By At Sunday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, ABC News’ Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott received the association’s award for deadline reporting, earning recognition and a $2,500 cash prize for her live coverage of the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In her prepared acceptance remarks, Scott emphasized the importance of journalistic precision. “We are not just storytellers. We are also witnesses to history, and that comes with a deep responsibility to report with clarity, accuracy, and integrity—even in moments of panic and distress,” she said to the gathered crowd of journalists, politicians, and dignitaries.
However, writes The Federalist, in recounting the events of the Butler rally during her speech, Scott made one glaring error that revealed how much the media despises Trump.
“Tonight, I want to commend all of the journalists and photographers who did just that on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a campaign rally quickly turned into an attempted assassination of President Trump. Three people were struck by bullets that afternoon. One lost his life shielding his family. Two others suffered life altering injuries.”
She was talking about three Pennsylvania residents who attended the rally and were tragically shot. They are Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pennsylvania., who was shot and killed; and James Copenhaver of Moon Township and David Dutch of New Kensington, who both received serious injuries.
But four people were struck by a would-be assassin’s bullets that afternoon. Trump was shot in the head. The bullet struck his ear because he miraculously turned his head at just the right moment.
There are iconic photos of Trump’s bleeding ear. Trump was shot that day by a bullet that was within millimeters of changing the course of history, but he did not make Scott’s victim count and a room full of reporters did not correct her.
To be fully accurate, five people were struck by bullets that day if you count the alleged shooter, Thomas Crooks, who was shot and killed by a sniper. We can maybe give Scott a break for failing to count Crooks. Often in mass shootings, the media either does not count the shooter with the victims, or describes it clearly. For example, she could have most precisely said, “Four victims and the alleged shooter were shot.”
Scott’s omission went uncorrected by the room full of fellow journalists, but it shouldn’t be surprising. After the assassination attempt, much of the media tried to downplay the event, worried that it could hurt their preferred candidate, then Joe Biden, but soon-to-be Kamala Harris.
Steve Krakauer explained in The Hill at the time what a failure the media was in its reporting.
The attack marked the first addition to this list in more than 40 years, and it happened live on television — the first assassination attempt of a media era that is wildly different from the days of JFK or even Reagan. The rise of cable news, and then social media, make the Trump assassination attempt a truly unique event.
Unfortunately, our modern, unserious media apparatus is failing the test.
Very few developments in America warrant wall-to-wall coverage on cable news, but an assassination attempt against a leading presidential candidate is certainly one of them. And very few moments should unite a country like a presidential candidate being nearly murdered at a campaign rally, live on television.
Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the assassination attempt was almost instantly politicized. We saw horserace analysis in the immediate aftermath — “how will this help Trump politically?” pundits asked within hours of his surviving this horrific incident by inches. Politico’s well-read Playbook newsletter on Monday described Trump getting “another gift” when he had his Mar-a-Lago documents case dismissed, apparently adding to that wonderful “gift” of almost being assassinated.
But the far worse developments were from the press outlets that took the opportunity to make themselves the victim. CNN’s media newsletter Reliable Sources described “the blood and the blame” in a special edition Sunday, instantly making the story about how the media was being blamed by some on the right for the assassination attempt.
While many Democrats lamented that the bullet missed, other liberal political operatives took things even further. The chief political adviser to Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman suggested Saturday night that the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump might have been “staged,” even as Hoffman himself faced backlash for a joke made earlier in the day about Trump becoming a “martyr.”
In an email sent at 7:34 p.m. shortly after the shooting — addressed to a group of sympathetic journalists and obtained by Semafor — adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn raised the possibility that the attack was orchestrated to politically benefit Trump. “One possibility — which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally — is that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash,” Mehlhorn wrote. He compared the scenario to tactics used by Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia, and to Hamas’ October 7 attacks, where perpetrators commit atrocities to galvanize support.
“If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack,” Mehlhorn continued, “that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.”
Mehlhorn also pitched a second possibility: that an unhinged anti-Trump extremist acted independently in an attempt to assassinate the former president amid a chaotic political climate.
The theory had been pushed by some of the lead anchors at ABC News.
JUST IN: ABC News' Martha Raddatz appears to blame the assass*nation attempt on Donald Trump on him and his supporters.
Scum of the Earth.
"We were just looking back this morning at some of the things that former President Trump has said, he warned last March of potential death… pic.twitter.com/MtWfzDsihB
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 14, 2024
Shortly after the shooting, a staffer for Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi who had tried to strip Trump of his Secret Service protection, took to social media to complain about the shooter’s aim.
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