An alarming number of people believe the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was staged, according to a poll.
A survey of 1,000 Americans conducted by YouGov on behalf of NewsGuard found that 24 percent believe the foiled attack by a gunman on April 25 was not a real attempt to kill Trump.
When expanded to include those who believe the assassination attempt was staged or are “unsure,” the figure rises significantly to 56 percent.
Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) also believe that at least one of the assassination attempts against the president—the WHCD dinner incident, the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, or the foiled attack at one of Trump’s Florida golf courses in September 2024—was staged.
The suspected WHCD gunman, 31-year-old Cole Allen, has been charged in connection with the attempted attack at the Washington Hilton.
Immediately after the attack was thwarted, conspiracy theories claiming it had been staged to boost Trump’s dire approval ratings spread online. Trump himself fueled some of the speculation by demanding just hours later that his $400 million ballroom project be completed to prevent similar attacks from happening in the future.
The president was even confronted about the rampant, unsubstantiated claims during an interview on 60 Minutes soon after the assassination attempt was foiled.
“I haven’t heard that last night didn’t happen,” Trump said. “Usually takes a little bit longer. Usually, they wait about two or three months to start saying that.”
Broken down further, the NewsGuard poll found that young people aged 18 to 29 were more likely to believe the WHCD incident was staged (32 percent) than any other age demographic. The second highest figure came from those aged 45 to 64 (25 percent), followed by ages 30 to 44 (23 percent), while just 15 percent of those aged 65 and older believed it was a fake attack.
More than one in 10 Republicans (13 percent) also believe that the WHCD incident could have been a staged attack, compared to 34 percent of Democrats.
Sofia Rubinson, an editor at NewsGuard, told The Washington Post the results show that “people on all sides of the political spectrum are distrustful” of the Trump administration and the press.
Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the online extremism-tracking group Open Measures, told the paper that the survey was a worrying indicator of the growing prevalence of conspiracy-theory-style thinking.
“Those poll numbers don’t terribly shock me. They’re definitely bleak,” Holt said. “Conspiracy theorizing has infected our body politic now to the point where it has become a gut reflex for a seemingly growing portion of the population.”
The Daily Beast’s executive editor, Hugh Dougherty, who attended the WHCA dinner and even stayed in the hotel room next to the alleged gunman, said that even he believed the attack could be a “stunt” in the immediate aftermath of the gunshots.
However, Dougherty later concluded that such a narrative “ceased to make sense” as the possible motivations behind it fell apart.
“No stunt would be so sloppy, amateurish, and chaotic. No stunt would leave Trump and those around him looking weak, old, and—some of them—terrified. No stunt orchestrated by Trump insiders would end in backbiting and recrimination inside his inner circle,” Dougherty wrote.
“Onstage, television footage shows the awkward removal of Trump, a 79-year-old man. If this was a stunt he masterminded, why would he want to look old, stumbling, and weak?”
In response to the poll results, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast: “Anyone who thinks President Trump staged his own assassination attempts is a complete moron.”
