It wasn’t a mystery. By 8 a.m. Sunday, major media outlets were reporting that, according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the gunman accused of charging a Secret Service checkpoint and opening fire outside the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner the previous night was believed to have been targeting administration officials.
Later that morning, any remaining doubts about the shooter’s motive were erased when The New York Post published a copy of a manifesto he had written and sent to family members roughly 10 minutes before he fired his first shot.
In the 1052-word document, the accused gunman, Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, stated that he was indeed targeting administration officials “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” For some unknown reason, FBI Director Kash Patel was excluded from his list of targets.
Regarding President Donald Trump, Allen wrote, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
From there, Allen ran through familiar progressive talking points and drew on Marxist rhetoric, framing the problems in America today as a struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed.
He signed the manifesto “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.”
To say the least, Allen was a Leftist, and his manifesto was only one piece of the evidence.
Fox News reported that Allen’s brother contacted the New London Police Department in Connecticut after the shooting.
According to Fox, his sister, Avriana Allen, informed authorities in Rockville, Maryland, that her brother “had made increasingly radical statements and often spoke about doing ‘something’ to address issues in the world.”
She told investigators he had bought two handguns and a shotgun, which he kept at their parents’ home without their knowledge, and that he regularly practiced at a shooting range. She also said Allen was connected to a group called “The Wide Awakes” and had attended a “No Kings” protest in California.
Additionally, Allen’s lengthy history on the social media platform Bluesky demonstrates his left-wing ideology.
But none of that mattered to former President Barack Obama, who pretended in an early evening post on X that “details about the motives” were still unknown. He tried to frame the violence as a “both sides” issue, warning followers, “It’s incumbent upon all [of] us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy.”
Backlash to his attempt at gaslighting was swift and fierce. Here are a few responses:
Obama wasn’t alone. The Left was clearly struggling to craft a coherent response to the third assassination attempt on Trump.
Neither the New York Times nor CNN would acknowledge the shooter’s motives on Sunday.
Some liberals claimed that the incident had been staged by the Trump administration to strengthen the case for the White House ballroom project.
Satire site The Babylon Bee published an amusing story on Sunday about the Left’s refusal to admit the truth. The piece was titled, “‘This Is A Both Sides Issue,’ Says Side That Shot President Trump, Assassinated Charlie Kirk, Tried To Assassinate Kavanaugh, Tried To Shoot Trump Again, Shot Steve Scalise, Firebombed Governor Shapiro, Tried To Shoot Trump A Third Time, (cont’d).”
By the end of the day, there was no ambiguity left to hide behind. The manifesto, the comments from Allen’s siblings, and his social media history made his motives unmistakably clear. What followed wasn’t a search for truth, but a scramble to obscure it. In the end, the facts didn’t just tell the story; they exposed the lengths some were willing to go to avoid acknowledging it.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY