Media elites are traumatized by the events of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and they won’t stop talking about it. The problem is that they were never really in danger, unlike people in the United States who experience actual gun violence in cities, towns, schools, churches, restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, concerts, dance clubs, neighborhoods and homes every day across the country.
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It’s been less than a day since a gunman tried to enter the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and even though administration officials say the shooter’s manifesto said he wanted to kill administration officials, the American people are not interested in that story.
If you spend five minutes on any form of social media, you’ll soon discover that the consensus reaction is people who claim the shooter was staged, MAGAs who think a White House ballroom will solve everything, and some version of the sentiment that the American people have already seen this movie twice before and are bored.
The lack of interest in this story shocked some media elites.
Dylan Byers of Puck News published a lengthy article on
We asked a bartender to change the channel to CNN so we could watch the president’s briefing with subtitles, which he did. But minutes later, the bartender said he was informed by the manager that the bar had a policy of banning political content and that he should return to sports.
I tried to imagine what that bar might have looked like on March 30, 1981, about an hour after Hinckley shot Reagan in the same hotel. I imagine that every television would have been on CNN or the wall-to-wall special coverage of the broadcast networks, and passersby would have come to watch as well. The media are giving this case all the coverage it deserves.
But it’s disturbing how desensitized so many people have become — to the shootings, obviously, but also to the political violence and abnormality of the moment. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe we just chose the wrong bar. But I doubt it. Pew Research recently reported that attention to news in the United States has declined across all age groups since 2016, with young adults (ages 18 to 29) consistently showing the lowest levels. Even as the news itself intensifies – in politics, geopolitics, technology, etc. – more and more people seem to ignore them.
And I guess that’s how you find yourself in a bar in the nation’s capital, an hour after crouching behind a chair as members of the Secret Service remove the President of the United States from the room, being told you’ll have to watch Penguins vs. Flyers.
People are deeply concerned about the crisis of mass shootings and gun violence in the country. They don’t care about a president who treats them badly, despises most Americans, and makes their lives worse.
The American people don’t care, because the media elites who make six, seven, or eight figures a year put themselves in this situation by choosing to spend an evening with Donald Trump, and they were never in danger.
The mainstream media is siding with Trump. They are not on the side of the people, and that is why most Americans do not care about their trauma or a possible third attempt against Trump.
It’s just an endless loop of drama that doesn’t lower prices, doesn’t reduce costs, and doesn’t keep our families safe.
Do you care about this latest shooter succeeding Trump? Share your thoughts in the comments below.