White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt railed against the “left-wing cult of hatred” while praising President Donald Trump as a hero as she addressed the shooting at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner during her latest press briefing.
“The president’s calm in the face of chaos while yet another individual was trying to take his life was really remarkable to witness and it’s something I’ll never forget,” said Leavitt, who was seated next to Trump during the incident.
“Nobody in recent years has faced more bullets and more violence than President Trump,” she went on.
Asked if there was a “normalization of rhetoric” around harming Trump and what his administration is doing to stop it by Fox News’ Aishah Hasnie, the press secretary said, “We need to recommit ourselves as a country to toning down the rhetoric and to unifying around what makes our country great.”
“That’s true of everyone who works in this White House,” she went on. “But, as I said, it’s also true of everyone who has a voice and a platform across this country.”
Leavitt accused the Democratic Party at large of inflaming division, taking issue with messaging about Trump being “an existential threat to democracy” or comparable to Adolf Hitler.
“These are despicable statements that the American people have been consuming for years, and so many mentally perturbed individuals are led to believe these words are truths and then are inspired to act on it,” she said.
She cited statements from Democratic lawmakers like Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Gov. Josh Shapiro (Penn.) and others as evidence. Suspect Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, was charged with the attempted assassination of the president on Monday afternoon.
While Trump and allies are blaming the opposition for threats against the president, he has a record of stoking violence towards his political foes since he began campaigning for president in 2015. In 2022, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband was attacked, he laughed and joked about it. After he was reelected in 2024, he mass-pardoned hundreds of violent rioters charged in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
