When The Seeds You Plant, Sprout Up…

I have always been a fan of the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, or as it is more affectionately known; “Nerd Prom”. Like the Al Smith Dinner during Presidential Election campaigns, it provides a welcome opportunity for overly serious and self-important figures in politics and media to endure some good-natured ribbing.

Sadly, the dinner has become a point of controversy. At the 2011 dinner, where President Barack Obama famously roasted Donald Trump, who was in the audience. Obama’s remarks, mocked Trump’s political aspirations and "birther" claims, and is widely cited by observers and advisors as a pivotal, humiliating moment for Trump that motivated him to run for president.

Donald Trump famously boycotted attending the dinner all through his first term as President. Leaning in hard on his traditional criticism of any and all negative coverage of him as being “fake news”.

So, when it was announced that Trump would be attending this year’s Dinner at the Washington D.C. Hilton, the expectation was that his remarks would be highly combative and critical of the Media. His press secretary Caroline Levitt, interviewed shortly before the Saturday’s event began even said she expected “shots to be fired”. Referring one assumes, to the speech Trump was going to give later on in the evening.

Well, be careful what you wish for Caroline.

By now most people know what happened Saturday night. At 8:34 pm, Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old man from Torrance, CA was confronted by security near the main screening area of the Washington Hilton; while the dinner has just gotten underway inside the main ballroom. He ran past the security checkpoint and is alleged to have fired at least one shot. He was chased and subsequently apprehended.

The suspect never reached the actual ballroom and no one inside the event was injured.

The incident prompted the Secret Service to immediately evacuate President Trump, the First Lady, the Vice President and the various members of the Trump Cabinet who were in attendance. The event was then ended and Trump went on to hold a performative press conference back at the White House where he cited then incident as a reason his proposed new Ballroom adjacent to the now demolished East Wing was needed for reasons of security.

Really… He actually said that.

What is most interesting in the aftermath of Saturday’s incident is the public reaction. Yes, folks are decrying the preponderance of political violence in America, as well we all should. But the predominate reaction seems to be one of … skepticism. Social media was immediately flooded with memes suggesting the entire event was staged by the Trump Administration.

I don’t believe the attempted attack on Saturday was some sort of “false flag” operation. Clearly Cole Allen, is a disturbed young man who claimed he didn’t recognize the country he was living in, and felt compelled to take drastic and violent action because of it. In a “Manifesto” investigators found in his home, Allen is purported to have written:

“I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me. And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes... Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

What has been interesting to see, is the voracity of the responses suggesting the whole thing was staged to help Trump’s dismal approval ratings. Responses originating not just on the left but on the far right as well. In the weeks leading up to Saturday’s shooting, social media had been full of posts by MAGA supporters now questioning if Trump’s previous assassination attempt in Butler, PA during the 2024 campaign had been staged.

The Trump Administration having an adversarial relationship with the Truth, is not a new phenomenon. It goes back to the very first day of Trump’s first term, when then Press Secretary Sean Spicer lost any hope of credibility in his fist ever White House briefing when he made the ridiculously false claim that the crowd at Trump’s inaugural earlier that day had been" the biggest one ever…, PERIOD!"

That was followed a few weeks later, by White House official Kellyanne Conway telling “Meet the Press” that the demonstrably false statements that Trump was making were not lies, but were “alternative facts”. Setting the stage for Trump to basically disregard any truth he didn’t care for as “fake”, and claim any statistics or election results not favorable to Trump were “rigged”

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All culminating four years later on January 6th, when unable to face the fact that he lost the election, Trump urged a mob of his supporters to do exactly what 31-year-old Cole Allen tried to do last Saturday. Affect change through political violence.

The fact that so many people are ready to believe that Trump orchestrated last Saturday’s attack as a way to help himself, is nothing less than the logical and very predictable end result of the constant attacks on facts, truth and … reality by Trump and his various MAGA mouthpieces over the past 8 plus years.

Political Violence should never be seen as a viable method of change in a civilized democratic nation. Yet the easy acceptance by a large percentage of Americans of the idea that Saturday’s attempted attack was merely political theatre produced by Trump to make him look heroic; Is the Trump Administration reaping what it has so enthusiastically sown.

When you make attacking truth, facts and reality the hallmark of your Presidency, you lose the right to be outraged when wild conspiracy theories come back to haunt you.