Trump Makes Damning Admissions on Day After Shooting…

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1:58Ben Meiselas:That's civilrightsmuseum.org. A number of very damning and peculiar admissions are surfacing from the Trump regime about the alleged shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night. First, that the alleged shooter, Cole Allen, supposed to be a 31-year-old from California who got an engineering degree from Caltech. Apparently, he was nowhere near Donald Trump when the shooting occurred. He still basically remained outside of the security perimeter, but everybody was acting like he got very close. It should also be noted that there was no designated survivor in the room where the White House Correspondents' Dinner was taking place.

2:43Ben Meiselas:That's a pretty odd thing, and it goes against all protocol. Also, it was pretty odd that the Secret Service went to protect J.D. Vance first instead of Donald Trump. I think most significantly, the Trump regime and all of its sycophants have made this instantly about Donald Trump's golden ballroom. And in unison, now it's like 50 to 60 of the top MAGA influencers and the top people in the Trump regime with a unified voice, all basically posting the same message. This is why we need a golden ballroom. This is why we need a golden ballroom. Donald Trump made a post this morning also saying, this is why I need a golden ballroom.

3:24Ben Meiselas:And now MAGA Republicans are saying, you know what? Really, the taxpayers are the ones who need to pay for the golden ballroom. In the next Department of Homeland Security funding bill, the taxpayers should be paying for this golden ballroom because of this incident. There's a lot of other red flags that I want to go through with you one by one, but let's not forget that Donald Trump's approval heading into this White House Correspondence Center was the lowest in presidential history. His approval was 33 % based on the latest AP North poll on the economy. It was 30%. That's worse than Nixon at the time of Nixon's resignation.

4:06Ben Meiselas:Also, let's not forget what happened yesterday as well, where there was supposed to be, if you believe the Trump regime's version of events, a meeting in Pakistan with the Iranian delegation, with Foreign Minister Aragchi and others from Iran. Even though the Iranian delegation had always said they're not meeting with the Trump regime, Donald Trump used the same media that was in the room at this White House Correspondents' Dinner to spread lies to the American people and manipulate the markets on Friday that this meeting was going to take place. When the Iranian foreign minister left, Trump regime had to come up with their next lie.

4:43Ben Meiselas:And they said, oh, well, you know, the Iranians sent us to document. We just didn't like the document. So we didn't want to waste our time. So that's the events that were heading into this White House correspondence dinner. And then, you know, the alleged incident takes place. And I mean, just look at the conduct and behavior of the Trump regime officials, as we posted on the Midas Touch account. They were all smiles. I mean, they looked like they were having the time of their life after this alleged shooting. I mean, look at them. Like, they're literally partying with the media. Like, this should be a very serious and solemn incident if you actually think about historical events where shootings happened, right?

5:24Ben Meiselas:But they're, like high-fiving each other. They're laughing. They're jolly. He holds a press conference last night, 30 minutes after the incident, to demand a golden ballroom and then to say, well, this isn't going to impact the fact that we're still going to win the war in Iran. I mean, no matter what you believe or don't believe about the incident, what is an undisputed fact is he immediately turned it into a propaganda and political moment using the same sycophantic media that props him up in order to spread more propaganda to the American people. That's clear. Here are more photos of them all smiling.

5:58Ben Meiselas:Look at Todd Blanche, J.D. Vance. Ha ha ha ha. They think this is the funniest thing ever. Here is Hegseth laughing. Alina Habba, after the incident, posted the following. 10 out of 10 slayed on the look. She said she's slayed. She thinks that she looks so good in her dress. She wants everybody to know after the shooting that she's slayed on the look. Then you had Chip Roy, MAGA Republican Congress member say, any consideration of DHS reconciliation instructions this week and beyond should provide for the construction of a secure ballroom on White House grounds in addition to other concerns being addressed regarding ICE, CBP, Save America, Transgender and Abortion Funding, Recon 3, and more.

6:44Ben Meiselas:In other words, now they're not just going to use the shooting, the purported shooting, in order to try to build a golden ballroom, but they're also going to use it to attack the transgender communities and marginalized communities and try to prevent people from voting in a safe way now. I mean, that's where they're going with all of this. Then Donald Trump posts the following. What happened, this is what Trump posted this morning, 5.46 a.m. What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great military secret service law enforcement, and for different reasons, Every president for the last 50 years has been demanding that a large, safe and secure ballroom be built on the grounds of the White House.

7:25Ben Meiselas:The event would never have happened with the military top secret ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough. While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is. Plus, there are no room sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in and is inside the gates of the most secured building in the world, the White House. The ridiculous ballroom lawsuit brought by a woman walking her dog who has absolutely no standing to bring such a suit must be dropped immediately. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with its construction, which is on budget and substantially ahead of schedule.

8:02Ben Meiselas:Thank you for your attention to this matter. So now you would also want to hold the White House Correspondents Dinner inside the White House when the very nature of what the event is supposed to be, it's supposed to show the independence of the press that you visit them. But now you're using this to build your golden ballroom. And by the way, the press plays right into this, of course, as well. I mean, you'll have on CNN, Dana Bash asks Jamie Raskin, who's a guest. So don't you think the rhetoric of the Democrats is just a little too heated right now? Don't you think it's just too heated? You need to tone it down?

8:41Ben Meiselas:Jamie Raskin's like, what are you talking about? Donald Trump's covering up child sex trafficking rings. Inflation is surging right now. He's engaged in war crimes in a lawful war. What does any of this have to do with anything? You're alleging that a shooter who got nowhere near the underlying event in the White House Correspondents' Dinner, that this now means golden ballrooms and we could give Donald Trump everything he wants and attack transgender community. What the hell are we even doing here? Here, play this clip of Jamie Raskin. Yeah. And you have, as many of your fellow Democrats, have used some heated rhetoric against the president.

9:17And do you think twice about that when something like this happens? What rhetoric do you have in mind? Just talking about some of the fact that he, you know, is terrible for this country and so on and so forth. I understand that that's your democratic right. But overall, do you have a responsibility? I have no personal problem with Donald Trump at all. I mean, I talk about the policies of this administration, the authoritarianism like we saw on display in Minneapolis, where two of our citizens were gunned down in the streets simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. renee good alex preddy um and others have you know died in custody uh i'm talking about policies i don't personalize it and i certainly have never called the press the enemy of the people i think the press are the people's best friend and that's why it's written right there into the first amendment we need the press to be a vigilant watchdog against every level of government federal state local all of it you're not going to get an argument for me on that before i let you go

10:16Ben Meiselas:And then on Meet the Press, you had Donald Trump's acting attorney general, Todd Blanche. When he was asked, do you think it was safe to have the vice president and the president, defense secretary, treasury secretary, all of these people in the same room? And Blanche was like, yeah, I mean, the shooter didn't even get close at all. Here, play this clip. Was it safe to have the president, cabinet officials, members of Congress, the first lady, the vice president, such high ranking officials all in the same room at the same time? Yes, of course. We're not going to stop living. We're not going to start doing our jobs.

10:58We're not going to stop all the work that we're doing every day. And by the way, and you were there last night as well. Let's not forget that the suspect didn't get very far. He barely broke the perimeter. And by barely, I mean by a few feet. And so while this was extraordinarily dangerous and put a lot of lives at risk, and there's no doubt that that's something that we're going to have to learn from over the next couple weeks, the system worked. We were safe. President Trump was safe. His Secret Service agents kept him safe. All of us were safe. And so while, yes, it was a very tragic situation, as President Trump said last night, we are not going to stop living.

11:38We're not going to stop being out there with the American people. And if that was his goal, he failed. And he was stopped. He was able, as you say, to breach that security checkpoint by merely a few feet.

11:51Ben Meiselas:And I think that's an important point that at least Jennifer Jacobs points out. The shooting happened or the alleged shooting happened on the level above the ballroom where the White House Correspondents Association dinner was. I don't think people hearing about this or even thus in the room realize how far away from the president and people in the room this incident was. It was on another floor up some stairs and several sets of security away because the Washington Hilton's hotel and other public spaces were open for other functions. The entire building wasn't secured by the Secret Service. Just the specific areas where the White House Correspondents Association dinner was held, law enforcement officials have been saying.

12:33Ben Meiselas:And so this is who they're saying the guy was who did it. This is who they're alleging. A guy by the name of Cole Allen, California computer scientist, 31 years old. He went to Caltech mechanical engineer, former student researcher at NASA's elite jet propulsion laboratory, computer scientist with advanced master's degree. At Caltech, he built offensive and defensive robotic systems, physics-based simulations. He graduated in 2017. This is what Asra Namani is reporting. Here's just a quick clip of him when he was in Caltech that has surfaced recently. Here, play this clip right here. College student Cole Allen developed a prototype for a wheelchair emergency brake.

13:17The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels but don't actually lock the chair to the ground. The idea with this is to prevent it from moving at all. Recent Aging Into the Future conference held by St. Barnabas Senior Services and the Eisner Foundation offered a test run on products that have the potential to enrich the lives of seniors.

13:39Ben Meiselas:And I'll also show you how CNN's trying to frame this. This is how Brian Stelter is trying to frame this, that Donald Trump just called for unity. This was all about unity, everybody. Here, let's play this clip right here. You know, a couple of minutes before this happened, I was with House Speaker Mike Johnson. I shook Johnson's hand. I was talking to him. And then I was walking across the ballroom, Victor, kind of taking the long way toward the CNN tables because I wanted to see some of my friends and some of my sources. And so I ended up on the ground next to an executive from Comcast, some people from NBC.

14:12And in that moment, you know, there was a lot of unity. And I'm thankful that President Trump talked about that unity last night and did not try to heighten the tensions or escalate the situation. He could have very easily gone out there and bashed the press last night and blamed the media for attracting this suspect to the ballroom. But instead, he basically said, we're all in this together. And that's certainly true. And that's how it feels this morning as well.

14:36Ben Meiselas:More from MAGA right here, one of their top influencers, this guy, Scott Pressler, who's their main voter outreach guy. He posted the following, dear leader Thune in our Republican Senate majority, since Democrats are literally trying to assassinate president Trump, can you come back to Washington DC and pass the save America act before Democrats have the opportunity to win back power? Thank you. As our editor in chief, Ron Philip Kowski writes, MAGA activists and influencers seizing on the incident in a lobby that was actually not close to the ballroom for unrelated pieces of legislation. Then you had other MAGA influencers saying the secret service agent shot had been working without pay for over a month.

15:17Ben Meiselas:They're alleging a secret service agent was shot in a bulletproof vest and the secret service have been working without pay. Yeah. Secret service agents have indeed been receiving pay during the ongoing DHS shutdown, which is really just impacting ICE funded through other means like the one big, beautiful bill act. The department remains unfunded, but agents are being paid. The Secret Service are being paid. This was a lie that MAGA tried to push out. Then there was this other part of the incident where you had Dan Scavino trying and failing to start the, and by the way, there's no one closer to the regime than Dan Scavino.

15:52Ben Meiselas:I mean, he's as close as you get. And as soon as this bizarre incident happened, again, not close to where the ballroom was, he wanted to start a USA chance. It was like USA, USA. And then nobody else was doing the chant here. Play this clip.

16:21God bless America. USA! USA! USA!

16:48Ben Meiselas:And again, in breaking protocol, you see that the Secret Service went for J.D. Vance first over Donald Trump. Here, play this clip.

17:07Where? Where? Where? Where's it at? Where?

17:15Where's it at? Where's it at? Where's it at? Where's it at?

17:23Ben Meiselas:And here then Todd Blanche is asked, why wasn't there, you know, why didn't you you go through protocols regarding having a designated survivor not in the room? I mean, isn't that raising lots of red flags? Here's what Todd Blanche had to say. Let's play this clip right here. So you must have attended past correspondence dinner. I mean, for over 50 years, they've been held at this hotel. Last night, it was extraordinary because we had the president, the vice president, the speaker of the house, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the Secretary of the Treasury, all in the same room.

18:01Those are five out of the top six leaders in that line of succession for this country, should something have actually happened to the President himself. Was there planning for that? I mean, when we have the State of the Union, there's a designated survivor. Was there an increased concern about gathering all of our leadership in that room last night? We will not stop doing things like we did last night in this administration. And this man, if his one of his goals was to get us to be scared, he failed. And let me just let me make clear that you're right. All those folks are in the room and more.

18:36And yet we were all safe. Law enforcement did their jobs. And so President Trump said last night, and he means it. And I very much agree with him that this type of conduct will not deter him. It will not stop him from living. It will not stop him from doing his job. And that is not not only him, but the vice president, the cabinet, the law enforcement, you all, journalists, you're not going to stop doing your jobs either because of this lone man that did what he did. And so this is something that we all are still reacting to because it's fresh. But I assure you that the types of things that you saw last night and the president being out there and available to the American public, that will not change because of what this guy tried to do last night.

19:19Ben Meiselas:Well, there have, you know, folks, when I think about this, uh, incident last night, and I think about how immediately the media was reporting the Trump regime narratives. Oh, this is about unity and sympathy and we need to come together and rally together. And even if things are looking bad, how courageous there's nothing. Let me be very clear. If you want me to say anything that Donald Trump or his regime did last night was courageous. You're watching the wrong media network, okay? Nothing is going to change my criticism of his policies, of his regime, so long as those policies are harming and killing the American people.

19:56Ben Meiselas:That's what we should focus on. This entire event from the outset was a complete farce, some black tie event with no comedian even mocking the president, where the media would be basically celebrating Donald Trump destroying the First Amendment. The whole concept of this event to me was disgusting in the first place. So no, you're not going to get any, you know, oh, I'm so sorry about what, no, stop it. Stop, stop it. We're going to be very critical of the facts, what happened, and we're going to report honestly and truthfully right here. You know, you think about what MAGA is also focused on right now, how they want to also, you know, use this to what, like go after their enemies, Ilan Omar or whatever.

20:37Ben Meiselas:I just noticed all of a sudden there's a lot of right-wing articles about like a winery tied to Ilhan Omar's husband is closing as Congress probes her finances. Oh, really? Ilhan Omar's husband and her finances. I mean, Donald Trump and his family have taken literally billions and billions of dollars in quid pro quos in the most disgusting way. But this is what right-wing media is focused on right now this weekend as well. I mean, it's so despicable as well when I even saw that that That was like a major topic on right-wing media. And it's why I use Ground News, because they're the best tool for me to not just stay objective in my reporting, but I want to see what's being reported on the right wing, on the left wing, in the so-called center, right?

21:21Ben Meiselas:That's why I partner with Ground News every episode. They're the best tool for me in doing this reporting. It's an app and a website that pulls in thousands of articles from around the world and organizes them by story to show you how's the left, how's the center, how's the right framing stories differently? What are they prioritizing in terms of their coverage? For every story, the color-coded layout makes it easy to see the political bias of each source. I can filter for high factuality sources and see which sources are independently owned or owned by a large media conglomerate with corporate interests.

21:53Ben Meiselas:This lets you compare reporting on the same issue in one place so you can come to your own conclusion based on all the facts. On this article, for example, I saw that it was just right-wing media covering it and pushing it. So if you're reading right-wing news, you think this is like the biggest story, but it's just in your own echo chamber. And by the way, if you're reading left-wing media only, you have no clue that this is what they're talking about this weekend. We were like, I have a blind spot to what's even going on over there, which is why Ground News even has a dedicated blind spot feed, a personal favorite of mine, which highlights stories being disproportionately covered on either side of the political aisle.

22:28Ben Meiselas:to help burst through echo chambers. Because I believe in Ground News so much, we're offering 40 % off the same vantage plan that I use for my research here. So just go click the link in the description or go to ground.news slash MTN or scan the QR code up here. It's one of the biggest discounts they've ever offered. Ground.news slash MTN. If you wanna support the channel and get a clearer understanding of the world, try out Ground News. I wanna get back to my coverage now as well. We're on state regime media. You had Peter Doocy saying because of this incident, Donald Trump may need to wear a bulletproof vest wherever he goes now.

23:07Ben Meiselas:Here, play this clip. But that there are discussions underway at the White House about whether or not President Trump is going to have to start wearing a bulletproof vest for future events in public. Jackie. Peter, thank you so much. Then you had Todd Blanche saying the way we respond to incidents like this. We can't hide in a bunker. We got to be strong right now. First off, y 'all are building the bunker. This golden ballroom thing you're talking about is, Donald Trump said, it's all about the bunker underneath. And what are we even talking? The individual barely breached the security perimeter and was actually nowhere near the ballroom.