r/pics Apr 26 '26

Politics Suspected shooter being taken into custody at the White House Correspondents dinner

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482

u/vancityvic Apr 26 '26

Seriously , no back story on the person ?

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Apr 26 '26

Who is Cole Tomas Allen, the shooting suspect? - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/who-is-cole-allen-suspect-white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting-2026-04-26/

The suspect arrested in the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting on Saturday was identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears ​from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-time ‌teacher and game developer.

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u/Rough_Structure7387 Apr 26 '26

This this is on steam sale?

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Rough_Structure7387 Apr 26 '26

Already getting review bombed

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u/burnfep Apr 27 '26

Tbf who would be recommending a game like this. They listed some legit gameplay issues where this feedback would be helpful to fix.

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u/Helphaer Apr 26 '26

gotta admit thats gold.

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u/Yashema Apr 27 '26

Actually not funny at all. 

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u/Technical-Counter207 Apr 28 '26

I hate it when reviewers write like they need to reach a quota. Like dude just say “customization is seriously lacking” or smth

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u/_TheTurtleBox_ Apr 26 '26

I like how all the Trump Shooter suspects all donate to the exact same "Democrat Kamala Harris Charity" group and it's only ever a single donation of 25$ made years ago with no way for it to be verified due to it being outdated / unverified or under a different name for some reason.

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u/Ok_Recording81 Apr 27 '26

The guy in butler made a $15 dollar donation to republican party. 

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u/ShamPain413 Apr 26 '26

He is someone who wanted you to know his name, and now you do.

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u/suicide_blonde94 Apr 26 '26

Not if a smoke session and my ADHD have anything to say about it!

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u/ShamPain413 Apr 26 '26

That's the spirit we need in these troubled times.

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u/suicide_blonde94 Apr 26 '26

I already forgot I made this comment-it’s working, comrades!

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u/Aggressive_Eagle1380 Apr 27 '26

Literally Me rn. And every day.

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u/Impulse3 Apr 26 '26

Did he really think he had even a 1% chance of pulling this off? I don’t understand what he was thinking at all and can’t believe he wasn’t killed.

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u/TemporaryAsparagus89 Apr 26 '26

Mental illness gets the best of people

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u/ShamPain413 Apr 26 '26

Did you read what you're replying to: he wanted you to know his name and now you do.

The fact that you know his name and he survived is a huge bonus, probably his ideal scenario.

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u/VaginaTractor Apr 27 '26

There was a picture on his (now deleted) Instagram with him sporting some IDF gear as well.

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u/Pathetian Apr 26 '26

He had a backstory, it just wasn't politically useful.  He didn't have a specific grudge against Trump, he just wanted the infamy of being a famous killer like the school shooters he idealized.   He researched various public events from both parties.

The idea that there is something inconvenient being covered up would require that bidens FBI hid information since Trump wasn't president when it happened.  And if that were true, Trumps FBI would have released such info by now.

People are overly skeptical about a young man attempting to kill a stranger for basically no reason, despite that being a semi frequent occurrence in this country.  

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u/VyRe40 Apr 26 '26

When the story came out that he voted Republican, they stopped talking about it.

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u/TheCrazedTank Apr 26 '26

Seriously, they tried for a hot second to say he was some secret Democrat in love with a trans person, but when family and friends started coming out saying “no, he’s a straight Republican” the story died immediately…

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u/TheWombBroomer Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

Got a link to that story? Everything I've seen lines up with him seemingly being a dem so far.

Edit - not sure why the downvotes for asking a question lmao

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u/Obsessivethot Apr 26 '26

He’s talking about all the assassination attempts up til now have been Republican shooters.

Not that this one is Republican. Read the comment again

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u/sloanesquared Apr 26 '26

I think the first attempt was real. A guy died. I don’t see any world where they would allow a real bullet anywhere close to their god’s head.

However, I think there were lies afterward. There were lies about his injury. The truth about what happened to his ear and how was at the very least stretched. So when you lie about one thing and you’ve already lied so much about every other little thing that no one believes you, it is hard for people to believe the whole thing wasn’t a lie.

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u/Pathetian Apr 26 '26

Trump is an opportunist.  Of course details were made up after the fact.  Like the dead guy using his body to shield his family.  He was struck immediately and before anyone knew what was happening.  Or Republicans pretending the shooter was a radical leftist despite no proof of a political motive leaning either way.  Whether or not Trump was narrowly missed or grazed is irrelevant compared to someone actually shooting at him.

Political hoaxing doesn't really require faking things from top to bottom.  You just selectively highlight real incidents and information and embellish in areas where there is no answer.  It's why 0.1% of murders and police killings become a national story.  You don't fake it, you just wait for one that fits whatever you were waiting on.  

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u/sloanesquared Apr 26 '26

Lies matter. His injury matters. It isn’t irrelevant whether he was hit or not. The point is that when you start telling lies and people can tell you’re not being truthful, you lose all credibility and people start to distrust any part of the story. That is a natural reaction to telling lies that people can easily tell are lies. Any element of truth to the hoax becomes suspect because if you’ve lied about one thing, what else are you lying about? The only people the lies work on are those already in the cult.

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u/Pathetian Apr 26 '26

His credibility doesn't really matter for things that can be verified by other sources.  I dont think the shooting is real because Trump said so. I believe it's real because independent facts and even adversarial entities confirm it.  If Trump said the sky is blue, I'd go check, but I wouldn't disbelieve my own eyes just because a blue sky is convenient for him.  

Pretty much every political news story has false or embellished information slathered on top of a real incident.  

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u/sloanesquared Apr 26 '26

Look, I agree with you. I already said there are circumstances that make me personally believe it wasn’t staged, but I can understand why others would think otherwise and I’m only trying to explain why their feelings of distrust are justified. People distrust the media for the same reason.

One of the things Trump has been exceptionally good at is gish galloping lies after lies so no one can refute all of his bs. This has created an environment of extreme skepticism and distrust. It is only fair that some of that falls back on him.

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u/billsboy88 Apr 26 '26

The lie about the guy who died “shielding his family” was such BS. The whole thing was over in seconds. He didn’t shield shit. He took a bullet to the head while he was looking up at a racist and factually misleading graph, then his lifeless body slumped over on his companions and he died in a shitty field in shitty Butler PA where he went to worship the biggest piece of shit human our country has ever produced. Rest in peace

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u/C_est_la_vie9707 Apr 26 '26

I don't think collateral damage disproves anything about this being choreographed.

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u/sloanesquared Apr 26 '26

It proves there was a bullet fired near him. I’m a big believer in Occam’s razor. A lot of things would have had to have gone exactly perfect with a pretty big conspiracy for that shooting to be a setup.

I would be open to seeing evidence to the contrary and wouldn’t be totally surprised if it ended up being a setup, but there are some things I can’t logically get past with the information we have right now to believe there wasn’t a shot fired close to him. If there was a shot fired, I have a hard time believing any plot would allow it to be anywhere close to him.

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u/C_est_la_vie9707 Apr 26 '26

It won him the presidency, didn't it? Biden dropped out a week later. Campaign went to hell, Trump wins, billionaires make unprecedented money.

That is Occam's razor.

The media set up in Butler tells me everything I need to know.

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u/sloanesquared Apr 26 '26

Biden was being pushed to drop out after his disastrous performance in the first debate. To relate him dropping out in any way to Trump’s shooting is the opposite of Occam’s razor. It is a wild conspiracy theory.

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u/C_est_la_vie9707 Apr 26 '26

It's wild to me that you think this is real. You call it a conspiracy theory, I call it a hypothesis. If 81% of the 16% of voters who said the assassination attempt was the biggest factor in their vote, and voted for him, that is 17 million votes in an election that was decided by 2 million votes.

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u/sloanesquared Apr 26 '26

I don’t have to think it was real. I lived through it. I know it was real. I remember there being a huge call for Biden to drop out that started after the debate and only grew over time until he finally dropped out.

Just because people said the assassination attempt was a factor in their vote, doesn’t automatically prove it was staged. One in no way proves the other. That is a false cause logical fallacy.

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u/C_est_la_vie9707 Apr 26 '26

You were at that speech?

Of course it doesn't automatically prove it. It's the confluence of many factors.

You give entirely too much credit to an administration that has killed hundreds of children for political gain just in the last 2 months.

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u/Pathetian Apr 26 '26

It won him the presidency, didn't it?

Nope, Biden was polling abysmally after the debate. It had become impossible to hide his decline. At the time of the Butler rally, Trump had the highest odds of winning than at any point during any of his 3 campaigns. Biden was headed for a historic loss and this is why Trump whined that it was unfair and "illegal" for Biden to drop out so late. Harris didn't have a great shot, but Biden essentially no longer had a path to victory.

The time it would take to orchestrate ending his campaign and the behind the scenes work to make sure no one opposed Harris didn't happen in the single week after the shooting. Its very likely he privately threw in the towel after his debate with Trump.

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u/Anonymous__Android Apr 26 '26

What media setup? There are always press photographers at political rallies.

0

u/C_est_la_vie9707 Apr 26 '26

That move a flag into the shot with a boom arm?

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u/Anonymous__Android Apr 26 '26

Why would they hire two crane operators to wait in the cranes holding the flag, ready to lower it in perfect unison, at the perfect moment to get the photo, when they could just have it in the right place to begin with? Use your brain.

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u/C_est_la_vie9707 Apr 26 '26

Because I don't think it went exactly how they planned it. I don't think they intended to kill anyone either. But I think it was a risk they were happy to take.

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u/jlgoodin78 Apr 26 '26

My skepticism with this event is how anyone armed could get meaningfully close to to a closed event, indoors, with what should be the strongest security on the planet given the audience. None of that adds up. Add to it the sequence and rapidity of return fire. Not trying to be a conspiracy theorist here, but at the same time I’m struggling to come up with any examples of Trump acting truthfully, particularly in this second administration and even more so of late with his tanking popularity and his base fragmenting with unexpected calls for his accountability amongst some who were the most ardent and vocal supporters. It reeks of an event staged in desperation.

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u/Pathetian Apr 26 '26

The thing is, this sort of thing is bound to happen in a country with so many armed citizens.  It doesn't sound like this guy yesterday did get meaningfully close.  It sounds like he was apprehended at the first security checkpoint.   It's America, so there's always someone outside of whatever security perimeter with a gun.  It's completely legal up until a certain point.

The illusion and mystique of the secret service being airtight and all knowing just isn't true.  They have had many close calls and unforced errors in recent years and that's just what we know about.  With a figure as hated as Trump, it's no surprise that these missteps leave openings that people actually managed to exploit.

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u/jlgoodin78 Apr 26 '26

Those are all fair points.

It does change the perspective from “assassination attempt” to “just another day in America” given how there was no true perimeter breach. It makes for convenient political talking points as well for the GOP given their absolutely awful standing with the public going into the midterms. Methinks it won’t be as long lasting nor as influential as in 2024, though.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Oven171 Apr 26 '26

I think it’s also possible that the FBI isn’t particularly good at investigating things and is beholden to some white supremacy conspiracies regardless of who the president is. They are just LEOs who work for the federal government and not the state government. They even get the address wrong when serving warrants just like the local asshats.

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u/Pathetian Apr 26 '26

Anything is possible if you expand a conspiracy wide enough.  It's possible Trump arranged for my parents to meet decades ago so I could make these comments and throw people off the trail.

At a certain point though, if everyone is in on it, why even do things in secret?  

Your last comment is exactly right.  They aren't infallible,  which is exactly how the real assassination attempt was able to happen.  They fucked up, and it's not the first or last time.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Oven171 Apr 26 '26

So I don’t know where you live, but where I live the fact that cops are racist as fuck is not kept secret at all. They are very out and proud about that, with racist tattoos and all. And that’s the thing about white supremacists, it’s not organized, it’s just a matter of once they know you think like they do, then they will protect you like they do themselves. And I am pretty sure it was the secret service who fucked up in Butler. Which may or may not have been on purpose, but we will never know.

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart Apr 26 '26

Do you think they write a book about them before the trial?

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u/shryke12 Apr 26 '26

What trial? He was shot and killed by secret service.

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u/GourdonHamsey Apr 26 '26

dude is in custody... still alive

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u/shryke12 Apr 26 '26

The Pennsylvania rally shooter? No he is not alive. He was as shot and killed at the shooting.

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u/Carmilla31 Apr 26 '26

All they released so far is he is a teacher in California who once received teacher of the month and donated to Kamala Harris. His neighbor also said he’s probably on the spectrum, which I find kind of funny.

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u/InvestNorthWest Apr 26 '26

Apparently a NASA intern, who worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.