed their records, and membership fell to a couple hundred.
When the Internet (particularly YouTube and Facebook) hit (2004-2009), the Society took off again.
Society membership is now over 8,000, and their channels have about 200k followers.
Polls report that ~2–5%+ of some populations (esp. younger US adults) express agreement with or openness to Flat Earth claims.
You can’t fix stupid — but you CAN breed for it.
“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: Who is to blame?”
It’s an intellectually lazy spectacle on display by people who apparently are also pushing the ridiculous theory that the Trump campaign “staged” the Butler, PA assassination attempt on Trump. Those people give no consideration to the family of former fire chief Corey Comperatore who was killed, or to Marine veteran David Dutch and James Copenhaver who were seriously wounded by Crooks.
Pelosi reveals the democrat’s favorite political smear tactic:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXeSiTbk_uk/?igsh=MXJsMmRvMGtta2Z3ZQ==
yeah, well, but…
to be a democrat means being able to believe in anything.
they believe and repeat lies about people they don’t know or understand: that’s bigotry.
some of them have been believing the propaganda for 70 years! I’m 73, but I figured it out when I was 22.
democrats live in a mass-hallucination, like the southern people in the year before the Civil War broke out, or the witch hangers of the Middle Ages (were 100,000 witches in Europe in the 1600s REALLY killed? apparently…)
This correlates well with the fact that 42% of democrats are retarded.
Isn’t News Guard a Democrat “fact checker”? What was their motive in running this poll?
Maybe the goal of the poll was to promote the narrative that the assassination attempts were faked?
The number of people polled is so small, that they are statistically insignificant.