The Latest Attempt on Trump’s Life Is Yet Another Unmasking Moment
For a president who is constantly accused of inciting wanton acts of violence, the most prominent examples of political violence in American life continue to come from Trump’s detractors.
The third major attempt on President Trump’s life, as well as the lives of other key officials in the administration, occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend. Cole Thomas Allen of California stormed a security checkpoint, armed with a shotgun, handgun, and knives, to target “[a]dministration officials…prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” according to a crazed manifesto he released to his family in the minutes before the attack. Referencing conspiracy theories related to Jeffrey Epstein, Allen wrote that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” He signed off his manifesto by proclaiming himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin,” an apparent inversion of the iconic Spider-Man tagline.
Fortunately, Allen’s attempt was foiled well before anyone inside the ballroom was in danger. Secret Service fired shots and tackled him, stripping him of his clothes as special agents carried out a weapons search. President Trump then shared on his Truth Social account a now-famous picture of the foiled pathetic assassin, wrapped up in a foil blanket. This was clearly intended to both humiliate Allen and display Trump’s own “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude, which was especially significant due to King Charles III’s state visit just a few days later.
Though it paled in comparison to the near miss in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the breach at Trump International Golf Club later in 2024, what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is the latest major attempt on the president’s life over the course of just two years. As a recent Babylon Bee headline rightly framed it, “‘This Is A Both Sides Issue,’ Says Side That Shot President Trump, Assassinated Charlie Kirk, Tried To Assassinate Kavanaugh, Tried To Shoot Trump Again, Shot Steve Scalise, Firebombed Governor Shapiro, Tried To Shoot Trump A Third Time, (cont’d).”
Deep in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome, some in the press have shamefully seemed to put more blame on the president himself than on Allen. Chuck Todd said he is not going to any more events featuring the president because “chaos” follows Trump everywhere—as if would-be assassins like Allen, Routh, and Crooks had no agency of their own.
What Todd voiced is part of the Left’s not-so-veiled meta-belief: Trump deserves whatever comes to him. They advance this argument while helping prepare the ground for acts like those that Cole Thomas Allen tried to carry out. Through showering Trump and his supporters with endless dehumanizing rhetoric and openly flirting with, if not openly endorsing in some cases, wishing for the president’s demise, the Left has made thoughts of regicide as normal as ordering from DoorDash.
Consider one of the top Twitch streamers, Hasan Piker, who has been seen as the Left’s answer to Joe Rogan (whose audience is many, many times larger than Piker’s). When Piker isn’t pictured “reading” Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, he’s rationalizing the cold-blooded murder of former United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In a recent New York Times podcast, he argued that Thompson was engaged in “social murder,” a Marxist concept that implies Thompson’s assassination was in some measure justified. And when Piker isn’t talking about murder, he’s discussing “microlooting,” a new, insipid phrase meant to promote breaking the Eighth Commandment on a mass scale.
If you think Piker has been openly advocating these sorts of radical ideas just recently, you’d be wrong. In 2021, responding to a listener’s comment on landlords who don’t rent their property, Piker screamed that the “streets [should] soak in the red capitalist blood.” At another time, he stated, “If you cared about Medicare fraud, you would kill [Florida Senator] Rick Scott.” Piker also justified Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and said that America deserved 9/11.
Regarding the president, Piker hasn’t exactly been coy with his thoughts. Sitting next to the giggling journalist Taylor Lorenz, he said that everyone knows what “Someone has to do it” means, to whoops and peals of laughter in the background, which he pointed to as evidence of untapped revolutionary potential on the Left. As Michael Knowles has written, Piker “expresses a consistent principle: namely, harming those he hates and helping those he loves.”
One glaring issue is that there seems to be no brakes on the Pikerization of the Left. A political coalition that has argued that America is racist to the core, cheered on mass property destruction during the Summer of Floyd, and stands for trans surgeries and abortion on demand will steamroll any centrist who may have second thoughts about the Left’s trajectory.
Take a recent column by the New York Times’s Ezra Klein. Originally titled “Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy,” the once ardent Piker critic now thinks that Piker needs to be included in the conversation since cancellation hasn’t worked. While Klein’s point about the many pitfalls stemming from the modern method of cancellation needs to be pondered, there’s a world of difference between the two sides.
Whatever you may think about Tucker Carlson, he has never justified—or been giddy about—the prospect of his political opponents being killed. Piker clearly has, and then some.
This points to the reality that some people and ideas need to be shunned. A healthy society will always have social guardrails that define the limits of acceptability. The virulent anti-Americanism of Piker clearly falls outside of traditional American social limits. Up until the mid- to late-20th century, most Americans would not have tolerated such views. Dealing with Piker in 21st-century America means addressing some of the basic questions he raises on Israel, Gaza, and America without platforming the man himself.
Though Democrats and a handful of left-wingers have condemned Piker, those condemnations will be difficult to sustain for long since the firewall between the institutional Left and its more radical wing has been virtually eaten away. For example, consider the current attorney general of Virginia, Jay Jones, who wrote text messages fantasizing about killing his Republican opponents. Jones was endorsed by prominent Democrats such as Senator Cory Booker and former Virginia governors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, none of whom retracted their endorsements after the text messages were leaked to the press.
We’ve come to the point where murder and mayhem are being openly perpetrated and celebrated throughout America. Casual cheering for Trump’s murder litters social media, and anecdotes of seemingly normal citizens enjoying the possibilities of Trump’s demise are being shared by the hour. This was the cultural milieu that prepared Cole Thomas Allen to try to assassinate the president of the United States.
Columnist Daniel McCarthy points out another factor that likely accelerated Allen’s radicalization: what’s being taught at top American universities. Allen earned degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science at CalTech and CalState, respectively, two schools that bought heavily into DEI and other noxious views.
Such institutions of higher education have also contributed to Christian students rejecting their faith, as revolutionary teachings are poured into wineskins that eventually burst. Allen wrote in his manifesto that “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.” But this isn’t a teaching of Christianity—this is left-wing critical theory dressed up in Christian garb.
Another worrisome trend among younger generations is an uptick in viewing violence as an acceptable political method. Though violence in American public life was far worse 60 years ago—from bombings to assassinations of key political figures—the ground is clearly being prepared for another outbreak, as we saw in 2020.
A republican regime full of citizens of character who use ballots instead of bullets is a precious thing that must be safeguarded and handed to the next generation. A regime in which violence is seen as a normal part of conducting politics means ripping up our birthright and slowly drifting back into a state of nature.
Per Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 1, will Americans descend into “accident and force,” or will we again regain our confidence in making “reflection and choice” the central hub of our political life? These are the stakes for our country as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this summer.
