Jack, thanks. as always, a good choice for early morning contemplations about what happened last night.
Apr 26, 2026
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with President Trump in attendance, ended in a shooting on Saturday. Officials identified the suspect as 31-year-old Cole Allen of Torrance, California. CBS News’ Nancy Cordes and Sam Vinograd have more.
CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe speaks with Weijia Jiang, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, about her experience during Saturday night’s shooting.
It was just after 8:30 p.m., in the basement of the Washington Hilton. The president was on stage, locked in conversation with CBS reporter Weijia Jiang; spread out in front of them were thousands of attendees, seated at more than 250 tables, as waiters cleared away their salads.
Then loud popping sounds were heard from the lobby. “I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump would say later.
For the third time in three years, Trump found himself under the threat of gunfire. Hundreds of people — table after table — dove to the floor, reporters huddling next to Trump officials and other dinner guests, some draped by white linen tablecloths, others pressed up against the ballroom’s walls.
“Get down, get down!” someone yelled out.
At the front of the room, Secret Service officers first rushed Vice President JD Vance off the stage, then Trump a few seconds later. Other officials in the line of succession, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were quickly whisked away, too.
Law enforcement officials barked out instructions — “Clear a path! Clear a path!” — as they escorted Cabinet members and other senior Trump officials out of the ballroom. Some attendees were injured in the scramble; Harmeet Dhillon, a top Justice Department official, said her head was bruised as agents ran across tables and chairs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel and others gathered with security officials outside.
For minutes, chaos reigned in the ballroom. Some White House officials, who had been sitting at an elevated table overlooking the floor, said they were just as confused about what had just unfolded, even as they watched their colleagues quickly exit the room. Trump and Vance were taken to secure locations, the administration said.
Meanwhile, law enforcement and White House Correspondents’ Association officials gave conflicting guidance — security officers instructing attendees in the lobby to promptly leave, while some media leaders encouraged reporters in the ballroom to stay, insisting that the dinner would go on.
“This is a crime scene,” said one Secret Service officer, telling attendees to keep walking out of the hotel and go a block across the street.
Law enforcement agents climbed over people in the crowded room. At least one man who was having trouble walking was escorted out of the room.
Reporters milled about on the sidewalks outside the hotel. Some interviewed each other, asking what they had seen, and learning little.
Around 9:40 p.m., Trump departed the hotel, accompanied by his security detail and press pool. An hour later, the president addressed the nation from the White House.
“That was very unexpected,” Trump said dryly, thanking law enforcement for their response. “This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties, with members of the press. And in a certain way, it did.”
He also criticized the hotel’s security protocols, reflecting on his prior brushes with violence. Trump was wounded by a shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, during his 2024 presidential campaign; weeks later, Secret Service agents would foil another would-be assassin who had crouched in the bushes around one of the president’s golf courses.
“It’s not a particularly secure building,” the president said, calling the shooting an example of why his White House ballroom is needed.
Striking an atypical tone, Trump praised the media for their coverage and said he was committed to the free speech ideals that underpinned the dinner, as White House reporters in tuxedos and formalwear peppered him with questions.
“I fought like hell to stay,” Trump said, vowing to return to the dinner and said it would be rescheduled within 30 days.
Saturday’s event was already shaping up as an unusual night in the worlds of politics and media. For more than 60 years, the Washington Hilton has hosted the correspondent’s dinner, an event that has mushroomed from a celebration for White House reporters to a gala replete with pre-parties, post-parties and celebrity encounters.
It was set to be Trump’s first appearance at the annual dinner since 2015. He was a guest of The Washington Post in 2011 — and the target of the sitting U.S. president’s jokes, as Barack Obama tweaked him from stage. Trump refused to attend the event during his first administration, and many of his deputies followed suit.
Sometimes dubbed “The Hinckley Hilton” — following John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan outside the hotel more than 45 years ago — the venue has been home to numerous high-profile events, many of which have been attended by sitting presidents and overseen by federal law enforcement familiar with the building’s layout. Guests faced minimal screening to enter the hotel on Saturday night — merely flashing their ticket to get on the
rounds.
After the ballroom opened at 7:30 p.m., thousands of guests descended on escalators to the hotel’s lower levels, where they were swiftly whisked through several magnetometers. Security took beer bottles and cocktail glasses away from people as they entered.
But the screening protocols were inconsistent; some guests were told to throw their umbrellas out into a big, blue trash can, while others were allowed to take them inside.
The president entered the ballroom at 8:15 p.m. as a band played “Hail to the Chief.” Trump officials, sprinkled around the room, cheered him loudly. In the middle of the stage hung a banner that read “Celebrating the First Amendment” over a photo of the White House mansion.
About 20 minutes later, the shots rang out. Officers with ballistic vests and long guns took control of the stage as the president and vice president were rushed off. The room fell silent, plates clanging with journalists and Trump administration officials hiding under tables.
Secret Service agents ran from the back of the room, clambering over chairs. “Watch your feet, watch your hands,” some shouted.
Law enforcement officials said they had a suspect in custody and that he would be arraigned in court on Monday.
At the White House two hours later, Trump said that he had planned “the most inappropriate speech ever made,” as he prepared to jibe an army of reporters who he often derides as “fake news.” But that speech may need to be permanently shelved, the president said.
“I’ll be very boring the next time,” Trump joked.
Sir Keir Starmer faces a difficult time on Who Wants to Remain a Millionaire when asked the all-important question regarding his connection to Peter Mandelson.
speaking of millionaires
No matter how much we tax the ultra-rich, they keep getting ultra richer and the money doesn’t flow to the people who need it the most.
Low ratings, everybody hates him, he is demented, delusional, diseased, senile and possibly showing inherited Alzheimer’s, stinks and has no idea what is going on around him. Perfect time to survive an assassination attempt. At least this time there were no collateral damages. That ballroom is not going to build itself.
The grift never takes a day off, and neither do we. We are tearing apart this ballroom delusion and the rest of today’s political dumpster fire on the Digital Diner. Grab a seat. We are live at 11am ET.
This morning has been a good one, so far (0647). I learned several things, one I had not known at all before. Another was that practice improves reducing collateral damage and death. It is a good morning to sit inside and drink coffee while watching revenge videos on YouTube and read other things.
The first, and very important, learning is about “pomodoro”, invented by an Italian using a timer in a tomato body. It is a work or study technique using a physical act and timed sessions with specfic break times. There have been many of these in the past, but this one is interesting due to the physical act of setting a physical timer.
One pleasure I have is watching revenge videos on YouTube. Some of based on an actual event, others are human created and a few are the chat created. All use computer generated voices and most use computer generated pictures or videos. A few use self-videos with a pomodoro overlay. Quite interesting to see it in use. Combines old school with modern computer use.
The second thing is stupid really, really wants his ballroom. At least this time there were no casualties to hide.
By Lotus, the World’s Wisest (and Most Judgmental) Feline
Humans have done something fascinating again, and by “fascinating,” I mean deeply revealing in a way they will spend considerable effort not examining.
They built a world that never stops talking. Notifications, updates, feeds, metrics, reactions. Everything is always on, always demanding, always measuring. And now nearly half of the youngest generation is looking at all of it and quietly thinking: I would rather not.
A recent poll found that 47% of Gen Z would choose to live in the past, and a clear majority believes life is getting worse. That is not some harmless aesthetic trend. That is not about Polaroids and vintage band tees. That is what it looks like when a generation grows up within a system and decides it does not actually like it.
The Thing Beneath the Thing
The humans are interpreting this as nostalgia because that is the most comfortable explanation available. It lets them believe it is about taste rather than pressure.
What Gen Z is reacting to is not the absence of the past. It is the presence of the present.
Every moment is shareable. Every thought is performative. Every silence gets filled. A world was constructed in which nothing is allowed to simply be, and now there is surprise that people want to escape it.
The simplest version: a system was built that monetizes attention, and then that system was handed to children.
They grew up. The system did not improve.
What They Actually Want
When humans say they want “the past,” they are usually pointing at something they cannot quite name. In this case, it is not about technology disappearing. It is about technology having limits.
Conversations that end instead of trailing off into endless threads. Devices that can be put down without the sensation that something important is happening somewhere else. Lives that are not constantly observed, compared, and quietly evaluated by an algorithm no one can see.
One of them said, somewhere in the noise, that they wanted a time with fewer phones. Not none. Just fewer. That distinction matters more than it appears to.
This is not rejection. It is calibration.
More at link
I like that Pomodoro Technique bluebronc, thanks for the link. I follow a version it for annoying long-term tasks (like de cluttering the house): Do something every day, no matter how small. It adds up over time. Don’t try to do it all at once, that leads to procrastination.
One good thing about the past (50’s-60’s ?) was the tax rate on rich people. Lots of evil mixed in, though; like the assassination attempts were real, many succeeding. That warn’t no good.
If there is video the guvvamint took it
There’s video of Kashewnut at the WCD. Not under a table, just on his chair looking at his phone and looking around. Did they know about this guy and decide to let him get just close enough to make a good show? Who fired the shots? Is there video untainted by tRUMPsky loyalists?
It looks like the guy just bolted through some very inattentive guards whose first instinct was to fire wide. Did the guy even have a gun? Was he just there to yell ‘free Palestine’ or ‘no data centers’ or something? He was running/falling forward, so did he fire a shot? Was he even armed?
The shooter never got on the same floor as the President. He was up on the mezzanine level approaching the magnetometer, so the security worked whether real or planned.
Breaking news. Real News Network.
Overnight in a post on his Truth Social platform President Trump announced the addition of a wall with a moat outside the perimeter of the wall with approximately spaced watchtowers is being added to the plans for the East Wing and his ballroom. He wrote that after studying security measures for the most secure federal prisons, European castles and even ancient cities that the omission of the combination of a wall with appropriately spaced watchtowers and a moat was an oversight that he has directed be corrected in revised plans to be presented to the appropriate planning boards for approval.
[…]
Because surviving an assassination attempt is exactly the same as holding the Union together. We dissect this absolute dumpster fire of a historical comparison on today’s Digital Diner. Catch the full show at 11am ET:
Iran caused more extensive damage to U.S. military bases than publicly known
U.S. bases and equipment across the Middle East came under attack — including from an Iranian F-5, despite American air defenses — and repairs could cost billions of dollars.
Jamie, put me on Right to Party. If necessary I’m going to fight for our Right to Party.
I’m gonna make big money on Pavlovian at 30-1. Maybe i’ll actually place a bet for the first time ever.
The Golden Tempo will beat them all like a drum.
But….but…..what happens when Pavlovian hears the bell?
Music to shoot by:
I’m sure the fact that the only thing that the newsies are talking about this morning is last night’s WHCA dinner shooting is just a coincidence. And the fact that Allen apparently took a train from CA to DC and brought his weapons with him is normal. HMMM. That sounds strange.
So he just happens to go to the dinner for the first time, and there just happens to be a shooting attempt?
—Rule Number 6…There are no co-incidences.
—Jethro Leroy Gibbs
You can carry weapons ON A TRAIN?
Just realized that’s the hotel Mrs. P and I stayed in for Craig and David’s wedding.
Sturg, so it seems, unless he was in DC for weeks. Reports are he bought the weapons in the few weeks before the event.
BTW Gibbs’ Rule 6 is my Rule 2.
Stur
If you don’t check your baggage and get a roomette or larger, there is no check on what you are carrying on the train.
Pog, i had forgotten you guys stayed at the Hinkley Hilton. Let’s chat on this staged theory in the diner today. Call me skeptical, but willing to explore.
Poobah, as pitiful as this sounds, I’m prepping a witness for a Wednesday hearing at 11 today.
BTW, Rule 1 is Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see. That appeared in Ed Poe’s “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether”. Marvin played it forward, with a lilt.
Do you suppose they want to put restrictions on a train travel, like they did with air travel after 9/11. Couple that with the manufactured global energy crisis, and the rollout of digital IDs worldwide, and nobody’s going anywhere.
I take the train regularly and have started to wonder why there isn’t more security.
The Ballroom promotion is a Red Herring.
I’m awaiting moderation? Okay then.
The United States has a sorry history of assassination attempts and successes. Until 45/47 not one president has been suspected of staging or creating an assassination. The magic ear shot and miraculous ear healing in Butler, two dead, started the questioning.
German take on the shooter by one of the public News Outlets.
From the German feed, it definitely looks as if the officer who was wounded was because of friendly fire and that the man arrested never fired a shot.
This is from the (left leaning- kind of) print magazine Der Spiegel.
Don’t miss the comments 😏
Today in the Diner… DC Hotel Shooting, ICE Funding & Kentucky Derby
The DC hotel shooting sparks staged event rumors as Trump spins the chaos into a real estate pitch for a new ballroom. Plus, Kentucky Derby picks.
It was a wild night in DC. We watched a near-tragedy at the Washington Hilton immediately devolve into a real estate pitch. Trump didn’t miss a beat, leveraging a live-shooter situation to demand a new ballroom, lying through his teeth about the capacity. His dream venue holds a thousand people at best; the Hilton sat 2,650. But facts rarely slow down the grift. Meanwhile, the internet is already cooking up staged event theories, comparing the bizarre paramilitary photo-ops to the lingering mysteries and missing emergency room reports from the Butler shooting.
To cleanse the palate from the political dumpster fire, we’re locking in our Kentucky Derby picks. Throwing a dollar at a 30-to-1 horse named Pavlovian seems like the most rational investment strategy left in this country. Then it’s back into the muck to look at Congress quietly rubber-stamping a massive, unbid funding increase for ICE, and Kara Swisher dropping reality checks on tech bros in coal country. Grab your coffee. We’re getting through this before I escape to Virginia horse country for the weekend.
00:00 Intro
00:25 DC Hotel Shooting & Ballroom Spin
06:17 Shooter Profile & Security Protocols
10:53 Kentucky Derby Picks & Odds
24:00 Middleburg Road Trip & Jackie Kennedy History
34:00 Defunding ICE & Tech Bros in Coal Country
38:30 Henry Winkler on Trump’s Tactics
42:00 Butler PA Comparisons & Staged Theories
58:00 Outro & Brahms String Quartet
a lot of lazy regime-serving journalism on the affair
Aaaand this one. Another publicly funded channel, ZDF.
That’s it from your Europe correspondent, today☀️
The left-wing press is truly the enemy of the PEOPLE. If there’s ever a second civil war True Americans will remember this and give them no quarter.
Jamie,
Franka Potente is the actress in „run Lola run“, who spends the whole movie running through the streets of Berlin. So I think that’s a good name for my Kentucky Horse!
Winterlinde
I have you covered
Phil et al
Most of us have stated quite often that anyone with workable penis (including the guards) don’t belong in a women’s prison. Also, very few claims of assault by trans women (unlike numerous against male guards), but I still hold with the banning of the working equipment.
Jamie, on the show Katie affirmed that biological men who identify as women are women.
Maybe the older and more rational folks here aren’t willing to throw women to the wolves, but Katie and the younger generation have no such problems. And lets face it, while you might claim to be against it, it’s not a deal breaker when you’re voting for a politician so you might morally claim it’s wrong but you enable it by your votes.
You see me with, I couldn’t betray women like that. If a politician supported feeding people to wolves it doesn’t matter what else they supported that I liked, I couldn’t in good conscious vote for them. James Talarico for instance supports throwing women to the wolves and putting biological men with working penis’s into female bathrooms, locker-rooms, and prisons.
And there have been assaults by trans-women, they just don’t get attention. There have been assaults, and disturbing incidents.
And understand many of the younger progressives think they’re being a good ally, they aren’t. They’re generating hatred and destroying peoples good will towards LGQBT. And the transgender ideology will eventually hurt people like Craig.
I don’t know if he has a partner he’s married to but gender ideology undermines the Supreme Court’s argument for gay marriage. One cannot be born gay if one is born in the wrong body, for all we know in a few years Craig will start wearing a dress and putting on lipstick and he’ll be in a “straight” relationship according to the gender ideology, which means he wasn’t born gay.
Kind of got off point there but it’s a very damaging ideology and it won’t just hurt women who are in prison and out of sight and out of mind.
Rewatching the video of SS ushering Vance out from Vance’s side of the table and even behind it (maybe held up their phone). They tried to move Adolf the same way, but tRUMP tripped.
They did not pile on him like they did Reagan. He couldn’t walk fast enough and he tripped.
It does note he’s a Cal-Tech student. Something to do with missing scientists, perhaps, or genocide, or war, or war crimes against civilians in the US, or corruption, or pedophilia and SA, or the deterioration of our coequal branches of government, or he’s been displaced by Ai, or any number of things.
Looks like we have a troll
Jack
RFKJ ran…completely forgot his plus one, who he happens to have married.
Maybe they will all just go to their bunkers now and leave the rest of us humans alone.
Anon, Craig and David married April 6, 2013. It was a great party.
There are pedophile protectors in Congress, and there’s a pedo and adjudicated rapist-in-chief who is compromised by BiBi & Putin. Much bigger issue. Global impact.
Don’t think for a second today’s troll actually gives a rat’s behind about any women, let alone those in prison. It’s just fried baloney to change the subject.
Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live
Take a moment to think before you dive in. That’s the best advice for Google Photos users, as the company confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation. That means Gemini seeing who you know and what you do. You likely have tens or hundreds of thousands of photos. They’re all exposed if you update.
We’re talking Personal Intelligence, Google’s latest AI upgrade path which lets users opt-in to connecting Google apps to Gemini. Why search for a doctor’s appointment when Google has access to all your calendar events. Why search for a party invite when it reads all your emails. And why search for a specific photo of you and your loved ones to create an image, when it sees all your photos.
Throwing a single dollar at a 30-to-1 Kentucky Derby horse named Pavlovian constitutes the finest financial strategy left in America. I do zero research. I just like the name.
The sexual spectrum biologically is quite wide depending on the x y combinations and science is discovering more genes effects on gender. For that reason, I differentiate between identity and behavior … criminal assault no matter who is doing it, is still criminal. There are trans that I would trust with a child more than the related uncle. Prisons are a whole different matter as the inmates have no say in who is housed and who is in charge. For that reason, you have to side with the safest possible circumstances and there a whole lot more assaults by male guards against female inmates. So you have to keep the penises far away from the vaginas.
*This is spot on and hilarious!
Adolf needs a bump in his poll numbers and he needs that ballroom ASAP. Enter, the lone wolf.
Looks like we are going to need to replace the troll barriers. A shame but they do shit all over the place.
Jack
It’s obvious to me that Phil is Chunk…
same crap… same bat channel…
thank you Craig for blowing him away…
Well, I’m not young or in Texas, but I couldn’t pull a lever (ok, click on a touch screen) and vote for Cornyn unless the only choice was a winger more right than he is.
meme #2…
The above anonymous is me..
Oooh, Craig mentioned WSJ piece on Epstein the other day, and tRUMPsky would have to shake hands with the journalist who did the reporting. Did the phony baloney event also get him out of that/not allowing mention of Epstein? Timing is everything, innit?
…we have more false claims from women of sexual assault, then we have actual real cases of rape
A statistic from the BBFF (Hi, Bob, miss ya man). And yet you rely upon claims of sexual assault in women’s prisons and assume the truth of those claims to force trans women inmates into male prisons, to say nothing of believing the false claim that that progressives back policies that protect pedos.
And Trump is a rapist IMHO. But then again, I believe his accusers, especially the ones he paid to keep quiet. His is not the most frequently mentioned name in the Epstein files because they were just buds, and if the references were innocent, Pam Bondi would not have wasted federal resources in an understaffed DOJ to redact them to try and protect him.
BTW, I’d bet there’s much less chance of seeing Craig prance around in a dress than Rudy Giuliani, but neither of them identify as a woman I’d wager.
meme #3…
just arrived Oakton plantation in Middleburg Virginia
Encountered WWII reenactors with a 1944 Willys just like the one I had in high school
Seen reports 87% of polled Americans believe it was staged for the damn ballroom.
Is The King still coming tomorrow to visit the kinglet❓
Chuck is famously sangfroid at the sound of flying bullets.
*Two months later…
At Linda Tripp’s store in Middleburg Virginia (she died in 2020)
Linda Tripp broke Maryland state law by recording her conversations with Monica Lewinsky without Lewinsky’s consent. Maryland is an “all-party consent” state, making it a felony to record a conversation without the permission of all participants. Although indicted, the charges were dropped in 2000 because her federal immunity tainted the state’s evidence.
Elegant food for 2,000 people went totally to waste? That’s the sad part.
spring pea and burrata salad
I don’t know what that is but must be good…
Seen clips of this song all over and finally decided to listen. She calls out a few things.
Burrata is an abomination. Perfectly good mozzarella until you cut it open and it’s soft and sloppy. The texture is off-putting, IMO.
TMI🤢🤢🤢
Nora O’Donnell really got tRUMPsky, Ha!
Just like they assume someone is talking about them when they mention N&zis, Gestapo, and fascists…tRUMPsky assumed Cole Allen was calling him a rapist and pedophile.
Anyway, none of this is tracking. Fox cutting off a correspondent, the talking points for influencers to sell that ballroom, low poll numbers so he finally decides to go to a WHCD and there’s a something/nothing that many underact to, and old Hegseth is smiling after the fact…and like Butler & the Kirk event, they won’t share allll of the details. Why was Hegseth smiling? Were they planning to let the old guy go down?
“The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President,” O’Donnell said. “He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, ‘Administration officials, they are targets.’”
O’Donnell then asked the president about his reaction to Allen’s rationalization that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” the president replied. “Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
“Oh, do you think he was referring to you?” O’Donnell asked, before Trump continued.
Crypto crap and it all ties to ta-da Epstein.
He said to Nora she’s a disgusting person. That’s when I bailed, dog had to go poop.
He’s lying as well about how he fell flat on his face. Truth is he can no longer walk upright or normally.
Having dinner at Goodstone Inn, Middleburg — ah, the Pork Diane!
Trump family’s crypto venture accused of freezing out investors as value plummets
Crypto billionaire Justin Sun alleged that World Liberty Financial grants company officials with unilateral authority over user accounts – including the power to freeze them – and an independent analysis found the value of his personal stake in the company has shriveled while he’s been locked out of his account, reported NBC News.
“I have always been an ardent supporter of President Trump and his crypto friendly policy,” Sun posted Monday on X. “[However,] this is the opposite of decentralization. This is a trap door marketed as an open door. I denounce the ongoing token scandals by the bad actors at WLFI.”
Sun claims his own account has been frozen since September, preventing him from selling his holdings, and the blockchain tracking group Bubblemaps found the value of that stake has declined by more than $80 million, to about $43 million, while he’s been unable to access his account.
“I am the first and single largest victim, as a result of their wrongful blacklisting of my WLFI token wallet back in 2025, that violates basic investor rights and blockchain principles of fairness,” Sun wrote on X.
“Every action taken by the WLFI team to extract fees from users, to secretly implant backdoor controls over user assets, to freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process, and to treat the crypto community as a personal ATM — all of these actions are illegitimate and were never authorized by any fair, transparent, or good-faith community governance process,” the investor added.
World Liberty responded to Sun’s claims with an apparent threat of a lawsuit and accused the crypto mogul of engaging in misconduct himself, alluding to a civil fraud lawsuit filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 that he settled last month by agreeing to pay a $10 million fine.
“Does anyone still believe @justinsuntron?” WLFI posted on X. “Justin’s favorite move is playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct. Same playbook, different target. WLFI isn’t the first. We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal.”
Okra! and…truffles?
Aaanyway, we, the taxpayers, will be footing the bill for that big, tacky ballroom over the fallout shelter because last night ~proved~ he needs a GD ballroom. FFS!
“The manifesto, which was full of anti-Trump and anti-Christian rhetoric, was sent to Allen’s family minutes before he opened fire at the Washington Hilton on Saturday, a White House official told Newsweek.”
NOPE! Not anti-Christian. He felt remorse in advance (pre-morse?) and actually thanked his church in addition to family, friends, etc.
***
Excepts:
“In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)”
“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.”
“Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.
Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.
Thank you to my family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years.”
***
How convenient that this was in the manifesto:
“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.”
***
*How odd that he’s making the case for that stupid ballroom. Wait! Maybe all schools should be ballrooms with bulletproof glass.
Most shooter’s manifestos remain classified so they don’t inspire more would be shooter’s.
Why did they release Cole Allen’s manifesto almost immediately?
2:47 PM • Apr 26, 2026 • 674K Views
*Was it even his? I mean, it’s pretty pro-ballroom. Is any of it real? They released footage of someone running through the lobby pretty quickly. Who took that photo of him shirtless, face down on the floor?
Diner menu 11am ET…
KING CHARLES arrives to a burning room. Between Iran, Ukraine, and the toxic Epstein shadow, the US-UK alliance is on life support. We are breaking down the geopolitical heartburn on The Digital Diner.
MAGA Influencers Allegedly Use Secret Group Chats Named After Trump Shooting to Coordinate Political Messaging
A former MAGA influencer exposes the synchronized messaging tactics used by pro-Trump influencers during crises
Within minutes of a gunman breaching the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on 25 April 2026, dozens of pro-Trump influencers posted an identical message, and a former insider says that was no coincidence.
As chaos unfolded inside the Washington Hilton, a strikingly uniform wave of messaging swept across X and other platforms. Conservative commentators, politicians, and influencers, many with millions of followers, converged on the same talking point: the shooting proved Donald Trump needed his $400 million (£296 million) White House ballroom.
The synchronicity prompted Marco Foster, an artist and executive producer at Really American Media, to highlight a claim from former MAGA influencer Ashley St Clair about how such messaging spreads.
‘All of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their messaging in lockstep via groupchats,’ St. Clair wrote. ‘All of these people came to the conclusion that after what they saw at the WHCD, their first thought was “Trump needs his ballroom.” One of the main group chats in which they coordinate this messaging is literally called “Fight, Fight, Fight!” after the “attempt” on Trump’s life in Butler.’
Trump himself had set the frame moments earlier, describing the venue as ‘not a particularly secure building’ and using the shooting as direct support for the White House Ballroom project. The influencer posts followed within minutes, using near-identical language, before details about the shooting had been officially confirmed.
St Clair’s allegation provides one possible explanation for that speed. The groupchat named ‘Fight, Fight, Fight!’, drawn from Trump’s raised-fist moment after the July 2024 Butler assassination attempt, is, she claims, one of the primary channels through which real-time messaging coordination flows.
St Clair spent nearly a decade as a rising fixture in the MAGA influencer ecosystem, recruited as a teenager through Turning Point USA and building a following exceeding one million on X.
In a recent video and interview, she described a pay-to-play ecosystem running through Republican consulting firms. Right-wing influencers access platforms built by GOP operatives, including former White House officials, where they can view campaigns and opt in to promote specific messaging or legislative pushes. Compensation, she said, is structured per click or as a flat fee.
Beyond the paid campaigns, St Clair described a coordination layer operating through groupchats on X shared with administration officials and Trump’s team. When a scandal breaks, messaging is coordinated in real time. Smaller influencers outside these chats see the resulting wave of aligned posts and interpret it as genuine agreement.
The mechanism St Clair describes is difficult to trace precisely because it is designed to be. When a campaign or PAC pays a consulting firm, that payment appears on Federal Election Commission records. But once money moves to individual influencers, no further reporting is required. Experts in election law have noted that current FEC rules do not require social media influencers to disclose paid political partnerships, with intermediary marketing agencies acting as a further layer of opacity.
And just like that, we talked about something other than Epstein, Iran, ICE, and high prices for a whole day.
NEW THREAD
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Jack, thanks. as always, a good choice for early morning contemplations about what happened last night.
Apr 26, 2026
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, with President Trump in attendance, ended in a shooting on Saturday. Officials identified the suspect as 31-year-old Cole Allen of Torrance, California. CBS News’ Nancy Cordes and Sam Vinograd have more.
CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe speaks with Weijia Jiang, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, about her experience during Saturday night’s shooting.
fromWAPO Inside the chaotic correspondents’ dinner shooting: ‘Get down, get down!’
Plates clanged, glasses clinked, and at the front of the room sat President Donald Trump, making his long-awaited return to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday.
It was just after 8:30 p.m., in the basement of the Washington Hilton. The president was on stage, locked in conversation with CBS reporter Weijia Jiang; spread out in front of them were thousands of attendees, seated at more than 250 tables, as waiters cleared away their salads.
Then loud popping sounds were heard from the lobby. “I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump would say later.
For the third time in three years, Trump found himself under the threat of gunfire. Hundreds of people — table after table — dove to the floor, reporters huddling next to Trump officials and other dinner guests, some draped by white linen tablecloths, others pressed up against the ballroom’s walls.
“Get down, get down!” someone yelled out.
At the front of the room, Secret Service officers first rushed Vice President JD Vance off the stage, then Trump a few seconds later. Other officials in the line of succession, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were quickly whisked away, too.
Law enforcement officials barked out instructions — “Clear a path! Clear a path!” — as they escorted Cabinet members and other senior Trump officials out of the ballroom. Some attendees were injured in the scramble; Harmeet Dhillon, a top Justice Department official, said her head was bruised as agents ran across tables and chairs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel and others gathered with security officials outside.
For minutes, chaos reigned in the ballroom. Some White House officials, who had been sitting at an elevated table overlooking the floor, said they were just as confused about what had just unfolded, even as they watched their colleagues quickly exit the room. Trump and Vance were taken to secure locations, the administration said.
Meanwhile, law enforcement and White House Correspondents’ Association officials gave conflicting guidance — security officers instructing attendees in the lobby to promptly leave, while some media leaders encouraged reporters in the ballroom to stay, insisting that the dinner would go on.
“This is a crime scene,” said one Secret Service officer, telling attendees to keep walking out of the hotel and go a block across the street.
Law enforcement agents climbed over people in the crowded room. At least one man who was having trouble walking was escorted out of the room.
Reporters milled about on the sidewalks outside the hotel. Some interviewed each other, asking what they had seen, and learning little.
Around 9:40 p.m., Trump departed the hotel, accompanied by his security detail and press pool. An hour later, the president addressed the nation from the White House.
“That was very unexpected,” Trump said dryly, thanking law enforcement for their response. “This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties, with members of the press. And in a certain way, it did.”
He also criticized the hotel’s security protocols, reflecting on his prior brushes with violence. Trump was wounded by a shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, during his 2024 presidential campaign; weeks later, Secret Service agents would foil another would-be assassin who had crouched in the bushes around one of the president’s golf courses.
“It’s not a particularly secure building,” the president said, calling the shooting an example of why his White House ballroom is needed.
Striking an atypical tone, Trump praised the media for their coverage and said he was committed to the free speech ideals that underpinned the dinner, as White House reporters in tuxedos and formalwear peppered him with questions.
“I fought like hell to stay,” Trump said, vowing to return to the dinner and said it would be rescheduled within 30 days.
Saturday’s event was already shaping up as an unusual night in the worlds of politics and media. For more than 60 years, the Washington Hilton has hosted the correspondent’s dinner, an event that has mushroomed from a celebration for White House reporters to a gala replete with pre-parties, post-parties and celebrity encounters.
It was set to be Trump’s first appearance at the annual dinner since 2015. He was a guest of The Washington Post in 2011 — and the target of the sitting U.S. president’s jokes, as Barack Obama tweaked him from stage. Trump refused to attend the event during his first administration, and many of his deputies followed suit.
Sometimes dubbed “The Hinckley Hilton” — following John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan outside the hotel more than 45 years ago — the venue has been home to numerous high-profile events, many of which have been attended by sitting presidents and overseen by federal law enforcement familiar with the building’s layout. Guests faced minimal screening to enter the hotel on Saturday night — merely flashing their ticket to get on the
rounds.
After the ballroom opened at 7:30 p.m., thousands of guests descended on escalators to the hotel’s lower levels, where they were swiftly whisked through several magnetometers. Security took beer bottles and cocktail glasses away from people as they entered.
But the screening protocols were inconsistent; some guests were told to throw their umbrellas out into a big, blue trash can, while others were allowed to take them inside.
The president entered the ballroom at 8:15 p.m. as a band played “Hail to the Chief.” Trump officials, sprinkled around the room, cheered him loudly. In the middle of the stage hung a banner that read “Celebrating the First Amendment” over a photo of the White House mansion.
About 20 minutes later, the shots rang out. Officers with ballistic vests and long guns took control of the stage as the president and vice president were rushed off. The room fell silent, plates clanging with journalists and Trump administration officials hiding under tables.
Secret Service agents ran from the back of the room, clambering over chairs. “Watch your feet, watch your hands,” some shouted.
Law enforcement officials said they had a suspect in custody and that he would be arraigned in court on Monday.
At the White House two hours later, Trump said that he had planned “the most inappropriate speech ever made,” as he prepared to jibe an army of reporters who he often derides as “fake news.” But that speech may need to be permanently shelved, the president said.
“I’ll be very boring the next time,” Trump joked.
Sir Keir Starmer faces a difficult time on Who Wants to Remain a Millionaire when asked the all-important question regarding his connection to Peter Mandelson.
speaking of millionaires
No matter how much we tax the ultra-rich, they keep getting ultra richer and the money doesn’t flow to the people who need it the most.
Low ratings, everybody hates him, he is demented, delusional, diseased, senile and possibly showing inherited Alzheimer’s, stinks and has no idea what is going on around him. Perfect time to survive an assassination attempt. At least this time there were no collateral damages. That ballroom is not going to build itself.
The grift never takes a day off, and neither do we. We are tearing apart this ballroom delusion and the rest of today’s political dumpster fire on the Digital Diner. Grab a seat. We are live at 11am ET.
This morning has been a good one, so far (0647). I learned several things, one I had not known at all before. Another was that practice improves reducing collateral damage and death. It is a good morning to sit inside and drink coffee while watching revenge videos on YouTube and read other things.
The first, and very important, learning is about “pomodoro”, invented by an Italian using a timer in a tomato body. It is a work or study technique using a physical act and timed sessions with specfic break times. There have been many of these in the past, but this one is interesting due to the physical act of setting a physical timer.
One pleasure I have is watching revenge videos on YouTube. Some of based on an actual event, others are human created and a few are the chat created. All use computer generated voices and most use computer generated pictures or videos. A few use self-videos with a pomodoro overlay. Quite interesting to see it in use. Combines old school with modern computer use.
The second thing is stupid really, really wants his ballroom. At least this time there were no casualties to hide.
The Past Wasn’t Better. It Was Quieter.
More at link
I like that Pomodoro Technique bluebronc, thanks for the link. I follow a version it for annoying long-term tasks (like de cluttering the house): Do something every day, no matter how small. It adds up over time. Don’t try to do it all at once, that leads to procrastination.
One good thing about the past (50’s-60’s ?) was the tax rate on rich people. Lots of evil mixed in, though; like the assassination attempts were real, many succeeding. That warn’t no good.
If there is video the guvvamint took it
There’s video of Kashewnut at the WCD. Not under a table, just on his chair looking at his phone and looking around. Did they know about this guy and decide to let him get just close enough to make a good show? Who fired the shots? Is there video untainted by tRUMPsky loyalists?
It looks like the guy just bolted through some very inattentive guards whose first instinct was to fire wide. Did the guy even have a gun? Was he just there to yell ‘free Palestine’ or ‘no data centers’ or something? He was running/falling forward, so did he fire a shot? Was he even armed?
The shooter never got on the same floor as the President. He was up on the mezzanine level approaching the magnetometer, so the security worked whether real or planned.
Breaking news. Real News Network.
🤭
Continuing my stories of the Baja
The Cat Who Loved BBQ
Because surviving an assassination attempt is exactly the same as holding the Union together. We dissect this absolute dumpster fire of a historical comparison on today’s Digital Diner. Catch the full show at 11am ET:
of course it was staged…
today’s meme…
1. Renegade, Todd Pletcher, Irad Ortiz Jr., 4-1 Jamie
2. Albus, Riley Mott, Manny Franco, 30-1
3. Intrepido, Jeff Mullins, Hector Berrios, 50-1
4. Litmus Test, Bob Baffert, Martin Garcia, 30-1
5. Right to Party, Kenny McPeek, Chris Elliott, 30-1
6. Commandment, Brad Cox, Luis Saez, 6-1
7. Danon Bourbon, Manabu Ikezoe, Atsuya Nishimura, 20-1
8. So Happy, Mark Glatt, Mike Smith, 15-1
9. The Puma, Gustavo Delgado, Javier Castellano, 10-1
10. Wonder Dean, Daisuke Takayanagi, Ryusei Sakai, 30-1
11. Incredibolt, Riley Mott, Jaime Torres, 20-1
12. Chief Wallabee, Bill Mott, Junior Alvarado, 8-1
13. Silent Tactic, Mark Casse, Cristian Torres, 20-1
14. Potente, Bob Baffert, Juan Hernandez, 20-1
15. Emerging Market, Chad Brown, Flavien Prat, 15-1
16. Pavlovian, Doug O’Neill, Edwin Maldonado, 30-1 Craig
17. Six Speed, Bhupat Seemar, Brian Hernandez Jr., 50-1
18. Further Ado, Brad Cox, John Velazquez, 6-1
19. Golden Tempo, Cherie DeVaux, Jose Ortiz, 30-1
20. Fulleffort, Brad Cox, Tyler Gaffalione, 20-1
Also eligible
21. Great White, John Ennis, Alex Achard, 50-1
22. Ocelli, Whit Beckman, Joe Ramos, 50-1
23. Robusta, Doug O’Neill, Emisael Jaramillo, 50-1
24. Corona de Oro, Dallas Stewart, Brian Hernandez Jr., 50-1
Jamie… I’ll take The Puma
because I LOVE cats…
So he just happens to go to the dinner for the first time, and there just happens to be a shooting attempt?
Uh-huh.
Any time somebody does something for the first time it makes me look closer at it.
—Columbo
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-caused-extensive-damage-us-military-bases-publicly-known-rcna331853
Iran caused more extensive damage to U.S. military bases than publicly known
U.S. bases and equipment across the Middle East came under attack — including from an Iranian F-5, despite American air defenses — and repairs could cost billions of dollars.
Jamie, put me on Right to Party. If necessary I’m going to fight for our Right to Party.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=eBShN8qT4lk&si=d2Yi_sXjyeWEgiMX
I’m gonna make big money on Pavlovian at 30-1. Maybe i’ll actually place a bet for the first time ever.
The Golden Tempo will beat them all like a drum.
But….but…..what happens when Pavlovian hears the bell?
Music to shoot by:
I’m sure the fact that the only thing that the newsies are talking about this morning is last night’s WHCA dinner shooting is just a coincidence. And the fact that Allen apparently took a train from CA to DC and brought his weapons with him is normal. HMMM. That sounds strange.
So he just happens to go to the dinner for the first time, and there just happens to be a shooting attempt?
—Rule Number 6…There are no co-incidences.
—Jethro Leroy Gibbs
You can carry weapons ON A TRAIN?
Just realized that’s the hotel Mrs. P and I stayed in for Craig and David’s wedding.
Sturg, so it seems, unless he was in DC for weeks. Reports are he bought the weapons in the few weeks before the event.
BTW Gibbs’ Rule 6 is my Rule 2.
Stur
If you don’t check your baggage and get a roomette or larger, there is no check on what you are carrying on the train.
Pog, i had forgotten you guys stayed at the Hinkley Hilton. Let’s chat on this staged theory in the diner today. Call me skeptical, but willing to explore.
Poobah, as pitiful as this sounds, I’m prepping a witness for a Wednesday hearing at 11 today.
BTW, Rule 1 is Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see. That appeared in Ed Poe’s “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether”. Marvin played it forward, with a lilt.
Do you suppose they want to put restrictions on a train travel, like they did with air travel after 9/11. Couple that with the manufactured global energy crisis, and the rollout of digital IDs worldwide, and nobody’s going anywhere.
I take the train regularly and have started to wonder why there isn’t more security.
The Ballroom promotion is a Red Herring.
I’m awaiting moderation? Okay then.
The United States has a sorry history of assassination attempts and successes. Until 45/47 not one president has been suspected of staging or creating an assassination. The magic ear shot and miraculous ear healing in Butler, two dead, started the questioning.
German take on the shooter by one of the public News Outlets.
From the German feed, it definitely looks as if the officer who was wounded was because of friendly fire and that the man arrested never fired a shot.
This is from the (left leaning- kind of) print magazine Der Spiegel.
Don’t miss the comments 😏
Today in the Diner…
DC Hotel Shooting, ICE Funding & Kentucky Derby
The DC hotel shooting sparks staged event rumors as Trump spins the chaos into a real estate pitch for a new ballroom. Plus, Kentucky Derby picks.
It was a wild night in DC. We watched a near-tragedy at the Washington Hilton immediately devolve into a real estate pitch. Trump didn’t miss a beat, leveraging a live-shooter situation to demand a new ballroom, lying through his teeth about the capacity. His dream venue holds a thousand people at best; the Hilton sat 2,650. But facts rarely slow down the grift. Meanwhile, the internet is already cooking up staged event theories, comparing the bizarre paramilitary photo-ops to the lingering mysteries and missing emergency room reports from the Butler shooting.
To cleanse the palate from the political dumpster fire, we’re locking in our Kentucky Derby picks. Throwing a dollar at a 30-to-1 horse named Pavlovian seems like the most rational investment strategy left in this country. Then it’s back into the muck to look at Congress quietly rubber-stamping a massive, unbid funding increase for ICE, and Kara Swisher dropping reality checks on tech bros in coal country. Grab your coffee. We’re getting through this before I escape to Virginia horse country for the weekend.
https://trailmix.cc/chat
https://trailmix.cc
https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
00:25 DC Hotel Shooting & Ballroom Spin
06:17 Shooter Profile & Security Protocols
10:53 Kentucky Derby Picks & Odds
24:00 Middleburg Road Trip & Jackie Kennedy History
34:00 Defunding ICE & Tech Bros in Coal Country
38:30 Henry Winkler on Trump’s Tactics
42:00 Butler PA Comparisons & Staged Theories
58:00 Outro & Brahms String Quartet
a lot of lazy regime-serving journalism on the affair
Aaaand this one. Another publicly funded channel, ZDF.
That’s it from your Europe correspondent, today☀️
The left-wing press is truly the enemy of the PEOPLE. If there’s ever a second civil war True Americans will remember this and give them no quarter.
Jamie,
Franka Potente is the actress in „run Lola run“, who spends the whole movie running through the streets of Berlin. So I think that’s a good name for my Kentucky Horse!
Winterlinde
I have you covered
Phil et al
Most of us have stated quite often that anyone with workable penis (including the guards) don’t belong in a women’s prison. Also, very few claims of assault by trans women (unlike numerous against male guards), but I still hold with the banning of the working equipment.
Jamie, on the show Katie affirmed that biological men who identify as women are women.
Maybe the older and more rational folks here aren’t willing to throw women to the wolves, but Katie and the younger generation have no such problems. And lets face it, while you might claim to be against it, it’s not a deal breaker when you’re voting for a politician so you might morally claim it’s wrong but you enable it by your votes.
You see me with, I couldn’t betray women like that. If a politician supported feeding people to wolves it doesn’t matter what else they supported that I liked, I couldn’t in good conscious vote for them. James Talarico for instance supports throwing women to the wolves and putting biological men with working penis’s into female bathrooms, locker-rooms, and prisons.
And there have been assaults by trans-women, they just don’t get attention. There have been assaults, and disturbing incidents.
And understand many of the younger progressives think they’re being a good ally, they aren’t. They’re generating hatred and destroying peoples good will towards LGQBT. And the transgender ideology will eventually hurt people like Craig.
I don’t know if he has a partner he’s married to but gender ideology undermines the Supreme Court’s argument for gay marriage. One cannot be born gay if one is born in the wrong body, for all we know in a few years Craig will start wearing a dress and putting on lipstick and he’ll be in a “straight” relationship according to the gender ideology, which means he wasn’t born gay.
Kind of got off point there but it’s a very damaging ideology and it won’t just hurt women who are in prison and out of sight and out of mind.
Rewatching the video of SS ushering Vance out from Vance’s side of the table and even behind it (maybe held up their phone). They tried to move Adolf the same way, but tRUMP tripped.
They did not pile on him like they did Reagan. He couldn’t walk fast enough and he tripped.
https://www.facebook.com/roguednncc/videos/a-resurfaced-video-from-los-angeles-abc-7-shows-the-white-house-correspondents-d/1528564232604521/
Usha Vance is NOT in the clip WITH Cole Allen.
It does note he’s a Cal-Tech student. Something to do with missing scientists, perhaps, or genocide, or war, or war crimes against civilians in the US, or corruption, or pedophilia and SA, or the deterioration of our coequal branches of government, or he’s been displaced by Ai, or any number of things.
Looks like we have a troll
Jack
RFKJ ran…completely forgot his plus one, who he happens to have married.
Maybe they will all just go to their bunkers now and leave the rest of us humans alone.
Anon, Craig and David married April 6, 2013. It was a great party.
There are pedophile protectors in Congress, and there’s a pedo and adjudicated rapist-in-chief who is compromised by BiBi & Putin. Much bigger issue. Global impact.
Don’t think for a second today’s troll actually gives a rat’s behind about any women, let alone those in prison. It’s just fried baloney to change the subject.
Move along.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/04/20/google-starts-scanning-all-your-photos-as-new-update-goes-live/
Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live
Take a moment to think before you dive in. That’s the best advice for Google Photos users, as the company confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation. That means Gemini seeing who you know and what you do. You likely have tens or hundreds of thousands of photos. They’re all exposed if you update.
We’re talking Personal Intelligence, Google’s latest AI upgrade path which lets users opt-in to connecting Google apps to Gemini. Why search for a doctor’s appointment when Google has access to all your calendar events. Why search for a party invite when it reads all your emails. And why search for a specific photo of you and your loved ones to create an image, when it sees all your photos.
From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️
Why didn’t The Mentalist have this covered❓
Anon
The sexual spectrum biologically is quite wide depending on the x y combinations and science is discovering more genes effects on gender. For that reason, I differentiate between identity and behavior … criminal assault no matter who is doing it, is still criminal. There are trans that I would trust with a child more than the related uncle. Prisons are a whole different matter as the inmates have no say in who is housed and who is in charge. For that reason, you have to side with the safest possible circumstances and there a whole lot more assaults by male guards against female inmates. So you have to keep the penises far away from the vaginas.
*This is spot on and hilarious!
Adolf needs a bump in his poll numbers and he needs that ballroom ASAP. Enter, the lone wolf.
Looks like we are going to need to replace the troll barriers. A shame but they do shit all over the place.
Jack
It’s obvious to me that Phil is Chunk…
same crap… same bat channel…
thank you Craig for blowing him away…
Well, I’m not young or in Texas, but I couldn’t pull a lever (ok, click on a touch screen) and vote for Cornyn unless the only choice was a winger more right than he is.
meme #2…
The above anonymous is me..
Oooh, Craig mentioned WSJ piece on Epstein the other day, and tRUMPsky would have to shake hands with the journalist who did the reporting. Did the phony baloney event also get him out of that/not allowing mention of Epstein? Timing is everything, innit?
A statistic from the BBFF (Hi, Bob, miss ya man). And yet you rely upon claims of sexual assault in women’s prisons and assume the truth of those claims to force trans women inmates into male prisons, to say nothing of believing the false claim that that progressives back policies that protect pedos.
And Trump is a rapist IMHO. But then again, I believe his accusers, especially the ones he paid to keep quiet. His is not the most frequently mentioned name in the Epstein files because they were just buds, and if the references were innocent, Pam Bondi would not have wasted federal resources in an understaffed DOJ to redact them to try and protect him.
BTW, I’d bet there’s much less chance of seeing Craig prance around in a dress than Rudy Giuliani, but neither of them identify as a woman I’d wager.
meme #3…
just arrived Oakton plantation in Middleburg Virginia
Encountered WWII reenactors with a 1944 Willys just like the one I had in high school
Seen reports 87% of polled Americans believe it was staged for the damn ballroom.
Is The King still coming tomorrow to visit the kinglet❓
Chuck is famously sangfroid at the sound of flying bullets.
*Two months later…
At Linda Tripp’s store in Middleburg Virginia (she died in 2020)
Elegant food for 2,000 people went totally to waste? That’s the sad part.
I don’t know what that is but must be good…
Seen clips of this song all over and finally decided to listen. She calls out a few things.
Burrata is an abomination. Perfectly good mozzarella until you cut it open and it’s soft and sloppy. The texture is off-putting, IMO.
TMI🤢🤢🤢
Nora O’Donnell really got tRUMPsky, Ha!
Just like they assume someone is talking about them when they mention N&zis, Gestapo, and fascists…tRUMPsky assumed Cole Allen was calling him a rapist and pedophile.
Anyway, none of this is tracking. Fox cutting off a correspondent, the talking points for influencers to sell that ballroom, low poll numbers so he finally decides to go to a WHCD and there’s a something/nothing that many underact to, and old Hegseth is smiling after the fact…and like Butler & the Kirk event, they won’t share allll of the details. Why was Hegseth smiling? Were they planning to let the old guy go down?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-erupts-in-60-minutes-interview-im-not-a-pedophile/
“The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President,” O’Donnell said. “He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, ‘Administration officials, they are targets.’”
O’Donnell then asked the president about his reaction to Allen’s rationalization that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. Horrible people,” the president replied. “Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
“Oh, do you think he was referring to you?” O’Donnell asked, before Trump continued.
Crypto crap and it all ties to ta-da Epstein.
He said to Nora she’s a disgusting person. That’s when I bailed, dog had to go poop.
He’s lying as well about how he fell flat on his face. Truth is he can no longer walk upright or normally.
Having dinner at Goodstone Inn, Middleburg — ah, the Pork Diane!
https://www.rawstory.com/world-liberty-crypto-trump/
Trump family’s crypto venture accused of freezing out investors as value plummets
Crypto billionaire Justin Sun alleged that World Liberty Financial grants company officials with unilateral authority over user accounts – including the power to freeze them – and an independent analysis found the value of his personal stake in the company has shriveled while he’s been locked out of his account, reported NBC News.
“I have always been an ardent supporter of President Trump and his crypto friendly policy,” Sun posted Monday on X. “[However,] this is the opposite of decentralization. This is a trap door marketed as an open door. I denounce the ongoing token scandals by the bad actors at WLFI.”
Sun claims his own account has been frozen since September, preventing him from selling his holdings, and the blockchain tracking group Bubblemaps found the value of that stake has declined by more than $80 million, to about $43 million, while he’s been unable to access his account.
“I am the first and single largest victim, as a result of their wrongful blacklisting of my WLFI token wallet back in 2025, that violates basic investor rights and blockchain principles of fairness,” Sun wrote on X.
“Every action taken by the WLFI team to extract fees from users, to secretly implant backdoor controls over user assets, to freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process, and to treat the crypto community as a personal ATM — all of these actions are illegitimate and were never authorized by any fair, transparent, or good-faith community governance process,” the investor added.
World Liberty responded to Sun’s claims with an apparent threat of a lawsuit and accused the crypto mogul of engaging in misconduct himself, alluding to a civil fraud lawsuit filed against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 that he settled last month by agreeing to pay a $10 million fine.
“Does anyone still believe @justinsuntron?” WLFI posted on X. “Justin’s favorite move is playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct. Same playbook, different target. WLFI isn’t the first. We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal.”
Okra! and…truffles?
Aaanyway, we, the taxpayers, will be footing the bill for that big, tacky ballroom over the fallout shelter because last night ~proved~ he needs a GD ballroom. FFS!
think so, from their on site farm
https://www.newsweek.com/cole-allen-manifesto-shooting-suspect-anti-trump-message-detailed-11880026
Read Cole Allen’s Manifesto in Full
“The manifesto, which was full of anti-Trump and anti-Christian rhetoric, was sent to Allen’s family minutes before he opened fire at the Washington Hilton on Saturday, a White House official told Newsweek.”
NOPE! Not anti-Christian. He felt remorse in advance (pre-morse?) and actually thanked his church in addition to family, friends, etc.
***
Excepts:
“In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)”
“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.”
“Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.
Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.
Thank you to my family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years.”
***
How convenient that this was in the manifesto:
“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.”
***
*How odd that he’s making the case for that stupid ballroom. Wait! Maybe all schools should be ballrooms with bulletproof glass.
https://x.com/mtgreenee/status/2048489181781926366
@mtgreenee x.com
Why does every shooter have a manifesto?
Most shooter’s manifestos remain classified so they don’t inspire more would be shooter’s.
Why did they release Cole Allen’s manifesto almost immediately?
2:47 PM • Apr 26, 2026 • 674K Views
*Was it even his? I mean, it’s pretty pro-ballroom. Is any of it real? They released footage of someone running through the lobby pretty quickly. Who took that photo of him shirtless, face down on the floor?
Diner menu 11am ET…
KING CHARLES arrives to a burning room. Between Iran, Ukraine, and the toxic Epstein shadow, the US-UK alliance is on life support. We are breaking down the geopolitical heartburn on The Digital Diner.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/coordinated-messaging-maga-influencers-1793693
MAGA Influencers Allegedly Use Secret Group Chats Named After Trump Shooting to Coordinate Political Messaging
A former MAGA influencer exposes the synchronized messaging tactics used by pro-Trump influencers during crises
Within minutes of a gunman breaching the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on 25 April 2026, dozens of pro-Trump influencers posted an identical message, and a former insider says that was no coincidence.
As chaos unfolded inside the Washington Hilton, a strikingly uniform wave of messaging swept across X and other platforms. Conservative commentators, politicians, and influencers, many with millions of followers, converged on the same talking point: the shooting proved Donald Trump needed his $400 million (£296 million) White House ballroom.
The synchronicity prompted Marco Foster, an artist and executive producer at Really American Media, to highlight a claim from former MAGA influencer Ashley St Clair about how such messaging spreads.
‘All of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their messaging in lockstep via groupchats,’ St. Clair wrote. ‘All of these people came to the conclusion that after what they saw at the WHCD, their first thought was “Trump needs his ballroom.” One of the main group chats in which they coordinate this messaging is literally called “Fight, Fight, Fight!” after the “attempt” on Trump’s life in Butler.’
Trump himself had set the frame moments earlier, describing the venue as ‘not a particularly secure building’ and using the shooting as direct support for the White House Ballroom project. The influencer posts followed within minutes, using near-identical language, before details about the shooting had been officially confirmed.
St Clair’s allegation provides one possible explanation for that speed. The groupchat named ‘Fight, Fight, Fight!’, drawn from Trump’s raised-fist moment after the July 2024 Butler assassination attempt, is, she claims, one of the primary channels through which real-time messaging coordination flows.
St Clair spent nearly a decade as a rising fixture in the MAGA influencer ecosystem, recruited as a teenager through Turning Point USA and building a following exceeding one million on X.
In a recent video and interview, she described a pay-to-play ecosystem running through Republican consulting firms. Right-wing influencers access platforms built by GOP operatives, including former White House officials, where they can view campaigns and opt in to promote specific messaging or legislative pushes. Compensation, she said, is structured per click or as a flat fee.
Beyond the paid campaigns, St Clair described a coordination layer operating through groupchats on X shared with administration officials and Trump’s team. When a scandal breaks, messaging is coordinated in real time. Smaller influencers outside these chats see the resulting wave of aligned posts and interpret it as genuine agreement.
The mechanism St Clair describes is difficult to trace precisely because it is designed to be. When a campaign or PAC pays a consulting firm, that payment appears on Federal Election Commission records. But once money moves to individual influencers, no further reporting is required. Experts in election law have noted that current FEC rules do not require social media influencers to disclose paid political partnerships, with intermediary marketing agencies acting as a further layer of opacity.
And just like that, we talked about something other than Epstein, Iran, ICE, and high prices for a whole day.
NEW THREAD