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What happened on Saturday is breaking news and important, but it is sucking the air out of the room. Trump and his cronies are making sure it does, all in an effort to sway opinion (and sympathy) before the midterms.
A gunman, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, came close to all those gathered at the Washington Hilton for the White House Correspondants’ Dinner on Saturday night. No one was injured, although shots were fired. He was arrested and will be charged soon, not with attempted assasination but other gun related charges. He left writings, which I put at the bottom of my post if you want to read what he said.
Not alone in this, my first thought was that Trump staged this for sympathy, and votes. Reading more about the gunman, I doubt it. This shooting occured just after conspiracy theories about the last attempt to shoot Trump were resurfacing again on the right. The New Republic has an interesting piece on conspiracy theories by Michael Tomasky:
“I’m sure most of America is grateful that the sitting president wasn’t assassinated. Love the incumbent or hate him, that would be a traumatic national event. But he would be quite mistaken to expect an outpouring of sympathy from a country that strongly disapproves of the job he’s doing, and where 55 percent of the people, according to last week’s Fox News poll, consider him mentally unfit to serve as president. He is still prosecuting a deeply unpopular war, building massive detention camps, and proving both incompetent to manage the economy and impotent to impact gas prices. Cole Tomas Allen didn’t change any of that.”
The event happened around 8:30PM on Saturday, Trump and his administration did a press conference at around 10:30PM. Almost immediately in his remarks, he mentioned the need for his big ballroom, and that the Correspondants’ dinner needs to be rescheduled—where, I don’t know. Security at the Washington Hilton was incredibly bad, everyone is acknowledging this. And then he did a 60 minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell the next day, and lashed out at her. Below is a clip of that moment when he responds to parts of the manifesto that directly (but not by name) go after Trump. Horrible. Ironic because it happened at a dinner supposedly celebrating freedom of speech.
@60minutesThe gunman who attempted to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner wrote a letter explaining his actions and accusing "Administration officials" broadly of various serious crimes. When Norah O'Donnell read this list of crimes to President Trump, he was offended.. “I read the manifesto. You know, he's a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I'm not any of those things,” he tells Norah O’Donnell during the 60 Minutes interview. #whcd #donaldtrump #uspolitics #correspondentsdinner
Assistant Attorney General Shumate said last night’s incident “proves, yet again, that the White House ballroom is essential for the safety and security of the President, his family, his cabinet, and his staff. When the White House ballroom is complete, President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom. The White House ballroom will ensure the safety and security of the President for decades to come.” He wrote to the lawyer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation demanding that the organization drop its lawsuit against Trump’s planned ballroom.
Republicans are blaming Democrats for violent rhetoric. Less than 24 hours after calling on Americans to “resolve our differences,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that “I do think that the hate speech of the Democrats … is very dangerous.” Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters cast Saturday’s incident as “the inevitable result of a radicalized left that has normalized political violence.”
What about the violent rhetoric coming out of Trump’s mouth for years?
Meanwhile the Epstein Files still have not been fully dealt with.
And there is a crucial deadline coming up: The War Powers Act requires the president to notify Congress of war within 48 hours of starting a conflict. Then, fighting must stop after 60 days unless Congress either declares war or authorizes the use of the military for that specific action. That day will be May 1st. A majority of Americans do not approve of this war, if the Republican Congress votes a continuance, that’s not good for them in the next election.
This whole thing—the aftermath of the shooting— makes me furious, mostly because I really dislike how Trump grabs the narrative and throws out lies so quickly. His people follow suit, and the mainstream media doesn’t know how to push back. Democrats need to keep stepping up.
I hope you all are okay, thank you so much for being here. Have a good start to your week.
The shooter’s manifesto:
“Hello everybody!
So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today. Let me start off by apologizing to everyone whose trust I abused.
I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for “Most Wanted.”
I apologize to my colleagues and students for saying I had a personal emergency (by the time anyone reads this, I probably most certainly DO need to go to the ER, but can hardly call that not a self-inflicted status.)
I apologize to all of the people I traveled next to, all the workers