A new national survey is turning the lefts favorite narrative about right-wing conspiracy theorists squarely back on its authors.
According to RedState, a poll released suggests that when it comes to political paranoia, it is Democratsnot conservativeswho are increasingly embracing outlandish theories, particularly surrounding the multiple attempts on President Donald Trumps life.
The survey, conducted by NewsGuard and carried out by YouGov between April 28 and May 4, questioned 1,000 American adults about three separate assassination attempts targeting Trump. The findings not only highlight deep mistrust of government and media institutions but also lend fresh weight to the notion that Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is not just a punchline, but a pervasive mindset on the left.
The most recent incident examined was the attempted attack on Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD) in April, which federal authorities have treated as a serious assassination attempt. Roughly one in four Americans now say they believe that episode was staged, a stunning figure given the gravity of the event. When broken down by party, the numbers become even more revealing: about one in three Democrats claim the WHCD attempt was fake, compared with just one in eight Republicans. Meanwhile, as my RedState colleague Ward Clark has reported, the alleged assailant, Cole Allen, has entered a not guilty plea in the case, underscoring that this was not some social media stunt but an active criminal prosecution.
Overall, the survey found that 24 percent of U.S. adults believe the WHCD shooting was not real, while 45 percent accept that it did occur and 32 percent say they are unsure. Sofia Rubinson, an editor at NewsGuard, acknowledged the disturbing implications of those figures. Its very striking, said Sofia Rubinson, an editor at NewsGuard. The results underscore broader skepticism that Americans feel toward the government and the press, she said.
Rubinson further noted that this distrust is not confined to one side of the political aisle, even if its manifestations differ. Increasingly, people on all sides of the political spectrum are distrustful of both this administration and also the media, she said, but willing to trust unverified information they see online. That last point is crucial: while legacy outlets have squandered credibility through years of bias and selective reporting, many Democrats appear to be filling the vacuum not with healthy skepticism, but with fantasies that any event favorable to Trump must be fabricated. The lefts media ecosystem, which has spent nearly a decade portraying Trump as a cartoon villain, has helped create a climate where some of its own consumers now reject reality itself.
The WHCD incident is not the only case where a significant share of Americansand especially Democratsinsist that real bullets and real bloodshed were somehow staged. When asked about the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, 24 percent of respondents said they believed that attack was fake. Among Democrats, that number soared to 42 percent, while only seven percent of Republicans said the same. This is not a fringe sliver of the electorate; it is a sizable bloc of Democratic voters effectively denying that a man tried to murder a president in broad daylight.
The Butler attack was no mere scare; it left one man, Corey Comperatore, dead and others seriously wounded, while Trump himself narrowly escaped with his life. Yet nearly half of Democrats surveyed are prepared to wave away the tragedy as theater, as if grieving families and injured supporters are actors in some elaborate production. One might reasonably ask those who insist the event was staged to look Corey Comperatores loved ones in the eye and repeat that claim. The willingness to erase the suffering of real victims simply because the target was Donald Trump reveals a moral and psychological rot that goes far beyond ordinary partisanship.
The survey also examined the attempted assassination at Trumps golf club in Florida, and again, a troubling pattern emerged. Sixteen percent of respondents said they believed that attempt was not real, including 26 percent of Democrats and just seven percent of Republicans. When the three incidents are considered together, 21 percent of Democrats said the attempts were staged, compared with 11 percent of independents and only three percent of Republicans. For all the lefts rhetoric about disinformation and conspiracy theories, it is their own voters who are disproportionately retreating into denial when confronted with violence against a political opponent they despise.
Self-styled experts have rushed to offer explanations for these findings, citing generalized mistrust in government and a supposed rise in conspiratorial thinking across the board. Yet one academic inadvertently pointed to a more specific cause rooted in the lefts obsession with Trump. Boston University professor Joan Donovan, who studies media manipulation, commented on the showmanship of Trumps presidency and claimed that The entire apparatus of the government has been turned into a reality TV show. When a large segment of the population has been conditioned for years to view everything involving Trump as spectacle, it is hardly surprising that some now insist even assassination attempts are scripted.
Mental health professionals can debate the clinical terminology, but the political reality is unmistakable. A significant share of Democrats appear so consumed by hatred of Trump that they reflexively dismiss any event that might generate sympathy for him as fake, regardless of the evidence. This is not healthy skepticism; it is a form of derangement that trivializes political violence and dehumanizes its victims. It was just another hoax says the people that really realllly want President Trump to be killed.
The left has spent years branding conservatives as the tin foil hat brigade, yet it is their own base that now insists real bullets, real blood, and real funerals are nothing more than stagecraft. Assassinations and political violence are not abstractions; they are deadly serious, and a republic cannot function when one side treats attempted murder as a narrative inconvenience to be wished away.
As one observer who was present during an attack put it, Assassinations + political violence are real. My party cant be the tin foil hat brigade. I was there a table away and I promise you, this was not staged. The surveys numbers suggest that if America wants to confront genuine extremism and conspiracy thinking, it must start by acknowledging just how deeply Trump Derangement Syndrome has taken hold on the modern left.
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