From President Trump’s plans for a gilded White House ballroom. [White House image.]
Correspondents Dinner Attack – The Onion may want to adapt its recurring headline about school shootings, “’No way to prevent this,’ says only nation where this regularly happens” to political violence in America.
We are not the only such country of course, but it seems we are the only such nation that’s not part of the third world and/or in constant political turmoil.
After FBI agents wrestled teacher Cole Thomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, to the floor of the Washington Hilton for allegedly firing a shot during the White House Correspondents Dinner, CNN contributing commentator and bombastic Trump supporter Scott Jennings said that conservatives in the US are feeling the heat of political violence from the left. [There continues to be question and speculation that an agent saved by his bulletproof vest may have been struck by friendly fire rather than the suspect’s bullet.]
It should be noted that to date, there is little known about the motives and political leanings of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old killed after shooting at President Trump at his July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Same with Tyler Robinson, suspect in the shooting last September of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. Liberals note Robinson has Republican parents and a MAGA background, according to Newsweek.
Whatever the motives of Crooks and the Charlie Kirk suspect, it does not serve either side of the political aisle to claim singular victimhood from political violence, and it’s hard to ignore recent violent government crackdowns on immigration policy protestors
by the federal government itself in Minneapolis and other cities recently.
The WHCD suspect, Allen, “sent a chilling anti-President Trump manifesto to his family just before opening fire” calling himself the “Friendly federal assassin.” Allen’s manifesto was obtained from a family member by the New York Post, which reports that his alleged “targets” were administration officials except for FBI Director Kash Patel.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” the manifesto says.
President Trump, who expressed some comradeship with journalists at the black-tie press conference immediately after the melee attacked CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell a “disgrace” the next evening for raising on 60 Minutes the pedophile, rapist, traitor accusations.
Meanwhile … As with they did in response to the Butler, Pennsylvania attempt, social media influencers, particularly from the left, are posting ridiculous conspiracy theories saying with absolutely no evidence that the WHCD attack was “staged,” The New York Times reports.
And yet, Trump potentially threw fuel on that fire Sunday morning – between the black-tie presser and his 60 Minutes appearance – that the attempted attack proves the need for his gilded White House East Wing ballroom.
“It’s got every single bell and whistle you can possibly have for security and safety,” Trump told The Sunday Briefing on Fox News.
“You can’t have a thousand rooms (above) or whatever. It’s a very big hotel on top of the ballroom and people come down the elevator, and they’re right next to the ballroom. Nobody’s blaming them. They’re good people … I’ve been in that room many times, but it’s had difficulty in the past and the new one is not to have that kind of thing.”
The White House ballroom WHCD will have to wait – Trump says he wants to see the White House Correspondents Association to reschedule within 30 days.
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Iran Has No Cards – President Trump will not send a US envoy to Islamabad, Pakistan, for peace talks with Iran, The Wall Street Journal reports. The president suggested on Fox News that if Iran wants peace talks, they could happen by telephone instead.
Iran has floated a proposal to the US in which it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war with the US, with nuclear arms negotiations to come later, a US official and two other sources told Axios.
Meanwhile, the WSJ says that US forces have sent 38 Iranian tanker ships back to port in its blockade within Iran’s blockade.
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Tillis Wins – In what The New York Times called a “stunning reversal” the Justice Department said Friday it would call off its investigation into the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell over renovation of the Fed’s Washington headquarters. Two days earlier, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro vowed to continue investigating the case, but Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) made it clear he would block President Trump’s nominee to replace Powell, Kevin Warsh, as long as the investigation plodded on.
After his term as Fed chair ends in May, Powell has two more years left on the Fed board. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa