Thankfully, the suspect in the shooting that took place at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (WHCD) on Saturday night was tackled quickly moments after shots rang out at what was already expected to be a wild and unpredictable night on the stage between President Trump and the reporters and comedian who were in attendance.
It was indeed a wild and unpredictable night, but one that ended much earlier than planned, and on a terrifying and deeply troubling note at that.
For the third time in less than two years, a deranged gunman had tried to take out Donald Trump, with the first two instances occurring in 2024 when he was the GOP presidential nominee, and the third one being 15 months after he took office for his second presidential term amid increasingly incendiary rhetoric coming from Democrats. And according to investigators, this time around, it wasn't just Trump who was targeted; the cabinet officials who were also in attendance were on the hit list, too.
READ MORE: WHCD Suspect Made Cross-Country Trip - With More Than One Target in Mind
31-year-old California resident Cole Tomas Allen was hit with three charges by the DOJ, as RedState previously reported:
- Attempt to assassinate the President of the United States (faces up to life imprisonment)
- Transporting a firearm across state lines (up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine)
- Discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence (a mandatory minimum of 10 years)
Additional charges are said to be forthcoming as the investigation continues.
In what's been described as Allen's manifesto, his claims about President Trump and his cabinet secretaries were the types of things one sees regularly from the left, not just on leftist fever swamps like BlueCry Bluesky, but also on MSNBC, CNN, and, more importantly, coming directly from Democrat members of the House and Senate:
I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.
To that point:
Legacy media: “We have absolutely no clue where all this anti-Trump hatred comes from or why anyone would want him dead.” pic.twitter.com/8SF5h5cQ70
— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) April 27, 2026
Relatedly, Allen also attended some of the "No Kings" demonstrations.
SEE ALSO: New Report Says the People Who Favor Political Violence Might Not Be Who You Think
It is with that in mind that we turn to a report from NPR, which declared upfront in its headline that "With no radical footprint, what drove suspect to try and assassinate Trump?" This was one of the many astonished reactions to what the piece claimed:
"No radical footprint."
— David F. Pierre, Jr. (@TheMediaReport1) April 28, 2026
You. gotta. be. kidding. me. pic.twitter.com/AxqnkvGbIf
While reacting like that to anything NPR reports is understandable, I'm gonna take a different view and note that what they actually stumbled upon here is perhaps the most troubling aspect about the suspect and, to the larger point, what it says about the modern left (bolded emphasis added by me):
According to a White House official, Allen's sister told the Secret Service and local law enforcement that her brother was known to make "radical" statements. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and NPR has not confirmed this with Allen's family members. But this characterization has puzzled some experts who track extremism, who say that it does not align with writings and social media activity that are believed to link to the defendant.
"You look at the social media profiles that have been attributed to this suspect and they're really not that radical," said Jared Holt, senior researcher at Open Measures, a company that tracks online threats and narratives. "Oftentimes it's like quite centrist, pretty moderate left wing, if anything."
As Ben Matlock from the hit TV show might say, stick with me - I'm getting to the point.
CNN, of all places, dug into Allen's social media postings, and this was among those on the highlight reel:
We went through 4700 of Cole Allen tweets/posts and one of the strangest things we found was he shared a lot of posts claiming the Butler assassination attempt was staged. He also repeatedly compared Trump to Hitler and urged people to buy firearms. pic.twitter.com/xWarTzHT5S
— Andrew Kaczynski (@KFILE) April 28, 2026
Kaczynski couldn't help but notice that it was "very telling of times to see conspiracies spread [over the weekend] saying the latest attempt was staged - when the person who did this attempt claimed past attempts were also staged."
This is called NPR (and CNN) stumbling upon the larger issue with the alleged shooter and others who think like him, which is that the radical left, which includes those who openly cheered Charlie Kirk's assassination and who believe Jews have no right to exist, is no longer the fringe part of the Democrat Party.
It and all its hate and disdain for the right, along with the left's normalization of assassination chic, is, in my view, the mainstream of the Democrat Party now.
This is the mainstream left. If they are confronted with a fact that challenges their worldview they just deny it. The shooter was a normal guy doing what angone who genuinely believed CNN’s coverage of the administration would want to do.
— Tom Pappert (@realTomPappert) April 28, 2026
No, the strangest thing about Cole Allen is that he is indistinguishable from 30 million middle-aged left-of-center Facebook addicts https://t.co/6eB7UcPZDw
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) April 28, 2026
The Democrat Party has been so successful at mainstreaming the radicalism and extremism within its ranks to the point that media outlets and so-called "extremism experts" either don't recognize it or refuse to acknowledge that the obvious radicalism and extremism that exists among the Democrat faithful, which leads to assassination attempts, is radical and extreme anymore.
That's a big problem, not just for them, but for America and any Republican/conservative on whom they set their sights. I mean, they've gone from "let's be careful not to use the word 'crosshairs' in our commentary" to "maybe that popular podcaster" (and others on the left like him), "who hates America, loves Hamas, and who condones political assassinations has a point we should be listening to." Think about it.
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