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.
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.
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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