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The so-called "assassination attempt" against Donald Trump continued to dominate headlines yesterday, in no small part because the White House wanted it that way.
In our item yesterday, we noted that the incident has launched a thousand conspiracy theories, which have spread like wildfire across social media. We do not think it incorrect to observe that the readership of our site skews heavily towards folks who are rational, and whose thinking is evidence-based. And yet, even our readers are wrestling with this particular incident. Here's a few examples from the messages we've gotten:
J.L. in Albany, NY, writes: I'll admit that I'm in the "It Was Staged" camp. Reportedly, security was extremely lax. If the President is going to enter a building, the Secret Service usually knows everything about everyone who might possibly be in that building. So missing that there was a very armed guy with some kind of grievance against Trump is, at best, a sign of incompetence and, at worst, suspicious.
A few other points don't help. For example, you used a zoomed in photo of Stephen Miller rushing out with his wife. The full photo shows Donald Trump behind the curtains waiting around. If there was an actual shooting, I'd think that the Secret Service would be trying to remove the President from the area ASAP. They wouldn't let him wait backstage to see what happened.
Another point comes from Fox. They had a reporter on via phone who said she was sitting next to Karoline Leavitt's husband. The reporter said that he leaned over and said that she would need to "be safe because..." And then the call was abruptly cut off. Fox claimed that the call was dropped, but it's very suspicious why Karoline Leavitt's husband would be telling someone to be safe. I doubt it was because the chicken was undercooked.
Finally, there's the ballroom. Last week, a federal judge ruled that Trump doesn't need the ballroom for national security reasons. Then the WHCD becomes a crime scene. Immediately after the "assassination attempt," Trump and his allies started referencing this as proof positive that the ballroom was needed for national security reasons. Because no other venue could be secured ever. (Despite the fact that the Secret Service have a lot of experience with securing venues for the President to appear in—be they hotels, stadiums, or restaurants.) They needed a national security argument only for one to immediately and totally coincidentally appear for them.
I'd also point out that an administration that constantly lies about the most trivial and easily proven false things doesn't always get the benefit of the doubt as to whether something is true or not. The boy cried wolf a few too many times and now people are rightfully doubting if this was an actual wolf.
C.S. in Flushing, MI, writes: I hate how jaded I have become, but it just seems... off, plausible, and entirely what I would expect from a reality TV president. Journalists were receiving awards for their (earned) unflattering coverage of Trump, keeping this spotlight on his Epstein association and perceived dementia/lack of humanity and what better way to hijack the moment and squash that additional coverage and plug his $400 million ballroom to boot? And it's hard to overlook the fact that he enjoyed a ratings boost in the polls after the Butler, PA, assassination attempt.
I am thinking of deadbeats that I have known in my life who will do anything and everything to avoid an honest day's work when the easiest solution is to work a job. So much effort gets put into avoidance of work, that they would end up working harder. It would have been so easy for Trump to do the right things and decent things... I mean think of the world looking at him in a positive light because he was doing humanitarian things. The press! The polls! He would be universally loved, which is what he craves! But alas, just another deadbeat.
D.R. Massapequa Park, NY, writes: Make it make sense.
The correspondents dinner has been in the SAME Hilton every year since 1968 without issue.
But the one year when the sitting president wants this ballroom and hitting roadblocks to build it just happens to magically be the same year there is a major breach of security.
Sorry, not sorry, I don't buy it.
S.N. in Sparks, NV, writes: When I first heard about a shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, I wondered if this was a false flag operation. In favor of the theory: (1) Trump's poll numbers suck and he is desperate for support and, (2) Trump has ignored the WHCD for several years until suddenly deciding to come this year.
But I moved away from that idea pretty quickly since I am not a big fan of conspiratorial thinking. I also doubt there is anyone around Trump who could carry out a credible operation.
Anyone who would like to read a rundown of the various conspiracies, click here, here, here or here.
It presumably won't come as any surprise that we agree entirely with S.N. in Sparks. We considered the possibility that there might be something sneaky going on here, but that notion just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Starting with the general, assassination attempts pretty much always lead to conspiracy theories. The JFK conspiracy theories are the best known, but there are plenty attached to the Lincoln assassination as well, and to nearly all of the high-profile attempts (all unsuccessful, obviously) made against presidents in the last half-century. An assassination attempt against someone as important and well protected as the President of the United States represents serious disorder in the world, and some people don't like that. The conspiracy brings the order back for them.
Another general observation is that in any situation where there are a lot of people, and there is a lot of chaos, a lot of odd things are going to happen. Those odd things are not inherently meaningful, just because they are odd. For example, there has been much attention paid to Michael Glantz, who is Wolf Blitzer's agent, and who calmly continued eating his salad while chaos reigned around him. This does not mean he was "in" on it, or that he had some sort of inside information. He decided (quite reasonably) that he wasn't in actual danger, and there was no value in getting agitated. End of story. For another example, see the "umbrella man" from the Kennedy assassination.
A third general observation, which is somewhat related to the second, is that something like an assassination attempt is, pretty much by definition, a black swan event. But the fact that it is so is not inherently suspicious. Consider the remark above, that "The correspondents' dinner has been in the SAME Hilton every year since 1968 without issue." First of all, it wasn't at the correspondents' dinner, but Ronald Reagan was shot at that same Hilton in 1981. Second, if presidents were regularly getting shot at that Hilton, well, presidents would stop visiting that Hilton. Of course any assassination attempt is going to be out of the ordinary. Or, to put that another way, what if we wrote "More than a dozen presidents visited Dallas without incident UNTIL the U.S. had the ambitious Lyndon B. Johnson as VP"? That the first eleven presidents were not the victims of a conspiracy does not mean that the twelfth was.
Moving toward the specifics of this particular incident, far and away the most common line of thinking is: (1) Trump wants his ballroom, (2) the assassination attempt happened, and (3) now he's using that to try to get his ballroom. The sequence of events is correct, but there is yet to be any evidence that the administration developed this as a scheme in order to advance its goals. More probable (and a major theme of the rest of this item) is that the attempt happened, and an extremely opportunistic Team Trump quickly thought of how to get mileage out of it. We will also point out that if your "proof" of a conspiracy is "Boy, Trump really wants to achieve [UNPOPULAR POLICY X]" or "Trump could really use a distraction from [SCANDAL Y]," well, Trump ALWAYS has some unpopular policy he's pushing, and he ALWAYS has some scandal he's trying to detract attention from. So, if we have to wait for neither condition to be met for an assassination attempt to be "legitimate," we are going to wait... well, forever.
And finally, if this was all just for show, we can't wrap our mind around how the show was supposed to work. Consider the assassination attempt where Trump was actually hit with... something, and he got his bloody head/raised fist photo out of it. There are conspiracy theories about that one, too. But we just cannot accept that: (1) Trump would knowingly allow himself to be put in such danger (i.e., bullets whizzing past his head), or (2) other people getting killed would be in the cards. In this case, we cannot fathom how a "staged" assassination attempt could be so milquetoast. It does not seem to be getting much attention, but here's a rundown of what happened, courtesy of CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Jennifer Jacobs:
The shooting happened on the level above the ballroom where the White House Correspondents Association dinner was.
I don't think people hearing about this—or even those of us in the room—realized how far from the president, VP and other guests this incident was. It was on another floor, up some stairs and several sets of security away.
Because the Washington Hilton's hotel and other public spaces were open for other functions, the entire building wasn't secured by the Secret Service, just the specific areas where the WHCA dinner was held, law enforcement officials told CBS News.
This is why we put "assassination attempt" in quotes above. Not because we buy the conspiracies, but because Trump, et al., were not remotely in danger. Put it this way: You could probably get a loaded gun about that close to Trump if you just stormed the fences outside the White House and fired a few shots in the direction of the Oval Office. But that would not actually create any meaningful danger for the President, nor would it be any sort of failure on the part of the Secret Service.
Anyhow, add it up, and we just can't see how someone in the White House would say "We'll put together an extremely weak 'assassination attempt,' one that produces no compelling visuals nor dramatic moments, and THAT will give us the political capital to get this ballroom built!" There is much stupidity, and much irrationality, and much magical thinking in this White House, but even given that, this seems a bit much to swallow.
One other thing, before we get to the lemonade-making promised by the headline. The would-be assassin, Cole Tomas Allen, who has already been formally charged with attempted assassination, clearly is not right in the head. In particular, if you read his "manifesto," he very obviously has lost track of the line between reality and video games. We got this comment from reader J.G. in San Diego, CA, that covers it pretty well:
Did you see the manifesto?
It's interesting because this guy is really clearly a gamer. He doesn't know how to use guns, but bought a bunch of them, and his plan was just like... use them expertly. He talks about not wanting to shoot Secret Service agents unless he has to, and if he does he hopes they will wear body armor because he will shoot "center mass." That is all gamer talk. Oh, you are just going to shoot them center mass! Easy! I mean, when you play Call of Duty, you just point in a direction and hit "X"—in real life, it can't be any harder, right?
And he says stuff like, "Hotel security not a target unless they start shooting at me..." Dude, this is not a video game. You don't get to take multiple shots and keep going. The point at which trained people are shooting back at you, the game is over in a second or two. These are pointless plans you are making.
Anyway, it's an interesting read.
Anyone who has played Call of Duty, or Wolfenstein, or Doom or Grand Theft Auto or any other first-person shooter knows that each level starts with easy resistance, progresses to harder resistance, and ends with the Boss. Real life, not so much. If you go after the president, you start with near-impossible resistance and... the end. You never get within a country mile of the Boss.
So again, we take the view that all the efforts to get some mileage out of this incident were post hoc. A (somewhat underwhelming) assassination attempt took place, and Team Trump rapidly shifted into "How can we use this to our advantage?" mode because that is what they do. And boy, oh, boy has MAGAworld been trying to squeeze this for all it's worth. A definitely non-exhaustive rundown:
Although we don't yet have the details about the motives behind last night's shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it's incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy. It's also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I'm grateful to them—and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay.This all seems perfectly reasonable and gracious to us. However, MAGA was entirely apoplectic. See, the shooter's manifesto had been released a few hours before that tweet. And, the thinking goes, Obama KNEW the manifesto was out there, and he KNEW the contents, and he was trying to paper over the complicity of the libs/the Democrats/himself/etc.
We have a couple of more things to say before we finish this item and, hopefully, don't have to talk about this story again. First, if you want to find a president to blame here, it's doable, but it's not Obama. We've written this before, and we'll write it again, but Trump has done just about everything possible to communicate the messages that: (1) It's OK to be angry, and (2) It's OK to act on that anger, violently, if need be. Think Charlottesville, or 1/6, or the ICE occupations, or Venezuela, or Iran or any of the other ways he's used violence and anger as tools. And, to borrow a pretty good turn of phrase from the Bulwark's Jonathan V. Last, if this is going to be your message, then eventually you are going to break containment.
On a related note, the hand-wringing from Leavitt, Miller, Trump and others over "violent rhetoric" is really a world-class display of resolving cognitive dissonance. In Trump, we have a man who celebrated the attack on the elderly Paul Pelosi. A man who cheered the death of Robert Mueller. A man who proclaimed that Rob Reiner got what he deserved. Trump and MAGA long ago ceded any moral high ground here, and people remember that well. #Pelosi, #Mueller and #Reiner were all trending on Twitter yesterday.
And that brings us to our final remark. As we outline above, the White House and its allies are trying to get as much mileage out of this incident as is possible. We feel confident in saying that it just won't work. The "threat" was too inconsequential, the hypocrisy is too obvious, the overreach is too great. What, after all, did Trump get out of the (much more serious) assassination attempt in Pennsylvania? A dead-cat bounce? What did he get out of the other two assassination attempts? Nothing? Indeed, what lasting benefit has Trump gotten out of ANY of his many and varied "victim" narratives? MAGA buys it, but nobody else does. We will be very surprised indeed if this incident is still a story a week from now. That said, we put it under the microscope nonetheless, just in case.
Oh, and since Calvin Coolidge took office, the only president to (apparently) avoid any assassination attempts is Lyndon B. Johnson. (Z)