Dems must heed Trumps call for unity in the wake of frightening WHCD shooting: Resolve our differences

The look on First Lady Melania Trump’s face after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ dinner Saturday night said it all. Eyes wide, mouth agape, her features frozen in horror as the room in front of her erupted in chaos, tables flipping, crockery smashing, hundreds of journalists and politicians hitting the deck as Secret Service agents barrelled toward the stage, guns drawn. By contrast, the expression on the president’s face was calm, slightly quizzical, his jaw tight, as he surveyed the ballroom and then glanced toward the agents dashing to block him with their bodies from potential other assailants before bundling him off stage. Perhaps, after surviving his third confirmed assassination attempt in less than two years, Donald Trump is used to people trying to kill him — or perhaps he has just trained himself to have a poker face in any situation. Either way, he was built for such moments of crisis.Two hours later, he was at the podium in the White House press briefing room — named after James Brady, the White House press secretary shot in the head and paralyzed in the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan outside the same Washington Hilton hotel.The historical echo was not lost on any of the hastily assembled journalists still dressed in their black-tie finery.If his Trump-deranged critics could be honest with themselves for a moment, they would admit that the president’s remarks that night were pitch-perfect. Wearing his tuxedo, he offered calm reassurance, wry humor, and even kindness to the shaken reporters and to a nation sick of ongoing political violence.He called on Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who had been sitting next to him on stage that night, to ask the first question, complimenting the CBS News reporter with whom he has had an acrimonious relationship.“Madam chairman,” he said, “I just want to say you did a fantastic job.What a beautiful evening.”Then he ...