Claims of 'staged' US press gala shooting misrepresent Fox News coverage
- Published on April 29, 2026 at 21:59
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
Social media users are misrepresenting Fox News coverage to support baseless allegations that US President Donald Trump staged the assassination attempt that disrupted a press gala in Washington on April 25, 2026. A purported Fox Business Network graphic saying 70 percent of Americans believe the gunfire was orchestrated is an altered fake, and online claims that Fox News cut off a correspondent on air because she was revealing a pre-planned plot have been refuted by both the network and the journalist.
"His own people think it's all fake!" says an April 27, 2026 post on X sharing an image of the supposed Fox Business Network segment.
The apparent graphic is dated April 25 and purports to show the results of a "new poll taken after the White House Correspondents Dinner," with 70 percent of respondents answering "yes" to the question: "Was Trump's assassination staged?"
The image spread across X, Facebook and other platforms as unfounded claims that Trump faked the gunfire that forced him and senior administration officials to evacuate the annual media gala took off online alongside other misinformation.
The accused gunman, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, was charged April 27 with trying to assassinate Trump in addition to two firearms crimes. The incident marked the third attempt on the Republican president's life.
Authorities said Allen, who is believed to have worked alone, sent an email to family members shortly before trying to sprint past security a floor above the ballroom, saying that "administration officials" were "targets" (archived here).
Disinformers have long attempted to brand shootings and other crisis events -- including a prior assassination attempt on Trump during a 2024 campaign rally in Pennsylvania -- as "false flag" operations aimed at redirecting public attention.
But there is no evidence that Allen's actions were staged -- a conspiracy theory that Trump himself dismissed during an April 26 interview with CBS News's "60 Minutes."
The alleged Fox Business Network graphic reporting on a "new poll" is a fabrication, manipulated from an image the network ran days earlier about Trump's economic approval rating.
"This graphic is fake and did not air on the network," said Alexandra Coscia, senior director of media relations at Fox News Media, in an April 27 email.
Reverse image and keyword searches on the Internet Archive's TV News Archive surfaced the original Fox Business Network segment, which ran April 22 during "Varney & Co."
The stock trading numbers and timestamp on the lower third, as well as the poll results and portrait of Trump, all match those used in the altered version circulating on social media.
The true report covered an AP-NORC poll that surveyed 2,596 US adults between April 16 and 20 and found 70 percent disapproved of how Trump was "handling the economy" (archived here).
Correspondent's call dropped
Other posts on X suggested that a moment during Fox News's live coverage of the chaos at the gala was proof the shooting was staged.
"Fox News just cut one of their reporters off as they seemed to indicate the shooting was a pre-planned false flag," said one widespread April 25 post.
A video embedded in the posts showed Fox News correspondent Aishah Hasnie abruptly cutting out as she recounted a conversation with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's husband (archived here).
"I was sitting next to Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary's husband," Hasnie is heard saying in the clip.
"Right as the dinner was starting, the national anthem happened, and then he kind of leaned over and said: 'You know, I've watched you on TV. You do a great job. You need to be very safe.' And he was very serious when he said that to me. And he kind of looked around the room, and he said, 'You know, there are some --'" At that point, Hasnie cut out, with the anchor noting that they "lost Aishah's phone."
On X, Hasnie clarified that the call dropped due to poor cell reception in the hotel's ballroom, where the dinner was taking place, and that Leavitt's husband was expressing general concern.
Our calls were dropping, because there is barely any service in that ballroom. To finish the story, he was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy. Which is what my own father and other people have also said to me recently. He was expressing his…
— Aishah Hasnie (@aishahhasnie) April 26, 2026
"Our calls were dropping, because there is barely any service in that ballroom," she wrote in the April 26 post (archived here). "To finish the story, he was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy. Which is what my own father and other people have also said to me recently. He was expressing his concern for my safety."
She continued: "I was going to say -- before I lost my signal -- that it was unfortunate that only a short time later, this all happened. When we heard people shouting, 'get down,' he jumped into action and made sure myself and others at our table got on the ground."
Coscia, the network spokeswoman, reiterated in her email to AFP that "Hasnie was not intentionally cut off, and her call dropped due to poor reception."
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the incident here.
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