While Donald Trump said the suspected White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter “hates Christians,” a purported manifesto not only suggests otherwise, but indicates they “might have” even been “provoked” by a social media post the president made that drew accusations of blasphemy, journalist Ken Klippenstein argued on Monday.
“The guy is a sick guy,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians. That's one thing for sure.”
However, the supposed manifesto of the suspected shooter – identified as 31-year-old Cole Allen of California – coupled with interviews with “people who knew him” conducted by Klippenstein, appears to suggest otherwise.
“If anything, it appears that Trump’s portrayal of himself as Jesus Christ (you know, the AI-generated image of a robed Trump healing the sick) might have provoked Allen,” Klippenstein wrote in a report published Monday on his Substack.
“Also, an alleged copy of his manifesto reported by the New York Post shows Allen invoking Christian theology to defend the shooting, working through Gospel passages one by one like someone who had spent real time with the Bible.”
In mid-April, Trump posted an image on social media depicting himself as a Christ-like figure, wearing a white robe and red sash, while healing an ill man using his hand, which was bathed in light. The post drew immediate backlash from many of his supporters, prompting the president to ultimately delete the post, though he later claimed that he believed the image depicted him as a “doctor,” and not as Christ.
“He was pretty prominent at the Caltech Christian Fellowship,” one of Allen’s former classmates at the California Institute of Technology told Klippenstein, speaking on the condition of anonymity, further discrediting Trump’s claim that Allen disliked Christians.
In the purported manifesto, published in full by The New York Post and confirmed as authentic by multiple journalists, Allen allegedly named Trump and his administration officials as his top targets, except Kash Patel.