If you blinked, you missed it. For about forty-five minutes after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, the media was actually covering it like a real story. Who was the shooter? What was the motive? Was the president the target? You know — journalism. Then somebody ran the shooter’s name, found out he was a registered Democrat, and every newsroom in America pivoted to “gun violence” faster than a Toyota doing a U-turn on an icy highway.
You could practically hear the group chat pinging. “Abort, abort — he’s one of ours. Switch to guns. SWITCH TO GUNS.”
And just like that, like synchronized swimmers in a pool of dishonesty, they all landed on the same talking point at the same time. CNN: “Gun violence strikes the nation’s capital.” MSNBC: “Another mass shooting raises questions about gun access.” The Washington Post: “The WHCD tragedy highlights America’s gun epidemic.” Not a single mention of the shooter’s political affiliation. Not one mention that this guy donated to Kamala Harris. Not a whisper about the years of eliminationist rhetoric that might — just might — have had something to do with a Democrat trying to assassinate a Republican president.
Now, let’s play a little game. Let’s imagine the shooter was a registered Republican. Let’s imagine he’d donated to Trump’s campaign and had a MAGA hat in his car. Do you think — do you think for one second — that the coverage would’ve been about “gun violence”? Do you think Anderson Cooper would’ve furrowed his brow and talked about “access to firearms”? Or do you think every single network would’ve been running wall-to-wall coverage about how the Republican Party, conservative media, and Donald Trump personally had blood on their hands?
You know the answer. We all know the answer. We’ve seen this movie before because they play it every single time.
Here’s their playbook, and at this point it should be laminated and hanging in every American’s kitchen:
**Step 1:** Shooting happens. **Step 2:** Check shooter’s voter registration. **Step 3a:** If Republican — “This is the inevitable result of right-wing extremism and dangerous rhetoric from conservative leaders.” **Step 3b:** If Democrat — “This is a gun violence issue and we need to have a conversation about common-sense gun reform.” **Step 4:** Repeat forever.
It’s not even subtle anymore. They’re not even trying to hide it. The transition from “who did this and why” to “we need to talk about guns” happened so fast that you’d need a slow-motion replay to catch the exact moment they all received the memo. One minute they’re covering an assassination attempt at the most high-profile media event in America. The next minute, they’re interviewing the same three gun control activists they keep on speed dial.
The shooter’s court appearance happened in the last twenty-four hours. His identity is confirmed. His political affiliation is confirmed. His donation history is confirmed. And the legacy media is treating all of that like classified information that the American public simply cannot be trusted with.
Meanwhile, remember the congressional baseball shooting? Steve Scalise was nearly killed by a Bernie Sanders supporter who had a literal hit list of Republican congressmen in his pocket. The media spent about forty-eight hours on it and then memory-holed it so hard you’d think it happened in the 1800s. But Charlottesville? That got four years of coverage and an entire political movement was blamed for one lunatic.
That’s the deal, folks. That’s always been the deal. When violence comes from the right, it’s an indictment of an entire ideology. When violence comes from the left, it’s a policy discussion about inanimate objects.
A man went to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and tried to kill people. That man is a Democrat. Those two facts are both true, and the American media has decided that you are only allowed to know one of them. The other one — the one that might make people ask uncomfortable questions about which side of the political aisle keeps producing assassins — that one gets buried under a pile of “gun violence” talking points so thick you’d need a backhoe to dig it out.
This is why trust in media is at historic lows. This is why more Americans trust their neighbor’s Facebook posts over the New York Times. It’s not because people are stupid. It’s because people can see the game. They can see the same outlets that spent four years blaming every act of violence on “Trump’s rhetoric” suddenly discover that rhetoric has nothing to do with anything the moment the shooter turns out to be on their team.
They’re not reporters. They’re defense attorneys for the Democratic Party who happen to have cameras and printing presses. And they’re not even good defense attorneys — a good one would at least try to be subtle about it.
The shooter was a Democrat. Say it with me. The shooter was a Democrat. The media doesn’t want you to know it, doesn’t want you to think about it, and definitely doesn’t want you to connect it to the years of “he’s literally Hitler” rhetoric they’ve been pumping into the culture like carbon monoxide.
But we know. And no amount of synchronized “gun violence” pivots is going to make us forget.