A wise man — possibly Winston Churchill — once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” And if he’d lived long enough to see President Trump in office, he might have added, “Especially if you can turn it into a real estate project.”
In the aftermath of the chaos at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, Trump was presented with yet another opportunity to refocus his presidency on issues important to the American people. Instead, he chose to exploit the opportunity for his personal priorities.
The real crisis, in his telling, was less about guns or mental health and more about America’s strategic shortage of sufficiently opulent indoor gathering spaces.
That, and the continued existence of pesky anti-Trump elites who had the audacity to try to hold him accountable.
Let’s start with the former: Trump’s attempt to link the attack with the need for a new $400 million White House ballroom.
“This event would never have happened with the militarily top secret ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump averred on Truth Social.
Of course, the logic of tying a failed assassination attempt to the urgent need for a huge new ballroom is “interpretive” at best. Keep in mind, the would-be assassin didn’t even make it to the same hotel floor as Trump, much less pose a danger to the president.
What is more, are we to believe Trump will soon perpetually hold court at the “Versailles on the Potomac,” never leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to hold a rally or deliver a speech anywhere else?
Regardless, this pro-ballroom influence campaign — which extended to Republican politicians and right-wing “influencers” — was presumably needed to fend off a pesky lawsuit based on the (legally correct) proposition that Trump should have sought congressional approval before bulldozing the East Wing to build a gaudy monstrosity.
But this vanity project was merely the opening act. As much as Trump loves redecorating, he loves something else even more: revenge.
Why else would he have begun his 2024 campaign by promising “retribution”?
More recently, he fired his attorney general for not effectively using the Department of Justice to deliver said vengeance.
So, in the wake of the correspondents’ dinner chaos, it made a certain amount of perverse sense that the Trump administration chose to renew its lawfare campaign against an old nemesis: former FBI director James Comey.
In case you’ve forgotten, the notion that Comey is a threat is premised on his 2025 Instagram post showing a picture of seashells on a beach arranged to show the numbers “86 47.”
Now, in the ancient vernacular of restaurant kitchens (here, I have ample experience), “86” means something akin to “We’re out of it” or “Get rid of it.” It generally doesn’t mean, “Threaten the 47th president using beach décor.” But that didn’t stop FBI director Kash Patel from saying that Comey “disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump’s life.”
Of course, Comey is merely the tip of the spear, in the paranoid mind. The conspiracy is imagined to be much larger than one man.
In the wake of the dinner, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) alleged: “Democrats want President Trump, Republicans murdered all across this country. Capitalists murdered.”
Meanwhile, acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche suggested that the media are complicit for “being overly critical and calling the president horrible names for no reason.”
These comments might resonate more if Trump’s standard chatter didn’t involve calling anyone he doesn’t like “traitors,” “vermin” and “enemies of the people,” while mocking the deaths of Americans like Rob Reiner and former FBI director Robert Mueller.
But it’s not just Trump’s rhetoric, it’s the violent imagery. Trump has a history of posting incendiary memes and images — a habit that continued in the immediate aftermath of the alleged assassination attempt.
Around 4 a.m. on Wednesday, for example, Trump posted one such violent AI-generated image of himself with the words, “No more Mr. Nice Guy!”
In this instance, the threat was intended for Iran: a nation that might see this as either an intimidating threat or an ineffectual parody. (Tehran speaks fluent meme, for what it’s worth.)
Now, I’ve got no truck with the Iranians. Still, considering the timing, Trump’s post was ironic. Nothing says, “Turn down the temperature” quite like digitally inserting yourself into a picture with aviator sunglasses and an assault rifle.
The obvious point here is that Trump isn’t actually against violent rhetoric or images — he’s against other people doing it.
The larger point is that Trump was granted a small amount of political capital in the wake of yet another attempted assassination, and his immediate instinct was to use his victimhood status to push construction projects and revenge.
Never mind using this opportunity to focus on lowering tensions (and gas prices and inflation). Those crises don’t come with chandeliers or schadenfreude.
After all, a man has to have his priorities.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
