We all know how Cole Tomas Allen was radicalized |
This column is about the relation between rhetoric and reality, with special reference to political violence and security. Everyone reading this knows that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was rudely interrupted by a crazed gunman. The marksman in question was Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old Cal Tech grad from Torrance, California. I say that he was “crazed” because, shirtless but armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives, he charged the entrance to the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC. Inside were some 2,600 people, including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and several cabinet members. Outside were who-knows-how-many armed Secret Service agents and local police officers. Not great odds for Allen. One Secret Service agent was hit in his bullet-proof vest. All the shots aimed at Allen missed, but he was tackled and subdued.
Why would someone do what Allen did? He told us in a manifesto. “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” he wrote. “Administration officials… are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” Barack Obama, responding to the incident, claimed to be mystified about Allen’s motives. Less hermeneutically challenged, or perhaps it is only less mendacious, observers saw at once what Allen’s motives were. To kill President Trump and other high-ranking members of his administration.
Where did Allen get the idea that Donald Trump was a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor?” Possibly from his congressional representative Ted Lieu. Lieu said that the Jeffrey Epstein files contain “thousands and thousands” of references to President Trump, including “allegations” of Trump raping and threatening to kill children. CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, in her interview with the President a day after Allen’s assassination attempt, quoted that bit from Allen’s manifesto and asked Trump to comment. He responded with the contempt that the question deserved. But O’Donnell – like Ted Lieu, like many, many Democrats – has reveled in suggesting Donald Trump is a criminal, a fascist, a dictator, a threat to “our democracy.”
On June 28, 2024, Joe Biden (or his autopen) posted on social media the statement that “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to........