The shots had barely stopped echoing on Saturday night before Donald Trump started doing what Donald Trump always does: finding an angle.
Trump, several members of his cabinet, and hundreds of guests – including journalists and public figures – were attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel when an armed man stormed past security officers on the floor above the ballroom and opened fire near the security checkpoint.
A federal agent was struck, but was protected by his bullet-proof vest.
The suspect – identified as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old computer science graduate from California – was detained.
Thankfully, nobody died.
But the very next day, Trump posted on Truth Social; and what he said was as depressing as it was revealing.
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‘What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE’, he wrote.
The ballroom in question is Trump’s proposed $400m, 90,000-square-foot White House project currently on hold after months of litigation, and which Trump is now saying, in light of Saturday night’s events, ‘cannot be built fast enough’.
And, of course, the MAGA machine revved into full gear – and full unison.
Disgraced former mayor and disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani urged the ‘haters’ to support the ballroom; far-right political activist and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec declared himself grateful Trump was building one.
A Florida congressman announced a ‘Build the Ballroom Act’. Colorado representative Lauren Boebert said she was drafting legislation.
The messaging was so well co-ordinated it would make a PR firm blush.
The reactive comms may have been impressive – but there is something genuinely nauseating about the speed of it.
A scary evening, in which journalists dived under tables and smelled gunpowder in the air, was stripped for political capital before the adrenaline had even worn off.
Of course, no-one wanted to use the event to push for the gun control the USA sorely needs, just the President’s gaudy vision.
But beyond the bad taste, the logic itself doesn’t hold.
The Correspondents’ Dinner is not a Presidential event. It is run by the White House Correspondents’ Association – an independent organisation – and helps fund scholarships for future journalists. The president is an invitee, not the host.
So for Trump to presuppose that the WHCA would agree to host the annual dinner at the White House itself is nonsensical – not least because the organisation aims to educate the public about the value of a free press.
Consider the rather significant conflict of interest in holding a supposedly independent press event on the president’s own property, with the journalists as his guests.
And even if the event had taken place in Trump’s proposed – and as yet, non-existent – ballroom, it has a capacity of around 1,000, less than half the Hilton’s, which would mean less revenue for the journalism scholarships. (Then again: maybe that’s the point.)
Most of all, though, this shocking incident did not occur in isolation. There is some damning context; context which makes Trump’s response all the more absurd [<again; feel free to reword].
In America, on average, someone is shot dead by a firearm once every 12 minutes. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 126 mass shootings – defined as an attack in which four or more are shot – in the first four months of this year already.
For context, the US gun death rate is around 340 times higher than the UK’s.
These events are not acts of God; they are representative of countries that have made – and continue to make – very different decisions.
One of the UK’s darkest chapters occurred in Dunblane in 1996, when 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in a primary school. By the following year, there was an almost total ban on handguns. There has never been another school shooting in the UK.
After the Christchurch terrorist attack of 2019, where a gunman killed 51 people at two mosques, New Zealand banned semi-automatic weapons a week later.
A week.
And yet Trump’s first and only solution after the events of Saturday night is, apparently, to return to his pre-presidential pastime of building a golden palace.
This is not the first time Trump has been under threat. Each time, the shots came close enough to frighten his base but not, apparently, close enough to make them think; let alone to actually legislate to try and reduce the amount of gun violence, political or otherwise.
Together, Washington’s political class – shaken by another shooting – and the MAGA base determined to find a culprit, will reach for anything – including a ballroom – before they reach for that conclusion.
Trump said Saturday’s incident ‘would never have happened’ with his ‘Militarily Top Secret Ballroom’ already built.
Maybe.
But it also wouldn’t have happened if America had decided to act after any one of thousands of mass shootings that took away someone’s child; and if the President looked towards any solution to gun violence that might have the added benefit of protecting more than just one man.
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