In April 2026, numerous social media posts claimed conservative pundit Tucker Carlson said U.S. President Donald Trump faked his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. The posts said Carlson's source for this claim was former Trump counterterrorism official Joe Kent.
Snopes readers reached out to us to verify this alleged quote from Carlson (some claimed Carlson's source was podcast host Joe Rogan). Posts on Facebook and X read: "Tucker Carlson, citing Joe Kent. 'Trump faked his assassination attempt in Butler.'"
(Facebook user Josh Helfgott)
There is no evidence of Carlson saying "Trump faked his assassination attempt in Butler." As such, this quote is incorrectly attributed to Carlson. He did, however, question the FBI investigation into the shooting and in 2026, he interviewed Kent, who also questioned the nature of the investigation.
Snopes searched for evidence of Carlson saying the above words in traditional media outlets. We found no news coverage, social media posts, or footage of Carlson making the statement. Had Carlson actually made such a statement, news media would have covered it widely.
However, in November 2025, Carlson posted criticism on X about the FBI investigation into the assassination attempt:
The FBI told us Thomas Crooks tried to kill Donald Trump last summer but somehow had no online footprint. The FBI lied, and we can prove it because we have his posts. The question is why? Story tomorrow.
In mid-March 2026, Kent resigned as director of Trump's National Counterterrorism Center in opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Soon after, he appeared in an interview with Carlson on YouTube and criticized investigations into the assassination attempt as well as the investigation into the killing of Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk. We reproduced sections of Kent and Carlson's exchange below. They reference Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump's would-be assassin, who was killed during the attack, and Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Kirk.
The discussion began with Carlson and Kent addressing Trump's decision to attack Iran and the plots to assassinate the president (emphasis ours):
CARLSON: What kind of pressure does it require to get a president who campaigned against exactly this thing for 10 years [attack Iran], to do exactly this thing? What does it take to do that?
KENT: I wish I knew definitively. I think there's two potentials or two schools of thought. I mean, one is the media echo chamber, the donors, the way the Israelis come in and kind of launder the information like I described previously. And then the other option is much darker. I mean, we still don't know what happened in Butler. We don't know what happened with Charlie Kirk. And by no means am I saying like, you know, the Israelis did this or any of that, but I'm saying there's a lot of unanswered questions there. And there is enough data to at least say that there's a good chance that President Trump feels like he is under threat.
We're not allowed to ask basically was there any linkage between what took place with Asif Merchant [man convicted of plotting to kill Trump], who was recruited by the Iranians to come to America to recruit proxies to kill President Trump. The FBI put a confidential human source at him. All this is public now. This is all out there in the open. And he's arrested and then two days later a sniper takes a shot at President Trump. We think Merchant, and we know the CHS was talking about the human source that the FBI put at Merchant. They were talking about hey we could kill the president potentially with a sniper rifle. But then they arrest him. Two days later, Butler happens and Crooks, according to the official narrative anyways, is an enigma. We don't know anything about him. We can't get into his devices. If we did get into his devices, maybe there's nothing there. No more questions are allowed to be asked about Thomas Crooks.
The DHS IG is currently being blocked from investigating Butler as well. That's out in the media. That's all well-known. Your investigative journalist found that Crooks did indeed have an online persona, online footprint, and he was talking to people. So, it's like, why aren't we investigating this, you know? […] attempted murder of a presidential candidate, and then there's another assassination attempt. There's been multiple public breaches of President Trump's security over the last year.
And then, you know, Charlie Kirk is killed publicly in a very horrific way, and we're not really even allowed to look into that at all and Charlie Kirk was one of President Trump's closest advisers. He also advocated heavily against a war with Iran. He was in the Oval Office in the lead up to the 12-day war.
I wasn't particularly close with Charlie. He was very gracious to me when I was running for Congress, very very supportive. So we knew each other, and the last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this earth was in June in the West Wing in the stairway, and I said hi to him and he looked me in the eye and he said very loudly […] "Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran." Very loudly. He walked off and he went into the Oval.
So when one of President Trump's closest advisers who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink at least our relationship with the Israelis and then he is suddenly publicly assassinated and we're not allowed to ask any questions about that — it's a data point. It's a data point that we need to look into.
The conversation took place at the 1:24:15 mark:
While Carlson did question the nature of the investigations into the assassination attempt on Trump, he did not outright state that the shooting, which killed one rally attendee and wounded two others, was staged or fake.
Snopes has covered numerous false rumors about Carlson, including the claim that he said bodies of dead Ukrainian civilians were staged.