What began as a rare moment of bipartisan unity and calls for unity in the wake of a shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner quickly devolved into a familiar cycle of partisan vitriol, as former President Donald Trump and his administration have reverted to sharp attacks on political opponents, the media, and public critics just 48 hours after the alleged assassination attempt.
Shortly after Saturday night’s incident, which unfolded in front of thousands of attending journalists and political figures, Trump struck an uncharacteristically reflective tone. Still clad in his formal tuxedo, he told the crowd he had originally planned to deliver a blistering, combative speech attacking the press, but opted instead to highlight a shared sense of unity after the scare. “I saw a room that was just totally unified,” he remarked at the time, pointing to a “tremendous amount of love and coming together” and even extending praise to the leadership of the White House Correspondents Association, the annual dinner’s organizer. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later confirmed the attack marked the third documented attempt on Trump’s life in just two years.
That moment of detente proved extremely short-lived. By Monday, the White House had sharply hardened its tone, with Leavitt – who cut short her maternity leave to address the incident – blaming the attempted assassination on what she called “systemic demonization” of Trump by left-wing opponents. “The left-wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed, and it almost did so again this weekend,” Leavitt told reporters during a formal briefing. She went on to argue that political opponents who repeatedly label Trump a fascist, frame him as a threat to democracy, or compare him to Hitler for political gain are directly fueling political violence against the former president and his allies.
Leavitt’s condemnation was quickly followed by fresh attacks from Trump himself, who turned his fire on late-night television comedian Jimmy Kimmel over a joke targeting former first lady Melania Trump. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump demanded Kimmel’s immediate dismissal from ABC, which is owned by the Disney Entertainment conglomerate. Calling Kimmel’s joke “far beyond the pale,” Trump wrote: “I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
The rapid shift away from unity has dashed any lingering hopes that the assassination attempt might prompt Trump to pull back from his long history of incendiary, confrontational rhetoric against political rivals, immigrant communities, and journalists – a pattern that has defined his political career over more than a decade. A former reality television star, Trump has long positioned the national media as one of his primary foils, famously branding reporters “the enemy of the people” and repeatedly targeting female journalists with aggressive, personal insults, including calling one reporter “piggy.” He has also pardoned hundreds of rioters convicted for their role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a riot staged to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Just in recent months, Trump has publicly stated he was “glad” former FBI director Robert Mueller, who led the Russia probe into his 2016 campaign, had died, and issued an extraordinary threat to Iran warning that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if it acts against U.S. interests.
By the time he appeared in an interview with CBS’s *60 Minutes* the day after the gala, Trump had fully returned to his combative form. When journalist Norah O’Donnell read extracts of a vague statement from the shooting suspect that referenced unsubstantiated claims without naming Trump, Trump snapped, calling O’Donnell and the network a disgrace. “I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person… You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes,” he shouted.
Democratic leaders have pushed back hard against Leavitt and Trump’s accusations, rejecting their claims that Democratic rhetoric is to blame for the violence. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dismissed the White House’s call for civility outright, telling reporters: “This so-called White House press secretary wants to lecture America and lecture us about civility? Get lost. Clean up your own house before you have anything to say to us about the language that we use.”