And maybe act like a real, responsible nation again.
Probably not.

It's supposed to be a fun, humorous event. It's put on by a group of journalists, lampooning Washington. It's their "fun event". It's also a fundraiser for scholarships. They give out awards to new journalists etc. The president is supposed to have a sense of humor. If he doesn't, he can skip the event.

Heather Cox Richardson nails it tonight. Really poignant.
applegrove
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221199197

Interesting.

For many, because it directly impacted them and they only heard it.

An interesting thing I noticed, watching that Bluesky video from behind the head table, was markwayne mullet in almost the exact same crouching pose as he was in on the House floor during J6!

It is only shocking and horrible if it affects THEM.. The rest of us, not so much. Deal with it. Thoughts and prayers.

Violent insurrectionist are pardoned and released from prison. The victims of the insurrectionist are ignored and dishonored

The national message is clear.

Karoline Leavitt being interviewed by FoxNews: “There will be shots fired” tonight.

— Katie Phang (@katiephang.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T01:34:44.085Z

... that she had overheard something about shots being fired and assumed it referred to pointed digs in his speech and picked up the coinage.

But that is something out my generalized suspicion of how far authoritarian regimes are willing to go to consolidate power -- and how incompetent these people would be about planning and discussing the engineering of of such an incident.

My first thought on hearing about last nights events was "too well timed with all-time polling lows to be real."

My second thought was "there I go, I am officially a conspiracy nut."

Whether Butler, or this latest "incident" was, or was not LIHOP (intentionally lax security inviting crisis) or somehow engineered (mentally unstable people or members of a resistance CAN BE, and HAVE BEEN intentionally radicalized in the service of the counter-resistance), we will likely never know. So, absent exposure, asserting "staged" makes one a "conspiracy nut."

I had been kicking my "nuttiness" a bit when I came across Figarosmom's post with Richard Teresi's latest. Even if my gut instinct is wrong, when viewed "through the lens of historical pattern recognition," that gut instinct is NOT CRAZY.

even during the State Of the Union speech not all are present. And then with the massive security that would be present for the event with those people, how did someone get through..

Is the secret service and DC police that incompetent?

After all, he did boast "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."

F**K THEM, and their whining asses about how "terrible" this is.

How about the deaths and destruction caused by this deranged jackass in the WH, and a RETHUG congress who cower before him, and refuse to do their jobs and control his abuses.

They own this shit, and now they are whining about it.

and to the dumb ass American public, because someone tried to assassinate the demented autocrat in the WH, that doesn't make him qualified to be president. In fact just the opposite, because he is responsible for the hate and division in the country, and the whittling away of our Democracy. When will you wake up and vote these jackasses out before it is too late...... It might even be too late now.

Won't budge on it now.

Many of those idiots on the Right only change their stance when it directly affects them, which is beyond selfish.

He wanted "more guns". It didn't phase him a bit. It seemed to make him worse.

Say it with me - "Guns are the leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 18". And yet the gun lobby successfully hides behind the second amendment, which has been misinterpreted for years (that pesky part about a well regulated militia).

Seems like another fake for Trump. He knew the press was going to be bad so he saves it with another fake 'assassination attempt'.

Shots were fired and he was tackled. It's on camera, and many Democrats saw it talked about it in live interviews. How is it staged? The shooter is going to get life in prison.

Not saying that’s what happened, but that’s one way you could potentially arrange something like this.

But why wasn't the shooter silenced? Kinda dangerous if they bribed him, he might sing.

This administration is really unpopular.

given the Iran FAIL and trying to continue to block out Epstein.

The truly alarming reality is that the gun violence was already there, in many forms.

Members of Congress and the press in particular should be attuned to it, and in fairness some of them are, but we shouldn't be seeing shock when violence is a default setting. We have more firearms than human beings in these United States!

And the Democrats there should have stayed the fuck home!

Any of us can have this happen to us.

And we don't have security to protect us.

This is the country our leaders want us to have.

Leading cause of death for American children: GUNS.