Actually, security last night was terrible – plus, the shooter’s manifesto is exactly what you might expect
I titled last night’s post, “I guess the security was effective at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” That was an initial response to the fact that no one was killed – not even the shooter, who was taken down alive and well. But of course, the earlier security had to have been abominable for anyone to get as far as would-be assassin Cole Tomas Allen did.
And, since Allen helpfully sent his family a manifesto of sorts ten minutes before he started his attack, we have it straight from the horse’s mouth, if this document is authentic (and I have no reason to believe it’s not). The relevant excerpt:
Ok now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? Sorry, gonna rant a bit here and drop the formal tone.
Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.
What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing.
No damn security.
Not in transport.
Not in the hotel.
Not in the event.
Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance.
I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.
The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.
Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.
Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed shit.
Actually insane.
Oh and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels: it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.
Can’t really recommend it! Stay in school, kids.
Even before I read that, it had become crystal clear that although security was good at the very endpoint, it was disgraceful prior to that. As with earlier incidents such as Butler, it is hard to fathom what could explain such overwhelming negligence. Some say that security forces’ incompetence is purposeful and out of malice towards Trump, and although I do not think it’s that I can see why people would believe it.
That quote I gave comes at the end of the shooter’s document. There’s much much more earlier on, describing the reasons that he feels he must do this. I plan to write more on the subject either tonight or tomorrow. But right now I’ll just say that several things are apparent.
The first is that Allen is intelligent. The second is that he’s not at all crazy. The third is that his letter of explanation reads exactly like the sort of thing we see every day, many times over, on “X” or other social media – what has become almost garden-variety hatred of Trump and accusations that he is evil and does evil (pedophile, rapist, traitor). Sound familiar? It should; it’s commonplace commentary on MS NOW (once MSNBC) and other leftist stations and talk shows, in the halls of academe, in social gatherings, and on the aforementioned social media. I know many perfectly ordinary people who are probably nodding along now with what Allen wrote, wishing he had succeeded. I predict he will become a hero to millions, just as Mangione has but even more – except for the fact that Allen was unsuccessful. But the effort will be applauded.
I hold Allen responsible for his actions. But it is tragic and outrageous that he has been fed propaganda so relentless and so vile that he felt that what he was planning to do was something noble and good: taking out the evil empire of Trump. His targets seem to have been the whole administration.
He also says something quite prescient:
Secret Service: they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who *aren’t*
One Secret Service agent was hit in the chest but was wearing body armor and will survive.
NOTE: Here is a critique of the abominable security measures. I think the average child could have designed something better. It is mindboggling.
ADDENDUM: Some history:
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States, was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as Reagan was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton hotel.
Same hotel 45 years earlier. Reagan was very seriously wounded but survived after surgery. Another big difference, however, was that although there was plenty of hatred towards Reagan, that’s not what motivated Hinckley, who was actually fairly crazy and shot Reagan because Hinckley had become convinced that assassinating a huge public figure would impress Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed. Earlier, Hinckley had considered killing President Carter.
As at Butler, the folks on the sharp end did their duty, best they could, althogh some of their steps were faulted by the usual Monday-morning crowd
What is extraordinarily informative–if in a negative way–is the endless number of ways supervision answered without answering how the shooter got that far. Something a sixth-grader Safety Patrol person would have spotted was…..endlessly bafflegabbed to no end.
The hearings were a lesson in answering questions not asked, as if we needed such lessons after watching Fauci.
And nobody swept the golf course in Florida in all those hours the snniper was waiting?
It’s not that, in retrospect, these things would have been a good idea. It’s that they’re written into procedures and then…ignored.
And among other things, the guys at the sharp end might be wondering if their bosses might be betraying them.
I read the whole thing at the link.
That’s not much of a “manifesto.”
I really don’t understand the criticism.
If you are going to have public events, then there must be some accommodation for the public.
For instance, I would not expect the luggage of hotel guests to be searched for hand guns, or broken apart long guns.
A security perimeter must of necessity be finite. There simply are not enough resources for it to be otherwise; and life must go on, even if severely inconvenienced, around the periphery of the perimeter.
The target area was clearly secure, and was not breached.
One thing I am curious about, is whether shots were actually fired by the SS and other security personnel without hitting the Perp. I would hope that they are competent shooters. Maybe that will be answered in due time.
A few years ago, we went to Washington, DC, for a three-day visit. Staying at the Mayflower, we had to go through a metal detector and put our bags on a belt for screening, and even opened for looking, every time we went into the hotel, just like staying at a hotel in the Middle East or Turkey. We were surprised until a look at the news indicated Netanyahu was in town, and evidently staying at the Mayflower.
Along with this shooter, I am surprised the Hilton was not like this for at least 24 hours before the dinner.
This guy is not crazy, unless we count all the falsehoods that relentless leftist media and social media have drummed into his head.
Side note: Why was Patel to be excluded from the list of high-ranking officials he wanted to target?
Yes, they should screen all guests coming into the hotel for at least a week prior to such an event. But do you really think that the uproar of such measures would be such that it could not be done. If it was a Trump event, like last night, the Left would go bananas. Day before and day of would have helped, but a determined person can cause a lot of damage.
I have watched the video, well at least one of them, and could not tell what the deranged person was carrying when he shot the Agent. The agent was clearly hit, doubled over, but still reacted quickly, pulling his service weapon and going after the shooter.
A few days ago I was talking with a lady whose house I’m painting. Nice older couple. They do volunteer work. She tutors children, he volunteers at Hospices. Both Christians. Moved to Texas from the east coast.
Yet the TDS is strong there.
I think it’s the media that has warped their perceptions.
SHIREHOME:
I don’t suggest screening all guests. The solution is to set up a wider perimeter within the hotel that is emptied prior to the event and doesn’t have just one checkpoint, but a series of them.
There probably are other ways to handle it, but that one came to mind almost immediately. This event had all the movers and shakers in one place.
But as far as screening guests goes – not all that long after 9/11 I stayed in a hotel maybe in Boston or NY and you could not enter the hotel without going through a metal detector each time you went out and came back.
How many wake up calls does the Secret Service need? Looks like a systemic failure, again.
Time for a systemic root cause analysis of the entire SS decision process, including counter-espionage and personnel reliability (who is compromised?).
Budgeting by continuing resolution (and the non-cooperation of the opposition in financing DHS components) may have played a role. One might also consider that the Secret Service has been damaged by DEI and also by the mission to protect the Bidens.
This person will be a national hero to the left and will spark more violence going forward, based on his “manifesto”.
Yes, the security planning was terrible but what about Allen’s planning? We have all seen the video of his mad dash from the left through the checkpoint. Did he really think that he would be able to run through the security into the ballroom to attack the President? This seems more a case of suicide by cop to make himself famous than a serious attempt to carry out the assassination.
Bob Wilson:
Perhaps he was wearing a protective vest. Perhaps he watched too many movies. Perhaps he wanted martyrdom. But he certainly might have made it into the room; it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. And he didn’t need to kill Trump – it was a very target-rich environment.
Brian E:
I definitely agree He also happens to be good-looking, like Mangione.
I keep seeing statements by officials saying we don’t know the motive. Have they not read what he wrote, or do they lack reading comprehension?
I asked grok what the distance was from the checkpoint Allen ran past to the ballroom entrance. The answer is below. It is pretty clear to me that this was just a publicity stunt. He did not have a reasonable chance of getting into the ballroom and attacking the guests.
Grok answer
Recent Incident Details (April 25-26, 2026 WHCD)
A security incident occurred just outside the ballroom area during the event (with President Trump and others in attendance). Reports describe the security checkpoint as located in the hotel lobby/terrace level area (one floor above the ballroom), with the suspect rushing toward it before being stopped.
• The suspect sprinted approximately 60 feet past the Secret Service checkpoint (through a magnetometer) and reached the top of a staircase leading down toward the ballroom, according to a Washington Post analysis of video, schematics, and testimony. He was apprehended before entering the ballroom itself.
• President Trump described the suspect as charging/starting his run from about 50 yards (150 feet) away, emphasizing that he remained “very far away from the room” and was intercepted at the checkpoint area outside it.
Re: Cole Allen as national hero to the left
I dunno. My bet is that such heroizing will be muted at best.
Not out of decency, but because higher-ups in the D Party and the Left might call a strategic pause to such blatant assassination celebration out of self-interest.
We’ll see.
I read into his “manifesto” that he expected to be killed. I don’t think he expected to be successful, as far as reaching the President. Possibly thought he might have a shot at some of the cabinet.
It’s human nature to need a purpose. Based on his advanced degree, he certainly was more drifting. He framed the act as giving his life larger meaning — essentially positioning it as a moral stand against what he saw as oppression by the Trump administration. He described it in terms of refusing to be “complicit” and stepping up when others were suffering.
He gave targets to others that he expects to take up the cause– members of the administration.
Brian E—Yes, Cole makes it plain that EVERYONE attending the ballroom are complicity in Trumps Crimes like rape, pederasty,” and a third I forget. Thus deserving death.
Extensive screen caps of the X.com discussion and fallout the day after Cole Allen’s decapitation attempt of US government summarized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud-WGAdhma4
Benny Johnson builds on Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon’s observation that Cole was carrying out exactly what Moron Media told their followers to do — but Benny concludes that Cole is now the avatar of the far Left, the new Champion to Murder Democracy! Ironically, exactly what they say they hate.
Benny Johnson finally concludes that more of this insanity, down the pipeline, is coming for us.
Extreme darkness will beget deaths.
PS this post includes AI enhanced video showing Cole running through metal detectors — elements of his crime not seen in the shooting scene CC video.
oldflyer … I agree with you completely, and have heard that no shots were fired by the Secret Service, at least in part because of the possibility of overpenetration into the event room.
I don’t give an ounce of credence to this guy’s assessment of the security. He had no idea what the Secret Service operational plan was or where their containment lines were. He was not only unable to access the actual venue of the event but was taken down without the need for lethal force to be deployed, and it sounds like he had no viable plan to gain access. I don’t think you can draw any parallels between this action and Butler which was obviously the work of the Secret Service B (at best) team.
Imagine there were three gunmen instead of one, that sprinted past the first security checkpoint.
My guess is that the outcome would have been far more deadly than what actually occurred.
Kate asks about screening all Hilton Hotel guests. Cole deliberately checked in prior to those 24 hours, planning to skirt metal screening until the last moments.
And you ask about Patel? Because in transectional mythology, darker skin means Black. Their sacred dogma exempts them from every crime, it seems.
In fact, historical genetic anthropology teaches us that the peoples of India like Vedic (Southern India) Kash Patel, are really
White or Caucasian descendants who’ve become a newer melanized race (because equatorial adaptation to strong sunlight of South India). That is, he isn’t a descendant of black Africans like Cole and other morons imagine him to be.
For those who’ve watched Friday afternoon, post Market Close business channels (Fox Business I believe, but perhaps CNBC): one Dan Nile’s (Investments – just search this term and name to see his photo!) is a NYC-based hi-tech stock analyst and advisor.
And he looks exactly like a white man but completely black complected.
You see, Dan Niles family emigrated from the big island nation just off India, Sri Lanka. Therefore, I think he’s Vedic in origins, too.
In short, the New Woke dispensation and compensatory justice hysterics deliberately squelch all mention of relevant biological facts in their zealous Quests. Even relevant discriminations cannot be made! But then, we all know this here.
HERE IS A LINK. Scroll down to Dan Niles photo https://www.nilesinvestmentmanagement.com/
So, “bugged hotel room”, anyone? What, he thinks he lives in the state of “The Lives of Others”? I.e., a totalitarian state?
Some marvelous education this guy received, wot? He’s a walking, talking and acting embodiment of the “fact-value distinction”. An ethical “fuckall” if you’ve even seen one, and we’ve all seen aplenty to this point.
Ah. Better still, a portrait photo of Dan Niles at a somewhat younger age, https://www.facebook.com/awesomeitv/photos/investor-legend-dan-niles-recommends-cash-as-the-top-investment-amid-signs-of-a-/1317618010405824/
Isn’t my point now obvious?
Like most Patels, Kash Patel’s family is from Gujarat, western India, adjacent to Pakistan. Gujaratis speak a language related to Hindi, like other languages in northern to middle India, derived from Sanskrit. The ethnic groups in far south India are Dravidic. Dravidic people speak an entirely different language group, and are, in general, darker-skinned than the “Aryan” groups in northern India whose ancestors came from the general vicinity of present-day Iran.
Kate
Where are Dravidians in the traditional caste scheme?
Thanks.
General Second Guess of the Monday Morning Quarterback Army (om):
60 feet of straight line running, not even a few temporary barricades to force entrants to WALK to the first entry checkpoint?
Rocket science needed?
Richard Aubrey, I don’t know, in general. The Dravidian peoples are considered to be the indigenous peoples of India, especially south India, but their religious cults have generally been absorbed into Hinduism. Some Tamils, like Kamala Harris’s mother or Vivek Ramaswamy, are Brahmin, at the top of the heap. I would imagine with the adoption of Aryan religious systems, some groups came to be identified with various castes as well. I don’t have further information, except that lighter-skinned northern Indians who worked for my husband in a manufacturing plant referred to a “black guy” in engineering. Looking around for an African, my husband learned they were referring to a dark-skinned degreed engineer from far south India.
I think I am with AppleBetty, more a travelog than manifesto.
When will the SS figout that crazy fanatics are going to try this again and again.
Of course the Marxists Propaganda Ministry is the main drive and they will not stop either.
My take away is that many “normal” people are crazy 🙂 There is a certain amount of craziness built into the species.
I think this “quite intelligent” nutjob is a dumbass, and perhaps a beneficiary of DEI.
I don’t accept him as an authority on Presidential security. His “manifesto” indicates that he expected to be killed or wounded in his drama queen production. All he accomplished was to sabotage any chance he had of a good career.
President Trump and others said Cole Allen was anti-Christian, but his “manifesto” (suicide note?) merely argues that turning the other cheek has been overridden by Trump’s alleged misdeeds. Allen also mentions his (Allen’s) church, which suggests that he considers himself a Christian.
Maybe Allen missed his calling as a track and field athlete?
He’s good looking?? Oy vey! He reminds me of the dork who supposedly planted the pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC.
If/when one of these attempts succeeds, it is likely some angry, unstable people on the right will take revenge. The Jake Tappers, Whoopi Goldbergs and Robert DeNiros don’t seem to get that they’re playing a very dangerous game. It won’t just be Democrat politicians who could be targets. I take no joy in saying this but it could very well happen and the aforementioned seem to think they’re immune to this retribution.
Selfy:
Intelligence is not wisdom or good judgment, nor is it morality or virtue. He is definitely intelligent in terms of expressing himself in writing. Plus, he is using logic quite well in the sense of being able to marshal better arguments than most people could in an attempt to justify his pernicious plans.
I think he would be considered good-looking by a great many of today’s young women.
I agree that his writing is not anti-Christian.
Nor is he an authority on presidential security. Neither am I, and I doubt you are, either. But he felt the security at the hotel was inadequate. I agree; one of my very first thoughts was, “How did anyone get as close as he did? That shouldn’t have been possible.”
I recommend against anyone NOT from India trying to understand the concept of skin color as perceived there.
My wife and I lived in southern India for two years before I joined the Foreign Service. We quickly recognized that southern Indians were generally darker complected than people from the north, and the range of skin color generally gets darker the closer one gets to the southern cape of the Indian sub continent. And your average Indian is VERY precisely attuned to the relative skin tone of everyone they meet and interact with.
But this is carried to an almost comical degree. We met two exchange students from South Africa at the local university. These two South Africans were members of what South Africans called “colored” — people who could be the result of racial mixing between Black and White South Africans, or could be the offspring of the many Indians who had emigrated to South Africa some time in the previous half century. In the case of our two friends, they were known at home as “asians,” i.e., their forebears had arrived at some point in time from India.
For all intents and purposes, they were studying “back home,” as their roots were in this subcontinent. Yet because they came from Africa their Indian fellow students called them by the N-word. They found that terribly ironic and stressful — they had come “home” only to be discriminated against, and to us their skin tone appeared lighter than that of their fellow students. Strange indeed.
I don’t think its a failure at all. There was a security perimeter in existence, which the shooter did not breach.
As you expand that perimeter it requires exponetially more resources, and the risk is that resources are misallocated.
All the event really proves is that there is a need for a ball room facility at the White House where it is not accessible to the general public.
Security for the broader hotel would have been looking mostly for bombs or the like – an individual shooter still had to breach the existing security perimeter, which as I noted he did not do.
@LordAzrael: All the event really proves is that there is a need for a ball room facility at the White House where it is not accessible to the general public.
Fetterman is now calling for the ballroom:
______________________________
After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these.
–Sen. John Fetterman,” Fetterman Backs White House Ballroom After Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting”
https://www.newsweek.com/fetterman-backs-white-house-ballroom-correspondents-dinner-shooting-11879860
What Christopher B said (5:52PM). The security may have been terrible, or maybe not so terrible, but it is ridiculous to make an evaluation using any rantings from this unbalanced psychopath.
I don’t think its a failure at all. There was a security perimeter in existence, which the shooter did not breach.
What if there had been five or ten or twenty shooters? We are lucky this was just a lone gunman. Is it so impossible to imagine a large group doing exactly what he did (registering a couple of days early at the hotel, bringing weapons in)? Would those SS agents have been able stop them? At best they would have had to empty their weapons in short amount of time, probably hitting bystanders. At worst a few would have gotten through to the ballroom.
Re Fetterman. NICE catch, huxley.
The Leftist-Far Left party in DC’s split is getting wider and wider.
F relates a good and funny story. South African Indians include Mahatma Gandhi, the anti-colonial nationalist who co-founded Indian independence. And a worthy cultural lesson, too.
Similar stories like F’s SA students classmates and the N-word are also encountered in Ghandi’s biography, IIRC.
Kate corrects me and illuminate Kash Patel’s bio. I used to have her level of knowledge because I took three of the four classes in “Comparative History Of Civilizations In Asia,” a two volume survey textbook, as well as a course title at the University of Minnesota.
The lead author (out of five) was my prof., David Kopf, a 19th century Indian specialist. His decades old textbook is still in print. But not by a NY publisher anymore. Instead, New Delhi, India — where I’m sure it serves Indian nationals in their general education well.
I am going to acquire new copy and read the modern half-volume that I skipped and re-read portions of old.
@ Neo > “Nor is he an authority on presidential security. Neither am I, and I doubt you are, either. But he felt the security at the hotel was inadequate. I agree; one of my very first thoughts was, “How did anyone get as close as he did? That shouldn’t have been possible.”…”
Looks like you got a lot of agreement on that last point.
@ JohnTyler, Jimmy and others in re the perceived laxness of security planning in not foreseeing some very possible scenarios and planning for them:
(1) I certainly hope Neo’s trolls took the week-end off, and are not reporting back to their handlers in order to give them ideas;
(2) We don’t actually know there wasn’t some contingency plan for a pack of assassins, but I don’t see what it could have been; although I think I saw one lone agent retrace the shooter’s entry path, he wouldn’t have been able to stop a rush, and all the rest of the security detail moved toward the ballroom;
@ om > “60 feet of straight line running, not even a few temporary barricades to force entrants to WALK to the first entry checkpoint?”
There weren’t even any classic velvet-ropes on either side of the magnetometer gate.
(3) “At worst a few would have gotten through to the ballroom.” — in the chaos of which, the Leftists in the media might well have been hoist on their own rhetorical petard.
@ Neo > “And he didn’t need to kill Trump – it was a very target-rich environment.”
Once the shooting and counter-shooting started, it would be out of the assassin’s control who got hit. But, I agree he could have “succeeded” in his own view by getting any Republican in the room.
@ Neo > “I keep seeing statements by officials saying we don’t know the motive. Have they not read what he wrote, or do they lack reading comprehension?”
Fool or fool?
Possibly knave?
Depends on who the officials are and what authority they have to speak about the situation, and what they actually know when they answered the question, and…
Also there might be some legal considerations about not speculating in advance of investigation (rarely observed if there is).
It’s also a good way to just shut down a line of follow-up questions that would get too convoluted and full of “but you said” traps.
When I saw the video for the first time, it struck me as odd that the Secret Service guy (in the middle of the screen) who was closest to the path of the sprinting perp moved out of the perp’s way (to the top of the screen, as it were) to pull out his gun and get a shot at him.
Didn’t block him. Didn’t crouch to try to trip him up.
I thought, hasn’t this guy ever played football?
True, had he done that, the collision would have been formidable, resulting in a lot of pain, hurt and soreness. May also have been shot for his efforts…
Then I figured I probably wouldn’t have been able to think that quickly, myself; also, the Secret Service guy may not have wanted to put himself in harm’s way. Perhaps…(but he IS Secret Service!)
Anyway, I was surprised…
(Of course it’s ALL speculation like everything else.)
Like Trump said, lots of brave people there doing their jobs protecting him and the other attendees.
But, as this post points out, the overall security planning should have been better. (Ah, hindsight…)
OTOH, getting lucky is nothing to sneeze at.
Miranda Devine said this:
https://nypost.com/2026/04/26/opinion/dems-must-heed-trumps-call-for-unity-in-the-wake-of-frightening-whcd-shooting-resolve-our-differences/
Now we know: Grassley planned it all !!
Seriously, it looks like the planners were not looking at all the personnel involved, just at the event “label” — ho hum, another meeting in a hotel, got it.
Not sure I agree Treasury is the right place, but obviously the Secret Service needs some kind of exemption from government shut-down shenanigans (but NO exemptions for evading accountability, as the agency has demonstrated over the years).
Considering the number of Congress-critters at risk this time, they might even agree on that.
The Instapundits were out in force yesterday and today (in 1 minute here it will be tomorrow).
Glenn Reynolds and others remind us what the Left really thinks.
https://instapundit.com/792654/
https://instapundit.com/792769/
Too long to copy-pasta much, kind of a round-up of Xweets and posts, mostly from Hot Air.
https://instapundit.com/792705/
https://instapundit.com/792733/
Seems we’re talking about OBAMA.
(Gosh, where would we be without the Lightgiver(TM)?)
“Ex-President Barack Obama claims ‘we don’t have’ WHCD gunman Cole Allen’s motives — despite raving anti-Trump manifesto”—
https://nypost.com/2026/04/26/us-news/ex-president-barack-obama-claims-we-dont-know-whcd-gunmans-motives-despite-raving-anti-trump-manifesto/
“What if there had been five or ten or twenty shooters? We are lucky this was just a lone gunman. Is it so impossible to imagine a large group doing exactly what he did (registering a couple of days early at the hotel, bringing weapons in)? Would those SS agents have been able stop them? At best they would have had to empty their weapons in short amount of time, probably hitting bystanders. At worst a few would have gotten through to the ballroom.”
What is there were a thousand ? A million ? What if they were T850s armed with Plasma rifles in the 40 watt range ?
The whole reason he wasn’t detected earlier was he was a sole shooter acting alone. You hink a group of a dozen armed folks isn’t going to attract attention long before they reach the checkpoint.
Not to mention this checkpoint is the floor above the event – its not not the same floor
You start increasing the size of that squad and ordinary hotel surveillance will likely identify them. People tend to under estimate how much regular hotel security sees.
You’re also requiring a dozen people maintaining OPSEC leading up to the event, and finding a dozen people who are willing to die for the chance to kill Trump. That rules out professional military as they don’t do suicide attacks – they will go up against odds if required but don’t think they are going to throw away their lives. So you’re now talking about a dozen crazies trying to keep a lid on it. Not bragging online etc etc.
Increasing the participants isn’t just a force multiplier to the attack – its a substantial increase in the chance the attack gets detected and thwarted before it even starts
Full Video – Extended interview: President Trump on White House Correspondents’ Dinner “60-Minutes Interview”
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/04/full-video-extended-interview-president.html
Lord Azrael:
I can easily imagine two or three or four people willing to die to kill Trump: for example an Islamic terrorist sleeper cell composed of people who are from Iran and who came here during the Biden administration across the porous border. It doesn’t really take much imagination at all to imagine that. The event is known in advance – date and time and place – and as I’ve said it’s a target-rich environment.
Nor was Allen walking through the hotel with a long gun out in the open. I assume his handgun was concealed as were the knives, and from what I’ve read, he was reported to have assembled his long gun in a nearby room that was unsecured (if this report is to be believed).
Also, a group wouldn’t have to arrive at the hotel all at once. They could coordinate their arrivals and stay in different rooms so as to not attract attention. But they would all converge on the checkpoint at the same prearranged time.
Kate. Thanks. I was thinking of some folks I’d seen pictured from the far south who looked like the Phillipines’ “negritos”, very dark but without African build and features. Used to have a neighbor who’d fought the Japanese there and he thought the negritos were fabulous allies,
Lor Azrael. How about miltary-trained Muslims looking for their ticket to Hefner’s version of heaven?
I have no idea how that hotel is laid out. Even a diagram is likely to miss the side door where the kitchen crew takes the trash out to the dumpster. Is it self-locking? So was, supposedly, a certain door in a school in Uvalde. Such hotels do considerably more for their guests than lay out a breakfast buffet and check them out by ten in the morning. Their layout and then connections from one place to another would reflect that and not the slightest concern for security. And in a city like DC, a huge place like that would have the complicated connections in spades.
Was there, could there even be, a way of vetting every single person who is in the building or has access to it? And who’s that last? The HVAC guy for the mohthly inspection with a whole bunch of tools on his harness…who knows how to get in and nobody worries. Through the backest of back doors.
Meanwhile halls leading to…large rooms for lots of people have to be large themselves.
If/since it’s impossible to vet every single breathing person in the building or who is likely to be in the building a some unknown time in the near future, what do you do? Not go, I suppose.
But at least put up large screens in the halls blocking line of sight into the venue in question. Spray and pray with automatic or semi can do a lot of damage but it’s better than having the Principal in your sights.
Or build the damn’ ballroom.
One headline, so to speak, on, I think, Insty was that the shooter believed all the lies the dems claim they hever said.
It was a SS failure.
Did the event go on without disruption? Were shots fired in the location under control?
Calling it a non-failure because the Secret Service was able to stop the threat before he got to his intended targets is wishful thinking.
The Secret Service agents did as expected and stopped him without killing anyone with wild gunfire.
Capturing him alive was a coup.
BHO and the other lying “will never knows” are fully exposed now.
The SS can’t count on such an outcome next time.
Lessons need to be learned.
TJ, and F: Yes, the experience of living in India gives an understanding of how pervasive questions of caste and skin color are. Indians know the caste of another Indian immediately; we never did. And preference for lighter skin is everywhere; women use skin lightening products which are surely not good for them; advertisements for brides routinely specify “light skin.” I also learned by observation that “Hinduism” is a myriad of cults, not a unified system. Which deity is especially venerated is governed in great part by caste, tribe, and family habit.
Not to worry!
Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are onto it…
“Finding a Lost Tribe of Israel in India”—
https://aish.com/finding-a-lost-tribe-of-israel-in-india/
Related:
“WHCA Dinner attendee exposes major security lapses in firsthand pre-attack account”—
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting-04-27-26
Key blurb:
Isn’t “long-gun” a sort of euphemism used when the gun in question is unknown or indefinite? Yet don’t we have numerous accounts (Allen’s own, even!) which say or claim Allen used a shotgun? It’s a trivial matter, but I don’t get why “long-gun” at this late date in the story, is all.
Barry Meislin, I am not at all surprised. Jewish tribes have been brought into Israel from a variety of locations. My cousin, an Orthodox convert (originally American), married a nice Jewish girl whose family came from Yemen.
Should a hotel search everyone for rifles if someone is going to speak there in the near future? I’m not sure that makes much sense. It’s not like they’re going to shoot through walls and floors, they need to get to a place where they can see what they’re shooting at, and that’s what the security team is there to prevent.
But until enough facts have come out I’m not sure it makes much sense to say what the Secret Service or the hotel should have done differently. And there’s the things the Secret Service does that ought not to be talked about.
It looks as though the assassin didn’t even get as far as the right floor. The reason to have multiple layers of security is to stop people at the outer layers. There will always be an outermost layer beyond which nothing is stopped, and none of the layers can be expected to be 100% impenetrable.
I’m not saying we know there’s wasn’t some failure that should have been anticipated and that security was perfect, I have to make THAT explicitly clear because the Internet runs on binary logic. I just think it’s a little early to judge from a position of few facts, and that someone fired shots in one of the outer layers is what is expected to happen from time to time, since the Secret Service is not omnipotent.
Indeed Niketas, well put, and to add (I hope) as Dan Bongino has put to us: the further out the security “boxes” extend the greater the multiple of agents will be required to man the growing perimeter. At some point the numbers in budget and manpower breaks down. Still, Dan is certain examination of this event will be had and lessons learned and applied.
I do think there is active malice of the Secret Service towards Bad Orange Man. The Secret Service gives assassins one shot to kill Trump and then they spring into action, as they did in Butler (where eyewitnesses were pleading with officers to check out the guy on the roof) and now here (the shooter “wasted” his one shot on a SS agent before he got into range). I believe that had this shooter just kept running, the SS would have let him enter the ballroom and get off a point-blank shot at the president or whomever he chose (assuming they weren’t a Democrat).
You’re full of shit, parsimony. Howzat? I say so because I don’t choose to let you get “one shot off” at the Secret Service, even if mayhap there are questionably motivated personnel in their ranks. The picture you paint is simple crap.
The Secret Service is not responsible for protecting everyone or “anyone.” Words mean things.
Interesting point, Barry, about the SS agent moving out of Allen’s way. It also seemed to me that the agent glitched while trying to draw his gun.
Trump wanted to resume the dinner. I bet he had a choice speech prepared!
Selfy, if you are talking about the Agent that doubled over, it was because he had just been shot in the chest. He recovered quickly and responded.
I noticed that agents in full tactical gear were visible very quickly, so they were close without being in the Ballroom.
According to the “manifesto”, Allen brought a shotgun, loaded with pellets rather than a slugs. That short video of him running past SS and possibly firing at that SS that seemed to veer away from Allen’s path might have been shot with the shotgun. But he didn’t react in the way I would think someone hit with 12ga shotgun blast with buckshot, compared to say a 9mm bullet.
That would mean the four or five shots heard in that C-SPAN video must have been SS, since no one could fire a 12 ga. pump shotgun that fast.
This is all turning surreal. Allen thought he could run through the ballroom after getting through the SS and get close enough to kill the President with a shotgun loaded with buckshot?
And supposedly this guy had an engineering degree from CalTech?
From what I’ve read, he didn’t get all that close to the ballroom entrance. 100 yards?
Selfy is talking about the SS guy standing right in the middle of the frame in this video, as was: Barry Meislin on April 27, 2026 at 1:31.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbxpHlS4vIg
I have a number of pro & con thoughts generally.
Ideally, this SS (Secret Service) agent should have body blocked Allen, instead of side-stepping and drawing his weapon. (I don’t think he was shot.) On the one hand, they should be trained to stop the threat on a moment’s notice. He’s not just some guy standing there.
The problem is that he is looking in the wrong direction when the threat comes, his response time is down to 0.1 sec. or less. Could he have heard the runner’s footsteps before he arrived? Maybe not. Sneakers and a noisy environment.
Another thing about this moment in time, is that a knife wielding attacker can do a ton of damage in an instant, even if a body armor vest is being worn. But again, these SS people are trained to take the damage if needed. I think it was just too quick.
Another point is that there should have been a loud warning sound the instant Allen blew past the first metal detector. That gives all the agents in the immediate area a heads-up alert so they are focused when the following moments transpire. Perhaps an agent at the detector could have shouted a warning.
________
I think the Butler shooting was a much worse lapse of SS security than this one. There weren’t that many nearby rooftops in Butler and they all should have been well covered.
This hotel environment is a big mess in terms of security. I would hope that the top SS people would just tell the president, Don’t go there. And probably, the president said, Yes, I’m going. Deal with it.
How serious is the SS management and organization? I don’t know, but I recall an incident many years ago that was quite shocking. I believe the foreign country was Colombia, and there was a sizeable SS detail there working. When they were off duty a group of them hired hookers for some probably drunken party. The mind blowing part was that they would have gotten away with that except that they decided to not pay the hookers. Just wow, in terms of both stupidity and how lax their work environment was.
nik (10:59am) has it right I believe. The “‘big one” regarding security here is how did Allen get weapons into the building? But the Washington Hilton is huge, over 1000 guest rooms. So a very large amount of traffic into the building on a daily basis, let alone over whatever period of time prior someone would consider “safe”. Once you decide TSA airport level screening at all hotel entrances is unfeasible it’s a matter of logistics and establishing perimeters and checkpoints. I doubt many of the people commenting, certainly including me, know the exact layout of the entire building well enough to pass judgement.
Not claiming at all that security was “perfect”, “adequate” or beyond question. Or even not “terrible”. But the real answer is likely that the event should have been held in a more suitable venue. Like Trump’s proposed White House ballroom.
What seems like a good idea is for the executive line of succession NOT to be all present at a public event like this. If the president chooses to go, the VP and the Speaker of the House should not.
Misdirection about screening or securing the Hilton. Focus folks.
Who allowed a straight line unobstructed pathway down that hallway into the “secured” part of the facility?
Ok you don’t want to make a straight line sprint not possible? Bring in a 12 inch layer or 1/8 – pea gravel or loose sand, try sprinting on that (think about the box you’ve put yourself in).
Tommy Jay, this is getting into the weeds. But watch the video again. The SS agent doubles over and draws back while Allen is still around four feet away. That is what you might expect as a reaction to being shot by a 12 ga buckshot shell, even if the pellets only hits his vest. At that point the pattern would only be a few inches.
I wonder if all this happened (rushing through the metal detector, running down the hall), because it’s never happened before, or so rarely it’s not taught in SS training. Just like flying a plane had never been done before– they were always hijacking, not suicide bombings.
As to the shooter, he is a Cal Tech graduate and teaching at an SAT/ACT prep course?
Something went wrong with this guy along the way.
“he is a Cal Tech graduate” – Amadeus48
I’d love to see his gpa– though even that isn’t definitive. Was he a DEI grad? Some time ago Victor Davis Hansen was talking about how the quality of graduates had declined at Stanford. He said tech companies were looking at graduates from schools like Georgia Tech over Stanford because of DEI.
I don’t think the agent would be wielding his weapon that smoothly & expertly, had he been shot. Even if he had a hard plate vest.
Read the NY Post publishing of this clowns manifesto (rant) where he mentions targeting every Trump official at the dinner but deliberately excludes Kash Patel. Why Patel?
And it seems the media is missing this also. Why?
Bill Serra:
Two possible reasons, and perhaps both. The first is that the shooter didn’t especially want to kill people in law enforcement. You could say Patel is in law enforcement. The second reason would be that Patel is a person of color.