Trump appeals for unity, rips '60 Minutes,' after a history of inflammatory rhetoric on both sides
I don’t want to hear any more about motives.
When someone engages in a mass shooting – or attempts to kill a president – they are by definition crazy.
In the case of the Washington Hilton gunman, his motive is spelled out in his so-called manifesto: He hates President Donald Trump.
Despite a background in engineering and teaching, he somehow became convinced that Trump was in cahoots with Jeffrey Epstein, calling the president a rapist and pedophile.
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But again, who cares about motive? Anyone who would storm an event protected by the Secret Service – knowing he could easily wind up dead – is not sane.
We do this all the time, try to impose a rational framework on irrational attackers.
The shooter was charged in court yesterday with attempted assassination of the president.
Another thing we do regularly is blame an entire class of people for the actions of a single attacker.
After the Secret Service captured the California gunman – who I’m not naming, under my usual policy of not providing the attention they crave – many conservatives blamed "the left."
Trump himself accused the Democrats of "dangerous" and "hateful" speech.
MS NOW anchor Antonia Hylton countered that the president should have said more about inflammatory rhetoric.
Just weeks ago, she said, he "posted about the possible extermination of an entire civilization online" and "has called his political foes ‘vermin, lunatics, scum, terrorists, the enemy within.’ He has certainly contributed — at a minimum — to the political rhetoric."
This ideological finger-pointing is nothing new. One year ago, a gunman posing as a police officer killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat and former speaker, and her husband in their home. The killer, a Trump supporter, also wounded a Democratic senator and his wife in their home. Trump said he was "not familiar" with the case.
One year ago, a man with a history of mental illness and a criminal record set fire to the mansion of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, on the first night of Passover. He said he would have attacked Shapiro with a sledgehammer if he had encountered him. He had tried to convince his family to vote for Trump and slammed Shapiro for his position on the Palestinians. Trump didn’t contact Shapiro that day but did call the next day.
The gunman who badly wounded Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, and killed six others in Arizona, was said by many in the press to have been inspired by a Sarah Palin political map that put political opponents in crosshairs. Turns out the killer never saw the map. The New York Times apologized and corrected the false accusation, and a Palin suit against the paper was unsuccessful.
This even goes back to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which President Clinton blamed on the atmosphere caused by the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters.
The security lapses at the Washington Hilton were unforgivable. It’s no accident that President Reagan was shot outside the same hotel in 1981, an attack I covered, in which Reagan lost far more blood than was originally disclosed.
All the gunman had to do to beat the system is take trains to Washington and check in as a guest. As at past White House Correspondent Association dinners, the checking even for tickets was inconsistent. Some journalists and other guests are there only for the pre-parties hosted by news organizations.
As Red Letter reporter Abi Baker explained:
"I didn’t have a dinner ticket, just an invite to a pre-party, so I flashed my phone at security, pulling up the email invitation. There was no barcode to scan, no list to check—just an email for a network news reception that could have been forwarded by anyone. At the party I was invited to, no one asked for ID, only my name. At others, just feet from the ballroom, I walked in without being stopped."
Incredibly, the Secret Service didn’t even invoke the highest level of security for an event attended by the president, vice president, House speaker and top Cabinet officials. There were other events and receptions going on at the hotel at the same time, so the building couldn’t be secured. There may be other reasons to get rid of the press dinner, but it can never again be held at the Hilton, a sprawling structure that has now been the target of two attempted presidential assassinations.
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Melania Trump, meanwhile, ripped Jimmy Kimmel for telling this joke:
During a parody skit about the press dinner, he said: "Our First Lady Melania is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expected widow."
Tasteless, to be sure. But this was days before Kimmel or anyone else imagined there would be gunfire at the dinner.
"Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country," the first lady said in a statement. "His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America," she said in a statement. "People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate…
"A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community."
The president added his voice yesterday, saying that in light of his "despicable call to violence," Kimmel should be "immediately fired by Disney and ABC." In fairness, Kimmel wasn’t calling for violence, he was doing a comedy sketch, but his words were offensive.
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In December, as part of their long-running feud, Trump called Kimmel "a dead man walking!" and that CBS should "put him to sleep…it is the humanitarian thing to do!"
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that Trump has been the target of "completely deranged" rhetoric since he first ran for president. She blamed a "left-wing culture of hatred." By falsely accusing him of being a "fascist" and "threat to democracy," she said, elected Democrats and some in the media have "helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment."
House Speaker Mike Johnson, while calling for a lowering of the temperature, said "you have some of the most prominent figures in the House and in the Senate on the Democrat side effectively calling for war. They use those kinds of metaphors. And it incites violence, because there are crazy people in society, and they get radicalized online."
During an interview on "60 Minutes," Norah O’Donnell read from the shooter’s document. Having somehow convinced himself that Trump was part of Jeffrey Epstein’s child abuse network, he wrote: "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes."
"I was waiting for you to read that," Trump said, "because I knew you would – because you’re horrible people…I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. Excuse me, I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person... You should be ashamed of yourself, reading that – because I’m not any of those things."
O’Donnell said she was just citing the shooter’s words.
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It’s important to recognize that Trump also has a history of violent rhetoric. He has accused journalists of "treason," a crime punishable by death.
He has said "if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath," though he was referring to the auto industry.
During the campaign, he said the Democrats were running a "Gestapo administration."
In 2020, he reposted a video of a supporter saying, "The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat."
Two days before the election, he said this about renegade Republican Liz Cheney:
"She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face."
And, of course, he pardoned and praised the Jan. 6 rioters.
A Utah prosecutor said the man charged last September with killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, despite coming from a Republican family, had moved toward a leftist ideology, and had become "increasingly concerned about gay and trans rights." (He had a transgender roommate.)
The shooter, in court last week, asked that the media be barred from covering the trial because it taints the jury pool.
But that brings us back to the useless question of motive. Who cares? There’s no question the recent spate of violence has come from shooters and suspects who at a minimum could be described as anti-Trump.
Some criticized the president for bringing up his planned White House ballroom, because it would be bulletproof and heavily secured. It’s hardly surprising that he would use the occasion to plug his pet project.
But a tragedy was averted that could have been so much worse was thankfully averted.
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FBI Director Kash Patel, who was at the Hilton media dinner, said at a briefing yesterday that Trump had delivered a "message of unity" after the gunfire on Saturday night. We could use more of that, from both sides.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said "the political violence and rhetoric has got to stop." He did not exclude "many in this room" for their negative coverage of the president.
Fortunately for all of us, the Secret Service did its job at the last security checkpoint that prevented the irrational gunman from opening fire in the room below.