VICTOR JOECKS: The next would-be assassin is watching

The party of microaggressions can’t figure out why it’s inappropriate to call President Donald Trump a fascist, a traitor and Hitler.

On Saturday night, Trump and a host of administration officials attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Police believe Cole Allen, armed with firearms and knives, attempted to rush past security in a bid to assassinate Trump and other officials. This is the third assassination attempt Trump has survived in the past two years.

After an event such as this, it can be tempting to dismiss the alleged criminal as mentally ill. But Allen wasn’t wandering about on the streets twitching and talking to the voices in his head. He graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Caltech. He worked as a tutor. He carefully planned his attack.

If you can’t blame Allen’s alleged actions on mental instability, you have to confront something more difficult. He was sane — and evil.

You don’t have to guess his motivation. Allen laid it out in his manifesto.

“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Allen wrote.

What’s shocking isn’t those allegations. It’s how Allen’s words echo liberal talking points.

In a February post on X, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called Trump the “leader of the Pedophile Protection Party. She continued, “At least in Somalia they execute pedophiles not elect them.”

The Epstein files contain “highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said in February.

In 2020, Ken Martin, who’s now the chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote on X that Trump “is a traitor to our nation and all those who have served.”

And this is only a small sample of the baseless invective that the left routinely hurls at Trump. In 2024, former President Joe Biden said Trump was a fascist. This month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz went to Spain and called Trump a “feeble-minded, trigger-happy president.” Last summer, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, called Trump a “wannabe Hitler.”

Yes, this is the same left that claims common terms such as “American” and “grandfather” are unacceptable microaggressions.

Aside from Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., few on the left have criticized this dangerous and now-routine rhetoric. Many of the left’s condemnations of political violence are as lifeless and perfunctory as Barack Obama’s 2008 opposition to gay marriage.

Other leftists hint that Trump staged the whole thing. The Washington Post found around 20 percent of “left-wing and liberal influencers and politicians who posted about the shooting used conspiratorial language.” To avoid a similar problem, conservatives should stop listening to Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.

Spot the disconnect. The left wants people to believe that Trump is an unacceptable threat to America. Outside the gala and after the shooting, a protester even held a sign calling for “death to tyrants.” But the left also wants to claim that political violence is unacceptable.

Consider this. The next would-be assassin is watching. What has the left said or done that would dissuade him from trying to assassinate Trump?