AMY GOODMAN: More details are emerging about the gunman who rushed a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement. The suspect was tackled and arrested before reaching the ballroom.

Authorities have identified the man as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old who traveled by train to Washington, D.C., from California through Chicago. He had booked a room at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was taking place. He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives. Allen was a graduate of the California Institute of Technology and worked as a tutor. In writing sent to family shortly before the shooting, Allen reportedly described himself as the “friendly federal assassin,” unquote, and referenced grievances with Trump policies.

Allen is expected to be charged today with two counts of using a firearm and one count of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, and maybe more charges. Officials believe Allen acted alone.

Video from inside the ballroom shows a chaotic scene in the moments after attendees heard nearby gunshots shortly after the dinner began.

[gunshots]

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 1: Stay down!

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 2: Stay down!

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 1: Get down!

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 3: Stay down.

SECRET SERVICE AGENT 4: Move! Move! Move! Move!

AMY GOODMAN: We just watched security racing up to the dais and taking President Trump and first lady Melania Trump. Also, Vice President JD Vance and other top officials were rushed off the stage by Secret Service as guests crouched under tables for cover.

On Sunday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on ABC’s This Week and talked about the investigation.

ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Well, we’re 12 hours into the investigation. The FBI and other law enforcement worked through the night. They executed search warrants on both coasts, both in D.C. at the hotel room where he was staying, which was inside the conference center where we had the dinner, and also in Los Angeles at the suspected home. We know that he had two firearms on him, as has been reported, along with some knives. We believe that he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago, and then Chicago to Washington, D.C. And we’ve executed search warrants on his devices, as well. We’ve started talking to folks that know him or — and to try to just continue to gather information and evidence. This is — I was on the phone with the director of the FBI after 1:00 last night, and he — they were working through the night. He was working through the night. And I think that as the days go by, we’ll certainly learn more. But that’s what we know so far.

AMY GOODMAN: In his so-called manifesto, the gunman, Cole Allen, does not mention President Trump by name, but writes, quote, “I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me. And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,’ unquote. He also wrote he planned to target administration officials, with the exception of FBI Director Kash Patel.

On Sunday, President Trump was interviewed on CBS’s 60 Minutes by Norah O’Donnell.

NORAH O’DONNELL: The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this: quote, “Administration officials, they are targets.” And he also wrote this: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” What’s your reaction to that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I was waiting for you to read that, because I knew you would, because you’re — you’re — you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Oh, you think —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m not a pedophile.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Do you think he was referring to you?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me. Excuse me. I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with all — stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, “You know, I’ll do this interview, and they’ll probably” — I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that, because I’m not any of those things.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Mr. President, these are the gunman’s words.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And I was never — excuse me. Excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes. You’re a disgrace.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s President Trump admonishing CBS’s Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes. Trump has sued CBS and 60 Minutes; CBS settled with him.

We begin today’s show with Congressmember Ro Khanna, Democratic congressmember from California, who has called for a bipartisan national commission for political violence.

Thanks again for joining us. Good to have you in our studio. Why don’t we start off with this commission? What are you calling for?

REP. RO KHANNA: First of all, the violence is never the answer in a democracy. And we’ve seen too many incidents, not just assassination attempts on the president’s life, assassination attempts on Governor Shapiro, Paul Pelosi attacked by someone going to Speaker Pelosi’s house. We need to lower the temperature, and we need to look at the causes of political violence, whether that’s social media algorithms, whether it’s mental health issues, whether it is access to guns, whether it is heated rhetoric, and what we can do to lower the temperature and prevent violence, while not trampling on the First Amendment.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what would this mean? What would this commission look like?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, I think it would look at what we can do, first of all, on social media algorithms. Right now you have social media basically for profit, sensationalizing information and sending information to people who are vulnerable. Do we need reforms on Section 230? We need to look at what sensible recommendations there can be on gun laws, what sensible recommendations there can be for security for elected officials, what are standards in terms of what we want elected officials — how to communicate so that we aren’t inciting violence in the ways that we’ve seen in our democracy, not to regulate it, but as a conversation about how we have more civility in our politics.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about gun violence. You have, oh, how many attacks we’ve been talking about just in the last week, numerous other cases of gun violence across the country. On Sunday, nine people were injured in a mass shooting near the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington. I bet most people in this country didn’t even hear about this shooting, with the number of victims of it, in Indiana, as people focused on the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting. In Virginia, you have Lieutenant Governor — the former Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax recently fatally shot his estranged wife, Cerina Fairfax, before taking his own life, a murder-suicide. In Louisiana, the 31-year-old Army veteran murdered eight children, including seven of his own, in a mass shooting rampage that spanned four locations across Shreveport last week. And we’re just talking about the last week. What about the easy accessibility of guns in this country?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, it’s shocking and tragic and makes me angry. I’ve been in Congress 10 years. We haven’t passed anything significant. We know what would work. We know that when we had the assault weapons ban of 1993, 1994, that it lowered violence. We let that expire. We know we need universal background checks. We know that we need red flag laws to go to a court and take the guns away from people who have significant mental health issues, where people raise a flag. And we just have not been able to pass that.

But there is, I do think, a difference between political violence and all of the horrific violence we’re seeing with guns more generally. And that is that political violence strikes at the very heart of democracy. We cannot have a democracy if people are saying we’re going to kill you if we disagree with your viewpoint. And that has to be condemned in the most strong, unequivocal terms.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember years ago when President Clinton said something along the lines of — this was after the shooting at Columbine — “We have to teach our children that violence is not the answer.” And this is when NATO was attacking Yugoslavia. And I’m wondering about that broader context of the massive violence. We’re looking at the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran. We’re looking at the attack on Venezuela. I was just reading in headlines about the attacks in the Pacific and Caribbean on these boats that the Trump administration doesn’t provide evidence but says they’re carrying drugs. But this level of violence in the world? If you can talk about what it means to have a government that makes violence look acceptable in some cases, but then you have this horror at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, this attempted attack on the mass dinner of hundreds of journalists and Trump administration officials? That is clearly and rightly condemned. But what is considered acceptable, and what isn’t?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, I think that Dr. King said that militarism overseas leads to the corrosion of a society and violence at home. And we live in times where there has been violence. There was violence with Netanyahu in Gaza that our country supported. You have the president threatening to wipe off Iranian civilization. You have a fuel blockade in Cuba leading to starvation. As you reported, we are shooting boats in the Caribbean, some of those people innocent. And this has — did not recognize the dignity of human beings. That does not in any way justify the assassination attempt. But what it does suggest is that we have a culture that has embraced violence inconsistent with our ideals.

AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, as you said, in no way does this justify, but in this reported manifesto — and by the way, this gunman, Cole Allen, 31 years old, apparently sent this, minutes before he engaged in his attack, to family members, and they went to law enforcement in their community quickly, and they said this is what our brother, or whoever he was in relation to them, is saying. So, in the manifesto, Cole Allen referenced U.S. foreign policy. He wrote, quote, “Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek. Rebuttal: 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.” That’s what he wrote in the manifesto.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, sometimes, just because he had intelligence of Caltech, it’s not correlated with character or wisdom. It’s a totally incoherent argument, and he’s doing real damage to the most vulnerable. By engaging in violence, he is actually hurting the very causes that he seeks to uphold. And what we need to say is, very clearly, violence has no place. There’s a democratic process to bring change. You can go organize. You can stand in No Kings protests. You can help lead new people to be elected. But when you take up arms, what you lead to, actually, is a response of censorship or a stronger security state. He’s undermining the very causes that he claims to care about.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you make of President Trump, the way he attacked Norah O’Donnell, once again particularly going after a woman journalist?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, it’s a pattern of his, which is to attack the press. And this could be a moment a normal president would have said, “This was an attack not just on me. This was an attack on our democracy. It was attack on journalists. And I’m appalled by what’s happening. And this is a time to celebrate open, free society.” Instead, he takes his personal anger, and he can’t transcend that. And it’s just very, very sad to see, to him attacking it.

And it’s sad to see some people conflating the condemnation of political violence, which should be clear, with criticism. I mean, obviously, you should be able to criticize the president of the United States and say that he did a bad job and he’s bad for the country, and that’s very, very different than threatening him with violence.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you hear Norah O’Donnell in this when she talks about — she’s reading from the manifesto and says he’s referring to pedophiles and rapists. And when President Trump says, “I am not a rapist. I am not a pedophile,” she says, “Oh,” because he didn’t name Trump, he — “Are you saying he’s referring to you?”

REP. RO KHANNA: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, that was a very interesting moment.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, as you know, Thomas Massie and I passed the Epstein Transparency Act to get the Epstein files released. This has been the single biggest issue that has had a blow to the administration. They’ve been covering up these files. And you can tell it’s on the president’s mind. He’s aware of this. His own wife, the first lady, said, “We need justice for Epstein survivors.” He still has not — his Justice Department hasn’t released the documents. They aren’t prosecuting any of the Epstein class, these people who raped and abused these girls. And this is on his mind, that he says, “No, I have nothing to do with Epstein.” But the reality is, this was bipartisan legislation. It’s the first time Congress has stood up to Donald Trump. And we need to continue to demand the release of these files and these prosecutions.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you make of Pam Bondi not coming forward on April 14th? I mean, granted, she was no longer attorney general. And would you say that Trump fired her because he didn’t want her to come forward on April 14th, and they would say, “Because she’s not AG, she doesn’t have to”? But they have — isn’t it your committee? The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the ex-boyfriend of Ghislaine Maxwell.

REP. RO KHANNA: Yes. Well, look, I drafted the subpoena with Nancy Mace for Pam Bondi. It was not as attorney general; it was in her personal capacity. So she’s in defiance of the subpoena, in violation of the subpoena. She should be held in contempt. But —

AMY GOODMAN: Is she going to be? Who holds her in contempt?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, the Oversight Committee has to vote on it, and Congress has to vote on it. And we are working to get the Republican votes, the same people who voted for our subpoena, to say, “Look, now you need to hold her in contempt. She’s not showing up to Congress. You were willing to hold the Clintons in contempt when they didn’t come before the committee. They then testified. Why wouldn’t you hold Pam Bondi in contempt? She was far more relevant.”

But she was fired, in part, because for mishandling of the Epstein files. There is no issue — not the war in Iran, not prices — that has hurt Donald Trump more with his own base than Epstein. And that is because he ran saying that the government was corrupt, that he was going to expose that corruption, and he has turned out to cover up for the rich and powerful people who wrote laws for their own benefit and abused these young girls. And that has really turned a lot of people who voted for Trump against him. And that’s why I believe Bondi was fired, and that’s why the administration is reeling on this issue.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what’s going to happen next in the Epstein files case? Again, 3 million files or pages have not been released.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, first, King Charles is coming tomorrow. I had requested that he meet with the survivors. He hasn’t done that. But the British ambassador assures me that he’s going to address it in his remarks to Congress tomorrow.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain why you want the king to address it.

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, his brother is implicated, serious allegations —

AMY GOODMAN: Prince Andrew.

REP. RO KHANNA: — Prince Andrew, former Prince Andrew — of having —

AMY GOODMAN: The man formerly known as Prince.

REP. RO KHANNA: Yes — of having abused, allegedly abused, young girls. And, of course, he engaged in financial impropriety. There is questions about the royal family’s relationship with Epstein. And so I thought he owed it to the survivors to acknowledge them and acknowledge their pain. And if he’s not going to meet them, he should very — at least address that when he addresses the Congress.

But we are continuing to subpoena people, including Bill Gates, including other people who came — Howard Lutnick, who went to the island. We’re continuing to push for the release. And we’re continuing to push for the prosecution of some of these individuals who are in these files, who the survivors tell us raped and abused them as young girls. There have been no prosecutions yet in the United States, though there are prosecutions in many other parts of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump said in that interview with Norah O’Donnell that he was exonerated, when referencing pedophilia or rape. Was he exonerated?

REP. RO KHANNA: He has not been exonerated. If anything, there’s been a cover-up. They first did not release the files of someone who made very serious accusations against President Trump. Then they released the files because of journalists’ reporting saying they had selectively released files. Now, there is nothing, so far, that implicates him, but exoneration doesn’t mean — there’s nothing also that exonerates him. The reality is, we still don’t have 3 million files, and there are a lot of unanswered questions.

AMY GOODMAN: Politico reports members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are divided over whether President Trump should pardon Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator, convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, in exchange for cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation. That’s according to committee chair James Comer in an interview last week.

REP. RO KHANNA: That’s shocking. And when the survivors testified in front of the Capitol with Thomas Massie and me and Marjorie Taylor Greene, they said that it would be a punch to their gut to pardon Maxwell. She was part of the abuse. You are basically then pardoning a someone who committed pedophilia or abetted pedophilia, and you are totally ignoring the survivors’ own sentiments. It would be just catastrophic on a human level.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to, finally, ask you — Trump quickly moved to use the incident, the attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner, to promote the massive new ballroom he’s constructing on the White House grounds, posting on Truth Social, “This event would never have happened with the Military Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!” If you could address this? I was just watching Eugene Daniels, the former head of the White House Correspondents’ Association. He said, “We would never hold it at the White House.”

REP. RO KHANNA: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: There is a separation of church and state, meaning between press and the state.

REP. RO KHANNA: Yes, he still doesn’t understand the First Amendment, which is the freedom of the press. Of course you would not have a gathering of journalists with a comedian who’s supposed to make fun of the president, whoever the president is, doing it at the White House, where the White House gets to dictate the agenda. And so, there are other reasons we don’t need a ballroom, and we don’t need corporate donors basically currying favor with Donald Trump, giving millions of dollars to this ballroom project of his to get policy. But certainly you would never have this event at the White House. And it just shows that the president still does not get it, after all these years, about the importance of the freedom of the press.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the billionaires’ tax that you and Bernie Sanders are putting forward?

REP. RO KHANNA: The biggest issue in this country is wealth inequality. We have 19 billionaires who have 12-and-a-half percent of the economy, $3 trillion. That is three times, Amy, the concentration of the Gilded Age during Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan’s times. Bernie and I have said tax them 5%. That means if you’re worth $20 billion, you’ll now be worth $19 billion. By the way, their returns are about 10, 15% or more over the last few years. And if we did that, we could have every teacher in this country paid at least $60,000. We could have universal childcare. We could have free public college. We could give every working family a $3,000 check. We could expand healthcare to include dental, vision, hearing. This is necessary for a new social contract in a country that has just seen wealth inequality explode.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Ro Khanna, Democratic representative from California.

Coming up, we speak to journalist and professor Jeff Sharlet, author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: The late Malian musician Khaira Arby, “Nightingale of the North,” performing in our Democracy Now! studio. To see all these performances in our studio, go to democracynow.org.