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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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An unknown assassin has attempted to kill President Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight. One person is dead. President Trump is unharmed. The disposition of the assassin is unknown.

Here's a clip. I think I hear shooting sounds at 0:40 and then they react a few seconds later. Dunno how close the shooter actually got, seems like they must've got him further away from Trump?

https://x.com/WomanDefiner/status/2048203588841750754

One can only imagine how toxic fake shooter narratives are going to be this time... I don't like Trump much but how hard is it to believe that people sincerely want to shoot him dead and will even sacrifice their lives to do so? Or that if the Trump campaign somehow faked their own assassination attempts that wouldn't immediately leak, like so much else that they do?

Edit: Apparently the assassin made the world's shittest-looking steam game too and people are shitposting in the reviews:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/945530/Bohrdom/

I'm a huge critic of the "small number of people did something bad so everyone tangentially related is responsible or guilty" sort of arguments, but I do at least appreciate that the conspiracy theories formed after bad events are logically consistent with that. After all if you do truly believe in the concept then you're forced to deny that anyone tangentially related to you could do bad or else you're admitting that you are bad.

So of course then people have to go with "This Trump shooting was staged" or "the people who beat up cops and planted bombs during Jan 6th were secret fed antifa" or whatever because it can't simply be "oh that guy was nuts, but I'm not that guy so it doesn't impact me or my beliefs". Not that false flag attempts don't exist at all, but the question really should be, so what?

What does it matter if the guy who shot a police station was actually a boogaloo boy false flagging instead of a BLM protestor? No one is accountable for his actions except for him. To me it didn't make BLM look bad beforehand and it didn't make right wing groups look bad afterwards just cause this individual sucks. I appreciate the consistency but it's still really stupid.

I'm a huge critic of the "small number of people did something bad so everyone tangentially related is responsible or guilty" sort of arguments,

I'm a critic of "My movement is only the good people, and the bad ones are unrelated." Sorry, but if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. Your stance would give zero consequences for extremism.

What does it matter if the guy who shot a police station was actually a boogaloo boy false flagging instead of a BLM protestor? No one is accountable for his actions except for him.

As an example, imagine that there was a gas attack on a public place. The police arrest the perpetrators, and discover that they were all members of the California Chemistry Club. Shortly thereafter, there's another gas attack and the perpetrators are also members of the CCC. And again, and again, and again. It's weird that it keeps happening, but it's not like the Club has any relation to the attacks. No one is accountable for the the perpetrators' actions except themselves. Under your framing, people couldn't even think that the organization might be promoting or benefiting from those actions, because only a small number of their members are carrying out attacks.

If Boogaloo Boys are shooting up police stations, then it's evidence that they're a violent group and should be (formally or informally) punished for that. The alternative is playing whack-a-mole after the fact.

Trying to equivocate 'Trump intentionally got shot in the ear since he's a showman' with 'massive sprawling mess potentially had glowies involved' is a bit of a stretch