A quarter of Americans doubt the reality of the assassination attempt on Trump.

According to a poll released on May 11, approximately a quarter of Americans believe the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in April was staged. Answers vary depending on respondents' partisan leanings, The Washington Post.

Among Democratic respondents, approximately one in three believe the incident was staged, while among Republicans, approximately one in eight believes the same. The survey was conducted by NewsGuard, a company that assesses the reliability of news sources. According to the report, respondents aged 18 to 29 were more likely than older adults to believe the incident was staged.

Last week, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted the alleged shooter. Cole Thomas Allen is charged with four felonies, including attempted assassination of President Donald Trump. Soon after the incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel, which resulted in the suspect's arrest, conspiracy theories began circulating online. Many users claim that the Trump administration staged the incident to boost approval ratings for the president, the Republican Party as a whole, and the White House ballroom project.

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A NewsGuard poll found that 24% of US adults believe the Washington Hilton incident was a hoax, while 45% believe it was real. Another 32% were undecided. The survey, conducted by YouGov from April 28 to May 4, surveyed 1000 US adults.

"It's very telling," said NewsGuard editor Sofia Rubinson. She said the results reflect Americans' distrust of government and the press.

"More and more people of all political persuasions don't trust either this administration or the media," she noted, adding that they are willing to believe unverified information they see online.

The presidential administration rejects conspiracy theories. White House spokesman Davis Ingle stated, "Anyone who believes President Trump staged an assassination attempt on himself is a complete idiot."

Boston University professor Joan Donovan, who studies media manipulation, said the findings are largely due to the role that showmanship and media visibility play in Trump's politics.

"It seems very Hollywood to suggest this is staged," Donovan commented on the shooting at the correspondents' dinner. "The entire apparatus of government has been turned into a reality show."

The April incident came after two assassination attempts on Trump in 2024. One was at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the other was at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

No evidence has emerged to support conspiracy theories that any of the three shootings at Trump public events were staged. Nevertheless, many Americans believe each was staged.

Regarding the assassination attempt in Butler, 24% of respondents said they believed it was staged. Among Democrats, 42% said this, while among Republicans, 7%.

At the same time, 16% of respondents believe the assassination attempt at the golf club was staged: 26% among Democrats and 7% among Republicans.

Overall, 21% of Democratic respondents believe all three incidents were staged. Among independents, 11% believe this, and among Republicans, 3%.

Donovan isn't surprised by the higher level of doubt among Democrats: "If you look at people on the left, you see that conspiracy thinking is on the rise, and a lot of that has to do with a lack of trust in institutions."

Jared Holt, a senior researcher at Open Measures, an organization that tracks online extremism, concluded that the data shows how widespread conspiracy thinking has become in the United States.

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"These figures don't surprise me. The picture is quite grim," Holt concluded. "Conspiracy thinking has become so ingrained in political life that for a growing segment of society, interest in conspiracy theories has become an almost automatic response to events."

"Unfortunately, when governments or institutions hide the truth, bend rules, or apply laws selectively, people find it easier to believe in a conspiracy against them than to acknowledge that the system itself is rotten," Donovan concluded.

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