I dont want to hear any more about motives.Â
When someone engages in a mass shooting â or attempts to kill a president â they are by definition crazy.Â
In the case of the Washington Hilton gunman, his motive is spelled out in his so-called manifesto: He hates .Â
Despite a background in engineering and teaching, he somehow became convinced that Trump was in cahoots with , calling the president a rapist and pedophile.Â
But again, who cares about motive? Anyone who would storm an event protected by the Secret Service â knowing he could easily wind up dead â is not sane.Â
We do this all the time, try to impose a rational framework on irrational attackers.
The shooter was charged in court yesterday with attempted assassination of the president.Â
Another thing we do regularly is blame an entire class of people for the actions of a single attacker.Â
After the Secret Service captured the â who Im not naming, under my usual policy of not providing the attention they crave â many conservatives blamed “the left.”
Trump himself accused the Democrats of “dangerous” and “hateful” speech.Â
MS NOW anchor Antonia Hylton countered that the president should have said more about inflammatory rhetoric.Â
Just weeks ago, she said, he “posted about the possible extermination of an entire civilization online” and “has called his political foes vermin, lunatics, scum, terrorists, the enemy within. He has certainly contributed â at a minimum â to the political rhetoric.”
This ideological finger-pointing is nothing new. One year ago, a gunman posing as a police officer killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat and former speaker, and her husband in their home. The killer, a Trump supporter, also wounded a Democratic senator and his wife in their home. Trump said he was “not familiar” with the case.
One year ago, a man with a history of mental illness and a criminal record set fire to the mansion of Pennsylvanias Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, on the first night of Passover. He said he would have attacked Shapiro with a sledgehammer if he had encountered him. He had tried to convince his family to vote for Trump and slammed Shapiro for his position on the Palestinians. Trump didnt contact Shapiro that day but did call the next day.
The gunman who badly wounded Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, and killed six others in Arizona, was said by many in the press to have been inspired by a Sarah Palin political map that put political opponents in crosshairs. Turns out the killer never saw the map. The New York Times apologized and corrected the false accusation, and a Palin suit against the paper was unsuccessful.Â
This even goes back to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which President Clinton blamed on the atmosphere caused by the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative broadcasters.
The security lapses at the Washington Hilton were unforgivable. Its no accident that President Reagan was shot outside the same hotel in 1981, an attack I covered, in which Reagan lost far more blood than was originally disclosed.Â
All the gunman had to do to beat the system is take trains to Washington and check in as a guest. As at past White House Correspondent Association dinners, the checking even for tickets was inconsistent. Some journalists and other guests are there only for the pre-parties hosted by news organizations.
As Red Letter reporter Abi Baker explained:
“I didnt have a dinner ticket, just an invite to a pre-party, so I flashed my phone at security, pulling up the email invitation. There was no barcode to scan, no list to checkâjust an email for a network news reception that could have been forwarded by anyone. At the party I was invited to, no one asked for ID, only my name. At others, just feet from the ballroom, I walked in without being stopped.”
Incredibly, the Secret Service didnt even invoke the highest level of securit
