Cole Allen is not anti-Christian. Trump lied about his faith and the press corps accepted it

More thoughts on the failed attack on the White House Correspondents Dinner.

• The president told 60 Minutes that the Secret Service told him to get down. However, video evidence shows that Donald Trump fell. Surrounded by security, he struggled to rise from his chair, he took a few steps, stumbled to his knees, was helped to his feet, then walked off the stage. Trump does not want that to be the public's understanding, though. So he lied.

• "What happened is then I started walking with them," he said. "I started walking, and they said, 'Please go down. Please go down on the floor.' So I went down and the First Lady went down also. But we were asked to go down by the – agents as I was walking. In other words, ... I was standing up and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall ... but I was walking out. I was pretty – about halfway there when they said, 'Please go down to the floor. Please go down to the floor.' So I dropped to the floor."

• It's clear that he fell, but CBS News correspondent Norah O'Donnell accepts his claim as if it were true. That, to me, suggests that the story of Donald Trump falling to his knees under pressure will go nowhere. The Washington press corps made President Biden's age a recurring motif in The Narrative about the 2024 presidential election. Every time he shuffled, there was a story about his "fitness." After Joe Biden dropped out, the focus should have shifted to Trump's age. It never did. Do not expect better from an anti-moral press corps.

• Let me be clear. In any other case, no one should criticize a nearly 80-year-old man for falling under stress. Anyone could have stumbled, even a man much younger than he is. But this president has never extended such grace to his enemies. He still calls Biden "Sleepy Joe" despite the fact that he literally falls asleep during televised Oval Office meetings. Trump's vanity is titanic. He could never admit to falling. So he lies. And the press corps accepts it.

• This dynamic is a part of strategy that's gotten clearer since Saturday. Instead of using the shock of violence to bridge divisions between Americans, the president is enlisting the press corps in creating a reality with which to divide us further. He is facing "an extinction-level event" – illegal tariffs, illegal deportations and an illegal war have turned the public against him. (Inflation was 3.3 percent last month.) Voters can't punish him, but they can punish the GOP. Last year, a Democratic takeover of the Senate was inconceivable. It's conceivable now. If this president loses the Congress, he will not only be a lame duck but a toxic one. A man whose ego knows no bounds will become something he's never been: persona non grata.

• Before the White House Correspondents Dinner, the Trump team was devising ways to incite maga to minimize the damage expected in the midterms later this year. The result was a slew of anti-Muslim statements that will ultimately energize white evangelical Christians supporters. Similarly, Trump cast the suspect, Cole Allen, as one of the enemies of God.

• "I read a manifesto," Trump said. "[Cole Allen] was a Christian believer, and then he became an anti-Christian." O'Donnell accepts this as true, as she accepted as true the claim that the Secret Service told Trump to get down. She said "he had social media accounts that had anti-Trump and anti-Christian rhetoric. ... He had a lot of anti-Christian rhetoric. He had – he was part of a group called the Wide Awakes. He had attended a No Kings protest in California."

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• In fact, Allen's "manifesto" – which is not Allen's word but the word chosen by the New York Post to describe the letter that Allen sent to his family moments before rushing through WHCD security at the Washington Hilton – is a deeply religious text that struggles to uphold Christian principles in the face of tyranny. "Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek," Allen wrote. "Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes."

• Allen calls himself the "Friendly Federal Assassin" who is "no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." His targets were members of the Trump administration, but he doesn't name Trump himself. The letter reads less like a manifesto than a suicide note. Allen seems to have expected to die for his beliefs. "Objection 5: Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s," he wrote. "Rebuttal: The United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people. In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered. I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again (unless the Secret Service is astoundingly incompetent.)"

• Christianity Today, which was founded by evangelist Billy Graham, reported that Allen’s dad "was listed as an elder at Grace United Reformed Church, an evangelical congregation that describes itself as preaching 'a gospel that is Christ-centered, covenantal and confessional.' ... It’s unclear if Allen was attending Grace URC at the time of the attack, but in his writing he thanked his 'family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years.'"

• The Republicans love to gaslight the public into believing that the Democrats are inciting violence when they tell the truth about Trump. In fact, it's the president who is the greatest source of incitement. That his life has been threatened three times should be proof enough.

• Yet the press corps plays along, accepting Trump's claims uncritically – he was told to get down when he actually fell; Cole Allen is ant-Christian when he is actually deeply Christian – as if the constant mainlining of deceit into the body politic is not going to bring tensions to an even higher boil. The way things are going, we might see more highly educated and highly devout men like Allen feel like they have no choice but to sacrifice themselves for America.