Americans believe White House correspondents’ dinner shooting was staged

7 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · May 11

A NewsGuard-YouGov survey of 1,000 adults found 24% called the April Washington Hilton attack fake, 45% legitimate and 32% unsure.
About one-third of Democrats and one-eighth of Republicans said it was staged; younger adults were also more likely to believe the claim.
The findings follow online conspiracy theories after Cole Tomas Allen was indicted over the shooting, and echo doubts about Trump’s 2024 Butler and Florida assassination attempts.

What are the hidden security risks when a large part of the public believes real attacks are fake?

As deepfakes proliferate, how can we rebuild collective trust in what we see and hear during crises?