The Left is crazy. We know that.
But Democrats are living in fairy land according to this most recent poll.
When Reality Itself Becomes A Partisan Question
The Fox News national survey released Wednesday carried a finding that is more troubling, in a deeper sense, than any of its economic data. Asked whether the April 25 assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was real or staged, 30% of voters said it was staged — including 13% who believe it was “definitely” fabricated. Only 52% said it was real, with 18% uncertain.
Let that settle for a moment. A man has been charged with four federal felonies, including attempted assassination of the President of the United States. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, is accused of obtaining a firearm, traveling to the Washington Hilton, and attempting to breach Secret Service checkpoints at the event where the president and multiple Cabinet members were present. An alleged manifesto has been reviewed by authorities. Allen has pleaded not guilty. A Hennepin County woman and another individual have separately been charged in connection with the alleged plot.
These are facts that can be verified from court filings, law enforcement press releases, and the testimony of every reporter, photographer, staffer, and official who was present at the dinner when security personnel rushed the room and evacuated the president, first lady, and Cabinet officials. There is a man in federal custody. There are charges. There is video.
And 30% of Americans believe it was staged.
The Partisan Breakdown Is The Alarming Part
The overall 30% figure is striking on its own. The partisan breakdown is far more troubling. According to the Fox News poll, nearly half of Democrats (49%) and nearly half of 2024 Harris voters (48%) believe the shooting was staged. Only 31% of Democrats say it was real.
By contrast, 79% of Republicans and 77% of 2024 Trump voters believe it was real.
This is not a gap. It is a chasm. Nearly half of one major political party believes a documented federal criminal prosecution is a fabrication designed by the president to gain political sympathy. As Republican pollster Daron Shaw put it directly: “The assassination attempt was undoubtedly real.” He added: “When partisan polarization and political cynicism prevent us from agreeing on a common and obvious set of facts, it undercuts our ability to diagnose problems and develop policy solutions.”
His Democratic counterpart Chris Anderson offered an equally pointed diagnosis: “When people are told that every major event could be manipulated or manufactured, disbelief itself becomes the default reaction.”
Who Is Feeding This — And Why It Matters For The Midterms
The ecosystem that produced the 49% Democratic disbelief number is not mysterious. It is the same media ecosystem that spent years claiming the moon landing was staged, that 9/11 was an inside job, and that the 2020 election was stolen — accusations that span partisan lines and have eaten into the credibility of government and media institutions from all directions.
In this specific instance, the fuel for Democratic conspiracy thinking about the WHCA shooting includes: three years of aggressive anti-Trump media coverage that conditioned Democratic audiences to assume the worst about anything that benefits him politically; a social media information environment that rewards contrarian takes with algorithmic amplification; and political commentators across the left-wing media landscape who have, with varying degrees of explicitness, implied that the event was politically convenient and therefore suspect.
That line of reasoning — “it benefits him, therefore it may be fake” — is the exact logical architecture that conservatives used to dismiss unflattering news about Trump. When it was applied to justify doubting the 2020 election results, the mainstream media correctly identified it as dangerous to democratic norms. When it is applied by Democrats to dismiss a documented armed attack on the President of the United States, the same logic applies: trading in “it might be staged” claims about a presidential assassination attempt is corrosive to the basic civic minimum that makes democratic self-government possible.
There is something genuinely bipartisan in the generational pattern the poll found. Voters under 35 are nearly twice as likely as those over 65 to say the shooting was fabricated (38% vs. 20%). Young Republicans are more than five times as likely as older Republicans to call it staged (22% vs. 4%). The erosion of a shared factual baseline is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It is an American problem — and the Fox poll has put it in numbers that are hard to look at without concern.
