The assassination conspiracy (theory)

Was the 'friendly federal assassin' for real?

Since the most recent foiled assassination attempt on Donald Trump, I’ve seen a lot of people from the left side of the political spectrum theorize that the attack was, for lack of a better word, and with apologies to Alex Jones, a false flag. That shouldn’t be surprising, but what is surprising is that it isn’t just Democrats who are arriving at this conclusion. While perusing coverage of the incident, I noticed a Wired article that opined, “MAGA Is Increasingly Convinced the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged.” The interesting thing about this is that, upon closer inspection, the article was published on April 17, a week before the attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

At this point, Trump has survived three assassination attempts as well as a number of other plots and security incidents. This has sparked online claims that Trump has survived more assassination threats than any other president and that Democratic presidents have not been subject to any attempts at all. The first claim depends on how you count, and the second is outright false, but it is true that Trump has had a number of close calls, particularly the Butler, Pennsylvania, attempt in 2024. It was the Butler attempt that was the focus of the Wired article, although there is a new one that deals with the WHCA attack.

Screenshot of video posted by Donald Trump showing Cole Thomas Allen crashing through security checkpoint

At this point, I’ll make two statements. First, I am a political opponent of Donald Trump, but I don’t think assassination is justified, moral, or should be condoned. Further, I don’t think Trump’s death or injury would benefit the Trump opposition. The president is running the Republican Party into the ground. The GOP is at a very unpopular level and is about to get “shellacked” in the midterms. I don’t think most Democrats want to make him a martyr or a sympathetic figure.

Second, I don’t think the attempts were fake. It would be very difficult to find patsies who would risk life and freedom so that Donald Trump could gain a few percentage points in the polls.

And these are real risks. Thomas Crooks was killed on top of a building in Butler, Pennsylvania, with an AR-15 that he used to shoot at Trump and with which he killed a rallygoer. Ryan Routh is serving life in prison for his attempt on Trump’s life in West Palm Beach in 2024. Cole Thomas Allen will probably spend the rest of his life behind bars as well. There are many reasons why someone might want to kill a president, this president in particular, but I can’t really think of a good reason why anyone would mortgage their future in a fake attack.

Having said that, I do have a lot of questions about the attack last weekend. For starters, why was Trump there in the first place? Trump has never attended a White House Correspondents Association dinner as president. The last time he showed up to the event was in 2011 when he was roasted by Barack Obama. A theory that I have some sympathy for is that Trump was so humiliated by the incident that it inspired him to run for president as revenge against those who mocked him.

Further, why were so many members of the cabinet present? Of 16 people in the presidential line of succession, 11 have been confirmed in attendance at the dinner. This includes seven of the next 10 in line to be president, including Vice President Vance (first on the list of succession), Speaker Mike Johnson (second), and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (fourth). We very nearly experienced the emergency presidency of President Pro Tempore of the Senate Chuck Grassley (third).

While it is not unheard of for cabinet members and congressmen to attend the dinner and there are no designated-survivor rules for the event, unlike the State of the Union, this seems like an extraordinarily top-heavy list of attendees. Of course, the simple explanation may be that this was Trump’s first time at the dinner as president, and the sycophants in the cabinet and congressional leadership know that Trump loves nothing more than to have his ego stroked. Not attending could have been viewed as professional suicide or at least a slap in the president’s face.

The attempt also raises questions about security and the effectiveness of the Secret Service. This is especially true in light of security lapses that came to light following the Butler attempt, as well as older scandals about unprofessionalism, including partying and drunkenness of Secret Service agents.

The dinner, which was not a state event, was being held at the Washington Hilton. Since it was not a state dinner, the argument that a gold-plated ballroom might have prevented the attack is a non sequitur, even though the White House was apparently pushing this pretty hard shortly after the incident. Trump himself plugged his ballroom project as a security solution in the aftermath of the attack. Ironically, the Washington Hilton was also the site of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.

A dinner in a hotel ballroom can be a security nightmare. It would be difficult to screen every guest in the hotel, and Cole was reportedly checked into the Hilton as a guest. Much like the 2017 Las Vegas shooter, Cole probably took his weapons into the hotel several days before the attack.

The BBC discusses the security measures at the hotel in detail, noting that the hotel was closed to the public hours before the event and that the heaviest security, including metal detectors, was around the ballroom where the banquet was to take place. Cole never penetrated the security cordon and never got close to the president.

Nevertheless, there was criticism of the security plan. Gary O'Donoghue, a BBC correspondent at the dinner, said that security was not “particularly heavy” and noted, “The man on the door outside only took a cursory look at my ticket from what must have been six feet away.”

A newly unearthed clip of local Fox personalities talking on hot mics backs up that observation. They observe that “two random chicks” are holding the door open and joke that the Secret Service should “just get a doorstop.”

Former UK ambassador, Kim Darroch, criticized the lack of security in depth, noting, "If you were there [as a hotel guest] and you had bad intentions about breaking into this dinner, there's just one security thing you had to get past... and then you're in the ballroom.”

Even the perp criticized the lack of security in his manifesto, writing, “What the hell is the Secret Service doing… No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event.”

Allen allegedly armed himself with a shotgun, pistol, and knives (no AR this time) and attempted to breach the security checkpoint going towards the hotel ballroom. He exchanged fire with law enforcement before being detained and captured without injury, but this brings up another question: With all the bullets that were flying, how did he survive without being hit? Did the Secret Service Agents attend the Star Wars Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship?

With Butler and the other recent plots against Trump, there are legitimate questions about whether security was too light or perhaps whether the Trump Administration’s lack of competence has infected the agency. The current director of the Secret Service is Sean Curran, who was appointed by Trump in January 2025 and has been with the agency since 2001. I don’t see any obvious red flags with Curran, but the investigation into what went wrong should include a look at the morale and culture within the Secret Service.

One thing that has been mentioned that was demonstrably not a factor is the ongoing DHS shutdown. Secret Service agents are among the DHS employees who are being paid through Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” ICE, CBP, Coast Guard, and TSA are also being paid.

There are also questions about the alleged shooter. Cole Thomas Allen (maybe we should be suspicious of people named Thomas) is a 31-year-old resident of Torrance, California, near LA. Allen is reportedly very intelligent, graduating from Caltech with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2017 and a master’s in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2025. Per NBC News, he donated $25 to ActBlue, a Democratic organization, in 2024, and was a member of a Christian fellowship at Caltech.

Prior to the attack, he sent a manifesto to members of his family (read it in full here), who forwarded it to police. Despite claims by Trump and others that the manifesto was “anti-Christian,” Allen specifically tried to explain and rationalize his actions to Christians in the manifesto, arguing that “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes,” citing “yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” as an objection to his plan, and thanking his church for its love. What little we know of his religious beliefs comes across like a liberal version of right-wing Christian Nationalism, although he probably sees himself more as a latter-day Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I suspect that we may eventually learn that Allen has a high-functioning form of some mental illness or disorder. The manifesto, in which Allen called himself “Friendly Federal Assassin,” presents a very odd picture of the shooter and his thought processes.

Mental illness is a common factor in many similar cases, perhaps more so than the always-assumed trope that to shoot a political figure, you must be radically political from the opposite end of the spectrum. Often, there is no coherent political ideology or evidence of strong political views, although, in this case, the manifesto does allude to a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor” that even the president assumes to be a reference to Trump, an adjudicated rapist and friend of Jeffrey Epstein (463 days into Trump’s second term, the Epstein files have still not been released). The manifesto also notes that other cabinet members, “not including Mr. Patel,” for reasons unknown, were targets.

Alternatively, it may be that Allen was influenced by both Trump’s corrupt and authoritarian behavior and the very online world we all inhabit. Again, I’m not going to justify or condone any act of political violence, but I think it is fair to point out that Trump’s rhetoric and actions have likely had the result of inciting violence against him. Again, that does not justify the violence, but it is an explanation.

As to the possibility that Trump and MAGA manufactured the whole incident (or incidents) as a public relations stunt, while I wouldn’t say that Trump is ethically above such behavior (or above possibly wearing a bandage on his ear for far longer than was medically necessary), the logistics make it very unlikely. It is far more likely that the attempt was real and that the president will use it to his political advantage. That is one reason among many why there should be no more violence against Donald Trump.

LINKS YOU CAN USE A lot of pundits are claiming that the left is more accepting of political violence than the right. That claim does not stand up to scrutiny. Numerous polls, such this Marist poll from 2025 and this PRRI poll from January 2026, show that support for violence is higher among Republicans. Further, in recent years, deaths from right-wing political violence have exceeded those from left-wing violence. Both sides tend to blame the other for violence, but the good news is that majorities on both sides reject violence.

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