On Saturday night, the press and the president who hates them did not get to have their fancy party, after an armed man rushed past security at the DC Hilton where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was taking place and allegedly fired shots. Trump and other White House officials were swiftly evacuated, while the press received conflicting instructions about whether to stay or go. For a while, it seemed like the event would continue; eventually everyone was told to leave the hotel, after which many reporters headed to the White House to cover the president’s press conference about the event they’d just been part of.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN suspect Cole Tomas Allen appeared to be “targeting members of the [Trump] administration,” though said it’s not yet clear who; CBS reports that “anti-Trump” writing was found connected to the suspect. Breaking news events are often chaotic and full of conflicting information: in the immediate aftermath, rumors swirled that the whole thing was a false alarm, that the suspect had been killed, that Trump intended to still give his dreaded speech, and more. It seemed like everyone in the room and following along leapt to the assumption that Trump was the target, despite the event being full of journalists at a time when Trump himself has stoked distrust of and violence against journalists. Trump certainly milked that assumption on Saturday night, touting in his press conference that he’s faced so many apparent assassination attempts because he’s “done a lot” in his time as president and using the moment to champion his ballroom.
Before all this happened, I’d been watching the C-SPAN livestream of the event, where host John McArdle asked attendees who they were wearing and acted like the whole thing was a fancy night on a red carpet and not a tone-deaf celebration of the particular brand of DC decorum that aimed to see journalists champion the First Amendment literally alongside the very administration that’s energetically eroding it. Some media figures declined to attend; others planned to undertake a milquetoast fashion protest from their seats. Satellite parties included one by Substack and one celebrating Trump hosted by David Ellison, who needs to cozy up to the administration to get his Paramount merger through.
The whole lead-up to the dramatic moment felt like the bizarre business as usual that’s come to define some journalists’ relationship to the White House. And the attempted shooting itself feels the same: another moment of gun violence, another (assumed) attack on a political figure who routinely spouts violence, another threat for reporters. Even Trump’s press conference was the usual bluster and bullshit, a moment for the president to make it all about his bungling priorities. The whole thing happening in black tie was certainly striking, but everything else–the ass-kissing and glad-handing, and then the chaos and fear–we see every day.
Also usual is the conspiracy theorizing roiling the internet in the aftermath: baseless suspicions of the whole thing being a false flag, people reading into comments made during the event, some on the right blaming the left despite little yet being known about Allen– even a video game connection, with Wired reporting that Allen is the developer of a small indie game called Bohrdom that saw an uptick in players after his name was revealed. If the correspondents’ dinner drew ire for normalizing our deeply abnormal times, its unexpected aftermath is also staying the course.
I subjected myself to a livestream of the dinner in case something newsworthy happened, a plan that I suppose panned out. And yet the most newsworthy thing about it is how rote it all is, which is what made the dinner newsworthy in the first place. So maybe it’s no surprise that some people are reaching for conspiracy theories– it’s so hard to accept that this is just how things are, from some members of the press buddying up to Trump in exchange for a fancy night out to yet another day that ends with people hiding under tables in fear for their lives.
I get the desire for there to be some underlying deeper reason for it all, some kind of proof that everything isn’t just like this. But everything is just like this, the engine of the status quo churning along through another shocking event. It doesn’t currently seem like any kind of conspiracy theory will suddenly surface that will make us not be living in the world we’re living in, one that can feel so hard--but not impossible--to change.
Whatever narrative ultimately emerges as more about the suspect’s motives become known–whether Trump was the target or whether it was the journalists in the room or whether there’s no deeper reason to be found at all–the people who can get themselves into the news cycle are already doing their work, casting blame on security and transit (??) and looking for anything that could make this an aberration and not just the latest thoroughly precedented unprecedented event that will get swept under the rug when the next one happens. Plans are already in the works to reschedule the dinner, where Saturday night’s events seem likely to mute even further whatever muted protest attendees had planned. At least some people got a fancy salad out of the deal.
Update, 4/26/26, 2:40pm--Reports now claim writing by Allen indicates he was targeting Trump.
