by Jacob G. Hornberger

April 29, 2026

Writers in the mainstream press are describing the assassination attempt against President Trump as evil. What they fail to realize, however, is that simply because the assassination attempt was evil doesn’t necessarily mean that the actions of President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment that apparently motivated the would-be assassin are good. It is entirely possible to have evil on both sides.

For example, what about the U.S. government’s official assassinations? How often does the mainstream press condemn those as evil? Hardly ever.

Consider the U.S. government’s assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani during Trump’s first term. The U.S. and Iran were not at war when U.S. national-security state officials assassinated him. Why don’t mainstream press writers condemn Soleimani’s assassination as evil?

Consider the U.S. government’s 1970 kidnapping-murder of Chilean Gen. René Schneider. He was the overall head of Chile’s armed forces at the time they murdered him. He was a totally innocent man, one who had a family. But since he was standing in the way of a U.S.-supported regime-change coup in Chile, U.S. officials decided that he needed to be removed as an obstacle. Why don’t mainstream press writers condemn Schneider’s assassination as evil?

Consider the assassinations of American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son Abdulrahman at the hands of U.S. government assassins. Why don’t mainstream press writers condemn those assassinations as evil?

Consider the national-security establishment’s assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, its repeated assassination attempts, in partnership with the Mafia, against Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and its assassination of President Kennedy. Why don’t mainstream press writers condemn those assassinations as evil?

How about the U.S. military’s recent assassinations of more than a hundred suspected drug-war violators on the high seas near South America. That’s just plain murder, given that those people were never accorded the chance to surrender, charged with a crime, or accorded a trial. Why don’t mainstream press writers condemn those assassinations as evil?

As I show in my current video series The Evil Within, ever since the early part of the 20th century evil systems have attached themselves like cancerous tumors to America’s original governmental structure and are now considered by many Americans to be a normal and morally good part of American life. Among these evil systems are a national-security state form of governmental structure, a foreign policy of economic sanctions, embargoes, and blockades, which target innocent people with death by starvation and illness as a way to achieve a political goal, and the omnipotent, non-reviewable, unconstitutional power to orchestrate and carry out assassinations of both Americans and foreigners.

Thus, when off-kilter people respond to the evil results of these evil systems with evil actions, the immediate reaction of statist Americans is to condemn their retaliatory action as evil while ignoring the fact that what they are responding to is evil as well.