When Lies Pull the Trigger

The CDC shooting is the predictable result of RFK Jr.’s anti-vax crusade, Trump’s culture of retribution, and America’s deadly tolerance for both.

What We Know

Date: Friday, August 8, 2025

Location: CDC campus, Atlanta, Georgia

Shooter: Patrick Joseph White, 30, Kennesaw, GA

Victim: Officer David Rose, 33, DeKalb County Police, killed responding to the attack

Details: Gunfire across multiple CDC buildings, including a daycare with 92 children (all safely evacuated). Shooter later found dead in a CVS.

Motive: Early reporting says the suspect believed the COVID vaccine destroyed his mind — a belief rooted in anti-vaccine disinformation.

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The CDC Shooting Wasn’t an Accident — It Was Inevitable

On Friday, the CDC became a crime scene. A man filled with conspiracy-fueled rage opened fire on multiple buildings, including the daycare center. Officer David Rose died doing his job. Ninety-two kids will never forget being evacuated under armed guard.

I’ve warned repeatedly that the Trump regime and its enablers promote a culture where violence isn’t just tolerated, it’s romanticized. They’ve spent years softening the ground: glorifying January 6th rioters, pardoning political thugs, talking openly about “retribution” and “taking back our country” as if that’s done with a ballot box instead of a bullet. This may be the first time we’ve seen someone actually killed in direct connection to anti-science, anti-government lies. I doubt it will be the last.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t pull the trigger, but he’s been loading this chamber for decades. His relentless crusade against vaccines and public health has built an entire permission structure for people to see the CDC as a villain. And let’s be honest — RFK Jr. is batshit crazy, plain and simple. That’s not hyperbole; it’s the only sane description for someone who’s spent years peddling paranoid conspiracies dressed up as “questions.” When you make an institution into the enemy, there’s always someone unstable enough to take the next step.

When lies meet firepower — the deadly consequences of conspiracy, politics, and permission for violence.

The irony is, while pundits are babbling about some looming “riot” if the Epstein files aren’t released — another absurd bit of chum tossed to a gullible base — Trump is off staging a photo op with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. It’s a desperate attempt at distraction, a way to look like a dealmaker while knowing nothing will come of it. Putin won’t capitulate, Trump knows it, and the Russian people know it. But for his base, the image is enough — a geopolitical reality show to keep them tuned in while the country they claim to love keeps getting more dangerous.

That’s the through-line: Trump’s cult of grievance, RFK Jr.’s anti-vax crusade, the MAGA media’s conspiracy firehose — all feeding the same closed-loop ecosystem of rage and delusion. It’s why QAnon believers showed up armed at pizza parlors. It’s why election workers have been swatted, stalked, and threatened. And now it’s why a police officer’s widow is planning a funeral.

And hovering over all of this is the toxic pairing of social media and America’s uniquely lax gun laws. Social platforms pump a steady diet of paranoia into vulnerable minds — the algorithms don’t care whether the content is true, only that it keeps people angry and engaged. And when the anger boils over, our gun laws make sure the would-be avenger can get an AR-15 faster than they can get a mental health appointment. That’s not just bad luck. That’s a system designed to turn delusion into gunfire.

We can argue policy all day. But when leaders tell millions of people that the government is out to kill them, that the CDC is poisoning their kids, and that justice will only come when “patriots” rise up — some will take it literally. This time, the crossfire hit a cop. Next time, it might be a school nurse, a county health worker, or another daycare full of children.

The tragedy in Atlanta isn’t an outlier. It’s a preview. God help us, but RFK Jr., with Trump’s blessing, is going to kill people with his actions.

Atlanta wasn’t random. It was the predictable end of a conspiracy pipeline — and it’s not over. Here’s a bonus commentary for my paid subscribers. The Part I Couldn’t Put in the Essay