Kimmel praised Trump for his accomplishments saying, “He passed new incentives for oil and gas. He put the brakes on solar and wind. That will be your legacy, sir: breaking wind and passing gas.” He had praise for Melania Trump, as having “a glow like an expectant widow,” (a dig which signals trouble for the show) and giving kudos for her Amazon documentary as a “huge accomplishment: the world’s first motionless picture.” To White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, he gave credit for “putting the cyst‘” in ‘white supremacist’, adding, “He’s like if baby Hitler traveled in time to kill us.” For the finale, Kimmel produced a large gold trophy for Trump for making comedy great again: the inaugural Burger King of Comedy Gold Award. “Congratulations, sir, and thank you!,” he added.

Early on, Jason Linkins, deputy editor of The New Republic, reported the bad news that the annual correspondents’ dinner would be ruined by the attendance of President Donald Trump, after several years of ruining it by not attending, upsetting to so many that they opted for calling off the event entirely. The theme of the annual gathering was to be a celebration of the First Amendment, but Trump’s recent threat to jail journalists for their reports on his Iran “excursion” certainly puts him at odds with the free speech advocates — and Paramount’s decision to invite to its table FCC chair Brendan Carr, who has launched probes into news coverage of the Trump administration, is hardly a favorable tactic. Linkins advised that far from canceling the dinner, it should have been made mandatory “that Trump, his Cabinet and all media elites attend, barring the doors while forcing them to answer for their sins against our civic fabric.”

Steve Schmidt, wrote in The Warning that Trump has called journalists “enemies of the people,” the language of tyrants, as he “smeared reporters as dishonest, corrupt, and dangerous, attempting to delegitimize any institution that dares to hold him accountable.” Sadly, he says, some journalists  — “credentialed, celebrated, and well-compensated, will walk into that room, clink glasses, and laugh. They will call it professionalism, history will call it something else.” He foresaw that some would say, “It’s just a dinner,” which is “the language of minimization, the refuge of people who understand the truth, but lack the courage to confront it, because it’s never ‘just’ anything when the stakes are this high.” Schmidt saw that there would be those who chose comfort, who chose access, who would choose to laugh in the same room as a man who has spent years trying to undermine the very profession that gave them their platform — history is unforgiving about these things, it remembers who spoke up, it remembers who stayed silent, and it remembers who laughed.

Perhaps the most prescient comment made leading up to the press dinner, was by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told Fox News host Jimmy Failla, that with President Trump’s attendance there would be “shots fired tonight in the room.” And indeed, that was the case, though Leavitt was referring to jokes or jabs expected to be leveled at the dinner attendees by the president, and not the actual gunshots heard later, one floor up and resulting in the cancellation of the festivities. Leavitt’s comments were in response to Failla’s query about Trump , who asked, “This man is ready to rumble, is he not?” The press secretary replied that the man was ready, and that everyone should tune in…”it’s going to be really great. I’m looking forward to it.” After the event was scrubbed, Trump confessed that “I was all set to rip it up. And I said to my people, ‘This would be the most inappropriate speech ever made,’ so I’ll have to save it. I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I’m going to be probably very nice. I’ll be very boring next time.” The president has requested  that the event be rescheduled within the next 30 days, adding that it would be “bigger and better and even nicer.” Don’t hold your breath!

Confronting what he saw as the third attempt on his life in less than two years, Trump seemed somber and somewhat less antagonistic, suggesting that his personal politics and policies were making him a target, while asking Americans to put aside their differences in a show of unity. But, in true Trump fashion he chose to spin the incident into a sales pitch for his $400 million dollar gold-festooned ballroom, because it would offer more levels of security than the Washington Hilton hotel — “levels that nobody’s ever seen before,” — simply another example of the self-important man-child taking the wrong lesson from a situation. Because the hotel and other public places were open for other functions, the entire building wasn’t secured by the Secret Service, just the specific areas where the WHCA dinner was held, which provided several sets of security in order to reach the hotel ballroom, quite a distance away from those at the dinner.

Trump’s East Wing ballroom is riddled with glaring conflicts of interest, and has supposedly received funding ‘donations’ from massive corporations with interests before the federal government, but many donors are shrouded in secrecy. Public Citizen has reported that 16 of the 24 donors have been awarded government contracts — make that awarded by the taxpayer, so who is paying for that ballroom, again? As Jake Johnson of Common Dreams writes, “Most of the corporate donors — 14 out of the 24 — are facing federal enforcement actions and/or have had federal enforcement actions suspended by the Trump administration. These include major antitrust actions involving Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and T-Mobile; labor rights cases involving Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar, Google, Lockheed and Meta; and SEC matters involving Coinbase and Ripple.”

The gunman, reportedly armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and several knives, was somehow taken into custody without being shot, precipitating a ballroom scene that some describe as “absolute chaos,” as the Secret Service personnel rushed to evacuate administration officials— not able to quickly locate several in the mosh pit of tables. Attendees ducked under the dining tables in confusion and panic, or scattering into the Washington night as they waited for the nightmare to be over. Eliot Kirschner wrote on Through the Fog that “there is no denying that violence surrounds this regime. Along with the cruelty, incompetence, corruption, and duplicity, the chaos and intent of harm we saw last night, sadly does not feel surprising. We must resist the urge to extrapolate too much from any single incident. It is likely that this one will also stir up the predictable conspiracy theories. And Trump and those who surround him, never encumbered by any obligation to propriety or the truth, will certainly try to shape this latest act to suit their propaganda needs.” The shooter who tried to kill Trump in Butler, PA, was a disillusioned right-winger. That fact didn’t matter — only the story did.

Kirschner writes that “any moment of political violence is a big story and should be reported as such — it is essential that we decry these acts as the antithesis of civil society; but we also need to recognize that there was violence in that room last night long before the shots were fired.” And the reporters who had gathered to mingle with members of the regime, for a night they see, supposedly in their view, represented a mix of entertainment and obligation, were actually helping to normalize trauma, suffering, and death on an epic scale. Kirschner asks that we consider who was in the room on that Saturday night: Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel. And the president himself — the man who sent a violent mob of insurrectionists to end American democracy. The very same man who installed incompetents and sadists into the government, giving them free rein to wreak their terror, and one who bathes in political violence.

Kirschner is thankful that no one was seriously hurt, but the same can’t be said about what the Trump regime is doing to the world. In his view, “the only lasting repudiation is to drive the regime from power in disgrace, making it clear for posterity that the American people voted them out because they hated them and what they were doing. The retribution they should face must come through the law — the sounds that should scare them must be the voices of people in the streets, not the shots of a gun.” The Editorial Board blog reminds us to “remember that the press corps is predisposed to giving Donald Trump endless benefit of the doubt. That’s why, even though he’s an old man, he was never given the old-man treatment the way that President was. Journalists have the incentive to play along with the GOP’s bad faith.”

It didn’t take long for the propaganda machine to raise its ugly head. Batya Ungar-Sargon, of NewsNation, posted, “The gunman’s manifesto is indistinguishable from the views promoted by the mainstream Left, the Democrats, the liberal media every single day.” She instructs us to “stop saying we have a political violence problem in America. We have a Left-wing political violence problem in America.” Daily Wire co-founder, Ben Shapiro posted on X: “Meanwhile, legacy media and mainstream Democrats keep promoting people who call Trump a pedophile, a rapist and traitor.” Podcaster Tim Pool posted on X: “This was always the point of their lies. They wanted to get Trump and conservatives killed.” The MAGA faithful shared their reactions about the gunman on social media, with Emily Austin posting, “Cool, hang him!”

Ron Filipkowski, writing on MeidasTouch, points to White House Chief of Protocol, Monica Crowley’s statement: “Once again, you witnessed the Hand of God tonight.” And to Franklin Graham’s post: “After three assassination attempts, some people say that President Trump is one lucky man. I don’t think luck has anything to do with it — I believe it is the hand of God. What do you think?” So Filipkowski tells Graham what he thinks: “I think Franklin Graham is a repo-baby charlatan who weaponizes the Bible to advance his political agenda.” Drum roll with rim shot, please! Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on Substack, “There was a feeling of solemnity around town the rest of the night. But I’ll tell you one thing — not one single person was surprised. Another shooting, another act of political violence, another wholly unnecessary tragedy. And we can all set our watches to the ‘thoughts and prayers’ that will drive the news cycle for the next few days.”

The Reverend Graham, the most recognizable and influential evangelical Christian Nationalist in the US, apparently believes God is intervening in Trump’s life to keep him safe while ignoring the ravages of malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, dengue fever, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases that kill 2.5 million innocents per year. Brian Tyler Cohen says anyone agreeing with Franklin should take a good, long look in the mirror and ask themselves, “Why?” Former MAGA influencer and mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, Ashley St. Clair, claimed that the messaging coming from MAGA world about the shooting is both “paid” and heavily coordinated, revealing screenshots on pro-MAGA accounts sharing nearly identical messaging. St. Clair says that one of the main chat groups, entitled “Fight Fight Fight” is coordinating the messages. Cohen writes that many social media sites are awash with accusations that the shooting was staged as a pretext for Trump to gin up support for his ballroom. “Now, I don’t know the truth, nor am I in a position to opine. But I found this notable because Trump has been on a decade-long mission to obliterate the very concept of truth. And he did it,” says Cohen. “But was the shooting staged? ‘Probably not’ — instead of a flat ‘no.’ Because Trump has unfortunately succeeded in annihilating any notion of a shared collective reality. No one knows where we go from here, because ‘here’ is no longer a singular agreed upon space.”

Cohen terms it a “perverse irony” that Trump’s greatest success is the complete destruction of our shared objective reality, loving to brag about his “wins,” all of which are clearly failures. Trump would tell his supporters that ‘up is down,’ that ‘black is white’, if it would result in his financial or political benefit. “As far as Trump is concerned, the ‘truth’ does not exist,” asserts Cohen. The Hilton shooting happened in a roomful of journalists who immediately went into reporting mode, going live with their filming — no hesitation at doing their jobs to report truth as it happened. “And still, the sentiment online and of people around the country is one of disbelief and rampant conspiracy theories. Trump wanted to create a world where the truth didn’t exist so he could fill the void with his own, more convenient, version of reality. The trust that used to bind us is now so obliterated that the knee-jerk reaction to an assassination attempt of Trump is to distrust everything about it,” theorizes Cohen.

The attempted assassination of President Reagan at the same Washington Hilton 45 years ago, finally resulted in the Brady Law, named in honor of press secretary, James Brady who suffered brain damage and an early death as a result of the shooting. Passed after a lapse of ten years, the law established background checks for gun buyers. Since Saturday’s shooting, there has been no discussion of gun safety or mental health, and no word about political violence — only Trump’s pitch for the ballroom, a $400 million ‘solution’ for gun violence. Make that gun violence against the president. Shootings are common on a daily basis, and no one else is offered a $400 million solution to rely upon for their safety. “Yet nothing changes, just collective shrugs from the people with the power to do something about it,” charges Cohen. “So the ballroom is only a bandaid for protection of a very small, very privileged group of people. An apt microcosm for Trump’s America: fixes for the privileged elites, while the rest of the country is left out in the cold.”

Alexander Willis on Raw Story is questioning why the Washington Hilton area where the shots were fired was not restricted by law enforcement, after two MS NOW journalists were able to walk around and document the aftermath at the scene after just a few hours. Podcast host, Grant Hermes posted on X, that “I’ve been to gas station murder scenes where crime tape is up much longer.” MS NOW reporter Julia Lester, and her news producer, Lillie Boudreaux, shared their exclusive photos and videos which showed discarded first aid materials, broken glass, and large square holes cut from the hotel’s walls where bullets had penetrated. In Jester’s words, she felt that the location “underscores just how close this scary night was to being even scarier.”

The Contrarian website caps the incident, saying it “should remind us that access journalism — covering politics as a sport or celebrity beat — and normalizing a president who daily shreds the First Amendment must end. Just as we do not have the law enforcement leadership we need, we are missing a credible, fearless legacy media. If we ever needed ‘truthful but not neutral’ journalism and unstinting candor, it is now. To accept anything else is to consign ourselves to never-ending political violence and mayhem.”