After agents stopped a would-be assassin of Donald Trump, a volunteer posted ‘That sucks’ to the party Facebook page.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: April 29, 2026
Host: On Saturday, Secret Service agents stopped a gunman at the Washington Hilton, apparently on his way to the ballroom where President Donald Trump was participating in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The same day, a post on the Sarasota County Democratic Party’s official Facebook account—under a “feeling disappointed” emoji—said, “Well that sucks.” It came with a laughter emoji. The response did not take long. Johannes Werner reports.
![Facebook post by Sarasota County Democratic Party, feeling disappointed: "Well that sucks. [laughing emoji]" Three replies: "No cigar!", "Uhhh, this is a really bad idea to post and I would strongly suggest that you delete it", "And it oscar goes to ,The fake and stage 3".](https://wslr.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/viral-Dem-post-e1777527662939-300x300.png)
Johannes Werner: Sarasota Democrats took down the post in a matter of hours. But it had already triggered outrage on social media.
Sarasota School Board Chair Bridget Ziegler, on her Facebook account, was among the first to respond. She used the opportunity to warn of Democrats taking “full majority control” of the school board in the next elections. “We must show up to keep our schools…free from political activism or radical ideology.”
The same day, the Republican Party of Sarasota County issued an official statement. It said the assassination attempt was prompted by the “unparalleled hysteria” of calling Trump a Nazi, authoritarian and dictator and accused the “political left and Democratic Party” of driving it. The statement pointed out that the correspondents’ dinner was a bipartisan event designed to promote free speech. And it said this:
“Sarasota Democrats owe this community an apology. Just by deleting a post in hopes no one noticed doesn’t cut it. A lot of people noticed. Leadership should issue an apology to the Sarasota community.”
On Monday, the chair of the Sarasota County Democratic Party, in an interview with WSLR, did just that.
David Dean
David Dean: I would apologize. We’ve been getting calls in our offices from candidates, supporters, registered voters, from people outside the state expressing their dismay at what happened. I know I’m the public face of our communications, and I want to apologize to anybody who thought this was offensive.
JW: Asked about how the post came about, David Dean seemed to blame a young volunteer.
DD: The post was made by a social media volunteer on Saturday. It’s a little unclear to me what the intent was, but the timing of it—it was taken to express a bad sentiment that we may have wished harm to anybody in the administration attending the White House Correspondents’ dinner, and that’s, of course—well, it was picked up immediately by the Republican party candidates and, actually, a number of groups all over the country, but I want to state that the post was taken down as soon as we were aware of it, and I want to reiterate that we do not condone political violence in any form as a means to resolve any different points of view we may have.
Several of our officers have access and are active on it. We have a couple new people who have been posting material designed to engage a younger and wider audience, and to that extent, it’s been quite successful and noticed by the state party and a number of other Democratic organizations, but I think there’s—the volunteers aren’t really experienced with public relations in an organization, which is different from posting for yourself. We’ve had a couple incidents where we’ve had to go and retract things, but we’re going to work out a better way to put in some guardrails and better establish what sorts of content and topics are suitable for posting.
JW: Dean also says he would like to see a bipartisan effort to address political violence.
DD: Shouldn’t have happened in the first place. But I would want to add that we should be concerned about the escalating political violence. More and more people are seeing that as a solution to solving their problems. This has been on the news on Saturday. There’s academics that study this and are getting very alarmed by the prevalence of this and the people wanting to turn to means of violence, either in words or in deeds, against people we disagree with. That should concern people from all political persuasions, and we should all work to tone down the rhetoric and not go to hate.
JW: For WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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