Matt Schlapp Calls Poll Showing 31% of Democrats’ Positive Reaction to Hypothetical Trump Assassination a “Communist Socialist Uprising”

Matt Schlapp, chair of the Conservative Political Action Conference and the American Conservative Union, told Newsmax that a recent poll in which nearly a third of Democrats said they would react positively to a hypothetical assassination of former President Donald Trump reflects what he called a "communist socialist uprising."

The survey was conducted by the Center for Strategic Politics and commissioned by the outlet Liberal Currents. It polled 683 Democratic voters via text messaging and online panels on Sept. 3 and Sept. 8–10, reporting a margin of error of ±3.75 percentage points.

Respondents were asked how they would feel about a headline stating Trump "was assassinated while speaking at a rally." Twenty-three percent said they would feel very positive and 8% somewhat positive — a combined 31% — while 43% said they would react negatively. That was the only one of five hypothetical exit scenarios in which negative reactions outnumbered positive ones.

Speaking on "Rob Schmitt Tonight," Schlapp did not cite the poll by name on air but attributed the results to what he described as "a long campaign of propaganda by the radical left."

"They're wishing death on a sitting president," Schlapp said. He added he could not recall similar polling showing Republicans reacting that way toward a Democrat and called the finding "an abysmal failure of the radical left of the Democrat Party" — saying it was "part of why they have this communist socialist uprising."

Host Rob Schmitt also cited a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey of 68,510 students at 257 colleges conducted Jan. 3 through June 5, 2025. According to Schmitt, the FIRE results show 71% of students consider it at least rarely acceptable to shout down a campus speaker, 54% would block other students from attending a talk, and 34% said violence against a speaker is acceptable in some circumstances. FIRE did not publish a margin of error for that study.

Schmitt connected those survey findings to the fatal shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025.

In response to the poll results and the broader discussion, Schlapp said, "Thirty percent of Democrats are committing a crime. It's the crime of assault." He argued that conservatives have become the more tolerant group and accused the political left of authoritarian tendencies, saying attempts to control what Americans eat, say, and hear amounted to "fascism" and "communism" that are "un-American."

Schlapp urged Republicans to work to remove the ideology he criticized from American politics, specifying that he was referring to the ideology and not the people who hold those beliefs.

Note: The poll figures described in this report are as released by the Center for Strategic Politics/Liberal Currents. Readers should consider the sample size and reported margin of error (±3.75 percentage points) when interpreting the results.