All week long he had been aiming screeds at the news outlets in the room, but now he was praising the reporters before him, complimenting their outfits, using a polite tone of voice and thanking them for their work.I have no idea whether Trump really would have delivered the "most inappropriate speech ever made" if the shooting hadn't happened. This could be an empty boast, like his threats to obliterate Iran. But I assume he would have delivered a typical Trump speech -- a rambling but very nasty hour-and-a-half diatribe, probably with an emphasis on the supposed sins of "the fake news." It would have been ugly. It might have had a few new insults that would have seemed unusually harsh even by Trump's standards and would have grabbed all the headlines, while going viral on X and Bluesky.
“You’ve been very responsible in your coverage,” he said. “I will say I’ve been seeing what’s been out. You’ve been very responsible.”
This was definitely not the message he had planned to deliver to the media tonight. He said he was going to make what he called the “most inappropriate speech ever made,” and sounded a bit disappointed that he had been robbed of that opportunity. So disappointed, in fact, that he vowed the dinner would be rescheduled for some time in the next 30 days.
But then, he would need a rewrite — or at least that is what he said for now.
“I don’t know if I can ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight,” he said. “I think I’m going to be probably very nice. I’ll be very boring the next time, but we’re going to have a great event.”
And then the shooting happened, and Trump was the central figure in the only news story anyone cared about. And all of a sudden, he didn't feel the need to launch mean-spirited attacks at the press, because his narcissistic supply needs were being met. He no longer needed to make news. He was news. Attention was coming to him.
Now he gets to say he's in rarefied company:
When asked by a reporter, “Why do you think this keeps happening?” Trump responded, “Well, you know, I've studied assassinations, and I must tell you the most impactful people, the people who do the most, take a look at Abraham Lincoln ... the people that make the biggest impact, they're the ones that they go after. They don't go after the ones that don't do much.”(Apparently he doesn't know that Gerald Ford, one of our least consequential presidents, survived two assassination attempts in one month.)
“And when you look at the people where there was an attempt or a successful attempt, they're very impactful people. They're big names," he continued.
And he gets to demand his beloved ballroom, which I'm beginning to believe he sees as himself in the form of a building.
Am I saying that Trump doesn't really hate the media -- that it's all an act? No. He hates the media and he wants to woo the media. He's known for attacking some of the same journalists he's courting -- Maggie Haberman, for instance. He wants them to write nothing but flattering pieces about him, and he hates them when they don't. But instead of accepting the idea that they sometimes won't feed his ego, he continues to seek their praise and resent them when they don't deliver it. His need for praise is bottomless.
But a shooting silences any criticism of Trump, at least temporarily. And so he gets the coverage he wants
“You’ve been very responsible in your coverage,” he said. “I will say I’ve been seeing what’s been out. You’ve been very responsible.”Translation: He's the main character, and no one is being mean to him. And the world turns on Trump's need for ego gratification.
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