A new poll suggests that a sizable number of Democrats — more than 40 percent in some cases — believe the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life were fake.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans over the age of 18, was conducted by NewsGuard and YouGov. It asked people to respond to three statements:
“The assassination attempt against Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner in April 2026 was staged.”
“The assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Trump presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024 was staged.”
“The assassination attempt against Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club in September 2024 was staged.”
The pollsters found that 34 percent of Democrats said the Correspondents Dinner attempt was staged; 42 percent of Democrats said the Butler shooting was staged; and 26 percent said the Trump golf club incident was staged.
By way of contrast, 13 percent of Republicans said the Correspondents Dinner attempt was staged; 7 percent of Republicans said the Butler shooting was staged; and 7 percent said the Trump golf club incident was staged.
The Republican numbers are bad enough, reflecting an information system and troubled culture in which fewer and fewer people believe what they read and watch. But the Democratic numbers are off the scale, reflecting something far beyond that — a political atmosphere in which some people will believe anything about their hated opponent, that he is a fascist, a dictator and a man who would stage elaborate phony assassination attempts for political gain.
One striking aspect of the poll’s findings was that the assassination attempt that seemed most undeniably real — the Butler incident — was the event the largest number of Democrats characterized as fake. On that day, Trump was shot and was visibly bleeding, while one man was killed and two others were seriously wounded, all of it captured on video and still pictures by several press photographers. And now many people, most of them Democrats, cannot accept that it happened.
The NewsGuard analysis notes, “Minutes after Secret Service escorted a bleeding Trump off the stage, social media lit up with claims that the shooting was staged, arguing, for example, that Trump faked the shooting with a ‘blood pill’ and that photojournalists at the scene had been tipped off. Nearly two years later, that narrative continues to gain traction, with claims by some social media users that an actual Russian plot to stage an assassination in Hungary that never came to fruition is proof that the Pennsylvania rally shooting was also staged.”
The poll questions gave respondents the option of saying they were “not sure” whether each of the assassination attempts was staged or not. When you combine the number of people who said that a particular event was definitely staged with those who said they were not sure whether it was staged, you get a majority of Americans who question the reality of the Trump assassination attempts. For the Butler shooting, a combined 53 percent said it was staged or they were not sure; for the Correspondents Dinner, 56 percent said it was staged or they were not sure; and for the Palm Beach golf course incident, 52 percent said it was staged or they were not sure. Again, these figures were dominated by Democratic respondents.
These are huge numbers of people who believe the assassination attempts are massive lies or might be lies. The numbers are so striking that NewsGuard included an editorial note: “After we received these results from YouGov, we were so surprised by the survey findings that we asked YouGov to go back and recheck the data. They did so and confirmed their findings.”
For Democrats, the results are reminiscent of earlier polls that measured credulity about the most sensational allegations in the Trump-Russia controversy of the president’s first term. In late 2018, the Economist and YouGov asked respondents about this statement concerning the 2016 election: “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected president.” Was it true or false?
First of all, the statement was clearly false; there has never been any evidence that Russia tampered with vote tallies in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But 31 percent of Democrats told pollsters the statement was “definitely” true, and another 36 percent of Democrats said it was “probably” true. That was a total of 67 percent of Democrats — two-thirds of the party — who believed Russia definitely or probably tampered with 2016 vote tallies.
Of course, at that time, experiencing fantasies about Trump and Russia was an everyday experience for many Democrats and their allies in the press. Indeed, watching some news coverage from the time, who wouldn’t believe the wildest stories about Trump? Now, the phenomenon has been updated with new material — the assassination attempts — but the willingness to believe anything is the same.
Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. Contact at byork@washingtonexaminer.com.
