'Again To the Grisly Well, With Ballrooms'

"Leave it to this still-repugnant regime to instantly twist a Keystone Cops security breach - not a so-distant-it-was-on-another-floor 'assassination attempt' - to their own skeevy purposes: blaming Democrats for 'this dark moment,' demanding a $400 million gold ballroom for 'national security,' burnishing the Brave Dear Leader myth of an addled old man who barely registered it, and what gun control issue? Meet the Epstein class: When shots (again) ring out, they get a friggin’ ballroom, kids get thoughts and prayers."

"The latest 'clown show on steroids' - and grim proof of Trump’s relentless corrosion of political discourse - unfolded Saturday night at an evidently sloppily unsecured Washington Hilton, where in 1981 John Hinckley shot Reagan, who survived. The already contentious White House Correspondents’ Dinner drew the black-tied, preening, profit-driven remnants of a craven legacy media - and a growing right-wing slopaganda brigade - both willing to pretend it was normal to party with an abusive enemy of free speech who’s spent years attacking, belittling, suing, bullying and name-calling them as an 'enemy of the people' for seeking to do their jobs and tell the truth, thus turning the evening into a queasy 'case study in institutional self-abasement.' "

"Even before the vitriolic and incendiary Trump - who led a Jan. 6 riot, urged fans to 'knock the crap out' of protesters, bade Proud Boys 'stand by,' mused 'the 2nd Amendment people' could do something about his opponents, warned of 'a bloodbath' if he was defeated, killed schoolgirls and threatened genocide in an illegal war he doesn’t know how to end - let loose with what he dubbed 'the most inappropriate speech ever made' (which Press Barbie called 'shots fired') - before all that came a few muffled thuds of a dud of an assassination attempt, on the floor above, by a suspect who ran past a security checkpoint before being tackled. One shot was fired - it’s unclear by whom - and one cop was wounded through a bulletproof vest; he is expected to be okay."

"On the floor below, meanwhile, 'absolute chaos' reigned. Panicked women in gowns and men in tuxedos hit the floor, flipping over chairs, lunging under tables and sometimes holding phone cameras aloft as a horde of Secret Service agents swarmed the ballroom, leaping on stage, yelling 'Get down! Get down!', running in all directions at once, weapons poised and flailing. A crowd of security guys whisked J.D. Vance out of his chair first; then another cluster went for Trump, dazed and stumbling, guys holding him up on both sides. Video later showed alleged FBI head Kash Patel crouching absurdly behind a chair and RFK Jr. heroically leaving his wife behind; an idiotic 'USA!' chant that 'absolutely nobody wanted to hear' flared briefly before dying a well-earned death."

Continued at link:

https://www.commondreams.org/further/again-to-the-grisly-well-with-ballrooms