snip...

Oh, the strange ironies of life.

Renee and I were at the fabulous Puck Penthouse party on a rainy and cold Saturday night in Washington, D.C., before the White House Correspondents Dinner. We had no plans to attend the dinner, but the Puck party was next door to the Washington Hilton. Just before we left, I walked Renee over to a window that overlooked the famous spot where John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan. The photo for the article is what we could see from that window.

Odd foreshadowing, but here we are.

We left the party, headed to the Renwick Gallery for the Substack Party, and a few minutes after we arrived, the news broke that there had been shots fired at the Hilton.

You knew the sequence, even before the sound of the gunshots died down in the Hilton lobby. Ignore the loose security that night. Ignore the fact that Trump was never in immediate danger. Cast the shooter as an agent of "the left." Invoke the sacred incantation of Donald the Martyr.