Crazier Than The Shooter

Monday, April 27, 2026

A couple of days before the WHCD Jimmy Kimmel “joked” that Melania looked like an “expectant widow.”  In light of events that subsequently unfolded there is not one single ounce of funny in that.  I get it, it’s a joke, but then again, it wasn’t.  The shooter’s “manifesto” makes plain this character has imbibed regularly and deeply of what has become far too common rhetoric.  Sure that rhetoric is hyperbolic, but turns out it is not.  But that said, bad jokes and hyperbolic rhetoric is not the heart of the matter.

Immediately in the wake of the shooting, Matt Vespa put up a Town Hall piece that I initially ignored in which he rounded up all the really heinous social media posts after the event.  You know the kind – wishing the shooter had had more success, etc.  There are always a few idiots out there, and bottom feeding the internet for them makes for quick and numerous clicks. But the next morning I had to dig the piece up again.  Within it were some posts that claimed the entire thing was somehow “staged.”  Easy enough to ignore as the claim is clearly insane.  Do you honestly think anyone could pull off a conspiracy with this many people involved and no one would leak?  Do you honestly think someone would volunteer to run a  security gauntlet like that for a stunt?  A stunt that would probably get them killed and failing that in jail or an asylum for the rest of their life?  The claim is outside the boundaries of reason.

But I could not ignore it the next morning when the “staged” claim appeared on my personal social media.  The individual involved is a long time friend, has several graduate degrees and while a hardcore Dem – I once talked him into voting for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.  The individual making that claim did at one point, not too long ago, operate with reason over passion.  Not only did this individual I thought reasonable make the “staged” claim, he doubled down in the same post and claimed Butler was staged as well.

Butler? Staged?!  No way.  Real bullets.  A real dead Corey Comperatore.  No way it could be guaranteed that Trump would only be slightly wounded. A claim that Butler was “staged” is madness on the level of someone thinking they are Napoleon or Christ.  It is pure delusion.  And coming from the source it did it is chilling.

There is something very, very sick running through this nation right now.  This nonsense runs far deeper than left/right, Republican/Democrat, or even just thinking Trump is evil.  Something malevolent is running through a lot of people in our nation right now, making them not just obsessed, but delusional.  This language is no longer used in mental health circles, but it is as if the nation is moving from neurotic to psychotic – from abnormal behavior to a break with reality.  And we should all be frightened.

This problem is far larger than just “political violence.”  It is also far larger than just a few highly disturbed individuals.

My old friend’s post drew a lot of comment.  I was tempted to chime in, but as I read through them, it was clear that any effort to inject reason into the situation would be vanity.  Just another sign that it was an expression of insanity.  And so I prayed.  I prayed for him, I prayed for his commenters and I prayed for the nation.

The sermon text I heard about yesterday was Psalm 23.  Perfect timing.  I need to be reminded this is all in God’s hands.