California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his team fired back hard on Monday after Trump ally Katie Miller suggested he bore responsibility for the shooting tied to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The clash erupted after Miller appeared on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” where she pointed to the suspect’s California ties and linked the incident to Newsom’s rhetoric.
“It’s no mistake that this man hails from the state of California and that of Gavin Newsom, who is one of the worst offenders of this violent political rhetoric that … sparks this man’s imagination,” she told host Laura Ingraham.
The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, has been charged in connection with the attack that targeted President Donald Trump during the chaotic incident at the Washington Hilton.
Newsom’s office responded within hours, unloading a sharply worded statement on social media.
“What an absurd statement,” it wrote on X. “Political violence is NEVER acceptable. PERIOD. What Cole Allen did was reprehensible and we’re grateful the President was uninjured. This finger pointing from people like Katie who haven’t just tolerated, but amplified, Trump’s dangerous rhetoric is offensive.”
The statement escalated further, directly calling out Trump and his allies for what Newsom’s team described as years of incendiary language.
“The President has openly celebrated the deaths of his political opponents, called Democrats and immigrants ‘vermin,’ ‘demonic’ and ‘evil’ ‘animals’ who are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ He regularly uses violent language, threatens to arrest and jail his political enemies — while describing the attempt to overthrow our democracy on January 6 as a ‘beautiful thing.’ The same folks cheering Trump’s threats don’t get to rewrite the narrative now.”
Miller’s comments reflect a broader effort among some Trump allies to frame the weekend violence as politically motivated by the left — a narrative critics say ignores the broader context of escalating rhetoric across the political spectrum.
The shooting itself unfolded when the suspect allegedly breached security at the Washington Hilton, injuring a Secret Service agent during what authorities described as an attempt to reach the event’s main ballroom.
