Shocking. Unnerving. Unpredictable. Violent. For a decade I have been following the twists and turns of Donald Trump’s America with the privilege of journalistic distance. On Saturday night I felt the darkness come viscerally close.

Bang! Bang! What was that? Where was it? At 8.36pm panic and pandemonium reigned in the cavernous ballroom at the Washington Hilton hotel. There were men running and cries of “Get down!” and “Stay down!”

I saw guests at the White House Correspondents’ Association’s (WHCA) annual dinner – men in tuxedos, women in dresses – diving under the circular tables and I, almost as if acting on a cue, did likewise. It was a scene from a dozen Hollywood movies but now it was happening to me, right here, right now.

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Peter Doocy of Fox News asked why this keeps happening to Trump. The president cited Abraham Lincoln and said: “I’ve studied assassinations, and I must tell you, the most impactful people … the people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after.”

Which was not the real story. The past 10 years have witnessed a shooting at a congressional baseball practice, a deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and the killings of the former Minnesota house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. Political violence is rampant and on Saturday, in a fancy Washington ballroom, Trump and the media glimpsed the edge of the abyss.

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What we know about gunfire at White House correspondents’ dinner (BBC)

In his alleged manifesto, Cole Allen, the man accused of targeting the White House correspondents’ dinner, called himself a “Friendly Federal Assassin” and created a list of targets for the shooting, formatted from highest to lowest priority, with Trump administration officials at the top, according to a report from the New York Post.

The manifesto, obtained by the Post, begins with apologies to those who knew the suspect and lists his motives for the shooting. It said the shooter targeted administration officials with the exception of FBI director Kash Patel.

“I am a citizen of the United States of America,” it said. “What my representatives do reflects on me. And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

The Guardian 2h ago19.06 CEST