A Quarter of Americans and 34% of Democrats Believe the WHCD Shooting Was Staged

Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images

A significant percentage of Americans believe the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was staged.

A recent survey conducted by YouGov and NewsGuard asked Americans about the three attempts on Trump’s life — the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, the thwarted attempted at the president’s golf course, in West Palm Beach, and the shooting at the Washington Hilton just weeks earlier. According to the survey, just 38% of respondents believed all three assassination attempts were legitimate. Additionally, 54% of respondents said all three were staged or that they weren’t sure.

Perhaps predictably, the numbers showed extreme variations between party lines. The report continued:

The contention that the three events may have been staged correlates strongly with party identification. Across all three events, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to endorse the “staged” framing.

In total, 21 percent of Democrats responded that they thought all three events were staged, as did 11 percent of Independents and three percent of Republicans.

• Of the 12 percent of Americans who said that all three attempts were staged, 55 percent were Democrats, 38 percent were Independents, and seven percent were Republicans.

• Of the respondents who said that all three incidents were authentic, only 15 percent were Democrats. Thirty-eight percent were Independents and 47 percent were Republicans.

• For the most recent event — at the April 25, 2026, White House Correspondents’ Dinner — 34 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said it was staged, a 21-point gap.

As the report noted, there is no evidence to support to the claims that any of the assassination attempts were staged. Cole Allen, the accused shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, recently pleaded not guilty to his charges.

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