A Cincinnati childcare teacher lost her job Monday after posting a TikTok video in which she appeared to express disappointment that President Donald Trump was not killed during the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday. BrightPath, the early learning and childcare provider that employed her, moved swiftly to cut ties.
Corrine Baum, identified on LinkedIn as affiliated with The Children's House, which rebranded to BrightPath Kids in 2023, posted the video after gunman Cole Tomas Allen allegedly opened fire at the Washington Hilton Hotel during the annual dinner. A local Fox affiliate reported that as of Sunday, Baum was still instructing young students at Bridgetown Child Care Center.
By Monday, she was out. BrightPath's statement to Fox News Digital left no ambiguity about why.
In the TikTok clip, Baum addressed viewers directly. Fox News Digital reported the following statement from the video:
"Man, there's been a few creators on here saying that like Friday or yesterday could have been the day and then I wake up to that news, but not that news. We're going to have to pay really close attention to what they're trying to actually distract us from."
The emphasis on "not that news", spoken after an assassination attempt on a sitting president, drew immediate backlash. Fox News Digital attempted to reach Baum for comment but did not report receiving a response.
There is no indication in available reporting that Baum issued a public retraction or apology. What she did issue was a video that, at minimum, flirted with celebrating a failed attempt on the president's life, while she held a position of trust with other people's children.
BrightPath did not equivocate. In its Monday statement to Fox News Digital, the organization said:
"The comments made online by this individual are deeply inconsistent with our values. The individual in question has been terminated."
The company added a broader declaration: "Our organization does not tolerate and explicitly condemns any calls for violence." That language, "calls for violence", is worth noting. BrightPath did not treat the video as a mere policy disagreement or an awkward joke. It characterized the remarks as something its organization explicitly condemns.
The Trump administration has dealt with its own share of personnel decisions in recent months, from the removal of prominent officials like Kristi Noem to broader agency shakeups. But this firing came not from the government, it came from a private employer that decided a teacher who appeared to wish for a president's death had no business caring for small children.
The event Baum's video referenced was no abstraction. On Saturday, April 25, 2026, authorities said Cole Tomas Allen opened fire at the Washington Hilton Hotel during the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, the first time President Trump attended the event as president. Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and several senior Cabinet officials were evacuated after shots broke out.
One Secret Service agent was struck but survived. No fatalities were reported. Allen was arrested Saturday night and faces life imprisonment. Fox News Digital reported, citing law enforcement sources, that Allen wanted to target Trump administration officials.
Photo captions from the scene described U.S. Marshals walking through the lobby of the Washington Hilton and emergency responders pushing gurneys carrying equipment outside the hotel. The annual dinner was canceled in the aftermath. Trump later spoke during a press conference in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House.
Allen is expected to appear in federal court, though the specific charges and court date have not been publicly detailed in Fox News Digital's reporting. The specific law enforcement agency that described the shooting has also not been named.
The speed of BrightPath's decision stands out. Within roughly two days of the shooting, the company identified the video, assessed it, and terminated Baum. That kind of institutional decisiveness is not always the norm. Government agencies, by contrast, have often moved far more slowly when dealing with personnel controversies, as seen in recent federal agency shakeups under the Trump administration.
What makes this case particularly striking is the setting. Baum was not a political commentator or a social media personality by trade. She was a teacher of young children, someone parents trusted with their kids every day. The gap between that responsibility and the content of her video is the real story here.
Consider what the video communicated. A man opened fire at a formal dinner attended by the president, the first lady, and Cabinet members. A Secret Service agent took a bullet. And a teacher's public reaction was to suggest she had hoped for a different outcome, one where the president did not survive.
Baum also urged her viewers to "pay really close attention to what they're trying to actually distract us from," folding the assassination attempt into a conspiracy framework rather than treating it as the serious act of violence it was. That framing, treating an armed attack on the president as a distraction, reveals a worldview so warped by political tribalism that even gunfire at a formal dinner becomes a narrative tool.
The broader political environment has seen no shortage of internal conflicts and power struggles, from reported disagreements between senior intelligence officials and the White House to legal battles that have reached the Supreme Court. But those are policy disputes between officials. What Baum did was something different: a private citizen in a position of public trust appeared to celebrate the near-assassination of the commander-in-chief.
BrightPath's response deserves credit for its clarity. The company did not hide behind vague corporate language about "reviewing the situation" or "placing the employee on leave pending investigation." It fired her. It named the reason. And it drew a bright line: calls for violence are not tolerated.
That line should not be controversial. Yet in an era when political rage routinely overwhelms basic decency, it apparently needs to be stated, and enforced. The fact that a childcare provider in Cincinnati had to remind an employee that wishing for a president's death crosses a line tells you something about the cultural temperature.
The legal system will handle Cole Tomas Allen. He faces life imprisonment for what authorities described as an armed attack on the Washington Hilton during one of Washington's most prominent annual gatherings. The courts and law enforcement will determine his fate, as they should, much as ongoing legal battles involving the administration continue to work through the judicial system.
But the cultural problem that Baum's video represents will not be resolved in a courtroom. It lives on social media, where performative outrage and political hatred have become content, even for people whose day jobs involve caring for toddlers.
Several questions linger. Fox News Digital did not report what specific federal charges Allen faces, or when he will appear in court. The exact TikTok account Baum used has not been publicly identified in the reporting. And it remains unclear whether Baum held any other teaching or childcare positions beyond those mentioned, BrightPath and Bridgetown Child Care Center.
Fox News Digital reported attempting to reach Baum for comment. No response was noted. Whatever she might say in her own defense, the video speaks for itself. And BrightPath heard it clearly enough to act.
When a teacher of small children posts a video lamenting that an assassination attempt failed, the problem is not just one employee. It is a culture that has made political hatred so routine that some people cannot even recognize it in themselves, until the pink slip arrives.
