Americans are learning more about Cole Allen, the gunman who sought to unleash chaos at the White House Corespondents Association dinner, where President Donald Trump and much of the Cabinet were joining the annual gathering of journalists for the first time in this administration.
One key fact: The would-be assassin lived in Torrance, Calif., which is represented by some of the most rabidly anti-Trump members of Congress.
One of them is Democrat Ted Lieu. In 2017, Lieu declared Trump to be an illegitimate president, and even launched a “cloud of illegitimacy clock” that still has its own website, ticking away the seconds of Trump’s presidency.
Another is Democrat Maxine Waters, who appears to be Allen’s representative, based on public information about his address.
Waters was one of the first members of Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment, shouting “Impeach 45!” at rallies, almost as soon as Trump took office.
And in 2018, it was “Mad Max” Waters who launched the current era of aggressive political confrontations when she encouraged Americans to accost Trump administration officials wherever they could be found.
At a rally in Los Angeles, Waters said: “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
She repeated that call on the liberal MSNBC network, telling the audience to “harass” Trump officials. She also said that she had “no sympathy” for the Trump officials who were targeted.
Waters’ comments came a day after Sarah Huckabee Sanders, then the president’s press secretary, had been kicked out of a Northern Virginia restaurant, The Red Hen.
A few days before that, President Trump’s then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had been mobbed, shouted down and run out of a Mexican restaurant in Washington, DC.
Waters suggested that physical confrontations with Trump and his appointees was not just acceptable, but required, of citizens.
Last year, in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a poll showed that liberals are more likely than conservatives to suggest that political violence is acceptable.
The poll suggested that 25% of those who described themselves as “very liberal,” and 17% of those who described themselves as “liberal,” said that political violence can sometimes be “justified.” Only 5% of “very conservative” and 6% of “conservative” respondents felt the same.
Even worse, one-third of young Americans under the age of 45 said they believed that violence is an acceptable means to an end.
This free-fall of American political civility is no coincidence. It has been encouraged by the elected representatives of the Democratic Party.
While we don’t know if the alleged shooter was specifically inspired by his hometown representative in Torrance, his manifesto echoes much of the rhetoric of the mainstream Democratic Party today, including false claims that the president is a “pedophile” and a “rapist.”
We also know that Allen made a small contribution to Vice President Kamala Harris‘s presidential campaign at least once during the 2024 election.
Harris stirred up her own brand of resentment. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, compared a campaign rally by Trump in New York City’s Madison Square Garden to a rally of Nazi supporters some 85 years before.
As we learn more about this shooting, one thing is clear: There are disturbed individuals who are taking the Democrats’ vile political rhetoric, and their encouragement to confrontation, seriously.
That is a clear and present danger to the president, his administration, and to the entire country.
It is time for voices of reason to speak out in the Democratic Party. Before the next attempted assassination. Before it is too late.
Jennifer Kelly is the former spokeswoman for the California Republican Party and host of The Jennifer Kelly Show.
