Cole Allen Hated the Democratic Party, Too

Alleged shooter's views are more mainstream than you've been told

Cole Tomas Allen

Extremist. Radicalized. Leftist. Anti-Christian. Democrat.

To read the coverage of Cole Allen, the alleged White House Correspondents' Association dinner gunman, you'd think he was a poster boy for the administration's belief that the country is under siege from a left-wing insurgency (see: NSPM-7). The evidence, as you'll see, says otherwise — but everyone from the White House to major media outlets are sticking to the script regardless.

President Trump declared Allen “radicalized.”

RNC Chairman Joe Gruters blamed a “radicalized left” for the incident, calling it “the inevitable result of a radicalized left that has normalized political violence.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said investigators were probing any connection Allen may have had to left-wing groups or were looking for accomplices and co-conspirators.

Even hyper-liberal MSNOW (formerly MSNBC) “Justice and Intelligence” correspondent Ken Dilanian parrots the administration line, claiming Allen is one of several attackers “on the far left fringes”:

“So it really fits the pattern of what we’ve seen with Luigi Mangione, accused of killing the United Healthcare CEO, or Tyler Robinson, accused of killing Charlie Kirk — of these sorts of people on the far-left fringes who have become radicalized, who are living in a world of unreality, bombarded by conspiracy theories, who decide that they have to take violent action.”

But as I’ve written, Luigi Mangione, Tyler Robinson and now Cole Allen were neither far-left nor on any partisan fringe. Instead, they were united in a sense of frustration with failed institutions defined by inaction — and a determination to embody the opposite through shocking spectacles of action. What nobody in power wants to admit is that the belief that institutions have failed is as mainstream as Taylor Swift, not the fringe radicalism of '70s outfits like the Weather Underground that pundits keep invoking.

Allen, his social media posts reveal, was not singularly focused on Trump. He had plenty of contempt for Democratic leaders too — a contempt for both parties that, far from being fringe, actually puts squarely in the majority of American opinion. By early 2025, the Democratic Party had sunk to historic lows: 27% approval in NBC News polling and 29% at CNN — the lowest in CNN's polling since 1992. A Pew survey found 59% of Democrats disapproved of their own congressional leadership. That’s more than 25 million American voters, according to the latest numbers.

Hating the political establishment may once have made you a member of the radical fringe, but those days are long gone. Strange as it may seem, Allen is, politically speaking, a dime a dozen.

Consider his social media posts.

“If this is the extent to which Democratic leadership is willing to lead, it is time to form an actual third party,” Allen posted on Bluesky on January 21, 2025.

It was one of numerous other similar posts in which Allen called for an alternative to the Democrat and Republican parties.

“At this point might be faster to replace it with a new party … call it the ‘Do Something’ party, idk,” he said in another post, one of countless hints at his frustration with political inaction.

“If this is the level of analysis coming out of the leaders of the dem party!!…might need an entirely new party tbh,” he said in another post.

“I swear the democrat party does not comprehend the concept of priorities…,” he wrote on February 13.

By March, he was calling for the ouster of the top-ranking Democrat in Congress, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Is there such a thing as a vote of no confidence for Senate minority leader?” he posted on March 13.

The day before, Allen was cracking jokes about Schumer’s uselessness.

“Schumer is acting like an rpg [role playing game] player who hoards every single potion, powerup, and consumable he comes across because ‘maybe I’ll need them later,’” he wrote on March 12.

“Schumer’s assignment was not turned in on time,” he cracked on April 8 — days before the attack.

To call Allen a foot soldier of the Democratic left requires ignoring much of what he posted online. It’s a convenient narrative — it casts political violence as a product of partisan extremism rather than what the polling actually suggests: a broad, bipartisan collapse of faith in American institutions and their leadership.

— Edited by William M. Arkin