Former President Barack Obama commented Sunday on the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and administration officials at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and claimed that it was unclear why the gunman opened fire at the event.
Obama addressed the shooting in a social media post hours after reports shed light on the gunman’s plan and reason for targeting Trump at the dinner. When Obama condemned the attack, however, he claimed that “details about the motives” remained a mystery.
“Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy,” Obama wrote. “It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I’m grateful to them – and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay.”
The shooter, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, laid out his plan and defended his violence in a 1,000-word document that he posted minutes before his attack. In the manifesto, Allen referred to Trump as a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor” and called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin.” Allen wrote that his goal was to murder Trump administration officials at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, targeting them from “highest-ranking to lowest,” excluding FBI Director Kash Patel for unknown reasons.
After the shooting, Republicans — including President Donald Trump — urged Democrats to tone down their political rhetoric and “resolve our differences.”
“I do think that the hate speech of the Democrats … is very dangerous,” Trump told CBS News during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday.
It appears that Allen bought into many leftist talking points regarding President Trump and his administration’s policies. Allen latched onto conspiracy theories about Trump’s involvement with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and condemned U.S. military strikes on suspected drug runners in the Caribbean, calling them “fisherman executed without trial.”
Allen, who described himself as a Christian, argued that his faith required him to turn to violence for the sake of people who are being “oppressed.” In his manifesto, Allen sought to reconcile his faith with his heinous plan.
“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes,” Allen wrote.
While the gunman claimed that he intended to “minimize casualties” of event attendees, he wrote that he was willing to open fire on anyone in the ballroom.
“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” he wrote in the manifesto.
Allen was taken down by Secret Service agents at the Washington Hilton before he made it to the ballroom. One Secret Service agent was shot by the gunman, but his bulletproof vest stopped the bullet.
