Well, I guess the narrative has moved on to the next plot twist. As Joe Biden said just a few days ago:
We're done talking about the debate. It's time to put Trump in the bullseye.
It wasn't quite a bullseye: the bullet struck his ear.
Which is to say the would-be assassin - one Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania - came within rather less than an inch of killing the Republican presidential nominee. From the intended target upon his discharge from hospital:
I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.
God bless America!
The other night my youngest expressed a wish to see The Manchurian Candidate - the original, of course. And, as great as it is, its famous ending seemed an artifact of a lost and somewhat innocent age: a man is able to stroll into a political rally and access easily a high-up vantage point with a direct line of sight to the nominee.
Couldn't happen now.
And yet it just did:
Shooter was about 150 yards from Trump on a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the stage.
It defies every security protocol ever written that this rooftop was not secured, and law enforcement personnel were not standing up there. pic.twitter.com/a1WfwMRZPA
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 14, 2024
From a trained sniper:
A guy w/ a rifle got within 152+ yards from a presidential nominee, unseen, and got shots off...We provided better diplomatic security when i was w/ Triple Canopy as a contractor. Who TF is in charge of the Secret Service?...No 👁's on a firing position that close? Sketch. #Trump pic.twitter.com/xjgeq24w58
— Nicholas Irving (@irving_nicholas) July 14, 2024
Given what we know about the FBI, the DoJ, CIA, DHS, the Bureau of Prisons, etc, you would have to be extremely naïve to believe the Secret Service is a uniquely uncorrupted and unpoliticised agency. A rally attendee on CBS News:
Another eye witness says that he told law officers there was a man on the roof climbing between multiple rooftops and they did absolutely nothing to stop him until it was too late!
And another, talking to the BBC:
Trump supporter claims he and others saw the shooter before the assassination attempt, alerted police and secret service, and were ignored.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 13, 2024
At the very minimum, this is a catastrophic security failure by the Secret Service. Nine years ago, in a considerably less insane America, my kids and I attended a Trump rally in Burlington, Vermont. I warned them beforehand to travel light because they'd have to go through security, but, unbeknownst to me, that afternoon one of them had been ambling along the street after school, espied a tennis ball in good condition on the ground, picked it up and put it in his pocket. The Secret Service at the Flynn Theatre confiscated it, the agent sternly demanding of my son: "Who takes a tennis ball to a political rally?"
And yet Thomas Matthew Crooks took his AR-15 to a political rally. And the reason he was permitted to do so is because he was "outside the security perimeter" ...yet still within range of the candidate's head.
Does that make sense even by the arseholian standards of the federal government? Even were one to accept it as a good-faith mistake, no prudent person would entrust his life to the same United States Government that wants him broke, gaoled and/or dead. From Sean Davis at The Federalist:
BREAKING: A source familiar with Trump's security detail tells @FDRLST that the former and future president's detail has been asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks, but has been rebuffed time and again by Biden's DHS.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose father and uncle have already taken bullets for their country, has likewise "been rebuffed time and again by Biden's DHS" - for any protection. It's almost as if whoever's actually running the so-called "Biden Administration" has concluded that a descent into blood and carnage would play to their advantage.
The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a man so butch he cowered in his basement rather than agree to be interviewed by me on The Rush Limbaugh Show:
🚨Flashback to Lincoln Project cofounder Rick Wilson in 2023:
"They're still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump." pic.twitter.com/FqMFty7SlO
— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) July 14, 2024
They talk about it because they want it to happen; the wish is father to the deed, or so they hope.
Robert Kagan, one half of the uniparty power-couple that brought us the Ukraine war, writing in The Washington Post:
WAPO Op-Ed by Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria Nuland: "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending."
"With each passing day, it will become harder & more dangerous to stop it by any means, legal or illegal."
Photo in OpEdhttps://t.co/473GQmDgHT pic.twitter.com/7bfLUp9WfL
— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) July 14, 2024
If what Mr Kagan and The Washington Post assert is correct, why would you not act upon it?
Oh, remember Bennie Thompson? The Congressman who just last month tried to strip Trump of his Secret Service protection? Here's his field director, Jacqueline Marsaw:
A field director for Congressman @BennieGThompson (who headed the Jan. 6th Commission & recently proposed legislation to remove Trump's Secret Service detail), wishing Trump's assassin had better aim on social media. pic.twitter.com/vQTptynYBK
— Russ Latino (@RussLatino) July 14, 2024
These people are mad, and they have killed, if not yet the candidate, the very possibility of anything resembling "politics".
Hey, what am I saying? Lighten up, you MAGA paranoiacs! Just moments after the presidential nominee gets shot in the head, CNN was assuring us that there's no need for Trumpsters to "perceive themselves to be under threat":
CNN analyst says "Donald Trump and the people around him perceive themselves to be under threat, and that is not legitimate"
This is just after someone tried to blow trump's head off on live TV
Fuck these people pic.twitter.com/EemzA7wLMl
— Gregg Re (@gregg_re) July 13, 2024
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Just a decade ago, Trump was an amiable bipartisan non-ideological telly-celeb schmoozing with Bill and Hill and doing cameos in Home Alone sequels. The Democrats chose to upgrade him to Hitler - complete with moustache.
Oh, but say what you want, trying to kill the candidate isn't like January 6th, is it? As the editors remind their anchors, there's no need for a "serious face". CNN's initial reaction:
Trump was shot at ! But see the @CNN headline : "Trump falls at rally"
This can't get any lower for US media @The_Trump_Train pic.twitter.com/qk4oryDY8W
— Sameer (@BesuraTaansane) July 13, 2024
From the CNN archives:
Yeah, some of the headlines were like this. pic.twitter.com/QY7kDL4IZb
— Tom Knighton (@TheTomKnighton) July 14, 2024
And, just for the record, Saturday night was not an assassination attempt: One Republican voter was killed, and at least two others are injured. That's to say, an American family has had a great big hole blown in its heart - because on a summer afternoon they went to a campaign rally.
Just another day in the United States' uniquely unique "peaceful transfer of power" - and on to next week...
Milwaukee approved every RNC protest request—without vetting or checking identities. And they gave protest groups no limits on the number of people allowed. @nypost's @amysikma: https://t.co/BwokKoGkKd
— Kelly Jane Torrance (@KJTorrance) July 12, 2024
