Week of Shooting, Blame, and Ballroom
Kimmel, Comey Seashelled, Charles Visits, Trump Crowns, Paramount Sells Out (again)

    It’s been more than half a century, but I think I’d remember if we did this in High School:

    We have our required dose of weekly wisdom from 38 of our usual suspects:

  • Shots are heard during the White House Correspondents Dinner.

    Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson reacts to the shooting. He is glad no attendees, including Trump, were injured. He appreciates Trump for not taking cheap shots at any and all criticisms (well, not right away…)

    James gives a couple of examples of those unburdened by such inhibitions.

    And this:

    I’m less concerned about political rhetoric than the glorification of violence in general. For example, this was a recent posting on Twitter (X) that I found especially unnerving even before Saturday night’s incident.

  • Science fiction author John Scalzi finds his social media posts on Bluesky under federal surveillance after it turns out the Correspondents Dinner shooter liked four of his posts.

    John understands the caution, but senses an opportunity. He includes a representative sample of what the feds will find:

    Hello to the FBI/Secret Service/NSA people now monitoring this account because apparently the attempted shooter liked a few of my posts in the last month, here's a picture of my cat to get you started

    [image or embed]

    — John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) April 26, 2026 at 1:50 PM

    He has his own reasons for hoping Trump experiences a long, long life.

  • When folks hearing gunfire duck behind pretty much anything nearby, it does seem a little unfair to portray photos as acts of cowardice.

    Now that the danger has passed, perhaps we can be forgiven as Disaffected and it Feels So Good captures a few of those moments, especially as Stephen Miller seems to reflexively use his pregnant wife as a human shield:

    [My Note: Actually, that is a little unfair. A Secret Service agent, barely seen, is pushing both toward safety and Miller is shielding his wife as the sounds were behind them.]

  • Calico Jack, in The Psy of Life, runs through available videos and accounts. He notices something odd.

    Everyone on screen shows surprise, some in apparent shock, some in self‑protective crouch, as shots are heard.

    With one, only one, exception.

    Jack explores possible explanations for Trump’s inattentive lack of reaction.

    There are three possible explanations for Trump’s face in that moment. And here’s the thing: every single one of them should disqualify him from holding the office he currently occupies.

  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson sees an increasingly frenetic level of messaging from the White House.

    Taking advantage of the shooting:

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called opponents of Trump a “left-wing cult of hatred against POTUS and all of those who support him” and blamed the “entire Democrat party” for the event.

    And this:

    At his press conference hours after the event, Trump insisted the trouble proved the need for his proposed ballroom.

    Desperate need:

    Forcing supporters to accept a lie as reality is a key tool of authoritarians, making it harder for them to reject the next lie, and so on. The claim that Democrats are calling for violence, when in fact it has been Trump calling for executing those he believes are his enemies, follows that pattern exactly.
     
    But there is at least one other story behind the administration’s insistence on building Trump’s ballroom: the man desperately needs a win.

    The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.

  • So maybe Putin isn’t the only one who runs troll farms, large rooms filled with closely supervised groups of paid participants on social media.

    tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors documents remarkably similar instant responses to shots fired near the Correspondents Dinner, all crying out for completion of the Trump ballroom.

    Reasonably enough, tengrain begins with this:

  • Dave Columbo has a helpful neighbor to explain the importance of Trump’s super‑secure extravagant ballroom

  • It isn’t just ballrooms.

    Julian Sanchez remembers Shelley’s sonnet to Ozymandias and his desolate boastful monument to himself.

    Julian seems less than impressed with Trump proposed statuary:

    Look very strongly on my yuge works, ye mighty, and despair.

    [image or embed]

    — Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) April 30, 2026 at 12:22 PM

    I'm sure evangelical MAGA will be delighted Trump is constructing giant golden idols to himself. Very biblical.

    — Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) April 30, 2026 at 12:29 PM

  • Master of rant, Max’s Dad, begins with the fake seashell threat, an actual indictment against James Comey:

    It seems the former head of the FBI, whom Trump now hates for insufficient loyalty, had been walking along the beach and found seashells by the seashore, arranged into an amusing pattern:

    Comey had posted a picture of seashells that the mad king didn’t like and as usual, MAGAts went straight into faux outrage as they tend to do. He was calling for the death of the mad king they wailed. Seashells. So yesterday they indicted Comey for calling for the death of Trump. WTF? We had the spectacle of Todd Blanche, Kash Patel, and the rest of the Shady Bunch speak with a straight face how concerned they were. It was laughable. But here we go.

    Max’s Dad then goes on to shots fired near the Correspondent’s Dinner

    So as I refuse to call it what the hand wringers and pearl clutchers want you to call it, an assassination attempt, and call it what it was. A security breach. Somehow this guy got a room at a $3k a night hotel, brought guns and knives, wrote out a list of grievances right up to the time he sprung into non action and caused utter chaos.

    Conspiracy?

    Was it fake? Nahhhh. But it IS fun to pretend it was a set up to get his goddamned ballroom paid for by you, the taxpayers. It’s fun because as absurd as it is to think this was all staged, it’s still more fun to hit the Ballroom Bangers with this, giving them a taste of their own medicine and them not being smart enough to know it.

  • Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel has the story as the tiresome seashell charges against James Comey drag on toward probable dismissal. To fulfill Trump’s orders to find something, anything, on which Comey might be sent to prison, Blanche had the DOJ accelerate into their own illegal procedures.

    Including this:

    What Todd Blanche confessed last night is that he authorized potentially illegal spying on Jim Comey, the original sin that Donald Trump falsely claimed happened with the Carter Page warrants.
     
    The threat indictment is just the pretext to rummage through all of Jim Comey’s communications.

  • The contrived set up was well conceived and technically well done.

    Jimmy Kimmel performed as a fake host of a fake roast at a fake Correspondents Dinner with supposed reaction shots as he made pointed jokes about the supposed White House attendees.

    Aside from open bigotry, Trump is well known for a lazy lack of discipline about his own health: obesity, fast food junkism, horrible personal hygiene, while keeping medical details secret.
    Kimmel combined that with Melania’s well known public persona of coldness and rejection of her betrothed, and their extreme age difference:

    And of course, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at her, so beautiful.
    Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.
     
    You know, Melania’s birthday is on Sunday. That’s right.
    She’s planning to celebrate at home the same way she always does, looking out a window and whispering, “What have I done?”

    Three days later came the shots fired during the White House Correspondents Dinner, followed by an avalanche of criticism and renewed demands for Kimmel’s firing.

    Some conservative attack was based on Kimmel celebrating the shooting.
    Seems unlikely, since that would involve time travel.

    Dave Dubya covers the Trump reaction as Melania and Donald accuse Kimmel of advocating assassination.

    Donald Trump:

    I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence…

    We might note that criticizing, or even making fun of, Donald does not equate to a call for violence.

    Dave contrasts the indignation with Donald’s history, and that of other Republicans, in celebrating violence and death when the target is those Trump dislikes.

    Just one example:

    Culprit:

    (Senator Mike Lee of Utah called it “A nightmare on Walz Street”, referring to governor Walz.)

    Okay, okay, here’s another:

  • Tommy Christopher brings us CNN’s Jake Tapper who contrasts the pearl clutching over Jimmy Kimmel’s pre-shooting joke about Trump’s age and health, and Melania’s apparent public coldness, with clear mocking glee by Republicans over violent attacks after they happen.

  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil reviews Trump’s 60 Minutes interview and the crazed stupidity that mainstream media somehow missed:

    One favorite part, M Bouffant’s and mine, quotes Trump on what he is standing firm to prevent:

    Things like transgender for everyone. [?!?] I’m against that.

    Okay, I have to admit that force marching everyone into transgender surgery camps may have its downside.

  • Brian Beutler watches the Trump interview on 60 Minutes and notices a certain choppiness in the video.

    Turns out many of the most demented of Trump’s comments were generously edited out.

    Brian remembers a rough parallel in which edits for time met angry howls from Trump and Trumpers.

    Except… when 60 Minutes applied that practice to its pre-election interview with Kamala Harris, Trump sued for $10 billion, then $20 billion, claiming “election interference.” He alleged, falsely, that CBS had concealed damaging portions of the interview to help Harris and thus hurt Trump and the GOP. The suit was frivolous, a loser, a p.r. stunt. But then he won the election, and CBS settled. For $16 million.

    Advice for beleaguered DNC chair Ken Martin:

    So Martin may not be long for the job. He may not even want the job anymore. But if he’s hanging on for dear life, I have an idea, offered for free, that he can put to the test relatively cheaply: He can sue CBS News for $20 billion (but be willing to settle for $16 million and not a penny less).

  • I suppose they had to get something for canceling Colbert and fine‑tuning news coverage as Trump demanded.

    News Corpse has details of a deal that Trump’s FCC is expected to allow that will let Paramount channel billions of dollars from Middle East sources in order to acquire CNN.

  • Jason Linkins gives us a clue of how things are going after Paramount sold out (again) and put Trumper Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News:

    Bari's incompetence machine rattles on!

    [image or embed]

    — Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) April 28, 2026 at 10:27 PM

  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has the image that Trump had his own White House post to social media. The occupant who formerly proclaimed himself to be the Messiah a Doctor in a robe surrounded by worshipers, now crowns himself America’s King.

  • From the Must-Count-Our-Pennies category:

    The Borowitz Report covers Britain’s King Charles who is profoundly regretful at being forced by jet fuel costs to meet with Trump only by video:

    Deep regret:

    I had been looking forward to many delightful hours in the company of the scintillating Donald Trump, but my hands are tied.

    However:

    I’ve gotten pretty good at using Zoom—especially the mute feature.

    Okay, so Charles does arrive in person, preaches to Congress, but alienates Republicans by speaking in complete sentences:

  • Hackwhackers quotes excerpts from Charles actual speech to Congress, words applauded by both sides of the aisle, a message that would normally embarrass followers of Trump.

    Those are some elegant phrases Charles uses to implore America to turn back to the good, to reject America- first Trump fascism, and to stand for the rule of law and democracy here and everywhere around the world.

  • PZ Myers looks past the self-crowning to Trump’s actual words on the important heritage early American patriots got from England and passed on to us

    For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men, women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British.

    And a little more explicitly:

    The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage.

    I suppose that sets up another They’re poisoning our blood speech against those who would dilute Anglo-Saxon blood and spirit.

  • Right Wing Watch brings us a conversation between white nationalist Lauren Witzke of QAnon fame and Greg Bovino, who had been in charge of Minneapolis ICE during the infamous beatings and shootings. Together, they talk about the imminent horror of having immigrants in our country.

    White nationalist Lauren Witzke says that immigrants are “parasites” and Greg Bovino agrees that “our culture is at stake”: “Our culture is definitely in jeopardy by those hundreds of millions of foreigners that, as you say, don’t care about your culture.”

    Which does put a cultural gloss over pure poisoning our blood nativism.
    We don’t have to go full blown racist. We can go cultural.
    We can even admit that immigrants often go through great sacrifice to be here.

    But, once they arrive, they just refuse to understand us.
    As Americans, our delicate sensibilities are bruised if we are not understood.

  • At The Moderate Voice retired U.S. Air Force Major Dorian de Wind looks at the effect on US military readiness as Pete Hegseth goes on a purging spree:

    The losses add up:

    When one adds up the years of invaluable military experience lost with the dismissal of just a dozen of these officers, one comes up with nearly 500 years.
     
    Half a millennium of military experience squandered!
     
    Why? Because of offering frank assessment and objective advice? Because of speaking truth to power?

    Quoting Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling:

    Dissent is not a luxury; it is a strategic necessity. It is not disloyalty; it is the highest form of allegiance. Strategic leaders must cultivate a culture in which disagreement is possible without fear of reprisal. Because the surest way to endanger a mission, a military, or a nation is to demand silence when candor is needed most.

  • Infidel753 discusses a frightening potential future in which palm sized drones can be launched against individual human targets.

    In such a dystopia, anyone could kill anyone without detection or consequence. And everyone would have motive to preemptively strike first.

    Infidel explains how such a future could come to pass, and why he thinks it probably won’t.

  • So Ali Redford doesn’t exactly live here in Missouri. She does live next door in Kansas, which sort of makes her family. Maybe a cousin or sister-in-law.

    In Scotties Playtime, Ali makes the best she can of primaries. She listens carefully, votes for the Democrat closest to her views. That often will not be the eventual candidate.

    But in the general, she is almost always all in for the Democrat, as long as that is the better choice.

    She gets frustrated with the occasional primary candidate who is willing to damage a primary opponent, to the advantage of an unacceptable Republican.

    Well, she’s got MY vote.

  • Tamra Brown helps the Democratic Party reach Democrats

  • In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper hears about horrible experiences with retirement savings lost to skyrocketing bills, deaths of loved ones as emergency medical care goes from a few blocks to many country miles, and more – as more essential systems are allowed to break down.

    Yet, in her travels to small communities, she discovers reason for hope:

    I think I should tell you that I think this mess is going to get better and soon. I know I tell stories that are unbearable and heartbreaking, but I also want you to know that there are people out here determined to make it better. Those who won’t stop organizing or running or volunteering. Those who refuse to look away.
     
    I am in text chains and Signal groups that organize every day. They don’t stop because they can’t stop until the work is done. They give me hope.

    A rural Democratic meeting, Moberly, Missouri. February 26, 2026:

  • Journalist Arturo Dominguez visits and studies East Texas. He suggests the prolonged Republican strategy of segregation, racial fear, and culture war instead of substantive policies may not be working as it once did.

  • driftglass resorts to science and analogy to show why he is not especially shocked when Republicans do what Republicans do

    Consistency:

    Their depravity is not a fluke or a fever. It has become a political constant. And their trajectory is ever-downward. Something we now have to factor in to every strategy and decision. It is impossible to imagine Republicans ever again acting in good faith about anything. Ever rising above their barbarity.

  • The Propaganda Professor takes us to what might be described as Hyperbole 101, with six important elements we should learn to recognize:

    1. Exaggeration Of Number or Degree
    2. Mischaracterization
    3. Glorification
    4. Fearmongering
    5. Comparison
    6. Understatement

  • Author and educator Amanda Nelson runs through the silly, but still dangerous, ways Trump and his appointees are trying to use the power of government to rig elections, and what can be done about it:

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has more numbers, as Trump seems to find a way to get even lower approval ratings.

    The results are organized by age group, with all ages really (Really!) not liking Trump. Not even a little.

    On a personal note, it’s heart warming to see folks in my age group catching up with youngsters.

    For the sake of clarity about those youngsters, I have reached the age at which everyone under 65 is one of them durn kids.

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz joins in experiencing an administration devoted to violence and theft and a week of Bullets, Ballrooms, and Bedlam, but suggests a path to maintaining sanity.

    Resist the pull of their nonsensical rage bait, do your best to avoid being distracted by their incendiary bombast, and do not be drawn into debate with people who have abandoned sense and benevolence.
     
    Find times of rest and clarity, taking refuge in stillness and solitude.
    Care for your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional health.
    Create beautiful things, cultivate gratitude, and fight like hell to stay joyful.
    Immerse yourself in meaningful community with your like-hearted neighbors.
    Partner in the redemptive, neighbor-loving work happening where you are.

    There is more.

  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce reviews a frequent Evangelical assertion:
    That Trump’s many moral lapses must be excused because he is to be regarded as a baby Christian, still new and growing in the faith.

    Is Trump a baby Christian who, despite his foibles, still respects God and the pastors who represent the faith?

    Bruce has thoughts.

  • Vincent, at A Wayfarer’s Notes, brings his camera as he tours a beautiful art exhibition, and saves readers some walking around.

  • SilverAppleQueen goes poetic in an ode to her favorite beer.

  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study from China into the use of the Mandarin word for really, when used as an exclamation rather than a question.

    Or, as my elderly Aunt Tillie would put it:

    This study explores the non-interrogative functions of the newsmark zhende (ma/a) (‘really’) in Mandarin conversation interaction, focusing on its stance-taking and (inter)subjective roles in systematically context-sensitive ways.

    Thanks, Aunt Tillie!

    The Journal’s own Marc Abrahams is inspired to recall a similar exercise from a dozen years back in Saturday Night Live:

  • Dave Barry has great advice on how to be a billionaire or not.

    I mean, when you look at photos of famous billionaires, do you see anything extraordinary about them? No. You see a group of people who appear to be regular humans, except for Mark Zuckerberg.

    So what do these billionaires have that you don’t? Is it simply that they’re more intelligent than you?
     
    Yes. Of course not. You’re plenty intelligent! The answer is that these billionaires do certain specific things that you don’t do.

  • @whiskeywhistle98 discovers age:

Burr Deming

2 responses to “Week of Shooting, Blame, and Ballroom
Kimmel, Comey Seashelled, Charles Visits, Trump Crowns, Paramount Sells Out (again)”

  1. bruce.desertrat Avatar
    bruce.desertrat

    The most I ever did as a graduating Senior in HS (also 50 years ago this June…I can’t be THAT OLD! Can I???) was myself and 13 other friends commandeering a table in the library to stage a recreation of the ‘Last Supper’

    I portrayed the 14th Disciple, known only as ‘St. Photographer’ 8-P

  2. Alison Redford Avatar
    Alison Redford

    Aww, thanks, Burr, for including me as family by location (I was raised for 17 years in Springfield, MO, if that helps. I’ve lived where I am, though, for over half my life, now.) And Scottie so appreciates you linking Scottie’s Playtime here.

    I use a lot of words when I write-I try not to, but end up sometimes using yet more!-but want to clarify that I do a lot of write-ins rather than cast a vote for a Republican. I do vote for one Republican, a good friend who is a most excellent County Clerk, and against whom no one ever runs, because she’s just that good at her work. Also, while I listen carefully before making a decision in primaries, I do what I can to elect the one I choose when I’ve made the decision, usually well before the primary election. We the people have to get off our butts and get good people elected for a change, then keep on their butts to do our work. It takes more than voting!

    There I go again… my apologies, but mostly, thank you so much for linking Scottie’s, and for these epic weekly works!