READING TIME: 6 Minutes
SUMMARY: When a gunman stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, everyone in the room reacted with visible fear and alarm — except Donald Trump. While the Internet exploded with conspiracy theories about staging, security failures, and Jimmy Kimmel’s suspiciously prescient “expectant widow” joke, the real story is being missed. Why wasn’t the event classified at the highest security level despite housing virtually the entire executive branch? And why didn’t Trump flinch? There are three possible explanations — narcissistic invincibility, cognitive decline, or foreknowledge — and the truly terrifying part is that all three are plausible., and every single one disqualifies him from holding office.
KEY TERMS: White House Correspondents’ Dinner Trump assassination attempt Trump cognitive decline Presidential security failure Trump narcissism WHCD shooting conspiracy Trump fitness for office Secret Service security level Trump psychology Jimmy Kimmel Melania
COMMENT: What do you think is driving all of the assassination attempts on Trump?
On Thursday 23 April, Jimmy Kimmel produced a parody of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in which he quipped, “Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” Two days later, a gun wielding maniac charged through the entrance of the dinner firing five or six shots and even hit a secret service agent in their bullet-proof vest before being tackled to the ground. BTW, it was a white guy. You know this because he wasn’t shot to death outside of the perimeter for having a cellphone but allowed to penetrate and definitively begin his attack before being presumed dangerous and aggressive enough to subdue. I’m jus’ sayin’.
There are some burning questions here. What did Jimmy Kimmel know and when did he know it? Was he predicting the attack? Did he have some insider knowledge? Did he CAUSE the attack?!?! Was it on purpose?!?
Or how about Mrs. Trump? The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Did Kimmel hit just a little too close to the truth? Was she planning a Florence Harding? For the uninitiated: Florence Harding was widely suspected of poisoning the philandering President Warren G. Harding to death, possibly to prevent an embarrassing philandering scandal.
Then, there is Trump himself. He has loudly proclaimed in multiple venues that he wanted the show to go on, but always in safety and comfort and far from the actual danger. First, from back stage with the shooter subdued and Secret Service in high alert. And, then, from the protective cocoon of a White House press conference.
What are we expected to think that we have a brave fearless leader and ignore the racist misogynist xenophobic white nationalists using the Bill of Rights for toilet paper! He’s willing to say he’s willing to be in the line of fire just to get a few more likes, shares, and follows. He even went so far as to post a picture of the assailant face in the carpet and video of the assault. He said it was so we could appreciate the heroism of the Secret Service, not to make himself look tough and brave.
Yeah, right Biff. Because everything you say is the absolute truth.
Fun Fact:
Reagan was shot at the same hotel as the White House Correspondance Dinner was at. It’s so bad that John Freaking Hinkley is calling it spooky. If he’s spooked, who are we not to be speculating wildly?
John Hinckley Jr., Who Shot Reagan at Same Hotel That Hosts WHCD, Says It’s ‘Spooky’ That ‘Bad Things Keep Happening’ There by Joseph Konig for the People on 27 April 2026
Explaining All of the Assassination Attempts
What are we to make of the third(?) half-assedination attempt of the Caricature-in-Chief? The Orange Doctor loves to say he is the best, did he look around and realize there have been no serious assassinations since John Hinckley tried to do the world a favor and rid us of Reagan’s disastrous budget and social service policies, and decide to be best at being assassinated but gave it his usual half-assed try?
Since the WHCD, conspiracy theories have been spewing forth on the Interwebs like the theorists are all pubescent boys and the half-assedination is their porn stash. Oh, wait. It’s not like that. Everybody, left, right, and center are posting their hot take that it all had to be STAGED! The serious chin stroking wags punditing on all the cable pundit shows are punditing that the end of democracy is nigh because we’ve seen the third horseman of the assassinations. The conservatives are squeezing every farthing out of “it’s the violent rhetoric of the left.” Kick a rock on the social media these days, and there’s a Trump half-assedination hot take under it.
Let’s begin with the precursor events.
The Events Running Up To The WHCD
Time Travel?!?
Back in 2023, there was this mysterious X post from Henry Martinez consisting of only the name, Cole Allen, the name of the shooter. The account only ever made that one post and it used an image called “Time Travel” in the header post. That’s it, right? Time travel’s real.
Predictive Markets?
Then there is Karoline Leave It! using the tired trope of “shots fired,” when describing the dinner just before it started, “There will be some shots fired tonight,” she said in her smug way. Well, that didn’t age well, did it? I mean was it a coincidence, or was it predictive? How many bets on the shooting were won on the predictive markets? Was Don-Don just bet hard on him NOT speaking, so he needed an excuse to get it cancelled?
First Signs of Trouble
Apparently, the first anyone in the ballroom knew of the half-assedination attempt was the sound of gun shots on the floor below. The people in the cheap seats recognized it as gun fire. The folks towards the front toyed with the idea that someone may have dropped some trays, from what I remember of the reporting. As soon as people started duck and covering, though, everybody else caught on real fast.
And, here’s what all of those hot takes you’ve been reading for the past few days have missed.
What all the Hot-Takers Missed
Not a National Special Security Event
The WHCD was not classified at the highest security level, despite the fact that Trump, nearly his entire Cabinet, and many high ranking Republicans were present in one room. Think about that for a second. In a post-Butler, post-golf-course-sniper world, DHS Secretary, Markwayne Mullins, i.e. Trump, decided that a ballroom full of the entire executive branch didn’t need the government’s most robust protective umbrella. Why? We’ll come back to that.
When is a Reaction not a Reaction?
Look at the screen grab of a BBC video of the folks at the head table when the gunshots begin. There are five people in the shot. Three of them have their mouths open in surprise. Four of them have alarm in their eyes. Trump looks pretty nonplused. The question is why.
This is the moment that the danger makes itself known. The people in front of them in all of their fancy dress are crawling around on the ground battling chairs and tablecloths for safety. Seriously watch the video. No body knows what is going to come bursting through that door. Anyone reacting emotionally to the sound of gunshots and the sight of people moving in fear and panic would reflect that in their face. And, everyone around Trump does.
Surprise, the Sympathetic Nervous System, and Safety
When our brains encounter something unexpected, we react with surprise. Surprise focuses our attention. It brings our bodies, brains, and emotions on alert. In an instant we judge the stimulus as being good or bad. Good, and we smile and laugh. Think, “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” moments. Bad, we jump, scream, and lash out. Think, “Boo!” as someone jumps out from behind the door. The point is our sympathetic nervous system has taken over and we are reacting without thinking without the rational part of our brain engaging because that will very likely save our lives if they’re saveable in that situation. It is fight, flight, or freeze. It isn’t fight, flight, freeze, or stupid — It’s like Trump is saying, “Hunh?!? Whutz dat?”
Explaining Trump’s Non-Reaction
There are three possible explanations for Trump’s face in that moment. And here’s the thing: every single one of them should disqualify him from holding the office he currently occupies.
Explanation One: Narcissistic Invincibility
Trump is a narcissist and genuinely believes, on some level, that nothing bad could happen to him. As he said of his decision to go to war with Iran, “It will work out, it always does.” The laws of physics, biology, and probability simply don’t apply to El Gran Jefe Estúpido. Which also explains why the WHCD wasn’t bumped to the highest security level — why would you need maximum protection when you’re cosmically untouchable? A president who can’t accurately assess his own physical danger cannot accurately assess the nation’s.
Explanation Two: Cognitive Decline
He just wasn’t processing the incoming information accurately or quickly enough to register surprise. The sensory data was arriving, but something upstream wasn’t firing right. Not at that table as the shots were fired. Not when the Secret Service rushed in and hustled him to the “safe room.” Not at his press conference that night. Not even the next day. It explains the weirdly statesmanlike eighteen hours that followed — the “we have to resolve our differences” press conference. The endless praise for the Secret Service. All the way up to the 60 Minutes interview when Norah O’Donnell quoted the half-assed assassin’s manifesto, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Apparently, reminding him that we all know he is a pedophile was enough to kickstart the old liard brain, and Trump was back to attacking the press, blaming Democrats, and justifying his Epstein room. Until then, though, he was on autopilot because there is a periodic disconnect with the reactive, impulsive, and hyper emotional part of his brain. A president who cannot process a threat in real time cannot lead in a crisis.
Explanation Three: He Knew Something
The entire world is pointing and hissing staged like they are Donald Sutherland at the end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” but it doesn’t even have to be that. Team Trump could’ve staged the whole thing, but it’s a high-risk play with catastrophic failure built right into it’s DNA. What if the Secret Service agent had been shot in the face instead of the vest? What if a bystander had been killed in the crossfire? Sure no one working in the White House would lose sleep over something as trivial as that, but they would lose sleep when Signal chat or the emails went publlc.
However — and this is the part that connects back to the security level question — if someone on Team Trump was playing elebunty-billion-dimensional three-dimensional Vulcan chess, keeping the security classification artificially low would be a way to let something get close enough to be dramatic without being fatal. A near miss generates sympathy, rally-around-the-flag energy, and the image of a fearless leader. A mass shooting would eliminate a lot of Trump press critics and create a hyperventilating hysterical frenzy of outrage on the right. So, win-win-win, right? So why wasn’t the security level higher? Narcissism or something even darker — a stupid jenius hoping for a close call or engineering one. Either way, he cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes.
So, siblings, pick your explanation. They’re all possible. But, does it matter? If it is one of them, then Trump shouldn’t be sitting at the Resolute Desk for one minute longer. Any one of them are completely disqualifying. But, if he’s just playing opportunist politics, he is still disqualified because he’s not working to improve the country, but to justify and further his own corruption. The fact that we cannot rule any of them out tells us everything we need to know about the fitness of the man currently sitting in the Oval Office.
Image Attribution
This image was found on Animalia and has a Creative Commons license.
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I remember the Talking Heads song, “Puzzling Evidence”. It comes to mind a lot.
The one thing in all this we know for sure is the thing we already knew, that Trump is not, and never was competent or trustworthy for the office he holds.
It may be significant how quickly Trump and his online sock puppets turned to the line that this event proved the need for the WH Ballroom. Combined with the “Shots will be fired” comment, that is suspicious, and in line with Trump’s real priority, the grift and the aggrandizement and monuments.
There’s another possibility. Something was planned that involved shots being fired, but it wasn’t the guy who actually got caught. Was he a surprise and spoiled the real plan?
Yep, puzzling evidence, as usual.
Howdy Bob!
Trump has a history of dropping verbal hints about his stupid jenius plans. His use of the word betting before the predictive markets scandal broke. He also has a tendency to blurt the most sensitive information of the moment. So, Leavitt using the “shots fired” trope before shots being fired is right in line with his tendency to leave an Easter Egg for his real plans. But, it’s not definitive.
The speed with which they got the but the ballroom talking points out to their social media personalities and Congressional Republicans — within minutes of the attack — also bespeaks foreknowledge of the event. I assume that intelligence services, private or public, could determine the weaponry the Allen had and would likely use and detect plans communicated on social media. It is possible that they knew about it and left the security just under the most secure possible — the entire Cabinet was there for God’s sake — has that ever happened at the WHCD before? — in order to make as spectacular attack as possible with as little risk for anyone significant being killed. As noted, they probably didn’t care if their were casualties or not.
The real point is that Trump can’t be trusted and that the MSM doesn’t report him as such. I guess that’s two points. Oh, and a third, the social media and pundit hot takes folks are in such a rush to get a hot-take that they don’t spend much time analyzing the situation — the picture of Trump’s blank face during the attack is much more than a thousand words — and then reify their message as they coalesce around a hot-take because they don’t want to risk being wrong.
Huzzah!
Jack
The circumstantial evidence is pointing to the Trump propaganda machine being prepared for some form of attack to happen, regardless of what level of the security setup was involved or the degree of damage or penetration. A drive by shooting at the entrance would have sufficed. In fact, any act of public violence in or around the hotel could be used.
If there was not foreknowledge, then the “Shots will be fired,” comment would have been metaphorical reference to the awesome speech Trump would be giving to his enemies in the Press.
The real bottom line is that whatever the real reality may have been, nothing coming out of the WH can be trusted. The worst consequence of that is that anything that happens to be true or partly true gets thrown out with the BS.
It helps top remember that all conspiracy theories are works of speculative fiction that begin like everything else in that genre and it’s sub genres, with a “What if…?”.
Howdy Bob!
The distrust, dishonesty, and disinformation is all part and parcel of setting up an authoritarian regime. Like Orwell said, you have to rely on the authoritarian for information and they can tell you whatever they want. This is a perfect exampe of that in real time. We all saw it happen. We’ve seen the video of Allen running through the security check point and, we still can’t trust what we’ve seen because it has to be interpreted.
AI will dim our critical thinking ability, but I’ve found AI agents to be capable of expressing skepticism about this issue and other important issues. One reason for that is because people keep asking them questions that push the skepticism. Everytime you interact with them, they learn something. AI, being a very complex system, is going to be full of unintended consequences.
The immediate use of the attack as an illusory explanation for why the ballroom is needed is the most troubling and least reported thing out there. Trump has collected donations to build the ballroom, but he has now asked Congress for the full $400 million to build it. Now, he’s covering his grift with the attack. And, the claims were immediate as in within minutes of the attack happening as if the gang who can’t shoot straight were prepared for it.
And, once again, we’re back to our biggest problem: the lack of a public demand that our politicians be honest and act in good faith in their office and that reporters act with professional standards and report stories more critically. Right now, we’re all having fun making up puns and clever hot takes on what really happened and fooling ourselves that that is enough to protect our democracy.
Huzzah!
Jack
That immediate transmission of the Ballroom talking points to so many influencers is an important window into the Trump propaganda machine, regardless of whether it is evidence of a planned event, or just having the message ready in case of a surprise event. Trump himself is not capable of organizing that. Steven Miller and others are, and the sock puppets stand ready for whatever is fed to them and question none of it.
Studies have shown that doing reactions, shares and comments on the social media do too often leave people with the feeling that they have done their duty. Although it is a way of expressing support for others in the “resistance”, which is no small thing, but cannot be allowed to be a substitute for IRL actions.
Dimming our cognitive lights is, from an authoritarian point of view, the real job of AI.
Howdy Bob!
I still keep up with friends I made while living in China. We chat on Chinese social media apps since they don’t have access to Western social media apps. I remember when taikonauts made a space walk or built their space station or something, and I congratulated them on it. Their reaction was so muted. I was trying to play up the praise of Chinese achievements in space exploration and the achievement. They were like, meh. They didn’t follow any of it on TV or anything. My impression was that not only were they not proud of their country, but that they couldn’t say they weren’t proud. They didn’t want to express pride in what the country had achieved, so they said nothing. Because the Chinese government monitors the apps and Chinese intraweb for specific terms and phrases, they seemed very careful about what they would say.
It was a sobering moment for me. I didn’t want to get them in trouble, and I realized how little enthusiasm there was for their government and the things it produced. They don’t feel connected to the government. That’s what they’re trying to achieve here. AI puts another layer between the average person and anything that is achieved by a group. Universal basic income will add another layer. We won’t be productive contributing members of society, so we won’t have a strong collective identity.
We no longer feel a sense of collective identity in our democracy. It is no longer a sense of we come together to vote, make a collective choice, the outcome of which we will all accept and support.
In China, the economy is still on hard times. Unemployment and inflation is high. Most of the folks I know are feeling depressed. They aren’t feeling like we need to pull together to get through a rough patch. They don’t feel like the government knows what it is doing and will help them. They don’t even have a public retirement system. They are envious of me because I have my Social Security. They have a much better medical system, though. They don’t have the esprit de corps that is necessary to sacrifice and get through a very difficult time.
I’m afraid that we don’t either any more. When I graduated with my masters in the 1980’s, the Texas economy had tanked. There were no jobs, but we had a sense that we would get through it in spite of Reagan. When Clinton was president, we had a national feeling of accomplishment by driving down the deficit. During the Great Depression, Obama restored that sense of possibility and hope for the future.
That maybe the worst thing that Trump has done: stolen our sense of hope in the future to line his own pockets with our hard earned money. With the recent SCOTUS ruling on the VRA, it makes the system feel even more heavily rigged against us.
Huzzah!
Jack
The combination of AI taking all the jobs and a UBI, combined with meaningless elections would complete the basic job title of persons transition from “Citizen” to “Consumer”. It would become completely the case of, “You don’t have to worry your little head about where we are going, or policy, or anything. Just keep buying stuff and throwing it away and buying more.” The media environment becomes all advertising and entertainment, or better yet, advertising-entertainment, and zero information.
Howdy Bob!
We’ll be reduced to a third-rate citizen. Our existence will be separated from that of the state and industry. While they run the businesses and government, we’ll be a nuisance whose necessity is constantly doubted and questioned. That seems a grim future indeed.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
The Matrix
Soylent Green
Logan’s Run
Hunger Games
to name a few
The Tech Bros have taken stories written as warnings for Utopias.
Did my comment show up? chuq
Yes it did. Did you get a timed out message? Bob has also had a spat of doubts about whether his comment posted. I’m working up the time to contact the happiness engineers at WP.
Jack
I am just pleased it made it through…..thanx for checking chuq
Ya just hate for anyone to have any trouble with your blog. I have to say, though, I’ve had comments time out on other WP blogs. Most of them allow comments to post without approval, so a page reload will show you whether it has gone through or not. I require every comment to be approved to eliminate trolls and other online abuse given the nature of the blog.
Huzzah!
Jack
I have had no problems since so it was just a glitch I think. chuq
Glad to hear it.
I found it interesting that the courts said no to ballroom and not long after this situation giving Donny a soapbox for his ballroom. chuq
Howdy Chuq!
Apparently, according to news reporting, the WH coordinates talking points with social media personalities via a group chat. Within minutes of the attack occuring released ballroom talking points to them. It sounds like someone was prepared because no one thinks like that when an assassination attempt is underway.
The salient fact here, that the MSM conveniently misses, is that this WH cannot be trusted and Trump is always playing an angle. They even got the WHCD assassination attempt into a brief filed with SCOTUS. With their slop, that seems next to impossible.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
It doesn’t say much for the credibility of the US government when following an attempted assassination, the first thing almost everyone thinks is that it must have been staged, does it?
But never mind that. to be perfectly honest, we are talking about a group of people who are astonishingly, breathtakingly stupid. So stupid they started a “war” with Iran that they’re actually losing and now can’t figure out how to wriggle out of it. So stupid that not only do they believe aliens from other worlds are flying around up there, but that they aren’t really aliens at all but demons from hell. And even if they could pull off a fake assassination attempt, they sure as hell couldn’t keep quiet about it. They couldn’t keep damning information about Noem from leaking out. Or about Chavez-DeRemer. And now Patel. If it had been staged someone involved would not have been able to resist the temptation of blabbing about it by now.
So as much as this might look like it was possibly a staged event, no, it wasn’t.
Howdy Grouch!
As much as I want it to be staged, it isn’t likely. However, the possibility that they left the security be lax — nearly the entire Cabinet was there, so it shoulda, woulda, coulda been a very high level security event on par with the inauguration and State of the Union. Leaves me wondering whether they were just hoping for something. Also, they had their talking points about the reason the WH ballroom was needed and released via group chat to social media personalities within minute of the attack.
Trump never plays anything straight. So, it doesn’t mean that their intelligence didn’t get wind of a possible attack and the WH brain trust didn’t just in case it, including bets on predictive markets.
However, the real point is that we cannot trust anything this WH does or says. If it was staged, it is duplicitous in the extreme and is disqualifying. If they had foreknowledge and chose not to stop the attack, it is extreme recklessness and is disqualifying.
The screen grab of the BBC video showing Trump the commotion erupted has his face blank when everyone else was surprised and fearful. No one normal responds that way to such an extreme event. It could be narcissism so extreme that he doesn’t experience fear, which is disqualifying because fear is a tempering agent that kept every president for the past 50 years out of Netanyahu’s little excursion into war crimes in Iran. It could be cognitive decline so severe that he just hasn’t processing the sensory inputs of danger, which is disqualifying because of the mental incapacity it demonstrates. Or, he had foreknowledge of the attack, which is disqualifying because of the above. That’d the point.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
PS We are not out of the blabbing window. There may still be more to come.
I saw his lack of reaction as well. But we need to remember that the poor fellow is suffering from serious mental illness and is probably deep into dementia as well. From the things he says it’s pretty obvious that his mind has retreated from reality and, frankly, we have no idea what he is experiencing.
As for the ballroom thing? They’re being enormously misleading there because Trump would never have permitted it to be held in his personal throneroom to begin with. It’s a fundraiser for the WCHA which is a nonprofit that gives out grants and other awards to promote freedom of the press, something he is blatantly opposed to. He would never allow it.
Howdy Grouch!
You keep making the points that I made in the post. A possible explanation for that slack-faced expression is that he just doesn’t have the cognitive ability to process the incoming sensory input that quickly anymore, which is disqualifying and demands his immediate removal from office.
That we don’t know whether this lack of reaction was because it was a conspiracy, conceit, cognitive decline, or coincidence is also disqualifying and demands his immediate removal. The entire country, MAGA, never Trumpers, the disaffected, leftists, everybody heard about this and thought, conspiracy. No one thought this was real at first blush. The administration is deliberately keeping the truth obscured, too. They think it is to their advantage, and it is if your goal is destabilization and implementation of authoritarianism.
And, the whole, the ballroom is necessary argument is just so much illusory explanation to get people to stop thinking critically about the ballroom that Trump has collected hundreds of millions in donations for and is now asking Congress for $400 million for. There’s 400 million reasons to keep us from thinking about it.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack