Many Americans think Trump assassination attempts were fake, survey finds

[mahatmakanejeeves]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Omaha Steve (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Washington Post

Many Americans think Trump assassination attempts were fake, survey finds

About 1 in 4 say the correspondents' dinner shooting was staged, the poll found, including roughly a third of Democrats, as conspiracy theories spread widely online.

May 11, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. EDT


President Donald Trump at a news conference after a gunman disrupted the White House correspondents' dinner last month. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

By Liam Scott
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/liam-scott/

About 1 in 4 Americans think the April shooting at the White House correspondents' dinner was staged, with a marked partisan divide, according to a survey published Monday.

Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans, according to a survey published Monday by NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of online news outlets. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 were also more likely than older people to think the incident was staged, according to the report.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/05/11/trump-assassinations-staged-conspiracy/

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Don't miss the comments. You have to act quickly, but you can click through to them.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Who was incompetent? The Butler, Door Dash Grandma, or a guy with empty shells?

Recall there was also the golf course lurker in Florida.

Yes, the comment are hilarious. But they also reveal Americans have figured it out.

[EYESORE 9001]

2. Remember the acronym from the time following 9/11? LIHOP?

Meaning ‘let it happen on purpose’. Given that we know he notified family members, who in turn alerted authorities, I’m inclined to believe he was allowed ingress to the point that he could still be neutralized as a threat.

[MichMan]

3. When is Cole Allen going to expose the whole thing? At trial?

Why didn't they kill him so he couldn't talk?

[Ford_Prefect]

11. I would argue they are trying to set that up by placing him on an unjustified suicide watch including isolation.

[efhmc]

19. Real or not, I have compassion for the young person who fell for this mess.

[travelingthrulife]

15. They knew he was coming well in advance. He took a long train from the coast and

posted selfies showing himself fully armed?

[efhmc]

20. As a gmother of two young men in this age group, I so want to help him. I hope he has a loving, well grounded person to

help him.

[tishaLA]

4. Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark talked about this

On her focus group podcast -- this was soon after the "assassination attempt" and even some of his supporters s thought it might have been staged!

[cstanleytech]

5. Honestly given how they have happened I wouldn't be surprised.

After all how exactly does an experienced group like the Secret Service fail at not securing where that one guy was supposed to have fired his rifle from during the first attempt? He should never have even been able to get a line of sight in the first place had it been secured.

[Goonch]

6. ;-{) .......

[Ray Bruns]

7. That is hilarious!

[Blue Owl]

8. Isn't it obvious by now that EVERYTHING about Dump is fake?

[Botany]

10. Yup

Like back in his first term when that boy was mowing the grass @ the White House it was
obvious he had never cut a lawn before, or the elections, or his business skills, or his degree
from Wharton, or ….. it is all kabuki.

[Fiendish Thingy]

9. Instead of finding common ground and bipartisan consensus in the center...

It has been found at the extreme opposite kooky CT fringes of reality, along with election Denialism and anti-vax cultism.

That’s what the millions who suffer from a social media cultivated inability to tolerate uncertainty have brought us to.

[Torchlight]

12. Given that the majority of his assertions are objectively false,

I'd double-check the color of the sky just to be sure if he went on air and said it was blue today. I'm not at all surprised much of the nation is presuming he lies any time he opens his mouth. No doubt his fans will find a non-sequitur conclusion that strokes their agenda; but the little fella lies and the nation has caught onto it, there's not much else to say...

[Botany]

14. Or the plaque he had put up on his golf course in VA to honor a battle that never happened.

"The River of Blood"
Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot, "The Rapids", on the Potomac River. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as "The River of Blood".
It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!
-Donald John Trump

The man lives to lie.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/details-details-donald-trump-has-plaque-at-his-golf-course-commemorating-civil-war-battle-that-never-happened

[efhmc]

18. Hope you are right.

[Wounded Bear]

13. It's all about the image, the show, for trump...

Very easy to believe the attempts were staged for PR purposes.

[travelingthrulife]

16. How else would ALL Republicans be sending the same text about the need for

a ballroom within moments of the attempt?

[Gaugamela]

17. How do you recruit someone to throw their life away for Donald Trump?

Sure there are undoubtedly a few people out there who are crazy enough to do it, but you would have to interview and screen an awful lot of people to find them. Someone is going to spill the beans. The only way to do it secretly would be through MK-ULTRA type techniques, which is getting into some pretty fringe conspiracy theory thinking.

I think the attempts are real, it’s how the administration handles it afterwards that’s fake. They seem to have plans already drawn up for such events. I guess it’s possible that the lax security is a way to invite would-be assassins, but Trump is way too much of a coward to let some 20 year old shoot high-powered rifle bullets passed his head. And lax security could also enable a much more competent shooter.

[ThreeNoSeep]

21. Totally Fake, unlikely. Totally manipulated, definitely.

There are endless kooks out there, each following the voices in their heads. My guess is attempts doomed to fail happen all the time. This administration attempts to manipulate this common nonsense occurrence for reasons of propaganda, to cover incompetence and distract from the powerful evidence of horrible illegal behavior by this rectum-lipped monster.

[GenThePerservering]

22. It's not whether the attempts were fake or not

but the fact that you not only cannot believe anything coming out of this maladministration, but they're complete manipulators.

The groper comments on that article show pretty much that they don't want to see the real reason for skepticism.

[Omaha Steve]

23. AFTER a review by forum hosts LOCKING

Polls and surveys are not allowed in LBN. They are a form of analysis.

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