This is what happens when you lie ALL THE TIME

Many Americans think #Trump #assassination attempts were fake

About 1 in 4 adults say the #WHCD shooting was staged, 1 in 3 Democrats said they believed the event was fake, & 1 in 8 Republicans also think it was staged, according to a survey published Monday by NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of online news outlets.

#TrumpLies #PerformancePolitics #BreadAndCircuses #ConspiracyTheories #USpol #media
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/05/11/trump-assassinations-staged-conspiracy/

Many Americans think Trump assassination attempts were fake, survey finds

About 1 in 4 say the correspondents’ dinner shooting was staged, the poll found, including roughly a third of Democrats, as conspiracy theories spread widely online.

The Washington Post
The survey found 24% of US adults believe the #WHCD incident was fake, 45% believe it was legitimate, 32% were unsure. The survey of 1,000 #US adults was conducted by YouGov April 28 to May 4.

“It’s very striking,” said Sofia Rubinson, editor at NewsGuard. The results underscore broad skepticism Americans feel toward the #government & the #press, she said. “Increasingly, people on all sides of the political spectrum are distrustful of both this [#Trump] administration & also the media.”

Joan Donovan, a Boston University professor who researches media manipulation, said the results are an indicator of the role of showmanship in #Trump’s presidency. “It just seems incredibly Hollywood to imagine that this is staged,” Donovan said of the correspondents’ dinner shooting. “The entire apparatus of the government has been turned into a reality TV show.”

#TrumpLies #PerformancePolitics #BreadAndCircuses #ConspiracyTheories #USpol #media

Jared Holt, a snr researcher at the online extremism tracking group Open Measures, said the statistics show how conspiratorial thinking is becoming more common in the US.
“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.”

#TrumpLies #Trump #PerformancePolitics #BreadAndCircuses #ConspiracyTheories #USpol #media

“Unfortunately, when governments or institutions are hiding the truth about what they’re up to or they’re playing fast & loose with certain regulations or they’re not imposing certain laws on different people,” Donovan said, “it is much easier to believe in a conspiracy against oneself than it is to believe that the system has become rotted.”

#TrumpLies #Trump #PerformancePolitics #BreadAndCircuses #ConspiracyTheories #USpol #media

@Nonilex

i vote fake

the ear wound in Butler was CLEARLY faked, AR15 wounds don't look like or heal llike that

i'll also ask this>what's "incredible" about reality TV actors producing their own reality TV show?

i feel it speaks to the limits of the BU prof's imagination to call it "incredibly Hollywood" to "imagine" something is staged when this is their training, Trump was a working actor FFS

to say conspiracies can't happen is to say bad people can't work together to achieve a goal

@Nonilex

JesusHFuckingChrist, either they’re bozos (can’t pull off a war with Iran; capture Greenland; do tariffs) or they’re 3-d chess geniuses (staging fake murder attempts.)

You can’t have both, this really is a Cartesian situation. Also Occam’s.

@Nonilex I'm 101% sure this is not completely correct ;)

@Nonilex Butler was fake AF.
Corespondents dinner? Maybe . Or least they purposely let it happen to create a narrative for the ballroom.

I wouldn't put anything past Republicans.

@Nonilex

Read an interesting quote yesterday that I should have Bookmarked

Something like:

"I believe those things that help me understand the world around me better"

versus

"I believe those things that help me get along with the people I have around me better"

One supports gaining personal wisdom, the other supports staying in the herd

@FinchHaven
Interesting distinction: useful! Thanks for sharing 🙏🏻🙂

@Nonilex