WHCD Shooting + Cole Allen's Manifesto | PBD #785

The White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting on April 25th was the third attempt on President Trump's life in less than a year. The alleged shooter, 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen, checked into the Washington Hilton the day before the event, bypassed a security checkpoint, and fired at least one shot before being tackled and injured. The episode dedicates most of its runtime to dissecting the incident, the shooter's background and manifesto, the security failures, and the broader political and cultural environment that the hosts argue produced him.

The Shooter and the Security Failure

Cole Allen was not a stereotypical lone wolf. He attended Caltech, interned at NASA working on AI models for planetary mapping, and worked as a part-time tutor. He was registered to vote with no party affiliation but had donated $25 to ActBlue for Kamala Harris's campaign and attended "No Kings" protests. The hosts emphasize that he was "radicalized" by a political propaganda machine, pointing to his manifesto's language calling the president a "pedophile, rapist and traitor" — rhetoric they attribute to mainstream media and Democratic figures over the past four years.