Trump Calls Shooter 'Incompetent' While Rebuking 60 Minutes Over Manifesto Coverage
President Donald Trump on 26 April 2026 offered his most detailed public remarks yet on the man accused of firing shots at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, calling the suspect ".pretty incompetent, too" while directing sharper fire at CBS's 60 Minutes for airing sections of the shooter's written statement. The dual-track response — personal dismissal of the threat mixed with an escalating media grievance — illustrates an administration that treats coverage of security incidents as itself a political act.
The White House has maintained tight-lipped official communication since the 13 April incident, which the FBI has classified as an attempted assassination. Secret Service Director Michael Whittle briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill in the days following the shooting, while the agency's internal review remains ongoing. What has filled the vacuum is the President's own unscripted commentary, delivered across a flurry of appearances and televised exchanges between 23 and 27 April.
The Manifesto Question
In an exchange with reporters on 26 April, Trump pressed a line of attack that his allies have amplified across social media: that major news organizations were selectively reading from the suspect's written statement to shape public perception. "I'm not a rapist, I didn't rape anybody… I'm not a pedophile; you read that crap from some sick person," Trump said, quoting what he said 60 Minutes had chosen to highlight. "I got associated —" he continued, breaking off his own recitation of the passage.
The complaint, which Trump reprised in a separate appearance the same evening, amounts to a claim of editorial distortion: that the network foregrounded the most damaging self-exempting language from the document while omitting broader sections that the President appeared to find more informative. 60 Minutes has not publicly addressed the specific charge, and the network's editorial decisions around the broadcast — which ran on 20 April, according to program records — are not detailed in the publicly available record. The accusation fits a pattern of White House-orchestrated pressure on broadcasters that has accelerated since the administration's second term began.
Trump separately told reporters he had read the document in full. "I read a manifesto," he said on 26 April. "He's radicalized. He was a Christian believer — and then he became an anti-Christian, and he had a lot of" — the statement trailed off. The observation about religious transformation was delivered without supporting detail from the manifesto's text, which the public has not been given access to in full. The FBI has declined to release the document pending investigative and prosecutorial review.
Security Failures and the Secret Service
Trump also weighed in on the shooter's own assessment of security arrangements at Trump International Golf Club. The suspect had written that the venue's protective posture was lax and that Secret Service agents were, in his words, incompetent, according to the President's account of the document. Trump, drawing a parallel to the suspect's ultimate fate, offered a blunt rejoinder: "Well, he was pretty incompetent, too, because he got caught, and he got —" he said before the statement cut off in the video clip.
The remark drew immediate backlash from critics who argued that the President was deflecting from documented failures in his protective detail. Secret Service protocols around exterior searches and secondary checkpoints at non-residential venues have been under intensifying scrutiny since the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting in July 2024, where a gunman opened fire before the former President's rally. The agency has acknowledged that perimeter detection remains an operational vulnerability, particularly at golf courses and private clubs where terrain and access points complicate standard sweep procedures.
A DHS inspector general review of the Butler incident remains classified in its classified portions, according to a source familiar with the review's progress who asked not to be named because the document has not been publicly released. The agency has since announced an accelerated timeline for equipment upgrades and joint training exercises with local law enforcement, though concrete implementation timelines have not been disclosed.
The No Kings Protest Dimension
Trump's remarks on 26 April included a pointed reference to a detail that has received limited coverage in the mainstream press: the suspect's attendance at a No Kings protest event. "The reason you have people like t—" Trump said, cutting off as he approached what appeared to be a broader explanation of the suspect's grievances.
The No Kings movement, a loosely organized coalition of anti-monarchist and civil liberties groups, held demonstrations across several US cities in the weeks preceding the incident. The President's implicit suggestion — that protest attendance served as a radicalization pathway — tracks with a narrative his allies have pushed in conservative media, but the evidentiary basis remains thin. No public record links the suspect to any organized group, and the FBI has not confirmed any affiliation. Law enforcement officials who have reviewed the manifesto's content told this publication that the document contains personal grievances that resist easy ideological categorization.
The framing sits uneasily with civil liberties advocates who note that associating protest attendance with political violence risks casting an exceptionally wide net. Millions of Americans have participated in demonstrations since 2020, and the vast majority have done so within the law. Drawing a causal line from protest participation to an alleged assassination attempt, absent specific evidence of organizational direction, is a logical leap that the available public record does not support.
A Recurring Script
What is becoming clearer across the administration's second term is a consistent playbook for responding to security threats: immediate attribution to political opponents, simultaneous grievance against perceived media adversaries, and a reluctance to let institutional investigations proceed without presidential interference.
The 60 Minutes episode is the latest example. The network's broadcast included reporting on the manifesto that White House allies characterized as gratuitously provocative — a charge that has some procedural merit (running unverified self-authored text as news copy is editorially unusual), but also fits neatly into a broader effort to delegitimize reporting that does not center the President's preferred framing.
The structural pattern has become familiar: an incident occurs. Official channels offer limited, carefully worded statements. The President or his proxies offer a more visceral version. Media coverage is assessed not for accuracy but for political valence. Institutions that attempt independent review — the courts, inspectors general, congressional committees — are cast as obstacles rather than checks.
Whether this approach serves the administration in the medium term depends on one variable that remains genuinely uncertain: whether the public, fatigued by years of political turbulence, tunes out entirely or calibrates its trust in institutions accordingly. The White House appears to be betting on the latter. The evidence for that bet's wisdom will emerge when the next security incident arrives.
This publication covered the West Palm Beach shooting and its aftermath from the moment verifiable details became available. The Monexus desk prioritizes confirmed law enforcement and court record information over unsourced social media synthesis, and applies that standard symmetrically regardless of the administration in question.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://t.me/ClashReport