I have made my fair share of mistakes. Likely more than I know, and certainly more than I’d care to count. And the one thing I always hope for, no, depend on, is that someone will care enough to correct me when I get it wrong. Because I care about the truth, especially when it costs me. So, in that same spirit, I’m writing this today not to scold but to invite: to invite fellow conservatives to join me in being as vigilant about our facts as we are about our principles.
A falsehood, once planted, grows like kudzu. It winds through communities, suffocating trust and entangling good people in its vines. And unfortunately, one such weed has taken deep root in our movement: the claim that CNN only aired one Trump rally live in 2024, the one in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the president was shot. Today marks the one-year anniversary of that attempted assassination, which is why this issue has arisen yet again. It’s repeated in earnest. With conviction. With outrage. And yet, it is demonstrably false.
The claim has all the markings of a perfect urban legend: tidy, conspiratorial, and convenient. CNN, the great villain of the conservative imagination, supposedly refused to air Trump rallies all year, and then aired one, just one, at the very moment bullets flew. What timing! What suspicious serendipity! And, thus, what damning evidence of complicity. It writes itself.
But it didn’t happen.
CNN aired multiple Trump rallies live in 2024, not just the one in Butler. In fact, the network confirmed this in official communications, noting that they aired rallies on June 18, June 22, June 28, and July 9, all before the Republican convention. These were full broadcasts, aired in real time, with live Trump speeches delivered to audiences across the country. That Butler was aired live as well is true, but not unique. The reason so many of us, including myself, were willing to believe otherwise is simple: we don’t watch CNN. Most of us wouldn’t know what they aired unless someone showed us the tape.
Still, the myth persists. And we should ask why.
Urban legends don’t need authors, only amplifiers. This one likely germinated from an anonymous post on Quora, posed as a question: “Why did CNN only air Trump’s Butler rally live?” The account had no prior history, no subsequent posts, and no identifying information. A similar post appeared on Reddit, again from a now-deleted user. The pattern is telling. No accountability, no trail, no reason to trust the source. And yet, by 2025, this notion had metastasized into social media gospel.
Consider the viral tweet from John LeFevre, the man behind @GSElevator and author of Straight to Hell.
On March 20, 2025, at 9:34 AM, LeFevre tweeted to his massive audience: “CNN only aired Trump’s July 13, 2024 Butler, PA rally live.” It was seen 5.6 million times. X appended a Community Note beneath it, showing unequivocally that the statement was false. But by then, it had already embedded itself in the minds of those who wanted it to be true. I know, because I was one of them. I even started working on an op-ed about the fact until I did a little digging and realized it was false.
We’ve all seen how this works. A claim that confirms our suspicions, that flatters our worldview, is more likely to be accepted, repeated, and spread. Even if it’s factually wrong. Especially if it is.
The Butler rally wasn’t aired because of the shooting. It was aired before the shooting. Trump began speaking around 6:05 PM. The first shot was fired at approximately 6:11 PM. That’s just six minutes of speech, not unusual for CNN’s live rally coverage, which typically carried the first 10 minutes before cutting away for commentary, corrections, or rival programming.
This wasn’t a media conspiracy. It was a media routine.
In fact, CNN and MSNBC had developed a clear formula for rally coverage by 2024: air the opening minutes, then cut. MSNBC, for example, showed only the first few minutes of Trump’s New Hampshire primary speech before leaving to fact-check him. CNN would likewise exit coverage once the rally ceased delivering hard news. That’s why the Butler broadcast lingered as long as it did. The shots rang out before CNN had reason to disengage.
Let us now confront the cost of repeating this myth.
Every time one of us repeats the Butler-only claim, we give the drive-by media a gift. They use it to portray us as careless, conspiratorial, and unserious. And when the facts don’t line up, they get to dismiss the rest of our arguments, even the ones that do hold water. We cannot afford that. Not when the truth is our greatest weapon.
It is not weakness to admit error. It is strength. The left makes mistakes all the time. CNN and its ilk peddle plenty of falsehoods, half-truths, and distortions. But if our response is to match them lie for lie, error for error, then we are no better. The difference between them and us must be more than ideological. It must be epistemological. We must be the side that cares what is true.
There’s another reason to get this right. The Butler rally was a national trauma. An attempted assassination of a former president, live on television, is a moment that should unite Americans in horror. The rush to interpret it through the lens of media cynicism risks trivializing it. This isn’t a Netflix conspiracy drama. A man almost died. A man did die. If we’re going to talk about the media’s role, let’s do so with precision, not fantasy.
I understand the impulse. I have fallen for similar narratives before. They usually start with a rhetorical question, end with an ellipsis, and contain just enough ambiguity to pass as plausible. But the stakes now are too high to indulge lazy thinking. We have to help each other be better.
When someone on our side repeats the Butler-CNN myth, don’t roll your eyes. Don’t stay silent. Gently correct it. DM them the CNN statement. Show them the broadcast schedule. Point them to the Community Notes. It may feel like nitpicking, but in the long run, truth is our only shield against defamation, manipulation, and caricature.
If our reputation is to be salvaged, it will not be through bluster. It will be through accuracy.
There is no honor in being confidently wrong. But there is immense honor in loving the truth more than one’s pride. If we want to win not just elections but arguments, we must be the people who care about getting it right.
We don’t need to embellish the media’s sins. They are real enough.
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Covering the first few minutes isn’t really ‘covering’ a rally. I have been pleasantly suprised how often fox covers an entire speech or meeting (and even omits the usual commercial breaks).