The Most Frightening Shooters Are the Smart Ones

A manifesto-like email allegedly sent by the dinner shooter suggests a murderous obsession with Trump’s politics.An FBI tactical agent near a house associated with the suspected White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooter in Torrance, California (Patrick T. Fallon / AFP / Getty)April 26, 2026 The line “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done” could probably have been written in an email to friends by any number of the attendees at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. But the line was apparently written by a man who showed up with a shotgun and pistol and was ready to kill “most everyone” there to get to Donald Trump and assassinate him and his Cabinet. In a manifesto-like email that he reportedly sent to family minutes before allegedly shooting, Cole Tomas Allen wrote that the assembled journalists and machers “chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit.” Allen never came near the president or the gala floor. A Secret Service agent was shot in the vest before Allen was tackled and arrested.Random acts of violence by unstable individuals are unfortunately a feature of modern life. The most frightening shooters are not these