"On Saturday night, May 23rd, a shooter once again sought to murder the President, his family, and his staff at the historic White House complex."

"We submit this urgent filing to update the Court on a second attempted assassination on the President within a single month. Last night, shortly after 6:00 p.m., an armed assassin approached a White House security checkpoint near 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, professionally pulled a high caliber gun from a bag, and opened fire in the exact direction of the White House. Brave Secret Service officers returned fire. The gunman was killed...."

From the Notice of Supplemental Authority in Support of the Government’s Motion for an Indicative Ruling Dissolving the Court’s Injunction, filed yesterday in National Trust for Historic Preservation v. National Park Service, the case about the White House ballroom, posted by Trump at Truth Social this morning.

"About 1 in 4 Americans think the April shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner was staged...."

".... according to a survey published Monday. Roughly 1 in 3 Democratic respondents said they believed the event was staged, compared with about 1 in 8 Republicans, according to a survey published Monday by NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of online news outlets. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 were also more likely than older people to think the incident was staged, according to the report."

WaPo reports, in "Many Americans think Trump assassination attempts were fake, survey finds/About 1 in 4 say the correspondents’ dinner shooting was staged, the poll found, including roughly a third of Democrats, as conspiracy theories spread widely online."

Is it Trump's fault?

"I got him before he got me. I got him first."

Said President Trump, quoted in "How Trump assassination attempts played into his decision to attack Iran" (WaPo)(gift link).

At a briefing on the threats in September 2024, U.S. officials told the Trump campaign that Iran had multiple kill teams inside the country. Trump repeatedly asked whether Iran was behind the Butler shooting, and investigators said they could not rule it out.... The would-be assassin at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida... represented himself at trial and was sentenced last month to life in prison.... 

No evidence has connected Iran with the two assassination attempts against Trump in 2024. Trump suggested he sees a connection, telling ABC, “They tried twice.” The White House did not provide evidence to support a connection....

A trial began last week for a Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, arrested in July 2024 and accused of trying to hire hit men to kill a political figure. Last month, a Brooklyn man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for planning to murder an Iranian dissident, working for an Iranian who prosecutors said was plotting to assassinate Trump....

Classic comments from WaPo readers: "And once again, he has an inability to see beyond himself." And: "Of course it’s about him. It’s always about him."

"The Secret Service failed to prevent the assassination attempt against Donald Trump last year at his Pennsylvania campaign rally, according to a Senate committe[e] report..."

"... which accuses the agency of a botched operation snarled by communication fumbles and the repeated denial of extra security assets at a time when the former president faced heightened threats on his life.... The report shed no new light about the assailant’s motives — which remain a mystery to investigators one year on — but painted a picture of an expansive security detail that was erroneously left in the dark as an assassination attempt unfolded. The committee identified several Secret Service failures to properly disseminate information about a suspicious person — later determined to be Crooks — and his whereabouts. Its investigation also uncovered conflicting reports about who knew what, and when...."

From "Secret Service failed to stop Trump assassination attempt, Senate report says/The report from the Homeland Security Committee accuses the Secret Service of fumbling communications and denying extra security at the Pennsylvania rally last year" (WaPo).

I clicked into the comments...

"He was insanely excited. I was sleeping in, and he comes crawling on top of the bed like a little kid. He’s like, 'Honey, we got to get up. We got to get there.' When he got that look, well, he was hard to resist."

Said Helen Comperatore, describing her husband Corey, "a man she met in kindergarten, started dating in high school and had been married to since just after he turned 21."

Quoted in "Revisiting Butler, one year later/President Trump is still processing the attack that nearly took his life, while a victim’s widow mourns" (WaPo, free-access link).

The article is by Salena Zito, adapted from her new book, "Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland" (commission earned).

Salena Zito was there that day: "'Saleeeeena,' Trump said, exaggerating the middle of my name. 'Look at her hair, everyone — doesn’t she have the best hair in journalism? Possibly in America.'"

"If there was a big, explosive there there.... If it was there, we would have told you."

So said Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the F.B.I., sitting alongside the F.B.I. director Kash Patel, quoted at the end of the previous post. The topic is what does he know about Thomas Crooks, the man who shot Trump's ear.

Here's the Fox News interview where Bongino makes the statement. Listen to his tone, watch his eyes, assess his demeanor. 

I'm noticing this verbal tic, this argument format: If X were true, I would have told you. It's an oft-expressed idea. It's the same idea as "Trust me" or "Would I lie?" But those are laughably ineffectual  expressions these days. 

I'm noticing this new effort at demanding trust. Kash Patel used it on Joe Rogan (talking about the Epstein video): "If there was a video of some guy — or gal — committing felonies — and I'm in charge — don't you think you'd see it?"

I'm paying attention to this after experiencing Tim Dillon's brilliant trashing of Patel. "They're doing 'Who's On First,'" with Joe as Costello and Kash as Abbott:

"Thomas Crooks was acting strangely. Sometimes he danced around his bedroom late into the night. Other times, he talked to himself with his hands waving around."

So begins the NYT article, "The Quiet Unraveling of the Man Who Almost Killed Trump/Thomas Crooks was a nerdy engineering student on the dean’s list. He stockpiled explosive materials for months before his attack on Donald Trump, as his mental health eroded."

Sidenote: The NYT is writing "acting strangely" again. We just talked about this grammar error 2 days ago, here. The NYT had "acting strangely" in a headline 2 days ago — "People Around President Trump Are Acting Very Strangely." Please, editors, learn about copulative verbs (AKA linking verbs). You should be writing "acting strange" (for the same reason you'd write "The sky looks blue" and not "The sky looks bluely").

Now, what can we learn about Thomas Crooks? Let's see...

8 things about this Maureen Dowd column, "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?"

Here's the column.

Here are the 8 things I want to say about it:

1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!

2. Under the headline is a photograph from the movie "Shane," and Maureen Dowd discusses the movie "Shane," which she saw when she was quite young. She never mentions "High Noon." I guess Westerns are interchangeable to NYT headline writers. 

3. "High Noon" had a villain and a hero and so did "Shane." Good guys and bad guys. Binary. 

4. I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking,

"Elon's not shy" and the Japanese Prime Minister is not "trying to suck up."

The event was a meeting between President Trump and the Prime Minister of Japan, Shigeru Ishiba, but a reporter saw fit to exploit the occasion to provoke Trump about Musk: "Do you have a reaction into the new Time Magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your Resolute Desk?":

Trump says a simple "no" in a way that sounded to me like it meant what a stupid question. 

Then, after the translator conveys the question and short answer to the Japanese Prime Minister, Trump deadpans, "Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know."

The translation ensues, and Trump gets to start again. Reponse #1 was the "no," response #2 was the joke, and response #3, was to praise Musk: "Elon is doing a great job. He's finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You see it with the USAID, but you're going to see it even more so with other agencies and other parts of government. He's got a staff that's fantastic... [USAID is] a fraud... very little being put to good use. Every single line that I look at in terms of events and transactions is either corrupt or ridiculous, and we're going to be doing that throughout government and I think we're going to be very close to balancing budgets for the first time in many years...."

There's a follow-up question: "Will you put Elon Musk on the podium for us to ask him some questions?"

Trump: "Oh, sure. He's not shy. Elon's not shy."

As for Shigeru Ishiba... earlier he had appealed to Trump's ego.

I don't think I've ever watched an inauguration so closely. The indoor setting brings the focus to the individual faces...

Share your observations of the swearing in and the inaugural address.

ADDED: "I was saved by God to make American great again."

AND: Here's the whole ceremony:

The 60th Presidential Inauguration Ceremony https://t.co/kTB4w2VCdI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2025

“I still have that throbbing feeling in my ear.”

Said Trump at his rally just now.

LATER: "We have to be protective of our geniuses. But that one is a good one" (about Elon Musk).

AND: It's funny that on the eve of the inauguration, Trump did a campaign-style rally. I remember thinking when he did a rally the night before the election that I was watching his last rally. I remember thinking it must be quite poignant for him. But here he is tonight, re-embodying Trump the Candidate, making the greatest comeback of all time. When it was all over and time to for "YMCA," we got The Village People in person....

Awful yelling in Congress today.

Secret Service chief Ronald Rowe Jr. got into a screaming match with a GOP lawmaker over 9/11 during an otherwise cordial hearing. https://t.co/SK6rnmRGdj pic.twitter.com/eKwBOkO1mN

— POLITICO (@politico) December 5, 2024

"Three men have been indicted in alleged Iranian plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump while he campaigned for a second term in office..."

"... according to a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York."

WaPo reports.

There's nothing to the report other than that 2 of the 3 men are in custody, but there is a comments section, with idiocy I won't quote but you can easily guess.

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Wrote C.S. Lewis, quoted by David French, in "Four Lessons From Nine Years of Being 'Never Trump'" (NYT).

That's a free-access link, so you can see for yourself what 4 lessons French learned.

But I liked the C.S. Lewis quote in the abstract. It's so abstract! The "highest reality," eh?

And now, this blog has a theme today: reality. This is only the second post of the day, but the first post was about a NYT column called "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?"

Is there a sense — at the NYT and elsewhere — that reality is at stake, that it's out there, eluding us, and we need to struggle to get a grip on it, and we are losing?

I am reminded of Trump's saying — on the Joe Rogan podcast — that when he became President, "it was very surreal." But: "When I got shot, it wasn't surreal. That should have been surreal. When I was laying on the ground, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew exactly where I was hit.... I knew exactly what happened.... With the presidency, it was a very surreal experience.... And all of a sudden I'm standing in the White House, and it was very, very surreal...."

I am reminded of Elon Musk's "There's no truer test than courage under fire."

And: "Reality, what a concept!"

Does this NYT illustration intentionally evoke the classical image of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian?

I wouldn't think, in the aftermath of 2 assassination attempts on Donald Trump, that the NYT would want us to make the association, but here is the image:

And here is the Renaissance painting by Andrea Mantegna:

Like Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Sebastian did not die from this shooting (though he was soon killed):

I watched Elon Musk's appearance at Saturday's Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but I couldn't remember what he said about what I want to know.

What I'd remembered was a lot of repetitious get-out-the-vote talk that anyone could say. What I wanted to know was why Elon Musk in particular supports Trump. Of course, I remember the grown-man-jumping-around-like-a-child business and the "dark MAGA" hat. But why is he for Trump? That might have some special persuasive power.

So I rewatched. Here's video of his appearance and a rough transcript. I've edited the transcript to fit it to the audio and to cut it down to the parts that might answer my question. 

First:

[T]he true test of someone's character is how they behave under fire....

So, one answer is that Musk was impressed by the way Trump behaved during and immediately after the assassination attempt.

Next:

The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms... they want to take away your right to vote effectively.... California... just just passed a law banning voter ID....

I don't know what was your favorite part of Trump's Butler rally yesterday.

Perhaps it was the moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, a silence broken by an opera voice, singing live, "Ave Maria"....

But maybe it was for you, as it was for me, the return of opera, after Trump's long speech and his concluding dance to "YMCA," when he beckons the opera singer — Christopher Macchio — back onto the stage and remains on stage and listens through the performance of 5 songs, not all opera songs, but all delivered operatically: "Nessun Dorma," "Hallelujah" (the song Leonard Cohen's estate complained about Trump's using in 2020), "America the Beautiful" (including the lesser-known fourth verse, the one with "alabaster cities"), "How Great Thou Art," and "God Bless America." 

Who does that? Who subjects a present-day audience to that much unexpected opera? Especially after they've been confined for 4+ hours. Especially with the almost-assassinated former President looming there, swaying, through the whole thing. The operatic interlude finally ends, and a brash and incredibly annoying pop song plays — something I can tell is called "Gloria." No, no, not the Van Morrison "Gloria." It's this awfulness. A good choice if the message is: Time to get out here.

It's my understanding that Trump loves music and likes to be the one to choose the music, and he just assumes people should hear what he wants to play. You can take that as a metaphor if you like.

Trump's word: "fight."

I have a simple point to make, but before I do, I want to acknowledge that "fight" was also Hillary Clinton's word, and here we see the music video shown at the 2016 Democratic National Conviction and it's full of celebrities brimming with determination to fight (for what we know they went on to lose):

Trump won in 2016, and he went on to lose — or are you one of the millions who think he won? — in 2020, and now he's fighting to win again. Out there fighting, we know what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, and we know that "fight" was Trump's word in the most immediate dire moment:

"September 27th is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough."

"I have spent countless hours studying Hezbollah and there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade them was possible. This is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent...."

Writes Jared Kushner, on X.

"Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out..."

"... but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before. Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving far more money to Secret Service - Zero 'NO' Votes, strictly bipartisan. Nice to see Republicans and Democrats get together on something. An attack on a former President is a Death Wish for the attacker!"

Writes Donald Trump, at X.

Here's some background at Axios: