Politics

Let’s make one thing clear before I start digging into the Washington Post firing up its teapot-based Tempest Generator: I do not support the assassination of Donald Trump. I am understandably impatient with the “let nature take its course” progression we’ve observed so far, but I would not encourage anyone to expedite this process in bullet form.

That being said, what the fuck is the Washington Post even doing here?

Peyton Vanest was fuming about President Donald Trump when he grabbed his phone and hit record. “Somebody should,” he declared, pausing for dramatic effect. “Somebody should, you know?”

“If somebody knew what needed to be done, that person should probably just do it …” the 27-year-old progressive influencer continued, conspicuously not defining “it.”

[…]

Vanest’s vague plea — posted 18 days before the third apparent attempt on Trump’s life in less than two years — is part of a social media trend that has twisted the idea of a presidential assassination into a morbid joke.

The “vague plea” that opens this (is it an op-ed or what is it exactly?) article by the Washington Post gathered “3.2 million views.” The way these paragraphs flow together invite an inference that cannot plausibly be made: that people fucking around on the internet somehow led to the shooting (mostly of the shooter) at the White House Correspondents Dinner.