Trump, diners missed chance to shine
Donald Trump was right. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, suspended by a shooting incident in the corridor outside the room where the banquet was underway, should have reconvened and continued.
As the president told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, “I don’t want a crazy person – I think it’s really bad for a crazy person to be able to cancel something like this…. When you cancel you’re playing into the hands of this nut job.”
President Trump spoke with O’Donnell last Sunday at the White House, just hours after a heavily-armed 31-year-old California man, Cole Tomas Allen, burst past security personnel in a hallway of the Washington Hilton Hotel.
Cole was subdued and taken into custody before getting into the hotel’s large banquet room. In a document he apparently wrote to explain himself, Cole said he was gunning for members of the Trump administration, from the lowest to the highest official. That would have included the president himself.
Does anyone doubt that had he not been hit, President Kennedy would have proceeded to the Dallas Trade Mart to speak to a luncheon crowd eagerly anticipating his arrival?
In 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt spoke to a political audience moments after being shot by a would-be assassin.
A little thing like a slug to the chest (TR’s life was saved when the bullet struck his steel eyeglass case and a wadded 50-page copy of his speech) was not going to stop the “Bull Moose” of American politics from performing his campaign chore.
In Trump’s case, the Secret Service would have had a fit of course. The crowd would have thinned out, with visions of a possible second gunman. As for those who regrouped, they would have demonstrated uncommon courage.
An astounded populace would have cheered.
Trump’s remark about the banquet going on as planned was the high point of the Trump-O’Donnell exchange. The low point occurred when the senior CBS correspondent asked the president about parts of the Allen “manifesto.”
“The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President,” O’Donnell said…. “He writes this quote, ‘I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’ What’s your reaction to that?”
“Well, I was waiting for you to read that,” the president responded, “because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”
Being even more provocative, O’Donnell then asked, “Oh you think – do you think he was referring to you?”
“I’m not sure he was referring to me or not. He’s a troubled person” is what Trump should have said. Instead, the president said, “You read that crap from some sick person? You should be ashamed of yourself reading that crap because I’m not any of those things.”
He called O’Donnell a “disgrace.” (Despite the barbs, O’Donnell maintained her professionalism. Being a reporter sometimes means never saying you’re sorry.)
CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired 12 minutes of the interview; its actual length is a little more than 40 minutes. The full interview is available online.
Trump was typically combative, blaming the bad things (imaginary and otherwise) that have happened on the twin terrors of Democrats and the media. O’Donnell fell into it herself, when she suggested that Allen was radicalized by attending a mainstream anti-Trump No Kings rally.
The president took that absurdity and ran with it. “… Probably it had an impact. They get up and say whatever they want…. I think it’s terrible.”
“I do think the hate speech of the Democrats … is very dangerous to the country…. They really created a tremendous amount of anger and hate,” said the man who rarely passes up a chance to call people names, labeling opponents as “vermin … thugs … enemies of the people … Communists … fascists” and assorted other wildly inappropriate and inaccurate epithets.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.