WH Slams Media's Blaming D.C. Guard Deployment for Shooting

The Trump administration has forcefully responded to media figures who placed blame on the National Guard after a gunman shot two of its members Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

MS NOW's Ken Dilanian is getting blowback since he suggested in a widely shared video that the sight of masked, uniformed personnel in a U.S. city "could provoke objection."

"There are some Americans that might object to that. And so apparently this shooting has happened," he said.

The White House fired back through its Rapid Response X account, calling Dilanian "beyond sick."

"@KDilanianMSNOW, two heroes were just shot protecting our nation's capital — and this is your takeaway?" the account stated this week.

"Democrats have relentlessly demonized these Patriots, calling them 'illegal' and even suggesting THEY might start shooting Americans. Get help. You are beyond sick."

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, echoed that sentiment Wednesday on Newsmax.

She called Dilanian's remarks "outrageous," adding that the National Guard's deployment in Washington "objectively" made the city safer.

"As a D.C. resident, I personally have been very grateful to see the presence of the National Guard and these brave men and women throughout our city," she said.

Jane Mayer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, also drew heavy criticism after she argued Wednesday the National Guard should never have been deployed in Washington and called the move political "show" despite crime reportedly dropping sharply since the deployment.

"You sick, disgusting ghoul," the Rapid Response account posted in reply.

"Two of these heroes were just SHOT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. The Guard has saved countless lives — backed up by evidence (which you're clearly too stupid to notice). They are American Patriots."

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung issued his own rebuke, telling Mayer to "shut the [expletive] up for trying to politicize this tragedy."

"They were protecting DC and trying to make the nation's capital safer," Cheung wrote Wednesday on X.

"People like you who engage in ghoulish behavior lose all credibility. Not like you had any to begin with."

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday morning the criticism of National Guard deployment by "progressive left idiots" and some news anchors was "disgusting." She also said she is reviewing such comments to determine whether they incited violence.

"What these lawmakers are doing, what some of these news anchors on other networks are doing, what their guests are saying is disgusting, it's despicable," she told Fox News. "They should be praising our men and women in law enforcement.

"We're looking at everything they have said and why they said it and if they encouraged acts of violence."

Richard Grenell, Trump's envoy for special missions and Kennedy Center president, dismissed an online claim that the National Guard was in D.C. only "because Trump fabricated a need for them."

He noted that the White House cited data showing the city had the fourth-highest homicide rate in the country in 2024 and vehicle thefts more than three times the national average.

"Yikes. Blaming the victim is so ugly. There is no excuse for this," Grenell wrote Wednesday on X.

Grenell also took offense Thursday to a post by CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem, who wrote, "The National Guard is stranded somewhere on this battlefield of partisan politics.

"They are not ready for this arena, and we should never have asked them to be. Politics is not a military mission."

"What a reckless thing to say — shooting people is not something to justify as partisan politics," Grenell wrote on X. "You need to stop giving aid and comfort to violence."