‘The View’ hosts call out conspiracy theory that shooting was staged, warn against making shooter a martyr

“The View” co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro called out people who were claiming the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) Dinner shooting was staged, and people who were thinking of turning the alleged shooter into a martyr during the show on Monday.

“I will tell you what really hit me, though, was later that night when I was on social media or the next morning, a good chunk of the country thinks this was staged. And where, I don’t think that. Let me just be clear, I don’t think that. But where are we in America, when Reagan was shot in 1981, nobody would have thought about that. And so, you know, I think people have to take stock of just the level of influence that misinformation, that the lies have had on the American psyche that the first conclusion so many people reach, because of the polarization and because of some of the things that our elected officials have done, frankly,” Navarro said as the co-hosts discussed the shooting.

Cole Allen, 31, from Torrance, Calif., is the man accused of opening fire at the Washington Hilton Hotel during the WHCA Dinner on Saturday. President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were evacuated from the Hilton ballroom.

Navarro took issue with Trump’s call for support for his White House ballroom construction after the shooting, and said she wished the president

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The president offered rare praise to the press after the shooting during a briefing.

“This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press, and in a certain way it did, because the fact that they just unified,” Trump said. “I saw a room that was just totally unified. It was, in one way, very beautiful, a very beautiful thing to see.”

Griffin first called out people who argued that the left was to blame for the shooting.

“I have already seen some folks on the right saying the left did this. The left did not do this. One individual actor who has his own agency, his own decision-making, who got radicalized however he may have did this. I reject that language because it makes these things more likely to happen in the future,” she said.

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Griffin then called on people not to make Allen into a folk hero, comparing it to Luigi Mangione, who is facing multiple charges in connection with the December 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota who was in New York City for a work conference when Mangione allegedly snuck up behind him and opened fire.

“On the flip side I also did see, if you were on some social media sites, do not make a martyr and a folk hero of this man. This is a bad actor who did something terribly wrong, deserves time in jail for it. This doesn’t need to be a Luigi Mangione situation where people want to emulate him and take up arms,” she said.

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Co-host Sunny Hostin said people should be outraged that someone allegedly tried to assassinate Trump, and his Cabinet.