As you probably heard by now, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a shitshow not for the expected reason, which was that Trump would give a speech attacking the media, the First Amendment, and democracy, telling everyone how much they sucked and should be hanged. Instead, a guy bumrushed the outer perimeter of security before being taken down in the hotel lobby and arrested. Thankfully, he was stopped by the Secret Service before he could get inside, and while an agent was shot in the chest, no one died (thank God for bulletproof vests). Adrastos’ excellent earlier take on this entire mess can be read here.
While this is in and of itself horrible, the immediate reaction by some non-MAGAs was nearly as disturbing. The worst thing about the conspiracies about the Trump assassination attempts and the Charlie Kirk murder is that we either don’t or won’t pay enough attention to the fact that the current society we have is creating a lot of broken people who see violence as the only solution. Often, such people have very confusing political stances that are all over the place.
I’m not really surprised someone tried to kill him. Obama had 11 attempts on him stopped, and given how Trump has borked up all federal law enforcement, that a guy’s plan to assassinate Trump and some of his cabinet members made it to this stage probably isn’t too shocking. If you want to go the conspiracy route, the real possibility is that they let this guy get to this point before stopping him, I suppose. But such an idea has a hard time getting past a lot of reasonable questioning, not the least of which is it is difficult to envision this crew being able to pull off such a caper. It would require a lot of skill to organize, which these dolts never seem to have, and also, it would be really hard to prevent such a plan from being revealed, given how much this administration leaks.
But it makes a lot of sense that people are thinking this must be a false flag conspiracy, because that’s the world TRUMP HIMSELF had a hand in creating through his crazy social media posts and bizarre statements. Add to that algorithms designed to feed us a constant stream of bullshit and influencers who spread the most salacious bullshit for personal monetization. The flip side of that is such a society, ironically enough, makes events like Saturday night more common.
On one hand, he is the Conspiracy Wacko in Chief who clings to a completely insane idea that the 2020 election was fixed, among others, and he lies more easily than he breathes. On the other hand, they use constant violent rhetoric, post totally insane nonsense about political opponents, including thinly veiled threats, and support violent groups like the Proud Boys.
So, it’s really not a conspiratorial thing that someone tried to kill Trump at least three times now. Think of Trump and violence in politics as similar to extreme weather events and climate change. Someone else has thought of this comparison.
New in PN: A more secure ballroom will not stop the madness"Trump is to individual acts of political violence what climate change is to hurricanes: We may not be able to blame global warming for a particular one, but we know it creates the conditions for hurricanes to be more common and intense."
Everything from the event to the reaction makes perfect sense, exactly fits the world we have. My concern is that it only gets worse, and instead of thinking of ways to fix it, we focus our energy on these conspiracies. That so many non-MAGA people automatically leap to the idea that Trump, or someone in his administration, concocted the event for publicity and to take people’s minds off the war, or Epstein, or gas prices, is not a good sign.
Okay, enough about the conspiracy stuff. I’ve written about this stuff before, so you can read more here and here. Now I want to move on with a few brief other thoughts about this mess.
First off, Trump had planned to trash journalists to their face Saturday night at an event that is supposed to be about the First Amendment (and now, conspiracy buffs, Lyin’ Karoline’s line about “shots fired” is not proof of a false flag, but instead she was very excited about Trump being an asshole in public once again). That he wanted to do this even after an incident where the targets of his ire were fearing for his life (the show must go on shit) is just, well, Trumpian levels of reprehensible.
Second, the brou-ha-ha with the shooter guy overshadowed the dorkiness of Professional Dork Michael Tracey, whose new project is harassing Epstein survivors and apparently was going to throw down with Jim Acosta.
UPDATE: LMAOOOOOOOO
“Fight me in front of the Hampton Inn, bro” is a new level of Michael Tracey lolz.
And finally, that the entire right-wing universe latched onto the attempted shooting as proof that Trump needs to get his ballroom for security reasons isn’t evidence of kayfabe but instead even more evidence of how the entire right-wing universe is remarkable in its ability to be lock-step in spreading bullshit and pushing scams. Please note: this is something that seems to be lost in the chaos, but the shooter never even got to the same floor as the ballroom, so the security actually did work fairly well, even if he probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
The idea that any social event involving the president must be in a totally secure ballroom is something else and another example of the right doing anything to address the real problem of guns in America. So, future American presidents will never attend international events or visit the heartland to be with the American People? Yeah, that will work out.
PS My stance that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner should be ditched remains unchanged.
The last word goes to ZZ Top.
