1 in 4 Americans Believe the White House Shooting Was Staged

Ultimize. When Democrats start believing fake shooting conspiracies, democracy has a bigger problem. This is according to a new story from Washington, the Washington Post. It's an article by Liam Scott, and it's a part of a NewsGuard YouGov survey. It found something genuinely disturbing. About 1 in 4 Americans believe the April shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner was staged. That's right, fake. They think it didn't really happen. Only 45% of Americans said they believe it was legitimate, and 32% said we're not quite sure. Now here's the part I want Democrats to sit with for a moment. The survey found roughly 1 in 3 Democrats believe the Correspondents' Dinner shooting was staged, compared with only about 1 in 8 Republicans. Younger Americans, especially those between 18 and 29, were also more likely than older Americans to believe it was staged. The poll also found that 24% believe the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt was staged, including 42% of Democrats and only 7% of Republicans. And 16% believe that Trump golf— the Trump golf course incident was staged. Including 26% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans. So yeah, in this case, Democrats are behaving irrationally and as insane— or timeout here, I just want to stress, sometimes people who watch this regularly accuse me of being biased. Oh, TJ, you criticize somebody I don't like, so you're, you're in the tank for the other team. Okay, I'm here as a sane sensible centrist, and I'm required by federal law and my own annoying personality to call out irrationality wherever I see it. If Republicans believe nonsense, I say Republicans are believing nonsense. If Democrats believe nonsense, I say Democrats are believing nonsense. If independents believe nonsense, I say congratulations, you've achieved bipartisan stupidity. And I'm sorry, but believing that these Trump assassination attempts were staged when there is no evidence they were staged is not healthy skepticism. It's not doing your own research. It's conspiracy thinking. It's taking your hatred of Donald Trump, feeding it Red Bull, giving it a podcast, and letting it run around the internet yelling, wake up, sheeple. So here's the uncomfortable truth. In this case, Democrats are the ones more likely to believe a fake shooting conspiracy about Trump. That's irrational. That's dangerous. And no, it does not become smarter because the conspiracy is aimed at someone you dislike. If you believe every terrible thing about Donald Trump automatically without evidence, you're not doing democracy any favor. You are doing fan fiction with a voter registration card. Democracy requires something deeper than my say good, your side evil. It requires a shared respect for facts. You can despise Trump, believe me, I get it. You can despise him politically and still say, no, I'm not going to claim an assassination attempt was staged unless there is evidence. That's not going soft on Trump. This is being hard on stupidity, and stupidity does not become noble because it's wearing your team's jersey. This is an extreme problem for democracy because democracy assumes something very basic: that enough people can still be reached by facts. Democracy does not require everyone to agree. The U.S. was founded in a time of brutally partisan newspapers. Founders attacked each other in print with language that makes today's cable news sound like a church bake sale, but there was still, at least as an ideal, respect for facts, reason, science, evidence, and knowledge. That brings us to a word people don't use much at dinner unless they want to stop being invited to dinner: epistemology. Epistemology simply means how do we know what we know. That's it. It's the study of what counts as knowledge. How do we decide whether something is true? Do we look for evidence? Do we check independent sources? Do we admit when we just don't know? Or do we say, I saw a guy on TikTok with sunglasses in his truck and he sounded confident. The attack on epistemology is the attack on the very idea that facts exist outside your own feelings. And yeah, Democrats deserve some criticism here, but let's also be honest. The greatest single attack on truth in American public life over the last decade has come from Donald Trump. America has always had some politicians who lied. Let's not kid ourselves. Some lied about taxes, some lied about war, some lied about affairs. Some lied so badly they looked like they were reading from a teleprompter written by their defense attorney. But Trump's different. He didn't just lie occasionally. He built an entire political identity around lying constantly, proudly, aggressively, and shamelessly. He created a universe where he always won, he was somehow always the victim cheated, he's always brilliant, and every fact that made him look bad was simply fake news. This is something new at this scale, and it appears to be shattering the fabric of society, ripping apart— I'm mixing my metaphors, sorry— because once one side spends years saying facts are fake when they hurt me, eventually the other start— the other side starts saying, fine, Then facts are fake when they help you. And now everyone is sitting in the rubble saying, what is democracy? Or why does democracy smell like burning hair? When people say do your own research, most of the time they don't really mean research. They mean find somebody online who flatters your existing prejudice. Newsflash: this is not research. This is emotional DoorDash. Real research means looking for independent sources. It means asking, who is verifying this? Who has evidence? Who corrects mistakes? Who has a track record? If you go to a restaurant and the only 5-star reviews are from the chef's brother-in-law and a guy named Definitely Not the Owner, you understand those reviews are essentially worthless. News works the same way. If You can't say this outlet criticized someone I like, so they are biased forever. Sometimes a fact makes your side look bad because your side did something bad. That's not bias, that's reality refusing to be your intern. So what do we do? We have to rebuild a culture where facts actually, or where people actually want facts, not just facts that flatter them, not just facts that hurt their enemies. Actual facts. That means reading outside your comfort zone. It means checking serious outlets, serious news outlets with real editorial standards. It means using independent media bias and reliability ratings as one input, not as a religious text, but as a guide. It means saying, "I don't know" more often. It means saying, "That sounds too perfect for my side, so I should be extra skeptical." And it means refusing to call every inconvenient fact bias, because once a society loses the ability to tell the difference between evidence and vibes, democracy itself becomes impossible. We can't vote intelligently if we can't know anything. We can't hold leaders accountable if every scandal is fake when our side does it. We can't function as citizens if truth is just whatever makes us feel morally superior for the next 7 seconds. So yeah, call out Trump's war on truth, but also call out Democrats when they fall into sloppy conspiracy thinking. The standard has to be simple. I want the truth, even when it annoys me, especially when it annoys me. Especially when your side loses an election, because that's when it matters. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Stay tuned. You don't need a complete life overhaul. You don't need a 10-step system or a 90-day transformation. Most of the time, you need a small shift repeated often enough that it sticks. That's it. If you're listening to this and thinking, yeah, I'd like to tighten up a few things, go to ultimize.com, U-L-T-A-M-I-Z-E.com. Ultimize.com. There's a free course there for you, communication skills or habit building, and it's designed to give you something simple, something you can use and repeat every day. Not overwhelm you, no complexity, just something you can use. Go to ultimize.com and start. Ultimize.