We’re Doing This Again? Are You Bleeping Kidding Me?
And Other Questions I Have After the Attack on the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner
The closest I got to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was following along vicariously in several group chats, as friends and allies distributed “Block the Merger” pins and snuck in bingo cards highlighting Trump’s attacks on the press.
Then shots rang out, the laughter stopped, people dove under tables and agents swarmed the room with guns drawn. The president, vice president and cabinet members were rushed from the ballroom.
Secret Service agents tackled and arrested Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old who had rushed past security with a shotgun and several other weapons. One agent wearing a bulletproof vest was wounded and briefly hospitalized. It could have been so much worse.
Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, and my friends, while shaken, all got home safely from an event that never should have happened.
But in the aftermath, all of the problems of the corporate media were on full display: navel-gazing, both-sidesism, subservience to the powerful. Meanwhile, social media was overwhelmed with “false flag” conspiracies and AI slop.
And as usual, President Trump began trying to exploit the incident in the most corrupt and pathetic ways possible.
Are you bleeping kidding me?
While Trump issued empty — and short-lived — calls for unity, cable news went searching for the real culprit: Democratic talking points.
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Rep. Jamie Raskin on Sunday if he would now “think twice” about using “heated rhetoric” about a president who constantly talks about treason, violence and destroying entire civilizations.
To which, Andrew Lawrence of Media Matters for America suggested a pithy response:
Raskin was far more patient, calmly explaining that he’s speaking out against administration actions and abuses of power, not trading insults or branding the press as “the enemy of the people.”
Bash already knows this and is seemingly capable of distinguishing honest critique from incendiary bombast. But as Greg Sargent of The New Republic points out, this rote hand-wringing masks and minimizes the real dangers of Trump’s actions.
“The implication is that claims about Trump’s fascism and/or authoritarianism are mere name-calling that can be simply detached from the reality of his actual agenda for the country,” Sargent wrote on Monday.
Greg Sargent
Can we stop all this ‘false-flag’ nonsense?
As bad as some of the mainstream coverage was, the online discourse was even worse. Social media platforms were inundated with misinformation, bogus images of the would-be assassin and widespread conspiracy theories that the attack was staged.
This wasn’t just coming from the fringes. It was remarkable how quickly false-flag narratives spread in so many different corners of my life. When distrust in our media and political system runs this deep, we have a serious problem.
But this is what happens when the president is unable to tell the truth and the media won’t call him on it. Everything becomes suspect, and people start to believe anything.
Craig Aaron
This detachment is only furthered by robotic right-wing propaganda. Before the ballroom had even been evacuated on Saturday, a cadre of conservative bloggers already were clamoring in unison for Trump’s White House ballroom.
“I told you guys that all of MAGA is paid, and they coordinate their messaging in lockstep via group chats,” Ashley St. Clair, a former right-wing influencer, said in a TikTok video. “And what do you know? All of these people came to the conclusion that, after they saw what happened at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, their first thought was all independently, ‘Trump needs his ballroom.’”
Jason Abbruzzese and Gibran Caroline Boyce and Julie Tsirkin
Can this get even stupider and more corrupt?
If you thought the responses couldn’t get worse than the ballroom baloney — and Trump’s congressional lackeys trying to toss $400 million into his money pit is pretty damn stupid and corrupt — don’t worry.
Melania has entered the chat.
In a Monday post on X, the First Lady — or her ghost writer — went after ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made at her expense two days before Saturday’s dinner. “Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” she wrote. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens [sic] the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”
Chris Stein
Before ABC executives even had time to offer her a development deal, Trump himself piled on, posting to Truth Social: “I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
We’re not even 96 hours away from an attempted assassination of the president, and we’re already stuck in reruns.
Cue Brendan Carr in 3, 2, 1 …
As Pressing Issues was going to press, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that the FCC was calling in Disney/ABC’s broadcast licenses for “early renewal” — an extraordinary move. According to CNN sources, “the license review stems from an ongoing probe into Disney’s DEI practices, not the Kimmel controversy.” That action alone would be immoral. The timing here makes it unconstitutional retribution, going after a broadcaster for free speech the president doesn’t like.
Are we really doing the Kimmel thing again?
Government censorship is the problem, not Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes.
Given how badly going after Kimmel went for them last time, this is a bizarre pivot. But everything in Trump World is about pleasing the king, so his late-night TV obsession has returned to the forefront.
You would hope by now that Disney/ABC has figured out that capitulation never works, but merger-hungry media executives are notoriously slow learners.
Fortunately, the coalition defending free speech is even broader and more coordinated than the last time Trump came for the comedian. And this unlikely free-speech hero seems to understand his new assignment.
“I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it,” Kimmel said in his monologue last night about hateful and violent rhetoric. “By the way, I also should point out, Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say — as you are, and as am I, as are all of us, because under the First Amendment, we have as Americans a right to free speech.”
Can’t we do better than this?
This tragedy has already turned into a farce. The trauma those in the room experienced is very real, and one can hope that this terrible experience can help this elite audience better understand what so many others in this country are experiencing everyday. What it feels like to have your neighborhoods occupied, your schoolchildren doing active-shooter drills, your lives disrupted by senseless cruelty.
“We shouldn’t downplay the horrors of assassination,” Jeet Heer wrote in The Nation. “All political violence should be condemned. Yet condemning political violence also requires us to recognize that Trump’s own violence and dishonesty deserve rebuke as well.”
We’re constantly told all these fancy cocktail parties and beat-sweetening bashes that make up the White House Correspondents’ Dinner are really about celebrating the First Amendment. But defending it is going to take a lot more than pocket squares.
“I wanted to say that there’s no reason for the media to take the bait of falling back on tired, pox-on-both-your-houses Beltway cynicism,” Raskin told The New Republic about his CNN interview. “Rather, the media should understand that the survival of the free press is at stake right now, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.”
Open tabs
I was protesting outside the U.S. Institute of Peace last week, where Paramount Skydance was hosting a profligate pre-party to woo the Trump administration. But wow, Paramount’s “Corruption Gala” really lived up to its billing.
“Among the guests was Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general. Mr. Blanche oversees the Justice Department, whose antitrust division is set to review the Warner Bros. acquisition,” The New York Times reported. “Paramount’s chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim, also sat with Mr. Trump.”
Right on cue, the Trump FCC announced yesterday that Paramount is seeking a waiver that would allow Saudi, Emirati and Qatari wealth funds to own 49.5 percent of the merged company — nearly double the statutory limit on foreign investment.
In the filing signed by the president’s dinner companion Delrahim, who was the top antitrust enforcer during the first Trump administration, Paramount argues that “foreign investment will ultimately serve to bolster the company’s local news programming, improve its technology stack, and increase the diversity of programming, citing the deal for UFC fights as an example,” according to a summary in The Hollywood Reporter.
Alex Weprin
Action News
Just like dated 1980s horror-movie references, the fight over warrantless spying is ba-ack.
The two-week extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is almost up. And this week's vote in Congress will determine if Stephen Miller and Trump will be able to continue warrantless spying on people in the United States — or not.
Opposition is growing, and right now House leadership doesn’t have the votes. Please call your representative and tell them to vote against any "clean" authorization of Section 702. We need reform — no more loopholes and no more warrantless searches. Free Press set up this line that makes it easy to call and reach your reps: Call 202-688-0628 today!
The kicker
“This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere. This political stunt won't stick. Companies should challenge it head-on. The First Amendment is on their side.” – FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez on the FCC’s “early review” of Disney’s broadcast licenses.
About the author
Craig Aaron is the co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action and a guy with two first names. Follow him on Bluesky.
