- Many items about the apparent assassination attempt last night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and how many people on social media detected signs of a staged attack;
- Why posting the Ten Commandments in classroom doesn’t work, as conservatives think it should;
- Jerry Coyne explores evidence about whether reality as a liberal bias, and my take on that;
- Listening again to Philip Glass & Robert Wilson’s Monsters of Grace.
Within an hour or so of my finishing yesterday’s post, which ended about how many people, even Trump supporters, think the 2024 assassination attempt was staged, another apparent assassination attempt occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, in of course Washington DC. And while mainstream news coverage is fairly uniform, Facebook (and elsewhere on the internet, apparently), has been full of conspiracy theories claiming that it was staged.
First, links to some reasonably consistent coverage, remarkable because many of these news correspondents *were there*! All of these posted today or late last night.
- The Atlantic, Missy Ryan, Matt Viser, and Michael Scherer: A Shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, subtitled “The president is safe after chaos at the Washington Hilton, and a suspect is reportedly in custody.
- Vox, Benjy Sarlin: What we know about the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, subtitled “Violence keeps stalking American politics.”
- Heather Cox Richardson: April 25, 2026
- The New Yorker, Antonia Hitchens: Inside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as Gunshots Rang Out, subtitled “I thought a caterer might have dropped a stack of plates, but then I heard shouts of ‘Shots fired!'”
While others were covering the conspiracy theories. Earlier today were individual items from JMG.
- (From Axios) Trump: Press Dinner Shooting Proves Need For Ballroom
- (From Washington Post) Trump Says He’s “Honored” By Shooting Attempts
- (From Daily Beast) Leavitt Made “Shots Fired” Remark Before Shooting (Though, obviously I think, she was speaking metaphorically, about the speech Trump would make.)
Then later today we got these.
- Wired, David Gilbert: ‘STAGED’: Conspiracy Theories Are Everywhere Following White House Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting
- Subtitled: The word “staged” exploded on social media following the attack, as both right- and left-wing influencers and anonymous accounts spread unfounded conspiracy theories.
- Always without evidence. But maybe because of how quickly Trump claimed this was evidence for the need of his huge new magnificent ballroom, which supposedly would be much more secure.
- And Leavitt’s comment, and a photo of Pete Hegseth smiling as if his team had successfully gotten away with something awesome.
And
- Slate, Molly Olmstead: There’s Zero Proof the Correspondents’ Dinner Attack Was Fake. But There Sure Are Plenty of People Claiming It Was.
- Subtitled: The attack touched off a conspiracy theorist bonanza—though largely not from the usual suspects.
- One quote from all of these:
The rapid impulse to insist the shooting was staged is further proof of just how deep we’ve ventured into a post-truth era, where anything that happens will be immediately engulfed in conspiracy theories. For a long time, the right was the only side dominated by feverish fantasies, but the shooting suggests the left is increasingly willing to join them in the swamp.
- We’re losing our grip on reality.
I’m going to come down on the non-conspiracy side, for the usual reasons. (Conspiracy plots are extremely difficult to pull off, for the same reasons that massive industrial projects never are finished on time or on budget.) But I would not be surprised to learn that some minions in one of Trump’s agencies or another might have planted a lone wolf to disrupt events and hoped for the best, specifically for the purpose of showing how Trump is always triumphant.
\\\
Conservatives never learn, almost by definition.
The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig, today: Thou Shalt Not Post the Ten Commandments in Classrooms, subtitled “Requiring schools to endorse biblical laws is both unconstitutional and counterproductive.”
This has been pointed out before.
Maybe they are right to worry. But if Republicans hope that displaying the Ten Commandments will instill Christian values in impressionable youth, or that subjecting students to scriptural dictates will affect a passive Christian evangelization, they are bound to be disappointed. Children with questions about right and wrong rarely turn to state-mandated declarations presented without comment. Answers and ideals about how to live meaningfully and ethically are handed down through relationships, conversations, and by example, not through posters about what one shalt and shalt not do.
Exactly. And this, observed repeatedly:
The Ten Commandments are also arguably not the most significant laws in the Christian tradition, nor the best positioned to elicit distinctly Christian behavior. According to scripture, when Jesus’s disciples asked him what the greatest commandment of all was, he replied that every other commandment hangs on two dictates: to love God and to love one’s neighbor. For a glimpse into Jesus’s heart and priorities, he offered the Beatitudes, a series of blessings for the poor, the weak, the oppressed, and the persecuted, among others.
Which are not what conservatives what to post in classrooms. OT vs. NT.
\\\
Jerry Coyne revisits the claim that reality has a liberal bias.
Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne, today: Does reality have a liberal bias?
I’m not going to quote, I’m just going to state my considered conclusion.
It means that reality doesn’t conform to the fantasies of conservatives, since they believe in things that are not true, usually in service of simplifying things to their level of understand, or in deference to their religious beliefs. Reality is complex, and is more subtle and intricate and colorful than what conservatives believe — while understanding that that simplistic take on the world, only what is needed to survive, is what has enabled the human race to survive.
\\
Music: listening again to Philip Glass’s Monsters of Grace.
