Nation's Journalists Issue Statement Clarifying They 'Absolutely Did Not Plan' The Whole Shooting Thing

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The White House Correspondents' Association issued an emergency statement Saturday night insisting that the attempted assassination at their annual dinner was "entirely unplanned" and that members of the press "in no way coordinated with, encouraged, or scheduled" the gunman who attempted to breach a security checkpoint inside the Washington Hilton. "We want to be very clear: this is the first time in thirty years we've had an attempt on the president's life at this event," said WHCA President Dana Lash. "Statistically, that's quite good." The alleged shooter, Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, California — a Caltech graduate and computer science master's student — was charged Saturday with attempted assassination of the president, marking what legal scholars are calling "a weird development for someone with a 3.9 GPA." Adding to the irony, this year's dinner was the first the president had ever attended, having skipped every previous Correspondents' Dinner on the grounds that the press corps did not like him. Many journalists privately noted that the shooting confirmed the president's instincts, which is the worst thing that has ever happened to journalism. "I'm not saying attending was a mistake," Trump said from a secure location. "But I'm saying attending was a mistake." Congress has scheduled bipartisan hearings to determine who is to blame, with early frontrunners including the media, California, and whoever seated Cole Allen near the fire exit.