On the debate stage in 2024, President Donald Trump correctly pointed out that he “probably took a bullet to the head [in Butler, Pennsylvania,] because of the things that [Democrats] say about me.”
His comments were dismissed as hyperbolic.
Yet over the weekend, Trump was proven right yet again.
On Saturday night 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen allegedly rushed Secret Service agents armed with multiple weapons at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The dinner ended early, despite insistence from Trump that he would still take the stage and give his speech. Trump later said the WHCD would have a do-over within the next 30 days.
If the WHCD does have a do-over, Trump shouldn’t go, because at some point, the president has to stop rewarding the very institutions that have spent years spreading propaganda that has justified and implicitly encouraged assassination attempts against him and his fellow Republicans.
Allen reportedly left a manifesto falsely accusing Trump of being a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor.” He allegedly wrote, “And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” adding that he was not obligated to “yield [elected officials and judges] anything so unlawfully ordered.”
The rhetoric Allen reportedly used to justify his actions should sound familiar, because he utilized the same talking points spread by Democrats and elevated by the propaganda press to vilify and dehumanize Trump.
Ryan Routh, who attempted to assassinate the president in September of 2024 and was found hiding in the bushes with a rifle, one hole ahead of where Trump was golfing, also echoed media talking points. Routh called Trump a “dictator” in a handwritten letter, and he asserted in a self-published book that Trump “perpetrated” the Jan. 6 unrest.
Another would-be assassin employed media rhetoric to justify an attempt to assassinate Scott Bessent in 2025. Ryan Michael English showed up to Washington, D.C., with a knife and Molotov cocktails. He was apprehended by authorities and admitted to wanting to “kill Scott Bessent.” A handwritten note from English stated: “This is terrible but I cant do nothing while nazis kill my sisters.”
In fact, Americans can go back nearly a decade and find examples of would-be killers imbibing leftist media talking points. In 2017, a violent left-wing attack nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise at the congressional baseball practice. While shooter James Hodgkinson left no formal manifesto, several statements on his social media show an intense loathing of Republicans and Trump using the same language parroted by the propaganda press. A March 22, 2017, post by Hodgkinson said: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time To Destroy Trump & Co.” A separate post said, “Republicans are the Taliban of the USA.”
In each case, the excuses, justification, and language sound awfully familiar because they are the same as those deployed by prominent voices on the left — whether Democrat officials or members of the propaganda press.
In parallel with the Allen manifesto’s claims about Trump being a racist, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., that Trump had been “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape.”
“Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined under New York law,” PBS News clarified. ABC News later agreed to shell out $15 million to Trump’s presidential library in a defamation suit.
The “traitor” language in the manifesto is also a media talking point. A NYT op-ed from 2018 declared: “Trump, Treasonous Traitor.”
“Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous,” Charles Blow wrote.
The Atlantic’s Marc Novicoff published a piece this past January entitled “How to Tell If Your President Is a Dictator.” The piece claims Trump’s second term is “literally dictatorial.”
A 2023 Washington Post op-ed by Robert Kagan said, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” Trump’s dictatorial reign was possible, likely even, Kagan said, “unless something radical and unforeseen happens.” Kagan also said a second Trump administration would be akin to Hitler’s regime.
Numerous other propaganda press outlets have also maligned Trump as a Nazi (along with his supporters and cabinet members).
A 2015 op-ed in the Washington Post said, “Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you’re talking about.”
MS NOW claimed in 2025 that “Trump’s attacks on museums and libraries echo the Nazi playbook.”
A 2023 article in Politico, written by Holly Otterbein, Elena Schneider, and Jonathan Lemire, gave cover to then-President Joe Biden and his team for comparing Trump to Hitler, arguing “historians” also agree that Trump is akin to a dictator like Hitler.
The media have also painted Trump as a “threat to democracy.” Such claims have been so numerous that cataloging all the examples would take up too much space, but a few examples can be found here, here, here, and here.
All of this rhetoric can best be described as “assassination prep” language, as The Federalist co-founder and CEO Sean Davis explained. The language is “meant to justify and even incite the most extreme measures, up to and including unconscionable violence.”
The pattern is clear: Would-be assassins are using the same language and rhetoric that has become commonplace in the propaganda press. There is no legitimate reason why Trump should have rewarded the corporate media with his presence in the first place. A press corps that peddles the kind of false and inflammatory rhetoric that has clearly driven and legitimized would-be assassins is not an institution that deserves legitimacy, credibility, or even attendance.
And Saturday’s assassination attempt just reaffirms it once again.
