The shooting that disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a stark reminder of how quickly public life can turn volatile – gunfire, confusion, and the swift evacuation of Donald Trump and other officials.
It is the kind of event that usually invites reflection. In this case, it prompted something quite different.
Mr Trump was asked about whether the shooter might have been trying to target him, following the unsuccessful assassination attempt on him during the 2024 election campaign.
He said that he had studied assassinations and they usually targeted “the most impressive, inspirational people”, citing for US president Abraham Lincoln.
“They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much because they like it that way,” Mr Trump said.
“And when you look at the people that have either whether it was an attempt or a successful attempt, that they’re very impressive, inspirational. People just take a look at their names. They’re the big names. And, I hate to say I’m honoured by that, but I do know we’ve taken this country … and now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world with this country.
”And there are a lot of people that are not happy about that. So I think that’s the answer.”
I can’t grasp the idea of Trump being honoured.
When he says he feels “honoured” – in that context – he’s reframing a dangerous situation into something that elevates his own status. The underlying implication is: only historically significant or “great” figures attract assassination attempts, so being targeted becomes evidence of importance.
That framing leans on selective history. Yes, figures like Abraham Lincoln were assassinated, but so were many others across the world – activists, local politicians, journalists – people who weren’t universally seen as “inspirational” or even widely known. The causes of political violence are messy: ideology, grievance, mental health issues, notoriety-seeking, or simple instability. There’s no consistent rule that attackers choose only the “most impressive” people.
Calling it an “honour” does a few things at once:
- It turns a threat into a kind of validation.
- It places him in a lineage with historically prominent figures.
- It sidesteps the more uncomfortable reality that political violence is often chaotic and not a compliment to the target.
What happened was serious. Shots were fired, people took cover, and a security officer was hit – saved only by a bullet-resistant vest.
There is nothing abstract about that. It is the reality of political violence, and it deserves to be treated as such.
Which is precisely why describing it as an “honour” feels so jarring. An attack – or even the possibility of one – is not a form of recognition. It is not a measure of greatness. It is a symptom of something fractured, unpredictable, and often senseless. To recast it as validation is not to illuminate the moment, but to reshape it into something it simply is not.
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Yes … there were also a number of assassination attempts on Hitlers life as well … and I think those are the most similar reasoning to those that want to assassinate Trump!!
My wife, Chinese, has an expression which has been used on more than one occasion, in Mandarin: Zhèlǐ shì àodàlìyǎ, which translates as ‘This is Australia,’ a comment that is uttered when her frustration over poor or difficult or inefficient aspects of public service are confronted, contrasted with the relatively greater degree of efficiency in the public-private interface in China.
Perhaps, in America, one might note” Zhè jiùshì měiguó, that shootings are an everyday commonplace, that several presidents have been assassinated, that political differences have a Hatfield & McCoy quality about them, that there seems no light at the end of the tunnel and that it will all end in a vale of tears.
Way beyond time to have a parting of ways.
“He said that he had studied assassinations and they usually targeted “the most impressive, inspirational people”, citing for US president Abraham Lincoln.”
Trump is safe then.
‘“In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University, found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe ‘a man who … repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and … takes sexual advantage of many women — someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment.’ When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, ‘Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.’”
“In our society, we do not push psychopaths off the ice when nobody is looking. In our society, we let them rule the world.
We’ve set up systems which elevate those who are willing to do whatever it takes to get to the top, and which protect them once they get there. The ones with the most wealth are the ones who crushed their competitors and exploited the working class the most ruthlessly. The ones who get elected to office are the ones who agree to protect the interests of the rich and powerful no matter how underhanded they have to be. The ones who get promoted to leadership in the military and spy agencies are the ones who’ve demonstrated unwavering loyalty to the bloodthirsty empire they serve.
These systems shield people from the natural consequences of their actions. If you have a lot of money your survival doesn’t depend on getting along with the other members of your tribe; you can just buy whatever services you need, and you can treat the people providing those services like garbage if you pay them enough. If you get elected to office your survival doesn’t depend on advancing the interests of the electorate; you can be as horrible as you like and rely on your security services to protect you.
This is a perversion of the natural order of things. The rich and the powerful should not be allowed to do whatever they want to us and get away with it. They are massively outnumbered. Everything they have, they only have because of us.” (Caitlan Johnstone)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/04/19/we-should-not-fear-the-tyrants-the-tyrants-should-fear-us/
We start to change this by throwing bad governments out of office and voting for people who will change this perversion. We start by throwing Labor out of office.
I can’t believe this was not a stunt
Calling it an “honour” just means that the clueless “divinely protected” orange lunatic has just painted a big target on himself for more assassination attempts. The next one may well end him, and to be totally blunt, it’s going to be a good day for the world.
Trump is merely the most visible symptom of a terminally ill society,which currently threatens the entire planet.
And our government still deals with them as though nothing is wrong.
@ Harry Lime: Australia has become a vassal state to the USA (Undemocratic Sewer of Apartheid) thanks to the kow-towing of politicans living without real life experience under the Canberra Bubble, especially the inept COALition self-serving pedestrians.
@ Thommo: Agreed until the last sentence. Perhaps the $80 MILLION empty glass of MDB water scam by Anus Faylure has been forgotten by too many persons, especially the very few Liarbral$ having a moral conscience. Such a wonderful liar about the Sydney Lord Mayor ….. why has he NOT been tossed out of Parliament as ”unfit to govern”??
A theatrical set up for sure.
Hi NEC, yes, absolutely.
I’m not recommending swapping Labor for the Coalition again, there are alternatives to the Coalition (that aren’t One Nation).
Having said that, though, if we keep rewarding bad governments like Labor on the basis of we might get another bad government then we will continue to have governments “who agree to protect the interests of the rich and powerful no matter how underhanded they have to be.”
““And when you look at the people that have either whether it was an attempt or a successful attempt, that they’re very impressive, inspirational. People just take a look at their names. They’re the big names.”
Perhaps we should take a look at the historical figures that TACO Trumpery identifies himself with ….. not the sanitised political ones, but the others.
Interred in the distant South Atlantic Ocean, Napoleon was slowly poisoned to death by his English captors, Sad, because he was a very reforming administrator and an extremely competent General, nothing like ”Bone-spurs” Trumpery who draft dodged his Vietnam imperialist war service.
In Russia post WWI, there was the unsuccessful attempt on Lenin that left him debilitated until his death about a decade later, which allowed Stalin to emerge as the dictator of the USSR, complete with numerous extra-judicial executions of any perceived competitors or persons perceived as being ”unfit for the job”.
The little Austrian painter, feted by the German conservative heavy industrial sector, who survived a reported about 40 assassination attempts, to die by his own hand, we are told when even he could see that the Russians were likely to swamp his bunker in 1945.
Then the two Kennedy’s. JFK for showing the American working class that Camelot was possible, which offended Hoover who provided the executioner as part of the Dallas Texas security team. RFK for being JFK’s brother. It would be most unreasonable to align any TACO Trumpery thinking with these two democrats.
Perhaps TACO Trumpery is best known for his bluster, bullying and uncaring use of anybody until they are no longer useful. Remember bullshit baffles all, see Germany 1933-1945.