Even more than civility, we need humility

Published April 27, 2026 9:10am ET



Most assassins and failed assassins are mad more than anything else, and their grievances are totally incoherent. Cole Allen, the man who allegedly tried to shoot President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, was different.

Allen’s apparent manifesto was eerily lucid, and to the extent he was divorced from reality, it was exactly as divorced as the standard NPR-listening No Kings protester is divorced from reality: calling Trump a racist, a pedophile, and a traitor, and accusing the administration of starving children.

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