A brand-new Rasmussen poll just dropped, and the results should have every cable news anchor updating their resume. Sixty percent of American voters say it’s at least “somewhat likely” that media coverage inspired the April 25th assassination attempt on President Trump’s team at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Forty-one percent said “very likely.” That’s not a fringe opinion, folks. That’s a national consensus.

But here’s the part that should make Brian Stelter cry into his third breakfast burrito: even 55% of *Democrats* agree. Their own voters — the people CNN and MSNBC are supposedly serving — are looking at the coverage and saying, “Yeah, you guys might have had something to do with this.” Incredible. When you’ve lost more than half of your own team, you haven’t just lost the argument. You’ve lost the plot.

Let’s walk through the numbers because they’re absolutely brutal for the “free press” crowd.

Rasmussen surveyed voters from April 27th through the 29th — just days after the attack — and asked whether hostile media coverage of President Trump was likely to have inspired the shooter. The breakdown: 41% said “very likely,” 19% said “somewhat likely,” 16% said “not very likely,” and only 13% said “not at all likely.” Eleven percent weren’t sure, which — fair enough — but the rest of the country has made up its mind.

Among Republicans, 79% said media coverage likely inspired the attack, with 58% saying “very likely.” No surprise there. We’ve been saying this for years. What IS surprising is the cross-party agreement. Fifty-nine percent of unaffiliated voters said the same thing. And among Democrats? Twenty-eight percent said “very likely” and another 17% said “somewhat likely.” That’s 55% of Democrats pointing the finger at the media. Their own media.

(Somewhere, a CNN producer just spit out their oat milk latte.)

And it gets worse for the press corps. The poll also asked whether media reporting is dividing or uniting the country. Seventy-three percent of voters said the media divides Americans. Only 11% — eleven! — said the media unites the country. That number is so low it’s basically a rounding error. You’d get more people to agree that pineapple belongs on pizza.

Here’s the kicker: the partisan split on this question barely exists. Seventy-one percent of Democrats say media divides us. Seventy-five percent of Republicans say the same. Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters agree. We finally found something that unites America — the shared belief that the media is tearing us apart. You almost have to admire the irony.

The poll also found that 71% of voters believe political violence is getting worse in America. Not staying the same. Not improving. Getting worse. And guess which party is most alarmed? Democrats — at 78%. Republicans came in at 68%, and unaffiliated voters at 67%. So the Left’s own base is the most worried about political violence, the most likely to say the media divides the country, and more than half of them think the media inspired the assassination attempt.

So what exactly is the media’s value proposition at this point? “Watch us! We’ll make you anxious, divided, and possibly inspire someone to commit violence — but at least you’ll know what Taylor Swift wore to the grocery store”?

Let’s not forget who the shooter actually was, by the way. The guy who opened fire at the WHCD donated to Kamala Harris and was honored as “Teacher of the Month” at his school. The profile writes itself. He didn’t get radicalized in some dark corner of the internet. He got radicalized by the same media outlets that 60% of the country now blames for inspiring him.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt put it perfectly: “The deranged lies and smears have led crazy people to believe crazy things.” That’s not spin. That’s a factual summary of what happened. You spend years calling someone “literally Hitler,” comparing him to dictators, running breathless coverage about how he’s going to end democracy — and then you act *shocked* when some unhinged lunatic takes the rhetoric literally?

We’ve been through this before. The congressional baseball shooting in 2017. The two assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 campaign. And now the WHCD attack. At what point does the media look in the mirror and ask, “Are we the baddies?”

Never. The answer is never. Because self-awareness isn’t really their thing.

The Hispanic community, by the way, was the demographic group most likely to blame the media — 76% said coverage likely inspired the attack, with 52% saying “very likely.” Sixty percent of white voters and 60% of Black voters agreed. This isn’t a racial divide. This isn’t a partisan divide. This is Americans across every category looking at the media and saying: you did this.

And they’re right.

The media spent years treating political violence against conservatives as an abstract concept — something that happens “on both sides” — while cranking out wall-to-wall coverage designed to make half the country believe the other half are fascists. Now six out of ten Americans are saying, out loud, in a poll, that the media bears responsibility for what happened on April 25th. Even the Democrats.

Maybe it’s time to stop calling yourselves “journalists” and start calling yourselves what you actually are: content creators with a body count.

But sure, tell us again how you’re just “holding power accountable.” The country’s not buying it anymore. The numbers don’t lie — even if the media does.