Gunshots rang out in the Washington, D.C. Hilton late last month, as California school teacher Cole Allen charged Secret Service agents in an attempt to shoot President Donald Trump — the third assassination attempt against Trump in less than a two-year span. According to a new survey, however, a sizeable minority of Americans believe that the assassination attempts may have been staged.

A NewsGuard/YouGov poll conducted April 28 to May 4 found that nearly one-third (30%) of Americans believe that at least one of the three assassination attempts against the president was staged, while only 38% of Americans believe that all three assassination attempts were “authentic.”

Nearly one-quarter (24%) of survey respondents said they believe the Cole Allen assassination attempt to have been staged; the same share believes that the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, which saw Trump shot in the ear, was also staged. A smaller share (16%) say that the September 2024 assassination attempt at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, was staged. In no case did a majority of respondents say that they believe the assassination attempts were authentic.

Democrats were the most likely to say that any of the three assassination attempts was staged: more than one-fifth (21%) of Democrats said that all three assassination attempts were staged, while only 11% of Independent voters and 3% of Republicans said the same. Additionally, young Americans evinced a higher degree of skepticism than their older counterparts. Just about one-third (32%) of Americans aged 18 to 29 said that the Cole Allen attempt was staged, 26% said that the Butler attempt was staged, and 19% said that the golf club attempt was staged. Among those aged 30 to 44, 23% said that the Cole Allen attempt was staged, 22% said that the Butler attempt was staged, and 15% said that the golf club attempt was staged; those aged 45 to 64 were only two percentage points more likely to say that each event was staged. Among those aged 65 or older, only 15% said that the Cole Allen attempt was likely staged, and only 14% said that the golf club attempt was likely staged, but nearly one-quarter (24%) said that the Butler attempt was likely staged.

NewsGuard classified the claim that any of the assassination attempts was staged as a “left-wing conspiracy theory,” noting that leftist activists consider staged assassination attempts “part of Trump’s playbook.” According to NewsGuard, the claim that the assassination attempts were staged largely originated from the same set of “anti-Trump” social media accounts. “Posts advancing the claim generated 80 million views on X alone in less than two days, according to a social media analytics tool used by NewsGuard,” a NewsGuard analysis reported. “Many of the same accounts previously claimed that two assassination attempts on Trump in 2024 were also staged. Those making the claims are part of a group that has come to be known as ‘BlueAnon …’”

BlueAnon

In 2020, mainstream media and Democratic Party-aligned officials began discussing a strain of conspiracy theories known as “QAnon,” which originated in 2017, shortly after Trump’s first presidency began. The QAnon conspiracy theories typically center on the belief that a cabal of Satanists, in league with the Deep State, has covertly captured much of federal government bureaucracy and secretly orchestrates an international child sex-trafficking ring. At a 2020 White House press briefing, a journalist asked, “Mr. President, at the crux of the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind or a believer in?” Laughing, Trump responded, “I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing?”

According to a Pew Research Center analysis, left-leaning mainstream media outlets like MSNBC, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, and The Washington Post focused extensively on QAnon, especially between 2018 and 2021. In fact, Democrats were among the Americans who said that they were most familiar with QAnon conspiracy theories, due to their consumption of left-leaning mainstream media.

The term “BlueAnon” emerged at a national level in 2021 as a means of describing the outlandish conspiracy theories advocated by Democrats and Democrat-aligned sources, particularly the “Russian collusion” narrative, which served as the basis for the first Trump impeachment and which dogged his 2016 campaign and presidency. While QAnon theories were found in niche, online message boards and chat forums, many BlueAnon theories were repeated by Democratic Party officials and legacy news outlets. The Russian collusion narrative, for example, started as opposition research funded by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but was quickly adopted by then-President Barack Obama and his national security apparatus, leading to a special counsel investigation, an impeachment, and years of incessant mainstream media chatter.

Other BlueAnon theories have speculated that Trump colluded with tech billionaire and political ally Elon Musk to use Musk’s Starlink technology to “rig” the 2024 election, that Trump secretly cremated his ex-wife Ivana’s body in 2022 to hide incriminating documents in her empty coffin, and that Trump’s current wife, Melania, was replaced with a body double on the 2024 campaign trail. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) even climbed aboard the BlueAnon train last year when he claimed that Trump had died and that the White House was trying to hide the fact in a bid to maintain power.

Staged Assassination Attempts?

When a lone gunman opened fire on a Trump campaign rally in rural Pennsylvania, both Trump’s supporters and detractors were amazed when the former and soon-to-be-again president defiantly faced the shooter’s direction, his own blood smeared across his face, and raised his fist, calling out, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” While Trump’s patriotic supporters readily accepted that the then-78-year-old was just a man who loved his country and was willing to give his life fighting to “Make America Great Again,” his detractors were just as quick to hypothesize that the attack, which claimed the life of Trump supporter Corey Comperatore, had been staged in an effort to galvanize Republicans and generate support for Trump’s candidacy.

One email claimed that the assassination attempt “was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash. This is a classic Russian tactic…” That claim did not originate with some anonymous account posting on some obscure message board: it was an email written by Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political advisor to LinkedIn founder and Democratic Party mega-donor Reid Hoffman. Numerous figures, from popular music artists to university professors, began repeating the claim that the assassination attempt had been staged. NewsGuard reported that, within about 48 hours of the Butler assassination attempt, the term “staged” appeared in more than 300,000 posts on X (formerly Twitter). And X isn’t even the main hub for BlueAnon conspiracy theories: the Facebook-linked alternative to X, Threads, is a hotbed for BlueAnon theorizing.

When Cole Allen opened fire on Secret Service agents outside the White House Correspondents Association dinner last month, the same machine went into effect. NewsGuard found that posts claiming that the assassination attempt was “staged” had generated over 80 million views on X alone, to say nothing of Threads. “Within minutes of the incident, before key details about what had actually happened could be confirmed, anti-Trump social media users began pushing multiple variations of the staged-shooting claim,” NewsGuard reported, noting that some theories suggested that the assassination attempt was staged to boost the president’s approval ratings, while others said it was to distract from the Iran war or other issues. “The left-wing conspiracy theory positing that staged shootings are part of Trump’s playbook has been a ‘BlueAnon’ favorite since the first attempt on Trump’s life during the Pennsylvania rally on July 13, 2024.”

Following his failed attempt to assassinate the president and the publication of a manifesto he allegedly authored, Allen has been charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer, transporting a firearm across state lines, and discharging a weapon during a crime of violence. If convicted, he faces life in prison. On Monday, Allen entered a plea of “not guilty” to all charges.