The Manifesto Trump Said You'd Hate. Jonathan Larsen Read It.
The alleged Correspondents' Dinner shooter wasn't an "anti-Christian" stranger to faith. He led a Christian fellowship and organized discussions on the forgiveness of sin.
We’re republishing this piece today from independent journalist Jonathan Larsen, whose reporting we follow closely and whose work consistently fact-checks the kind of administration spin most newsrooms now repeat without question. Larsen’s latest takes apart President Trump’s claim, made on Fox News after Saturday’s shooting outside the White House Correspondents Association dinner, that the alleged shooter “hates Christians.” Larsen pulled both the alleged manifesto and archived posts from Caltech’s Christian Fellowship, where the suspect was reportedly a group leader organizing discussions on the Apostles’ Creed and the forgiveness of sin. The piece is a short, sourced demolition of an easily-told lie—exactly the kind of small but load-bearing fact-check that corporate political reporters used to do reflexively, and now mostly don’t.
If you value this kind of independent reporting—and we do—go subscribe to Jonathan Larsen’s Substack, free or paid, right here. Then read the piece below. He earns the support.
— Editor’s note, Blue Amp Media
Pres. Donald Trump said on Fox about the accused shooter at Saturday’s White House Correspondents Association dinner that, “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians.”
In fact, the alleged gunman’s “manifesto” reflects a Christian grappling with what his faith calls on him to do and not do.
And postings I found from his college Christian group show that Cole Allen wasn’t merely a member, he was a leader.
In the message that Allen reportedly sent shortly before the shooting, he writes, “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
Allen’s view appears to have been that resorting to violence to stop violence was Christian behavior. It’s almost a variation on the “just war” theory that Pope Leo XIV and Vice President JD Vance recently debated regarding Iran.
Allen’s alleged message appeared to refer to the Iranian girls school demolished by a U.S. missile, killing 180 people, most of them children. He also cited other violence carried out by the U.S. government and, allegedly, individuals in it:
“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.”
Ten years ago, Allen was a student at the California Institute of Technology, and a member of the Caltech Christian Fellowship (CCF). But not just a member.
In June 2015, he was announced as a new large-group coordinator. The blog posting read, “Pray that Cole will be able to manage his time well, especially since he is taking ME 72 next year.”
In October that year, Allen and another coordinator led a discussion on “God the Father.” It was, the notice said, part of a series about the Apostles’ Creed, the fourth-century affirmation of basic Christian beliefs, including the trinity, the resurrection, and the forgiveness of sin.
The following month, Allen brought his pastor to meet with CCF members. The subject was “the forgiveness of sin.”
Another post indicates that Allen was still a large-group coordinator almost a year later, in September 2016.
Despite Allen’s alleged attempt at a moral defense of his actions, the message he’s said to have sent falls short morally and in Christian terms.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” the message says. But after listing the dinner staff and guests as not at all targets, it also says they’re acceptable collateral damage.
“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
That’s a justification that neither Christianity nor any moral code accept for murder. It’s possible, however, that Allen, if he’s guilty, understood and accepted that.
The message he allegedly sent Saturday night says, “I don’t expect forgiveness.”
Cliff’s Note: This is what Blue Amp Media does that almost no one else in this lane does anymore: we feature community voices. Independent reporters like Jonathan Larsen who do the real work—chasing primary documents, reading the manifesto in full instead of skimming a White House press release, and calling a lie what it is. The corporate press won’t do that work because their executives are scared. Larsen does it because he believes it matters.
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—Cliff
Sometimes men of principle are drawn to wars. Our Civil War was in part based upon “principle”. I see the point like “I see something that I believe has to be done no matter what the personal consequences”. To me that sounds like misguided idealism. Men of peace can overturn world orders, we have been given many examples: Siddhartha Gautama overturned and replaced the prevailing Vedic Order, Jesus of Nazareth overturned and replaced the prevailing Sanhedrin Order, and Martin Luther King overturned the prevailing white power order. We have been given many, many more examples throughout history, we need to be more informed and less misguided.
The guy had had enough of Trump and his army of sycophantic perverts, and being a good Christian, felt he had to act! Who among us hasn’t felt that way in the last eleven years?