I Was in DC During the Shooting. Here's the Perverse Irony

Trump wanted to create a post-truth world. Now it's coming back to bite him.

I got back to my hotel room around 2 am on Sunday. By now we all know what happened: shots fired at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump rushed out by Secret Service, mass confusion and fear among the people in attendance. It was an exclusive event; only so many people were invited— but everyone in the city could feel the ripple effects of what happened in the room.

It was raining on Saturday night as I approached the barricade that served as the first security checkpoint to get into the Hilton, where I was attending a different party on the opposite side of the building from the White House Correspondents Dinner. I was asked to show an invitation or a QR code (or prove I was a guest at the hotel). They glanced at the email on my drenched phone and let me in.

It was a bit of a circus as I made my way into the lobby. It was packed with journalists and officials, all putting umbrellas away and shaking the rain off their tuxes and gowns. I asked for directions to my party and was told I was in the wrong place; I would need to head back out the doors into the rain and circle back to the other end of the building. But I’d gotten right into the Hilton lobby, no problem. Not terribly far from where the shooter was ultimately apprehended.

Later, after the shooting, Trump and the administration officials were carted off to safety, while everyone else inside the room was left to process what the hell had just happened.

There was a (now all-too-familiar) feeling of solemnity around town the rest of the night. But I’ll tell you one thing - not one single person was surprised. Another shooting, another act of political violence, another wholly unnecessary tragedy. And we can all set our watches to the “thoughts and prayers” that will drive the news cycle for the next few days.

As I reconcile my lived experience with my existence online, what’s become a source of debate is the legitimacy of the crisis. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok are all awash with accusations that the shooting was staged as a pretext for Trump to gin up support for his ballroom (I’ll get to that in a moment). Now, I don’t know the truth, nor am I in a position to opine. But I found this notable because Trump has been on a decade-long mission to obliterate the very concept of truth. And he did it.

There’s a perverse irony to the fact that Trump’s greatest success is the complete destruction of our shared objective reality. He loves to brag about his wins, when they’re all clearly failures (crowd sizes, tariffs, the “hottest” economy, the 2020 election). He would tell his supporters that up is down and black is white if it would somehow redound to his financial or political benefit. As far as Trump is concerned, the “truth” does not exist.

The shooting happened near a room full of journalists, many of whom immediately picked up their phones and began reporting. They called law enforcement to try to verify facts, they went live and started filming. They didn’t hesitate to do their jobs, which is to report the truth— in this instance as it was happening. And still, the sentiment online and of people around the country the next day is one of disbelief and rampant conspiracy theories. Trump wanted to create a world where the truth didn’t exist so he could fill that void with his own (more convenient) version of reality. Years later, the trust that once used to bind us is now so obliterated that the knee-jerk reaction to an assassination attempt of him is to distrust everything about it.

The hotel where the White House Correspondents Dinner is hosted is known as the “Hinckley Hilton.” 45 years ago, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan right outside, wounding three people. One of them was press secretary James Brady, who suffered permanent brain damage and ultimately died from his injuries. When the Brady law passed nearly a decade later, it established background checks for gun owners.

There’s been no such discussion in the aftermath of this shooting. Nothing on gun safety or mental health, not a word about political violence. Instead, what we got was a sales pitch for - you guessed it - Trump’s ballroom. A $400 million “solution” for gun violence. Well, gun violence against the president. But shootings happen every day in this country, and no one else has a $400 million ballroom to fall back on. Americans get shot in classrooms, concerts, church, malls, temples— and yet nothing changes. A collective shrug by the people who have the power to do something about it. So no, a ballroom is not a solution. It’s a bandaid— one intended to protect a very small and very privileged group of people. An apt microcosm for Trump’s America: fixes for the privileged elites, while the rest of the country is left out in the cold.