Daly: Both Parties Have a Conspiracy Theory Problem

Wide belief in "staged" assassination attempts offers the latest proof.

A recent YouGov poll revealed something troubling that a number of other polls (along with a fair amount of anecdotal evidence online) have suggested for some time: a significant portion of Democrats believe that the assassination attempts on President Trump’s life were “staged.”

26% believe it of the incident at Trump’s golf course. 34% attribute it to what went down last month at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And a whopping 42% believe that the shooting at Butler Farm Show Grounds in 2024, during which Trump was shot in the ear and a spectator was killed, was phony-baloney.

In other words, the more dramatic the incident, the more likely it was staged.

Many on the political right have been touting these findings as proof that the Democratic Party has a serious conspiracy-theory problem on their hands.

Pro-Trump columnist Byron York called the situation a “Democratic fantasy world,” and I’m inclined to agree with him. I think it’s delusional to buy into these occurrences being staged, absent of proof, and based primarily (if not entirely) on the notion that being targeted for (and escaping) political violence elevates Trump’s stature… and perceptually broad-strokes those who strongly oppose him as being aligned with violent lunatics.

Sure, some would argue that Trump’s lack of character, and his long history of gaslighting the American people, should not afford him the benefit of the doubt. They would say it warrants at least considering the idea that he and his team orchestrated these incidents — especially the Butler one. After all, the imagery of Trump rising from under his podium with blood streaming down his face, clenching a fist in the air and encouraging his supporters to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, felt like something straight out of a Hollywood production.

But that’s the same deeply flawed logic used by 9/11 Truthers, and those who’ve long insisted that the moon landing was filmed on a sound stage. It’s built on the premise that something so visually dynamic and conducive to a preferred narrative can’t possibly be on the up and up. This is a mindset that values emotional interpretation over factual evaluation, and it can lead to the latter being disregarded entirely.

Suffice to say, that’s not a healthy thing for society. Sometimes it’s even outright dangerous, which is why rational and reasonable people of good faith ought to call it out whenever they see it.

But that’s not quite what’s happening with much of the push-back I’m observing against the “staged assassination” stuff. Far too many of those appropriately denouncing it are doing so from the bottom of the same conspiratorial nesting box.

To this day, national polls show that 60-70% of Republicans still believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Five and a half years later, despite the ongoing theatrics (including from our current president), the facts are no more on those people’s side than they are on the side of those who believe in the “staged assassination” nonsense. Those willing to call out one of those groups, but not the other, are part of the problem.

Case in point, if you read Byron York’s columns, or follow him on social media, you know that he’s barely been critical at all of the widespread Republican belief that Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election. In fact, York has been pretty understanding of (and even sympathetic to) the view, developing arguments over the years that minimize, trivialize, and otherwise downplay its significance. In typical York fashion, he’s put far more focus on what he sees as Democratic “overreaction” to the falsity.

But when it comes to the belief that attempts on Donald Trump’s life were staged, York laments “a political atmosphere in which some people will believe anything about their hated opponent.”

Go figure.

On a side note, it seems that there are some folks who actually believe both of these major conspiracy theories. 7% of Republicans in the YouGov poll think that the Butler assassination-attempt was staged, and, for some reason, twice as many think that the one at the correspondents’ dinner was staged. The numbers for independents are in the low 20s for each. Comparably, about 9% of Democrats think Trump won the 2020 election, and around 20% of independents believe that. This overlap would at least suggest that some bipartisanship and intellectual consistency still exists in this country… though not in a positive way.

The sad reality is that large portions of both major parties believe in thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories, some of which have been harmful to our democratic foundations. What’s needed to combat the problem is a strengthening of our shared sense of reality, and a serious commitment to weeding out misinformation.

Unfortunately, in these deeply polarized times — in which partisan division is both a political resource and a very lucrative business model — that’s a very tall order.

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