Nearly one in four Americans says they think the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month was staged, according to a new survey. It highlights the degree to which people who are increasingly mistrustful of institutions turn to conspiracy theories.
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The person detained in the April 25 attack, Cole Tomas Allen, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that he attempted to kill President Donald Trump and fired a shotgun at a Secret Service officer who tried to stop the assault.
To be sure, some details emerging from the incident seem like something out of a screenplay: An assailant racing through a security checkpoint, past Secret Service guards who are caught unawares; an officer firing his sidearm multiple times without hitting the intruder; the accused attacker being caught because he fell, not because he was shot or tackled.
Thinking It Through
You can see why some people might be inclined to explain the whole thing as a sinister scheme implemented by powerful and secretive plotters – a conspiracy theory, in other words. But no evidence has come to light to make that a credible allegation.
And, as with any conspiracy theory, it’s wise to take a step back and consider what would be required for it to be true. Would the officers caught flat-footed at the checkpoint be in on it? They stand to lose quite a lot from that security failure. How about the head of the Secret Service? Same problem: The agency has been under fire for years, including for lapses in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a shooter nicked Trump’s ear but could have killed the president had he not suddenly turned his head. What about the scores of security officers from various agencies guarding other senior government officials attending the dinner? Plus, if this was all staged, wouldn’t it have been more dramatic to catch the shooter right outside the ballroom than a flight of stairs away?
That’s on top of the fact that everything this administration does eventually leaks, including private White House warnings to staff not to leak. It’s not limited to this administration, of course. Just read former President Barack Obama’s recent comments to Stephen Colbert about whether the government is hiding evidence of alien life. He said no, because, “one of the things you learn as president is the government is terrible at keeping secrets.”
…But Here We Are
Nearly one-third of Americans believe at least one of the apparent assassination attempts targeting Trump over the past two years was staged, according to the survey from NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of online news outlets.
Just 38% of Americans believe all three were authentic.
Things get grimmer if you lump the Americans who think the attacks were staged with those who are “not sure” they were real attempts. In each case – the incidents at Trump’s international golf course in September 2024, Butler in July 2024 and the Correspondents’ Dinner in April – the skeptics outnumber those who think they were a real attempt on the president’s life.
The Partisan Split
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Democratic respondents were more likely to say the Correspondents’ Dinner incident was staged – 34% of them said so, against 13% of Republicans (which is still crazy high).
And 21% of Democrats told NewsGuard all three incidents were staged, compared to 11% of independents and 3% of Republicans.
Among Democrats, the Butler attack was the one most respondents thought was staged (42%), followed by the Correspondents’ Dinner (34%) and then the Florida golf club (26%). Among independents, it was the dinner (23%), Butler (21%) and the golf club (14%).
Rage Bait
Conspiracy theories have had a place in American politics for as long as I’ve been alive. Who really killed JFK? Did we really land on the moon?
But they seem to be getting more outlandish while also drawing more passionate support. Pizzagate, the insane story of a global pedophilic cabal, including prominent Democrats, running a child trafficking operation out of the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn’t have a basement?
Or QAnon, in which the so-called deep state is protecting a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles and Trump is secretly leading the fight against them? (Trump has promoted elements of this tale.)
The point is not that the federal government never hides facts. It does. All the time. The point is not that there are not ugly plots in American public life. There are.
The point, at least for the purpose of this column, is to ask readers to be skeptical of unsupported claims they see online and especially skeptical of claims they agree with.
Things are bad enough out there without Decision Points readers making themselves vectors for conspiracy theories. Help contain the outbreak. Don’t give the infected monkey a ride to the airport.
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