A man tried to assassinate the President of the United States at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25th.
More than a third of the Democrat Party thinks it never happened.
Now the one Democrat willing to say that out loud just went on a conservative podcast and lit his own party on fire.
The Number That Should End the Democrat Party's Credibility
John Fetterman sat down with Katie Miller this week and said something no Democrat senator is supposed to say.
"More than a third of my party thinks that was a hoax," Fetterman told her. "That's wild."
It is wild – and the numbers are actually worse than Fetterman let on.
A YouGov poll released in May found that 42 percent of Democrats believe the Butler assassination attempt – the one where a bullet grazed his ear and hit a man standing behind him – was staged.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2061836972071559442?s=20
Nearly half the Democrat base believes a man died in Pennsylvania as part of a political stunt.
Thirty-four percent believe the April Correspondents' Dinner assassination attempt was fake, too.
The deranged man at that dinner was stopped at a security checkpoint before reaching the main room where Trump sat – the same room holding the entire line of presidential succession.
Fetterman was there.
"The entire line of succession is in a room not much bigger than where we're shooting this," he told Miller.
And his colleagues went home and told their voters it was theater.
Why Fetterman's Voice Cuts Through the Noise
Fetterman has been calling out his own party for two years and paying for it politically.
He has backed Israel when the rest of the Democrat caucus retreated, called out the "rot" in his party for standing with pro-Hamas voices, and watched far-left media figures like Mehdi Hasan fume every time he appears on a conservative platform.
This week's Katie Miller interview set Hasan off again.
But Fetterman keeps talking.
He also defended Trump's White House ballroom project – a six-story hardened security structure built with impenetrable steel and four-inch-thick bulletproof glass, a direct response to the Correspondents' Dinner attack making clear that existing event infrastructure can't protect a president.
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/2061884751204487310?s=20
"For me, he could start it today," Fetterman said. "It's like planting a tree you're not going to sit under the shade of. It's a facility that's necessary."
He's right.
The ballroom isn't a vanity project – it's a response to an assassination attempt on a sitting president while every major figure in the American government sat in one unprotected room.
Schumer and AOC Won't Say What Fetterman Said
The voters who believe the Butler shooting was staged aren't fringe voices in some dark corner of the internet.
They are a plurality of the Democrat base.
Fetterman watches this happen from inside the caucus and describes it as "a fracturing" between him and his party.
That's a diplomatic word for something uglier.
Chuck Schumer has not said publicly that the Butler shooting was real.
https://twitter.com/WWG1WGA301/status/2061201918483993023?s=20
AOC has not said it.
The entire Senate Democrat leadership watched a madman try to assassinate the president at a dinner they attended – and not one of them has stood in front of a camera and told their voters to stop calling it a hoax.
Fetterman did it on a conservative podcast.
Half an inch at Butler.
"Half an inch over to the left," Fetterman told Miller, "and that could have plunged our nation into untold chaos."
The Democrat Party spent two years pretending that half inch was a prop.
John Fetterman is the only one in that caucus with the spine to say so.
Sources:
- Rachel del Guidice, "Fetterman on why he supports Trump's ballroom, and his shock at Democrats who doubt last assassination attempt," Fox News, June 2, 2026.
- John Loftus, "POLL: 42% Of Democrats Say Trump Butler Assassination Attempt Staged," The Daily Caller, May 11, 2026.
- Greg Wehner, "Trump claims donor funded White House ballroom includes hidden build below with security focus," Fox News, March 29, 2026.
- Fox News Digital, "Trump unveils White House Ballroom as hardened security shield structure," Fox News, May 19, 2026.
- Max Bacall, "Fetterman says 'moral clarity' drives his widening break with the Democratic Party," Fox News, April 6, 2026.
