After Gunshots Ring Out, MAGA Realizes That America Truly Needs Trump's Ballroom
Suspect Cole Tomas Allen after shooting arrest at White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25, 2026
I know you want me to Make it Make Sense.
Welcome to another lesson in the political applications of public trauma. Like some insidious machine, MAGA influencers and shills and bots went off Saturday night simultaneously, on cue using the mayhem to advance Dear Leader’s obsession with his wasteful ballroom. If you doubt this, you can watch Elon’s estranged baby mamma Ashley St. Clair streaming herself spilling the beans: “All of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their messaging in lockstep via groupchats,” she says. “All of these people came to the conclusion that after what they saw at the WHCD, their first thought was ‘Trump needs his ballroom.’”
Next, cue the conspiracy theories: A troubled Caltech grad takes his spot next to the other shooters who must have been Democratic plants Crooks and Robinson. These Manchurian candidates take their spots beside the chemtrails, UFO murders, vaccines with tracking microchips, and all the rest of the paranoid schizophrenic babble that one can hear on the street outside the Port Authority.
Oh and did pregnant Karoline Leavitt actually tell a red carpet reporter an hour or so before the evacuation that “shots will be fired”? Why yes!
Unlike the other two incellular maniacs, if Cole Tomas Allen actually pulled a trigger, and we don’t know now and may never er know, no one, thankfully, was killed. It’s not clear yet whether a Secret Service agent’s bulletproof vest sustained a friendly fire bullet or from the would-be assassin.
But in the telling of course the young man who traveled across the country on a train will have been motivated not by his own demons, not by maniacal but righteous rage at live broadcast state-sponsored murders, or Trump’s open-air racism.
He will have acted because, as Trump has announced, he “hated Christianity.” His “writings” will show this.
Hysterical early reports from MAGA influencers were that DC Hilton security was lax - dum-da-dum - cue Deep State enemies lurking. This turned out not to be the case - the shooter simply loped through a magnetic arc and got tackled on the fly - nowhere near the dais.
The real lax security of course started - as always - at the gun store, then on the cross country Amtrak train where he transported his weapons, then out on the street in DC where he toted them illegally, and then at the Hilton check-in a few days before the event.
But when CBS’ Margaret Brennan asked Trump’s personal attorney and Acting Attorney General Todd “Whiteout” Blanche about the guns, he swatted her down: “Look, this isn’t about, in my mind, changing the law or making the laws more restrictive around possession of firearms. …. “And I don’t think that that’s something we should be focused on right now in any way, shape or form.”
It’s never the guns.
To begin to be able to name what is going on, I recommend some reading about what our brothers and sisters in Russia have endured since the turn of the 21st Century. First, The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano de Empoli, a fictionalized account of the schemes of Putin’s political stage manager, a former theater producer and reality show impresario-turned-strategist Vladislav Surkov. The Russian regime has mastered the art of using horrifying public trauma to manipulate the public.
Then, to understand the dazed and confused MAGA faithful who fall for the manufactured narrative every fucking time, read Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev, who reveals the stew of cults, regime lies, mass disinformation, and salvation narratives that have rendered much of the public incapable of critical thinking.
So many American journalists who should know better by now are still utterly flummoxed. Their training never prepared them for this moment, still reaching for fairness and norms, careers anchored in a lost era when one could assume that national leaders acted with some semblance of respect for civic discourse, and were still susceptible to shame.
To wit, this remarkable exchange on CNN today:
DANA BASH: You and your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president. Do you think twice about that when something like that happens?
Rep. JAMIE RASKIN: What rhetoric do you have in mind?
DANA BASH: That he’s terrible for this country and so on and so forth .. .
Oh America: Richest country on earth with a government ditching science, defying the Constitution, embracing religious and medical quackery for power. A stupid reality show with real menace, real guns, real war, real nukes, and real state terror. And now, cherry on top for history, grotesque images of Cabinet members, celebrities and DC swells in black tie, fleeing the sound of gunfire - broadcast around the world, to the sound of bleating MAGA minions calling for a new ballroom.
Kudos to the CAA agent photographed calmly forking up his spring pea and burrata salad while the room was evacuated. Huzzahs also to the table of celebrants who had the forethought to snatch bottles of wine and champagne for the road during evacuation - and selfie’d themselves! - while a photojournalist captured the scene.
That’s the spirit to match the times.
The photo made the morning edition of Italy’s newspaper La Repubblica. As one Italian commenter on Instagram put it: “Stati Uniti d’America ripiggliaventi!”
It sounds better in the Italian but it means:
Get your act together, United States of America.
AUTHOR NOTE: The second novel in my Road Sign trilogy of dystopian satires is published. A while ago, I decided that some truths are more effectively communicated in fiction. The trilogy is about the effects of political uses of public trauma, pending climate catastrophe and mass media dissemination of real time violence on our souls.
Here’s a link to more information about the book on Amazon. If you, like me, are boycotting Bezos as much as possible, you can contact me directly right here on substack by replying to this newsletter email, and I’ll mail you copy, plus shipping. Still costs less than a pizza!
Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.
Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow
- Yet Another School Massacre Is Met With Yet More Right-Wing Madness ›
- Charlie Kirk: School Shootings Are 'A Prudent Deal' To Keep Guns (VIDEO) ›
- Why So Many Americans First Suspected Trump's Shooting Was Staged ›
- Man held after shooting at White House correspondents’ dinner – as it happened | White House correspondents' dinner shooting | The Guardian ›
- White House says suspect in Correspondents’ Dinner shooting wanted to target Trump officials | CNN Politics ›
- White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting: Suspect described himself as 'friendly federal assassin' in letter, sources say - 6abc Philadelphia ›
- What we know about Cole Tomas Allen, Torrance teacher suspected in WHCD shooting - Los Angeles Times ›
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