Here’s an important mental exercise: If the shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday had intended to kill journalists instead of the president, what would the media be talking about nonstop for the next 100 years?
Everyone knows the answer. But 31-year-old Cole Allen, the suspected would-be assassin, explicitly wrote in his widely-reported “manifesto” that he wasn’t targeting guests at the annual event, but instead U.S. “representatives,” specifically “administration officials … prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” And when it’s Donald Trump or his supporters being targeted, well, those stories don’t tend to stick around for long.
That will certainly be the case once again. We’re sure to get reports on Allen’s motives, what exactly he did in the lead-up to the shooting, and what his friends and family have to say about it. But there won’t be nonstop, end-to-end coverage of what we all know this almost certainly is: A left-winger inspired by Democrat leadership and the corporate press to take out political opposition.
That minor detail will surely get to take a backseat to speculation on whether Trump is in fact to blame for a third close attempt on his life in the course of just two years.
A day after the shooting, in which thankfully nobody died and only one Secret Service agent was mildly injured, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell sat with the main target to ask why he thought the alleged gunman had referred to the president as a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor.”
Mr. President, why would you make someone think such horrible things about you?
Trump reasonably took offense, what with having been shot in the side of his face less than two years ago, and called O’Donnell a “disgrace.” He said that “the hate speech of the Democrats … is very dangerous.”
The next day on CNN, content creator Manu Raju, whose formal title is “chief congressional correspondent,” tisk-tisked Trump for having “erupted” at O’Donnell. His Politico peer Eli Stokols said it was “incredibly selective” for Trump to “single out” Democrats for their extensive record of violent, inciteful rhetoric. For having suggested immediately after the shooting that the planned White House ballroom would have better security than the traditional Hilton Hotel venue for the dinner, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny claimed the president was “spurring wild conspiracy theories” about the shooting being staged.
But it was just a little later that CNN unleashed the mother load by bringing on the chinless wonder Chuck Todd, who in rapid succession said:
—”Presidents set the thermostat for the country.”
—”Only a president can dial down on the rhetoric.”
—”Only a president can set the tone.”
—”It is on the president.”
—”[T]he president has to change his tone.”
—”I did not see any self reflection [from Trump]… and you’re not gonna see it.”
Imagine if the shooter had written down that he was coming after Chuck Todd, and the president reacted by suggesting that Todd “change his tone” and bemoaned the lack of “self-reflection.” We’d see rioting from Washington news bureaus on the level of summer 2020.
The violence continues. These people keep it going.