Donald Trump Just Set A New Record For The Most Assassination Attempts On A President
And his record will probably get bigger
Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, tried to rush into the White House Correspondents Dinner last night to kill President Donald Trump. It is the third time a home-grown would-be assassin has made the attempt, surpassing the two attempts made on the life of President Gerald R. Ford.
Commentary today centers on the rhetoric of Democratic politicians, the gleeful behavior of Democratic rank-and-file, and the inattention of traditional media outlets towards left-wing violence. Most interesting to your humble reporter is the sheer amount of Pseudologia Fantastica, or pathological lying, in baseless conspiracy theories about a ‘staged’ attack.
Pathological lying is distinguished from ordinary lies in that it seems unconscious. The liar is constructing a ‘preferred reality’ rather than simply trying to get away with something. Pathological liars plan events, then rewrite the events, internalizing a false narrative to protect their ego from cognitive dissonance and avoid confronting their own conscience. While it is not a diagnosis, pathological lying is usually linked to conditions like narcissistic personality disorders and borderline personality.
Recall the days immediately after the 7 October attacks on Israel, when Hamas fans took to the streets and tore down posters of the kidnapping victims. These vandals were not in denial that Hamas had kidnapped anyone. Rather, they did not want to confront the immorality of kidnapping when their ‘side’ was at fault, so they tore down images that threatened their sense of themselves as ‘good people’ on the right side of history. They were protecting themselves, not Hamas.
This same psychology is behind the instant denials of what happened last night. Within moments of the story breaking, X and Bluesky saw the word “staged” trending as users who hate Trump declared their opinions in advance of any evidence. Most of these claims referenced the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024, which has also been the subject of conspiracy theories since it happened.
Insane as these denials seem, they are rational — in fact, psychology calls them rationalizations. They are coming from people who approve of violence against Trump knowing that it is morally wrong. Confronted with the fantasy playing out in the real world, they deny their own immorality by projecting it on the victim.
It is inarguable that this mindset exists on the left, and that it is widespread. For while any human is capable of displaying this behavior, it is more pronounced on the left than the right. This is not my supposition, it is the message of cold, hard data. Mr. Allen is in the age group most correlated with this mindset.
“We identified three key variables that predict support for violence”, Zack Dulberg and Max Horder reported a year ago. They are “left-wing authoritarianism (characterized by a willingness to use coercion and punishment for progressive aims), external locus of control (the extent to which individuals feel powerless in their lives), and use of the left-wing social media platform Bluesky.” Events last night certainly validated the last point.
