The post title is a quote from a Sean Davis article in The Federalist.
Instapundit pulled out Jamie's quote for his post on the Sean Davis article.
Also quoted at Instapundit is a comment from Achilles: "At first glance every trained person in the world said one thing: Bullshit."
So how are you feeling — more like Jamie or more like Achilles? The Jamie position, if I may rephrase it, is: I hope the Secret Service is as bad as it would need to be for this to have all been mere negligence. The Achilles position is: The negligence theory is beyond belief.
I'm not one for jumping into conspiracy theories, but here, the idea that it happened through multiple levels of Secret Service failures feels more like a conspiracy theory. You have to strain and get creative to explain it. If you begin in the Jamie position and desperately hope there was no intent to allow a killer access, you have to struggle to explain how that could be.
Apologies to Achilles and Jamie if I've misstated their thinking or if they don't like their names being used in this way. I'll rename the "positions" if they object.
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202 comments:
1 – 200 of 202 Newer› Newest»All the “conspiracy theories” about the pandemic turned out to be true.
The Biden admin ordered the hit.
They aren’t through yet.
If you’re expecting resolution from an FBI investigation, remember that the FBI was one of the main actors in propagating and disseminating the Russia collusion hoax.
I’ll add the comment I had to that post…CBS put up a report that ‘US Intelligence’ received info of threats from Iran over Trump’s order to kill Soleimani…and I immediately assumed it was bullshit cover. I was willing to go with incompetence and diversity hires until that point…
If you engage in Ann’s exercise If you had to argue… it was coordinated plot by government actors, you would be diligent not just in providing the opportunity but covering your tracks, and as we have seen the psy-ops they’ve used against us in the past there’s always a ‘muddying the waters’ element to persuade us from acknowledging the obvious. Once you know what to look for those become red flags. That planted CBS is a red flag…
If Occam's blade was not so rusty and dull...
It leaves a ragged cut that bleeds heavily and will not heal. Is that blade our media "truthtellers"?
Whose media?
Whose truth? When you get right down to it, it's all belief and it's all faith.
What is your leviathan? When the monster loses its monstrosity, the world shifts. That's where we are right now.
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late...
All the “conspiracy theories” about the pandemic turned out to be true.
…and that’s just it. The persuasion language, the information operation becomes the identifier.
The comments to that post were fascinating. Maybe the best ever on the Althouse blog; a high bar indeed.
For me, I lean toward incompetence and criminal negligence. But I will keep an open mind until more facts come out after a rigorous investigation not conducted by the FBI.
One thing really stuck with me from the comments was when someone mentioned the billions in graft that is on the line in this election. We all know criminal cases where someone was killed over a small amount of money. With Trump, billions are at stake.
I tend to go with Achilles as this is way too much incompetence for it to be only due to a bunch of errors. Change my mind!
I repeat what I said in an earlier thread where I was thinking about complexity:
Stochastic Terrorism:
Set up the dominos and wait for someone else to knock them down.
Rube Goldberg Machine:
This attempt looked much more like a Rube Goldberg Machine than it did a line of dominos.
Criminal negligence is not beyond belief and should result in jail time.
The Secret Service, the evidence demonstrates very clearly, allowed this person to roam the grounds for some time, then set up a sniper position, get interrupted by a local Keystone Kop, reposition himself, and then get off 8 shots before they acted. Nobody disputes any of these facts.
Either their inaction was deliberate, or criminally negligent. Either way, they should be in prison for the same length of time.
It might be that the protocols of the Secret Service are that you don't shoot unless you are absolutely sure it's an assassination attempt.
The Secret Service had the assassin in their sights, and they were watching him. But they weren't sure if he was an assassin or not.
That's because there were multiple snipers on rooftops, and you don't want to shoot a security person by mistake. It wasn't just the Secret Service who was there. They were understaffed. So they were also relying on police and state troopers.
So when the Secret Service snipers saw another sniper on another rooftop, they didn't know who he was. And they want to check and be absolutely sure before they shoot the guy. If you're wrong, you could be facing prison time.
It's a stressful situation and a stressful job. I don't blame the Secret Service agents in the field. I blame the higher ups in D.C. who decided to give Donald Trump minimal protection.
There’s a bit of the appeal to authority fallacy running in the Achilles argument…except they aren’t wrong. Even with basic firearms training it’s incomprehensible to me to imagine the inner circle protection of SS agents would leave a line of sight to the podium open and unprotected, or not momentarily move the asset once a threat was reported…
The most plausible theory:
Whoever is running Joe Biden, and the husk of Joe Biden himself, are all sitting around in a meeting in the West Wing.
"Jeezum those Trump rallies are dangerous from an executive safety point of view," said cabal member number one.
"Yeah, too bad if something happened to him," said the husk of Joe Biden.
"Well, we could help "luck" along if we hamstrung his Secret Service protection," said another shadowy figure
"We *do* make the decisions on these matters," said cabal member number one, "I will write a memo."
Suddenly the husk of Joe Biden becomes animated for a second, because a thought occurred to him that he still could retrieve, "Haven't I told you guys the first rule of politics?" he chided, "Never write when you can speak, never speak when you can wink, never wink when you can nod!" After a few moments of silence, as the truth of Biden's words sank in, he then added, "It's like I always tell you, without my help, you Boy Scouts could never run this country."
In other words, anybody looking for a paper trail is going to be disappointed. Joe and Jill Biden don't have 20 shell corporations whose tax returns they don't report, and whose primary function seems to be moving around money, for nothing.
Perhaps in the case of the Biden (mis)administration we may have arrived at this point: "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity." ==> "Never ascribe to stupidity, that which can be explained by malice."
The two most rational theories are incompetence or evil. Embrace the healing power of "and."
With Trump, billions are at stake
It’s trillions. Also keep in mind there is a dangerous mix of Davos dictators and climate change zealots backing the Biden regime. The world can’t afford them losing power, or so they believe…
I take what I think is the middle approach of 'motivated incompetence.'
During Trump's first term there were reports of Secret Service agents questioning whether they'd stop an active assassination attempt on him.
The Biden administration denied, until a few days ago, Secret Service protection to the main active Democrat campaigning for the nomination.
Democrats in Congress were attempting to get all of Trump's Secret Service protection stopped.
The report from Susan Crabtree of RCP indicated that the Secret Service was using the presumably lower level of 'former President' rather than 'active Presidential campaign' when determining resources assigned to Trump, evidently leading to the situation where the majority of the agents at Butler, PA were temporarily assigned from different offices.
It's not hard to imagine all of these things leading to an attitude that viewed protecting President Trump as a distraction from their primary mission.
Also noted in a podcast I just listened to from Powerline is the last (known) assassination attempt on a President or Presidential candidate using a weapon from beyond pistol range was probably JFK's assassination.
"I'm not one for jumping into conspiracy theories, but here, the idea that it happened through multiple levels of Secret Service failures feels more like a conspiracy theory."
It's analogous to the observation someone made that the number of statistical anomalies in the 2020 election is itself a statistical anomaly.
A critical mass of Biden Administration employees are braindead DEI figurehead placements. They think they are doing a great job because they are literally incompetent...while a smaller group of predatory strategists set up scenarios where something bad might happen to Trump.
Biden's handlers hired 10,000 carbon copies of Kamala, luggage thief and cross-dresser Sam Brinton, and the childish disinformation singer Nina Jankowicz.
See the rules of engagement for the selective enforcement of classified document laws with the Mar A Lago raid. Deadly force. For a case that has now been tossed, even as Biden also kept classified documents in his garage and was ignored.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/21/us-news/fbi-was-authorized-to-use-deadly-force-in-mar-a-lago-classified-docs-search/
Biden and Mayorkas both “stand behind her 100%” which tells me Cheatle will not be fired for gross negligence or incompetence. Nor has she accepted any responsibility for USSS errors. To the contrary she gave the silly “sloped roof” excuse and blameshifted to “local law enforcement” for not handling the building “outside the perimeter.”
Anyone else notice a huge contradiction in those two statements from her? Which is it, Kim? You ordered them what to do or that area was designated to local LEO?
Prediction: she’ll keep her job because she handled it exactly how she was expected to. But suddenly Trump’s personal detail is a bunch of tall fit men.
Take them at their word. The head of the Secret Service said that "the buck stops with" her; we came an inch away from catastrophe; she accepted responsibility AND didn't resign in shame.
Therefore it was intentional.
I'm in the Jamie position until I have a cocktail. Then I'm in the Achilles position. Who the hell really knows?
I don't know whether there is any way to even look into this, but were there any unusual communications between the White House and the military regarding contingency plans for civil unrest in the event of Trump's assassination? *
*I mean aside from the general run-I would hope and even expect that there are constant and ongoing scenarios being considered for all sorts of potential events, including assassination of prominent domestic political figures.
Both can be true. Upper level people could have arranged to have incompetent people in Trump's detail. The difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is about 90 days right now.
The people saying that the regime couldn't possibly try to kill their political opposition through criminal negligence are forgetting multiple things:
1) The Biden regime is stacked with incompetent criminals who realize that President Trump will go after them, jointly and severally.
2) The DOJ, Homeland Security, and the current President are the only theoretical controlling authorities over the Secret Service.
3) The errors are not by the standards of elite operatives, but by the standards of "functioning eyes."
4) This many errors go well beyond negligence, as the helpful crowd spent half an hour pointing out the assassin.
5) Anyone saying "ooh, conspiracy theory!" is not only stupid, but engaging in low-grade Holocaust denial. After all, how could such a major conspiracy take place?
The twists must be indulged to pretend that Charles Randall and Inga aren't supporting retarded and evil thugs in their campaign to drive America into the ground. I'm not one of their children, so I don't have to feign any such concern.
We've seen so much incompetence over the past three+ years with this administration, and with diversity hires in general. But in this case it is at such a stunning level, that I'm at the 60% likelihood of incompetence/40% likelihood of intentional actions.
"This attempt looked much more like a Rube Goldberg Machine than it did a line of dominos"
That makes no sense to me. Can you expand? I know what a Rube Goldberg Machine is, BTW, and they are designed by a human, not accidents of nature. Is that your point? That it is an actual conspiracy beyond just trusting to luck that Trump would be killed?
These secret service agents are government employees with good salaries and great benefits and almost total job security. They have been protecting Trump for almost a decade now with no problems. It was a sunny summer Saturday in rural Pennsylvania. Complacency had set in and when that happens it can be hard to recognize that too much is being left to chance.
I think this is much easier to believe than some grand conspiracy.
The counter-sniper had Crooks in his scope for some time. He could see that this was a kid with a gun wearing a T shirt. He was no cop! He should have shot; at least a warning shot if he thought Crooks was a cop.
I spoke to a colleague who in his spare time is a sniper who over the years has been on the security teams at a number of events in the Midwest with Presidents attending.
His take: USSS screwed this one up.
I was most interested in the reports of the shooter being seen and not dealt with until he shot. My colleague explained it in a way that satisfied me that it was USSS negligence, and or a conspiracy.
As told, the USSS uses a lot of local law enforcement (including local snipers - hence his involvement) to fill in the security team. The local guys - the snipers are either in radio contact with the USSS or have a USSS member next to them. Each local person is given a specific assignment. They are told to ignore the other people's assignment, and just focus on their assignment. My friend said one time he was bored and was looking around through binoculars and his scope and saw in some other area of the event (not his assigned area) a breach in the security perimeter. He mentioned it to the USSS guy next to him USSS guy got brusque and asked him why he is looking outside of his area and told him to focus only on his area of assignment.
Also, the snipers are only allowed to shoot when they are given a green light by the USSS.
So his explanation of how it could be that the shooter was noticed climbing up on the roof and was reported but nothing seemed to happen, was that as a local you don't know who that guy is. You don't know if that guy is another local or another USSS. So, you call it in but you don't do anything until you are given the task or permission to do something.
Or put differently, it seemed to me that as a sniper, even if you see the person, you can't just shoot him because (a) you don't know if he is another local or USSS, and (b) you aren't allowed to shoot until you are given the green light by the USSS command center. Even if people identified the person and told some local law person standing there, that local would not necessarily know who that person was, and would just need to call it in.
From this conversation, I concluded that the event was USSS failure, not conspiracy. (USSS screw-up was my colleague's statement on the event.)
"but were there any unusual communications between the White House and the military regarding contingency plans for civil unrest in the event of Trump's assassination? *
You mean did they intentionally leave any smoking guns laying around?
I’m waiting for more facts to come out. Minimally I think it was gross negligence to allow Trump on the stage while they’re trying to figure out if that was a good guy or bad guy on that roof.
It’s also extremely concerning that the crowdsourcing of the threat did not provoke a massive reaction from the LEOs. We’ve learned - again - that we can’t count on LE alone. We have to raise a larger and larger ruckus until the proper response happens.
"The counter-sniper had Crooks in his scope for some time. He could see that this was a kid with a gun wearing a T shirt. He was no cop! He should have shot; at least a warning shot if he thought Crooks was a cop."
My colleagues said locals might wear any number of things, including camouflage.
I do not mean to suggest that one must be intoxicated to think like Achilles. Having a cocktail makes it easier to think about the things that I, like Jamie, would rather not think about.
Correction above: I was most interested in the reports of the shooter being seen and not dealt with until he shot. My colleague explained it in a way that satisfied me that it was USSS negligence, and NOT a conspiracy.
To add to my previous comment — if the LE don’t respond, others may see the need to step in to do so. That’s not good.
IF, we stipulate, for the sake of argument; that it was "just screw-ups" that allowed a shooting site (RIGHT OVER THEIR HEADS) to be unattended, and then used by a shooter (THAT THEY WERE OBSERVING THROUGH RIFLE SCOPES) to
a) climb up..
b) set up..
c) take aim..
d) fire FIVE rounds at The President of the United States..
IF, we stipulate, for the sake of argument; that it was "just screw-ups"..
HOW do we "explain" the fact that they let Trump go on with his speech, WHILE abcd were happening?
HOW??
"I think this is much easier to believe than some grand conspiracy."
LOL, of course you do. Meanwhile my ex wife just called me telling me that my daughter called her because she is having nightmare that Trump is going to follow "agenda 25," and make women carry "menstrual passports," and all the while Biden tweets out memes of women being forced to wear nun's habits by the Trump Administration.
So you have a pincer, on the one hand you raise the rhetoric to 11, and on the other hand, you slowly choke off Trump's protection. There is no "grand conspiracy" required. We know for a fact that both of these things happened. The result is predictable, and it already happened in Europe under nearly identical conditions just a few weeks ago.
Spite-driven decisions to give Trump the short end of the stick on security prior to in-the-field negligence is where I’m at now.
The former a hallmark of the Biden abuse of power approach to perceived domestic political enemies.
We are now 4 days past the shooting. The excuses from the Secret Service have rolled around like an unsecured marble on a table: From the Director of Secret Service: It was up to the Butler Police to cover that roof. This was outside the perimeter of our coverage. The roof was too slanted to allow an agent to go up there safely. From the Butler Police: That was not our roof to cover. It was up to another local law enforcement agency.
Butler has another local law enforcement agency?
The longer this goes without truth, without anyone giving an adult answer, the more the holes open up wide to allow for other ideas. But I find it very interesting- and disturbing- that we're at the point in this country when a large number of people are thinking, right at the outset, that this was set up.
And there is no one in authority who sees and hears this and is willing and ready to jump on this and stomp it down with the truth. So...what are we to believe?
Has a similar vulnerability occurred in any of Trump’s previous rallies? If the most obvious place for a sniper is regularly left unsecured, then the SS is hoping for some stochastic terrorism.
imtay--I don't expect that there would be "smoking guns." But as a practical matter, if the assassination attempt succeeded, massive civil unrest would be expected (indeed, perhaps intended as part of the "plan").
It would be hard to keep any such 'smoking guns' from smoking--and conversely the absence of any such 'smoking guns' suggests that no conspiracy was involved.
So the question should be asked.
In which theory does the "dog not bark"?
Jamie states a hope/preference, and Achilles implies an opinion/belief, As has been noted, they are not mutually exclusive, and I’m sure many are, like me, in agreement with both.
Side question: does the “Achilles” exception to the possessive rule apply to our Achilles?
This is a slippery slope.
See what I did there?
The only thing I object to is my own bad grammar!
Yesterday was a long day...
If this was a coordinated assassination attempt, we can be sure that Biden didn't organize it. He'd have already blabbed about it if he did.
So how are you feeling — more like Jamie or more like Achilles?
Perhaps both
Jamie's and Achilles' positions are not at odds.
There is room to conclude negligence on the part of Secret Service, and at the same time find more than negligence, deliberate nefariousness, at administration level, the latter of which was the focus of the post and article that Achilles addressing.
The Federalist article states:
"Biden’s security regime reportedly diverted even more resources to a hastily planned Jill Biden event that just happened to be in the area."
Some believe that Jill Biden is acting in a regent role, in which case the diversion of secret service resources may be seen as a logical and sound decision.
Let's invert the conversation.
USSS cannot shoot at a threat until given approval by a superior.
That was almost certainly the same rule in place for the Capitol Police on January 6th, with the only exception being if they (or others) faced a clear and imminent deadly threat.
However, officer Michael Byrd shot Ashli Babbitt at point blank range without orders and without an imminent deadly threat.
He murdered Ashli Babbitt in violation of the ROE and the Democrats gave him a promotion!
Whatever conspiracy theory you are contemplating, just include the data point that LOTS of Democrats in positions of power are just fine with murdering their Republican political opponents.
Well, as I said in a previous post, I dearly would like to attribute this debacle to sheer incompetence. However, I can't believe the shooter would have got to the point of actually targeting Trump without at least some advance knowledge and assistance from someone who knew the details of the security plan and wanted the attempt to be made, irrespective of whether it actually succeeded. So I guess I start with the Jaimie position, but am now shading to the Achilles position. How about material neglect by higher authority hoping to lead to incompetence and assassination?
Remember the Navy ship collisions a few years ago?
This is a lot like them.
No one wants to crash their warship into a merchantman; no one wants their protectee (and civilians) to get shot.
Everyone knows how to drive a ship safely; everyone knows how to set up a secure site.
But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The Navy has more than one ship. The USSS has more than one site going on at any given time.
The Navy was trying to do too many things with too few ships. They didn’t invest time and resources in training, drills, and maintenance. Plus they have what seems to this soldier to be a cultural antipathy to letting anyone get 8 straight hours of sleep at sea. Maybe one of you can explain the complex duty rosters. Anyway, the can-do culture makes everyone salute and execute when Congress says no to more stuff, when the admirals say yes to more missions, etc.
Something very similar in the USSS, especially during a campaign. Congresses and admins of both parties refuse to staff the Service at the levels needed for a campaign, since those people would apparently just twiddle their thumbs the other three years. So various bubble gum/baling wire fixes get used: cookie-cutter mobile teams, drafting agents from other DHS bureaus, and relying more and more on local police. Oh, and no one says no when the campaign staff picks sites with less than the recommended amount of lead time.
So your ship winds up getting driven by zombies who may be under-ranked and under-trained for their positions, and who may have never been in a crowded commercial sea lane before. And your campaign site gets advanced by zombies who are told to make it work with a fixed number of bodies, plus whatever Andy and Barney can spare.
So it’s not exactly like Achilles setting up a hasty defense with a platoon of Rangers. More like Seven Samurai trying to keep the brigands out, with the help of some brave villagers wielding improvised pikes.
RLTW
JSM
Jamie states a hope/preference, and Achilles implies an opinion/belief, As has been noted, they are not mutually exclusive, and I’m sure many are, like me, in agreement with both.
Hell, I'm in agreement with both, more or less. And like boatbuilder, which way I lean is seeming to have something to do with the level in the bottle.
My husband's and my last conversation before bed last night was all reluctant acknowledgement that an awful lot of things had to go wrong at once in this case. I know that event cascades do happen. But... geez.
I think Qualye brings up a good point wrt the conspiracy vs incompetence decision. The Google Earth pictures don't really give a representation of what the sniper overwatch teams would have seen through binoculars or with Mark I eyeball. The roof has a slight pitch that looks flat from overhead but did have enough of a peak to be a reverse slope. The teams likely only saw movement on the other side of the peak but couldn't be sure it was a potential threat. It could have been another officer ascending the roof to check it out, which did happen. Without more detailed information about the communication net and what comms were being passed between the various teams it's hard to know for sure but I suspect they were waiting for confirmation that the threat was there and also that the officer was out of the line of fire.
@Dave Begley: The counter-sniper had Crooks in his scope for some time. He could see that this was a kid with a gun wearing a T shirt.
The counter snipers had premium/pro grade 35x magnification riflescopes that cost maybe $3,000 each. This means the distance would appear to be 35 times closer: 150 yards / 35 = 4.28 yards away. They could have counted the hairs in his eyebrows, counted his pimples, read printed text from a book, and easily identified his weapon type.
Many people have no clue about the long-range capabilities of this type of rifle.
More good conspiracy theory for us.
ACcording to a report at Gateway Pundit, a Black Rock subsidiary bought the AGR building on which the shooter was about 4 months ago.
The shooter crook also appeared on a black rock commercial shot at his high SCHOOL. This would normally just be a coincidence but who knows.
John Henry
There were plenty of issues to point to a high level of incompetence, but I now believe it was intentional. Using the Swiss cheese analogy, there were way too many slices of cheese for all the holes to line up.
The telling moment was when Cheatle threw out the sloped roof argument. No one is dumb enough to throw that one out there.
The timing was just too perfect. Two days before the convention would have sent the convention into a tizzy, just what the Democrats needed. The shooter is dead. Perfect. No motive. No trail. The perfect patsy.
Life imitates "The Parallax View".
I don't think it's a binary choice 1) incompetence 2) deliberate negligence. In either of these scenarios you still need this Crooks asshole to take advantage of the situation. Was he an outside agent, or part of the plan? The needed someone that doesn't scream "pro", and Crooks sure fills that bill. The guy was walking around with a goddamn 12' ladder in plain sight? Not every agent can be in on the hit, you never get them all to keep it secret, so #2 is part of the plan, and #1 just follows.
Is it so far fetched that the Biden cabal feels it perfectly acceptable to put a hit out on Trump? I mean, he's Hitler, right?
Begley, warning shots? Cops don't do warnings shots.
Incompetence at this level stems from a lack of consistent training. And the fault for that is at the top of the organization, always.
Incompetence vs Conspiracy? I think we've seen both at once in things like the Fani prosecution. At least with the lawfare there was recourse. Gin up a conviction that nobody takes seriously and it gets tossed on appeal.
I don't think the Secret Service would stand for being made patsies. There are such things as institutional memory and honor and they must run deep there.
So the best explanation is Incompetence. Profound, dangerous, unchecked incompetence for which there is no recourse. Fit whatever demographic is in vogue, or speak whatever nonsense is necessary and you cannot be fired. Confidence in Biden plummeted after the Kabul fiasco and has never recovered. What General was fired or took the milder course of early retirement?
The Buck never stops anywhere. Oh, and whatever bad things happen are Trump's fault anyway.
In a Secret Service where the Director is not willing to take an embarrassing but harmless career hit for the good of the country and for her organization, what are the odds that agents in the front line will leap immediately in front of a bullet?
Slightly off topic, I think it is quite fair to criticize the female agents for their height. Your primary job does include keeping your protectees from being shot in the head. But lets lay off the weight. None of you would look particularly buff wearing a bullet proof vest....
Tacitus
The Federalist article states:
"Biden’s security regime reportedly diverted even more resources to a hastily planned Jill Biden event that just happened to be in the area."
An event for Italian American women where Jill, of Sicilian descent, spoke for five minutes. While Joe, elsewhere, was at Mass, possibly stroking a cat.
[shakes fist at sky] Oh, come on! Just quit it!
I am definitely getting punchy.
john mosby, excellent comment.
I could imagine that the personnel assigned to Trump rallys are on punishment detail, do to the politics.
There are layers of possible screwups that any which one by itself would not have been enough to cause the near catastrophe, but for other screwups along the way.
This was in JFK’s mind when he said: "There's always some son-of-a-b**ch who doesn't get the word”
I am in the Jaimie camp, wishing I didn’t believe that Achilles is right.
The Dems rolled the dice and came up snake eyes. If Trump’s head turn had not caused a brain destruction a la JFK to be replaced by a quarter inch ear lobe only wound, the Dems would have won it all. Naturally Dementia Joe wanted to know why Trump turned his head. But like the wolf in Road Runner Biden lost it all.
I don't believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in incompetence. The bottom line is that they really didn't care about Trump's safety. They went through the motions, but weren't zealous.
So they did a half-assed job of it.
I was thinking about this last night. What makes this less about incompetence and more of a conspiracy is that we know nothing about this clown since he graduated from high school. His recent past has been erased.
Every young person has an internet presence. Everyone has people they talk to and messege on their phone. This guy didn't.
How long did he scout the site? How did he know no one would be on the roof? What was the chain of command for local law inforcement when they noticed this guy on the roof? This isn't spur of the moment stuff. You plan this weeks or months in advance. But he left no paperwork?
I think it's a natural inclination, when there's an assassination attempt, to lean towards supporting the person who got shot at. We are supposed to decide these things through votes and when someone tries to steal a democratic right from millions of people and replace it with a single violent act, we recoil against this. This is the obvious take, but I think this is illogical: The candidates are the same as they were before the attack and you should support whomever you think is best.
The not obvious but true take, is that at multiple levels, the event and its aftermath reveal incompetence and lack of leadership at the top, the presidency.
As president you have a huge advantage in an election: You're running things. One of the most important things, is to make sure that the election is fair and orderly. If you let your opposition be killed or almost killed, you have failed to properly administer the executive branch.
It's not just a fluke or a well planned attack. The USSS made just about every mistake that could be made and got foiled by a single 20-year old. It was dumb luck that Trump happened to move his head at exactly the right moment.
The attack was Saturday, it is now Wednesday. Nobody has resigned or been fired! There is a chain of command from the site commander right up to the president. The site commander should have resigned on Saturday or Sunday, or been fired on Monday. If not, by Tuesday, the site commander and his immediate superior should both have been fired.
If Biden had already fired people, he could have shown leadership. He did not, he needs to be fired.
Right now I’m at “expect the worst” (conspiracy) but “hope for the best” (incompetence). Screw ups will never admit it until they are backed into a corner. Even then they will still try to find a scapegoat.
I watched a video of a person of color plead for someone to tell Trump to get some “boyz” from the hood to protect him. It may not be a bad idea.
traditionalguy said...
Naturally Dementia Joe wanted to know why Trump turned his head. But like the wolf in Road Runner Biden lost it all.
7/17/24, 7:49 AM
That is Wile E. Coyote, and he keeps coming back for more no matter how many times he gets knocked down. Your metaphor needs serious work, 4/10.
Some of you have zero idea how the Secret Service and personal protection details work. That's fine, I don't have time to educate people for free. But I'm less concerned with tubby yet loyal women, and more concerned about the two police goons on the roof. The whole point of a spotter is to recognize such threats before they can even aim. Their careers are pretty much over even if they landed the kill shot. If not, people will want to know why.
I'm with FairMarketValue:
"So I guess I start with the Jaimie position, but am now shading to the Achilles position."
for now, willful, but passive incompetence.
I can't fathom expecting that many conspirators to be silent. For me, the two largest incompetence's center on the 2 CS guys.
- What were they doing from the time he showed the gun till bullet 8?
- why no GUN! alert to the team and a podium evac?
What will we learn from the local cops and I assume a State Police CDR who was the local LEO integrator?
"the absence of any such 'smoking guns' suggests that no conspiracy was involved."
Oh grasshopper...
Maybe they thought that a violent outburst from angry Republicans at seeing their leader's head blown apart on live television was just what the husk of Joe Biden's re-election prospects needed. It's not like the people at the top don't have bunkers.
john mosby said...
Remember the Navy ship collisions a few years ago?
i was just thinking about those, right after i posted..
in at least one of the two collisions, apparently the two officers in command (bridge and CIC? i don't know) weren't speaking to each other, because the two ladies were having a spat (lover's quarrel?)
I guess.. Never ascribe to malice what just be female bad feelings ?
HeartlessAztec asked: "In which theory does the "dog not bark"?"
You know which dog isn't barking? It's the hospital dog. There has been not a single photo or video shot by any person showing Trump's Secret Service detail rushing him into a hospital in that town. No interviews thusfar with the doctors and nurses who worked on him. Nothing. That is very, very surprising.
That might just be a lack of imagination in the press, but I'm still waiting to see evidence that Donald Trump was rushed to a hospital. I've seen none yet. That dog is strangely quiet.
A conspiracy does not necessarily require direct collusion with the shooter (recruitment, planning, provisioning, payment, etc.). The conspiracy here was to deliberately create a long-term deficient security regime in order to enable some unknown assassin(s) at any of numerous events to have an opportunity to successfully eliminate the intended target. And it doesn't have to involve the onsite SS agents/snipers.
Those at the top of the decision tree, as St. Croix described it, can set the entire plan in motion and then just sit back and wait for the random assassin(s) to make use of the enabled environment. Not just incompetence or just negligence, but deliberate assembly of both for a long period of time and multiple events.
Evidence? You won't find receipts or cellphone conversations. But you will see continuous understaffing, untrained or unfit staffing, reduced pre-planning, lack of aerial surveillance, uncoordinated communication or centralized command, and the most egregious - lack of control & surveillance of high-ground direct line of sight positions.
In this case, ALL of the above are in evidence.
I favor a hybrid theory: Those in leadership were choking Trump's security resources on purpose, not because they wanted to create a situation in which an assassination took place, but because they no longer seriously believed that assassinations were possible in America. Thus it became one more area for spite toward Trump to be expressed. And they forgot their duty to the material realities at the expense of these expressive meanings.
Trump qua salesman and qua politician also tends to live in the world of expressive meanings, as did Obama. At least Trump knew how to delegate (mostly) on the basis of functional competence.
Conspiracy theories should be entered with care. Everyone who wants to begin thinking about them should begin with Machiavelli's chapter on conspiracies in _The Prince_. It would make it clearer to the theorists what kind of hurdles have to be cleared to execute one.
"USSS cannot shoot at a threat until given approval by a superior."
Not true. I would suggest everyone watch the interview that was posted yesterday on this site yesterday. Tim Kennedy (interviewee) covers the events in Butler from beginning to end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9boJpqiZTQ
Christopher B said...
The roof has a slight pitch that looks flat from overhead but did have enough of a peak to be a reverse slope. The teams likely only saw movement on the other side of the peak but couldn't be sure it was a potential threat.
SS or SP Drone coverage?
I think it's more of a gestalt--a force field--than a conspiracy. In the presence of such incompetence, negligence, malice, and stupidity, then something bad will inevitably happen.....There's certainly reason for further investigation, but who will investigate the investigators.
In any event, “the buck stops” at POTUS.
Russia, Russia conspiracy.
FISA lying
Gretchen Whitaker abduction instigation.
Donald Trump assasination instigation.
Lethal force order on the Mar lago raid.
Sounds like escalation to me.
Dixcus said...
That might just be a lack of imagination in the press, but I'm still waiting to see evidence that Donald Trump was rushed to a hospital. I've seen none yet. That dog is strangely quiet.
7/17/24, 7:57 AM
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Secret Service wanted to get to a hospital, but Trump snapped that only his ear was bleeding. Aside from the fact that a totally unsecured hospital is an even larger security risk, it's very likely that Trump's medical staff simply stopped the bleeding and proceeded to monitor him for PTSD. You can't imagine how skilled a presidential medical staff is, particularly for a billionaire.
How many coincidences does it take to equal one conspiracy? 2? 5? 8?
The Hamas raid into Israel was a failure of intelligence. That's a fair observation. But when you speak about intelligence failures, you should take note of the failure of Hamas intelligence. What did they think would happen after their murder/rape spree?....Humanity has a long history of intelligence failures and incompetence. Did you ever read about a battle where the losing general didn't ignore the obvious prompts to move his troops here instead of there.
Interesting that we have three theories. First (my default) is that USSS is as supremely incompetent as the rest of government which can’t organize a three car parade. Second, the USSS is supremely competent, and was able to orchestrate an attempted assassination while leaving only muddled tracks. Third, the USSS and the Trump campaign are both supremely competent, acting in perfect harmony so that Trump turns his head at the split second that the bullet hits his ear instead of his skull.
That misunderstands the mindset of hamas their eliminationist goals
" but because they no longer seriously believed that assassinations were possible in America."
Really????? Good grief have you listened to lefty rhetoric encouraging this abhorrent behavior?
“ USSS cannot shoot at a threat until given approval by a superior."
Not true. I would suggest everyone watch the interview that was posted yesterday on this site yesterday. Tim Kennedy (interviewee) covers the events in Butler from beginning to end.
My colleague agrees: not true. He said USSS can shoot upon probable cause. But the local supplemental law enforcement can’t.
I think the most likely is "gross negligence". The definition differs state to state, but generally can be understood as "conduct That evinces reckless disregard for the rights of
others or smacks of intentional wrongdoing". In other words, not just not meeting the standard of care, but acting so badly as to basically make it equivalent to intentional, even if the penalties are not exactly the same as true intentionality. But I will say that the longer that the hack who is currently in her job doesn't get canned, the more I start to believe its even worse than that.
Breezy @ 7:22am,
"To add to my previous comment — if the LE don’t respond, others may see the need to step in to do so. That’s not good."
Sir Robert Peel disagrees with you (see, in particular, principle #7.)
Dixcus
7/17/24, 7:57 AM
There are videos on X from people in the waiting room at the ER watching Trump's arrival.
Here's one: https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1813557902902284710
Some people need to see a "chain of causation" -- Biden (or someone in the CIA) got the ball rolling, then another unknown individual did something else, and that followed by a third individual and so on until Thomas Crook pulled the trigger and shot Trump in the head. This chain of causation is somehow different from the very obvious negligence that occurred on Saturday.
The Drill SGT said...
SS or SP Drone coverage?
Just an average guy taking a SWAG here but I'm betting there were drones out (they've been mentioned) though again the issue to me is more what team was controlling the drones, where were they observing, and how was communication flowing to and from them to the other teams.
On the incompetence side, the long time that Crooks was apparently under observation speaks to something of an institutional paralysis that didn't recognize him as a threat, almost a "can you believe this guy is skulking around?" reaction. The last most serious attempts on Presidents Ford and Reagan were all pistol-range.
I tend to fall into the camp with those who see this as WILLFULLY negligent security. Doing the job, but not seriously. Window dressing. (I can’t imagine any individual agents wanting to go down in history with an assassination on their records.) I think Biden is making a huge mistake in not firing Cheatle. A failure this monumental requires that someone very senior is fired. Her comments on the sloped roof were so ludicrous, a competent leader would have fired her right then or made her resign. Why hasn’t he? I can think of a number of reasons…none of them good.
The fact that the FBI initially claimed that they could not get into his phone, and then said that they did, but there was "nothing there" after how long? This is the same FBI that lied to a FISA judge to get a warrant to monitor Trump's phone calls, BTW. The same FBI that sat on the Hunter Biden laptop for a year before it came to light again when the guy who gave it to the FBI called attention to it again, after being surprised that nothing happened.
This is the same PA FBI, that whistleblowers on the PA 2020 election and the actions of the Post Office in ballot shenanigans, and how when the FBI showed up to "hear" his story, they didn't listen to what he had to say, but threatened him instead? The FBI in PA that knows for a fact that many of the election judges on the PA Court of Common Pleas, the one that rules on Election Day issues, were put in office by ballot stuffing, but won't tell us which ones? That FBI?
If the goal of a Deep State conspiracy was to ensure a Democrat victory it would focus on eliminating Biden, not turning Trump into martyr.
Russia, Russia conspiracy.
FISA lying
Gretchen Whitaker abduction instigation.
Lethal force order on the Mar lago raid.
Continuous corrupt lawfare
Actual assassination attempt <- You are here
Genuine civil war.
Some of you are going to be really disappointed with your choices.
One thing that I find curious is that Crook’s car was a mile aw@y from the event. Thus means that he had to carry all his gear plus a 12 foot ladder a mile in order to set up. Did anyone see him on this? If not did he have help?
Someone posted, I think it was on this site, that it was Malicious Incompetence. That is my opinion also.
"Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" is a quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170.
The stage was set. If someone executes. it's not on us. Hey that's life.
My concern is that we haven't hit the October surprise timeframe yet.
Jamie or Achilles? Both.
The explanations we're being given are blatant lies.
At best, Trump's protective detail was understaffed, underfunded, and bureaucratically abused by the same people who refused to give RFK any protection, and operating under rules of engagement that wouldn't let a sniper shoot first at an obvious threat.
That's already bad enough. I hope that the reality isn't any worse.
My position is closer to Jamie’s for a couple of reasons:
1) I lived in or around Washington, DC, for nearly my entire adult life. I have seen federal agencies that once were outstanding drift into incompetence through poor leadership leading to even poorer hiring and promotion decisions — EPA used to have really good scientists, for instance, and one can also look at the performance of our health-related agencies like NIH and CDC during the pandemic. Not to mention FAA letting Boeing bamboozle them on the 737-MAX.
2) But I think Achilles is on to something. Suppose a pro football team could assure itself of last last place — and the first pick in next year’s draft — by losing a particular game. What would we think of that team’s coach if he deliberately kept his best players out of the game? The security team assigned to Trump last Saturday cannot possibly be their best or even second-best and make that many mistakes.
I am reading that Democrats are calling on Republicans to stop pointing at their intemperate rhetoric (particularly Joe Biden’s rhetoric) and stop suggesting Trump’s poor security last weekend was deliberate. Shouldn’t we be trying to de-escalate things instead of pointing fingers and assigning blame? Yes, assholes, we are trying to de-escalate things by pointing fingers and assigning blame. My honest assessment is that Lefties cannot even begin to understand what would happen if Trump was murdered. Would the revenge stop at Democrat politicians? Or would it include journalists who write for the likes of the Washington Post or the New York Times, talking heads from CNN, MSNBC, and other far left of center television news organizations, non-STEM university professors, and other such useless appendages on society? I’m well to the right of center but I’m scared of what might happen. Will happen.
Excellent start, Gilbar.
It is inconceivable that SS does not have a "Plan" for large outdoor events. There would be some kind of annex to that plan, specific to individual events. It would include knowledge of the venue and obvious threats.
It would include identification of all defenders and their locations at all times. If my luggage or phone gets "lost" I can find it instantly with a cheap "air tag".
If outside assests are included in protection, their responsibilities and rules of engagement must be specific and known to the SS. Ability to communicate between defenders and a command post is essential.
That command post should include someone from each agency and one or more monitors of surveillance video of ALL rooftops and other features providing line-of-sight to target. Cheap drones would be useful as would a FAC in a light aircraft.
There's more but that stuff should be basic.
I fear that, right now, the players are gearing up to create Warren Report II. We will get an "Executive Summary" but the details will never see the light of day. Maybe it would be more productive to donate to James O'Keefe.
There was a time when the media would be leading the charge for truth but they have become the least curious people on the planet :-(
Congrats Achilles. Opened the blog, read AA's post, and you could have knocked me over with a feather.
Big Mike said...
I’m well to the right of center but I’m scared of what might happen. Will happen.
7/17/24, 8:30 AM
Your fear is why the regime and its partisans are so confident that you won't be killing anybody.
First Trump defeated Hillary in 2016.
Then he ended her kill streak in 2024.
Apologies to Achilles and Jamie if I've misstated their thinking or if they don't like their names being used in this way. I'll rename the "positions" if they object.
That is a fair description of the position in TLDR format.
I fully believe that 95% of the SS agents there were brave people who gave their best. They also seemed to be staffed in a grossly improper manner. Women can be very useful in this type of operation. But they are not asset protection team material. Too small and they can't carry the principal. They should be crowd management and approach interdiction if they can do 40 pushups in a minute.
But I think it is important to note that I have a second point in addition to the incompetence of the SS.
The SS left an obvious attack vector completely open. And it is far more than just not occupying the roof. In order to attack a position like this you have to have a path of ingress. You have to do recon in the area. You have to get to the roof.
The shooter did not teleport to that roof.
The shooter carried a 10 foot orange ladder down a road through trees past the door to the building that local LEOs were staging from and climbed up and down that ladder more than once to the roof of the most obvious over watch location in the history of over watch locations.
The LEOs took pictures of him 30 minutes before Trump spoke and told the SS about it.
The SS knew about the shooter when they let Trump on that stage.
The SS sniper on the primary over watch position behind the stage had eyes on the shooter when the shooter pointed his weapon at another LEO.
The conspiracy was this: The secret service was set up to fail.
DHS gave Trump an inadequate number of badly trained SS agents and told them to rely the local police force. And because they aren't enough agents, they were under time pressure and couldn't do what needed to be done and they make mistakes.
However, we still don't know how many of the "errors" were due to higher ups being involved in the process and making the bad decisions that almost got Trump killed.
Who made the decision that the roof was too unsafe to put a police officer on it? Who decided the building 130 yards away was outside the SS prememiter? Who was in charge of communications between the local police and the SS, cause there doesn't seem to have been any? WHo decided that a police sniper had to ask permission to shoot? Who decided Trump should be allowed on the stage despite a "suspicious character with a range finder" wandering around?
BIden and Mayorkas didn't try to kill Trump, but they werent particularly concerned about keeping him safe either. As I stated before, what reason can there be for disallowing SS Protection for RFK except pure spite and malice?
And that fits into the pattern of the FBI/DHS raid on Margo - why arm your FBI agents and allow the use of deadly force unless you hope something might happen? Why has the FBI used dead of night and predrawn SWAT raids to arrest Trump supporters and higherups unless you hope something might happen and someone gets killed?
The idea that Genocide Joe and his gang care about Trump's life or anyone they don't like is rather silly. Look at Ashli Babbitt, look at the criminals being allowed to come over the border, look at the hysteical support for Genocide in gaza and war in the Ukraine.
The progressive track record of targeting Trump makes me believe this was done on purpose. I haven't heard any explanations good enough to explain WHY they didn't get him off the stage when they first noticed this assassin 30 minutes prior.
They have been trying to stop him for 8 years....and have lied to us every step of the way, so how do you believe anything they spew to us today??
@doctrev (8:42), I said I was scared. I didn't say I wouldn’t do whatever it takes to defend my wife and my sons and their spouses and my grandchildren.
Now… from Paraquat Productions… a conspiracy bigger than anyone expected and must race to prevent the government’s next big hit as this political thriller plays out in an explosive game of cat and mouse.
Joe Biden in… The Ex-Lax® View
So, the left's comments are aligned with Don't Miss Next Time. If this were a movie Rotten Tomatoes would have flunked it post haste. That is, unless the director was Mack Sennett.
Only one member of Trump's Saturday team was said to be full time Trump. Is USSC incompetence and Cheadle's not resigning presenting future opportunities?
Maybe Trump should hire Mosaad or some Korean shop owners from South Central.
Smellin like a Las Vegas concert out there.
The Drill SGT said...
I'm with FairMarketValue:
"So I guess I start with the Jaimie position, but am now shading to the Achilles position."
for now, willful, but passive incompetence.
I can't fathom expecting that many conspirators to be silent. For me, the two largest incompetence's center on the 2 CS guys.
- What were they doing from the time he showed the gun till bullet 8?
- why no GUN! alert to the team and a podium evac?
What will we learn from the local cops and I assume a State Police CDR who was the local LEO integrator?
The local LEOs have been leaking from the start. They leaked that they took pictures of the shooter with a spotter scope 30 minutes before the shot was taken early on.
But more importantly people in the crowd posted videos and pictures of the situation.
There is a real time split screen of people yelling about a guy on the roof for several minutes while the CS team was looking right at him.
I just find it really convenient that they waited until the only thing the gunman could do was tell people who helped him to shoot him.
The picture of the ladder is the biggest problem for me. He walked through those trees and through that parking lot in broad daylight with a 10 foot orange ladder and used it more than once.
This will not end well.
By any means necessary. Dwell on that.
I'm with Quayle. This was a failure of planning and a lack of communication between agencies. Supposedly on the local side, there were state police, Butler County Police, and Beaver County emergency services.
My guess would be that everyone assumed that by making that building a staging area, they were making it secure. No one specifically told anyone, "watch to make sure that no one climbs onto the roof of the building full of cops," because it was full of cops. What kind of nut would try to climb onto that roof? Oops.
To believe it was deliberate, one has to assume that the people running security are masterminds who can set up just the right opportunity and cover their tracks completely. Any scenario strains credulity. That they have been repeatedly leaving security holes hoping a sniper of opportunity would come along? Any one of the multiple local agencies they partner with at every event might notice and call them out. That they recruited Crooks specifically? Confident that they could identify a suicidal killer willing to follow a plan precisely and not betray them? And that Crooks, who had no history of violence and a reputation for being a terrible shot, was the perfect weapon? The slightest slip and they'd all be exposed. These people are not political fanatics, willing to risk their own freedom for the sake of Joe Biden's reelection.
Cheatle is lying: either about the sloped roof order or the the perimeter responsibility. Both cannot be true. Why is she lying?
"Any scenario strains credulity. That they have been repeatedly leaving security holes hoping a sniper of opportunity would come along?"
Sorry, but the Biden Administration has intentionally limited Secret Service protection, and then pulled off the A team to go to some Jill Biden event in Pittsburg, But no one will ever be able to "prove" that they were hoping that the exactly same thing that happened to Fico in Slovakia, after years of press demonization, a few weeks back by a "lone wolf" was going to happen to Trump, so I guess a conspiracy is impossible.
After all, in a real conspiracy, evidence is left all over the place in the form of memos, emails, etc. Absent that, it is impossible to believe that a reckless disregard for Trump's safety by the same people who would benefit the most from his death adds up to anything.
"If you begin in the Jamie position and desperately hope there was no intent to allow a killer access, you have to struggle to explain how that could be."
You also kind of have to wonder what is going on here. It sure looks like a Secret Service agent is telling people standing behind the stage to get out of the way because there is about to be a shooting, just before the shooting starts. No doubt he has a good explanation, and I hope someone will figure out who he is and ask him for it.
On the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, in 1759 during the French and Indian war, a little known back way into French fortifications was left open to the British troops, who used it to sneak up behind the French and take Quebec and thus win the war by cutting off supplies to the interior, and to this day, going on three hundred years later, it's still being argued about.
Yesterday, someone said something to the effect that it is hard to believe that people that are incompetent in everything else they do in government could suddenly be brilliant conspirators.
"brilliant conspirators."
Nobody said that it would take a "brilliant conspirator" to increase the odds that an assassination would happen, it would only take what actually is known to have happened, shorting the Secret Service on the resources that they needed to do the job.
But nice straw man knockdown.
Whatever happened it's a very sad commentary on the state of our government that it's so easy to believe the Secret Service and the FBI would carry out an assassination attempt on Trump.
As a retired federal employee and even though I have never delt with the SS, I can fully believe that there was sufficient incompetence to allow this to happen.
WOW!! Jupiter @ 9:37 AM I hadn't seen that one. Interesting....
Yesterday, someone said something to the effect that it is hard to believe that people that are incompetent in everything else they do in government could suddenly be brilliant conspirators.
It wasn't brilliant though, was it? Trump is still kicking and there are endless questions.
I don't think they arranged anything with the shooter. I don't even believe they purposely left that particular rooftop open, though I don't know why I don't believe that one. Probably more I don't want to believe it. It would take only a feather's weight more evidence for me to change my mind on that; good God, just look at the site and marvel at the necessary incompetence.
But I do believe they did not take their responsibility to protect Trump seriously. They didn't take the effort and they didn't care. If something did happen to him, so much the better. To bolster this opinion, look at the case of their other opponent, RFK Jr, who they probably viewed as a traitor; a challenger from their own party. They flat out refused him protection, even given his history and multiple requests. The law wouldn't allow them to refuse Donald Trump, but they could and did refuse Kennedy.
I doubt Biden knew what was going on; he no longer knows how to find his way off a stage. But Cheatle, yeah, Mayorkas, yeah. Donald Trump's protection was lax and it was on purpose.
Now I'll go read the comments and see if I change my mind.
I sure would like to know how many other close-in rooftops they've left open. I don't know how you'd find that data.
the only strain required is a basic understanding of geometry and human fallibillity
"From the Butler Police: That was not our roof to cover. It was up to another local law enforcement agency."
"Butler has another local law enforcement agency?"
Pennsylvania is a crazy quilt of municipalities, most of which are relatively small population. My understanding is that local law enforcement at the rally was drawn from multiple jurisdictions.
It sure looks like a Secret Service agent is telling people standing behind the stage to get out of the way because there is about to be a shooting
Not at all. The agent walks up and listens to something the photographer is saying to him, and then gives the photographer the okay, at which point the photographer starts to walk around the stage. My guess would be that the photographer wanted to relocate to get a different angle on Trump, waved the agent over to ask permission, and was approved.
The alternative would be that the agent knows he's in an imminent line of fire, but nonetheless stands there exposed for several seconds while the photographer talks to him, then makes a snap decision to evacuate these two people in particular for some reason.
I was trying to recall the names and/or offices of the staff who resigned following January 6th. When I made the search, the response I received was 'Can't answer that question; pick a new topic for search".
For a moment I wondered if I should rethink my "gross incompetence" vote. ;-]
THE ANSWER BTW;
In the wake of Jan. 6, Stenger, as well as former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, came under fire for security failures at the Capitol. All 3 resigned within 24 hours. - one specifically at request of Mitch MCCONNELL.
" believe that there was sufficient incompetence to allow this to happen."
Then throw a deliberate shorting of resources into the admixture. High level decisions were made to ignore pleas for more resources, and those decisions could easily have factored in the "too bad, so sad" factor if Trump was actually killed, and the blame fell on somebody else.
The FBI has shown themselves to be the proverbial "jackbooted thugs" of the DNC, and having them lead any investigation is a joke, but like any professionally run assassination, it will be all but impossible to prove. The JFK thing left way too many loose ends, so that kind of multi parted conspiracy is definitely out in this day of minute examination of narratives on social media. But nudging the odds in your favor using levers that retain plausible deniability? Not a stretch at all.
At this point I lean towards malign neglect. Too many properly-aligned incompetencies. I think Crooks was encouraged or assisted in some form and then allowed to get through and take his shots.
"The agent walks up and listens to something the photographer is saying to him, and then gives the photographer the okay, at which point the photographer starts to walk around the stage. "
I agree, that's a nothing burger.
I do think law enforcement is walking around with their hands tied behind their back. No one wants to shoot because they've been informally trained to think that if they're wrong, there's going to be riots.
I also think inertia has a bigger hand to play as well: nothing bad has happened before with our corner cutting security, so nothing will continue to happen.
But the head of DHS and the Secret Service absolutely are indifferent to Trump's well being and that attitude filters down.
I suspect the B team that was sent out there probably did the best they knew how to, which was incompetent in the face of a real threat. The responsibility lies with whoever decided to send that inexperienced and poorly trained group, while apparently diverting the A team to some Jill Biden event. That was the malign neglect, and clearly reflecting a lack of any real concern over protecting Trump.
for example, doubling the radius of a cordoned-off area multiplies the area by 4. a question like 'why didn't we 4x the area we were covering to include this one building' answers itself with simple geometry'
so, why did they not see this building as a threat? oh wait they did see it as a threat and attempted to secure it from the interior rather than the sloped roof. but you can see in the video that the countersniper above trump is lining up on the would-be assassin within seconds of (or possibly even *before*) the first shots from the baddie. so, this roof was covered from multiple angles, and it was not enough.
so, why didn't they shoot the guy before he opened fire on trump, instead of after? because shooting at every 'suspicious-looking' person before they become a clear and present danger is not something most presidential candidates want to happen at their events. likewise, the candidates do not generally want to be rushed off stage just because some random asshole decided to do something weird.
individuals had to make a bunch of judgment calls. they will still have to do that tomorrow. every one of those calls can be second-guessed, all the way down to eternity. that is fine, that is what we do in this country. but it is also NORMAL. it is scary to be reminded of this, but in any relatively free society, there will be risks that things like this will happen; perhaps scarier for some is that even in a vastly unfree society these things can still happen; they will simply happen more often to the normies at the bottom rather than the heads at top.
this was a three-mile-island event, not a chernobyl event.
those who insist that we have become the soviets will continue to pretend this was chernobyl instead, blissful in the knowledge that most americans have no actual idea what the soviet union was like whatsoever.
I don't believe Achilles wants it to be intentional, he's just saying all indications look like it is to the eye of anyone trained in the field of protection.
And Jamie is praying for incompetency, because an inside orchestrated attempt is so much worse.
Incompetency is easier to correct than corrupt evil.
I lean towards a tragedy of errors. A stressed out and understaffed security team who tasks local police with securing a building; their own snipers spot another sniper on said building and wonder who it is: security or not? Couple with a lack of clear communication between the local law enforcement and security team and the security team overwatch (snipers) are waiting on answers until (Oh S*!t!! he just shot!) at which point all of their questions are answered, just too late.
The hole in security that allowed the individual to get in place could be yet another string of errors.
I've seen strngs of errors leading to tragedy in other venues - air craft accident investigations are full of such strings where an aircraft is lost when a myriad of mistakes are made. Often, the loss could have been prevented if any one of those mistakes hadn't been made.
While I don't like our current administration, I think it is early days to think this was a conspiracy to get President Trump. One of the things I wonder about is how many wannabe assasins have been deterred before this? We don't hear about the ones that are prevented from trying because the security detail kept them out or scared them off.
One of the things my career in airplane safety taught me is that I need to be most cautious when the answer I see is the one I WANT to be true for that is when I am MOST likely to be biased and blind to other answers that are the true answers just not the one I wanted to be true.
I was just thinking back to when Obama was elected. There was a lot of talk about how, as the nation's first black president, there were a lot of good-old-boy racists out there that would try to shoot him.
I was even concerned about this at the time. But, as it happened, incidents of homicidal racism were few and far between. I don't recall any attempts, or even scares; if there had been any, we'd be hearing about them now.
So, two full terms, and no (public) attempts to kill him. THANK GOD!
Gross incompetence ? Gross negligence ? After all of the "conspiracy theories" that have proven true, and without consequences to the perpetrators there is certainly cause to question the possibility of a deliberate action. There are ,currently, many many unanswered questions . Considering the abhorrent and abysmal actions of the biden administration and the democrats in general, perhaps they have managed to weaponize incompetence and negligence. Just saying.
Without the Zapruder film we really wouldn't know much about the JFK Assassination. The film contradicts the official narrative. Most famously "back and to the left" which indicates an additional shooter in front of JFK.
Today is smart phones, there are Zapruder films everywhere from all kinds of angles. We see the shooter crawling on the roof while people warn police. We see cops acting like a simple fence is the Great Wall of China. We see frantic, unqualified DEI Secret Service agents. And the video Jupiter links above just isn't right. Then this stuff get's spliced together, and you see the delay in taking out the shooter, until he actually shoots.
But yet they tell us not to believe our own eyes, even considering incompetence alone. And then Kimberly Cheatle comes out and says they didn't occupy that roof for safety reasons because it was sloped. That's not even a good lie. It's a ridiculous explanation.
" A stressed out and understaffed security team..."
If this was an air crash investigation, why the security team was understaffed would be a heavy focus, and at the end of it, recommendations would be forthcoming. But not until every aspect of why the orders were given that staffing should be inadequate was done.
"So when the Secret Service snipers saw another sniper on another rooftop, they didn't know who he was. And they want to check and be absolutely sure before they shoot the guy. If you're wrong, you could be facing prison time."
Which is WHY you put your own man on the best rooftop for shooting Trump.
The 'secure the rooftop from inside the building' nonsense has to be explained. It makes no sense.
"ndividuals had to make a bunch of judgment calls."
based on inadequate resources, as doled out in a miserly fashion by the Biden Administration, which had an interest in Trump being assassinated, even if they would not go so far as to order Seal Team 6 to do it.
Witness: "why did they not see this building as a threat? oh wait they did see it as a threat and attempted to secure it from the interior rather than the sloped roof"
Look at the overhead view of the venue. That building has a long complicated perimeter, making securing it from the ground difficult. But putting two or three spotters on the roof could cover any plausible shooter location. (The "sloped roof" actually makes this simpler, because it strongly limits the choice of shooting sites.)
I'm ignoring the "not guarded because dangerous sloped roof" argument, because it's nonsense, for several reasons.
Akso, doubling the protected radius only doubles the security perimeter. You don't have to stake out every square foot. This argument is also silly because the shooter's chosen building is the closest to the stage, except for the smaller buildings behind the stage, which were covered. It's absolutely the obvious place for a shooter to choose, except for the fact that any moderately intelligent person would expect that roof to be guarded.
"The agent walks up and listens to something the photographer is saying to him, and then gives the photographer the okay, at which point the photographer starts to walk around the stage."
Sounds plausible. But I'd still like to hear them say it.
You don't have to have multiple layers of conspiracy at the highest levels to get this to work. Stzrok and Rat-faced Girl show that plenty of people in the Federal aparat were willing to do things on their own--to avoid paper/email/text trails and to preserve deniability.
I think one mid-level person embedded in Trump's team could pull off most of it single-handedly. Pop your head around a corner and say to the local LEO's "We got this one" for a building that we originally in the plan as having a uniformed officer on the roof. Set up ROE to require permission to fire and then just hesitate. Take a call from local LEO and say "Our guys are on it" but not follow through. The person on the ground doing this doesn't have to know the details of the assassination attempt--just accumulate vulnerabilities.
The big weak link in the case for Incompetence rather than malice is the kid showing up with a gun and a ladder and even TRYING to get on that roof. Well, also him being the only person in the U.S. under 25 years old without a social media presence (and maybe the WEIRD coincidence that he's in the background of a BlackRock video). Taken together, plus him being at least a decent shot despite having had to climb up on and crawl across a roof and then deal with the adrenaline rush of the officer coming up the ladder*: it all seems like a tell that someone--probably through multiple cut-outs, was running him.
*Extra exertion and extra adrenaline almost always mess up your shooting ... well, at least they mess up mine, and I'm guessing it's the same for other non-professionals. My most telling experience was when there was some kind of malfunction at the range and the sound of a very loud explosion coming from behind me, where I didn't expect it, scared the bejeezus out of me (never got the full story of what happened, but no one was hurt, so not a big deal): even 10 minutes afterwards my steadiness was bad and despite keeping my mouth open, my breathing kept messing up my groups through terrible over-corrects (bad ones; like shots 6-10 just barely grazing the paper).
Most boring, amateur range-shooters (like me) don't have many opportunities (or sufficient time/money) to train those problems out of our shooting the way professionals do (though Sig Sauer, for example, has advanced classes that try to simulate real-world chaos and adrenaline-rush problems such as weapon jams, lights going out, unexpected loud noises, etc., so you can drill them out of your system).
The Zapruder film did NOT prove there was a second gunman in front of Kennedy. The fact that his body lurched back and to the left when he was shot was because he was shot in the brain. The brain controls the movements of the body, so stimulating or damaging specific parts of the brain can and will cause the body to move very strongly in various directions.
I first read this about Dallas 40+ years ago, but it was so obviously true that I've never forgotten it. It was an "Aha!" moment. It helped that I had previously read a story (probably in Reader's Digest in middle or high school) about doctors performing brain surgery on the motor-control part of a patient's brain. (Removing a cancer, I assume.) When they poked a scalpel in his brain, his right arm moved quite strongly off the table. When they poked a nearby area of his brain, his leg bent, and there was nothing they could do about it. His brain was making his limbs move.
Thinking about that, it was obvious that a bullet hitting the motor-control part of someone's brain would inevitably cause body parts to move (or rather jerk) very strongly in random directions. So strongly that a back-and-to-the-left jerk of the whole body would be stronger than the forward movement caused by the momentum of the bullet coming from behind and above. In short, a brain is not a sandbag, and does not follow the usual laws of dead-mass physics. And, to repeat, the Zapruder film provides zero evidence of a second gunman.
Plus they have what seems to this soldier to be a cultural antipathy to letting anyone get 8 straight hours of sleep at sea.
The navy has been on a 3 watch system since time immemorial. Often called 4 and 8. 4 hours on, 8 hours off. If 4 to 8s were the worst since you also worked from 8-4 doing regular ship's work.
Then you had drills and ops and emergency that could occur at any time.
If shorthanded we might go to "port and starboard" 4 and 4 watches
Everyone except the captain stood regular watches. He was always on watch,wr hours.
I never heard of it being a problem until a few years ago some people started moaning about it. It certainly was not a problem when I was standing them.
Karen Hultgren did not die from lack of sleep she died fro DEI kept on flight status where a man would have washed out.
The Fitzgerald didn't crash from lack of sleep. It happened because 2 women, one on the bridge and one in cic plot were not speaking to each other. DEI it would never have happened with men. Probably because men would still work together regardless of personal issues. If they hadn't, they would have been court martial.
John Henry
I like the subject, so really appreciate the post the comment on it.
I believe in the same previous thread; I wrote that Democrats certainly made it clear they thought Trump and RFK Jr. shouldn't have USSS protection. They can claim because of cost, percentage of the polls, or because Trump should be disqualified because of criminal convictions/insurrection. The problem is they never explained exactly what the qualifications were to be disqualified from and how either candidate failed to meet them. In fact, both were qualified, which is why a bill was necessary to disqualify. Which means, the goal of no USSS protection was more important to them. You don't need a conspiracy theory to recognize that several Democrats had no issue with harm coming to the opposition as a way to get rid of that opposition.
As for USSS, I don't believe any of the agents present had any desire for what happened to occur. You don't sign up to be part of a protective detail, to be in the line of fire, and then allow a situation to occur that puts you in the line of fire. It is in the realm of possibility ("conceivable") someone is suicidal enough to do so and would sign up and make it through the psychological evaluations in a DEI environment to be put in that situation. But I doubt it. This leads me to incompetence on the part of the USSS, and that starts with the Cheatle.
The rest simply requires an investigation of the events, and that takes time. An investigation is required, and it should be taken with the same care of airline crash or space shuttle loss. A committee of experts holding interviews, analyzing evidence, and writing a findings report. It shouldn't be led by the DoJ. It should be a Congressional defined committee. Questions I think need to asked are:
Why was those buildings left out of the security zone? (they are on the other side of a road, but the question needs to be asked and confidently answered.)
Why were security personnel inside the building rather than outside the building? How is a threat inside the building a threat at all? (this also includes the discussion of the "sloped roof")
When did security personnel first become aware of a suspicious person around the building? (current reports suggest Crooks was first identified at the building 30 minutes before the shooting)
When was the suspicious person clearly identified as a threat? (when was Crooks first seen with a firearm)
Why were other non-lethal measures not taken to secure the event when an incident with a suspicious person was ongoing? Why not delay Trump's speech? Why not put agents on stage between the building and Trump? (This is not just about Trump. Hundreds of people were in danger and obviously 1 was killed and 2 injured. If a suspicious with a gun was seen near a school, security personnel would lock it down until the threat was known to be over. Why wasn't that done here?)
After that information is captured, we can start working backwards from there.
What was Crooks motive? What evidence do we have of us state of mind?
What was the state of mind of the security personnel that lead to the decision making?
Without that information, we are just speculating. A righteous government would want to nail down these questions and be transparent about it. Any lack of transparency will only cause more questions and distrust. I now repeat myself; it is already clear many Democrats were willing to allow harm to their opponents. If they want to clear their name, then they should want a transparent independent investigation to do it.
RCOCEAN II said...
The conspiracy was this: The secret service was set up to fail.
DHS gave Trump an inadequate number of badly trained SS agents and told them to rely the local police force. And because they aren't enough agents, they were under time pressure and couldn't do what needed to be done and they make mistakes.. . . .
BIden and Mayorkas didn't try to kill Trump, but they werent particularly concerned about keeping him safe either.
USSS was already exhausted apparently, with their top dogs in Milwaukee preparing for the convention. Jill and Kamala decided they needed to be in the same area as Trump on the same weekend. And Cheadle?? When the news first broke, I heard she was at some conference in Aspen - so just as a major campaign has begun, she's AWOL (reportedly).
If Ms. Cheadle isn't willing to resign, that means that they are now doing everything in their power to find scapegoats. I really fear for the local cops and USSS members who tried to do their best with lousy resources and sloppy work at or near the top - this is the stuff of suicides.
***Lefties cannot even begin to understand what would happen if Trump was murdered.
It looks like there are 3 theories as to what happened. Simple incompetence, malicious incompetence, and intended assassination. I'm keeping my powder dry on conclusions for now, but......
***The left is perfectly able to game this out past Trump getting assassinated. What would actually happen if that occurred? Massive riots and civil mayhem most likely. Way beyond J6. Enough so that Biden would have to call on the military to quell it. Not quite martial law, but lasting at least til Nov 4. For the good of the country, and to "secure an orderly election". Run that scenario out and see where it leads. Who would benefit from it?
This may be pushing the boundaries into tin foil hat territory, but there is a history of Democrat actions in the recent past (J6, covid 2020) that keeps it in the realm of possibility. Not sayin', just sayin'.
If Ms. Cheadle isn't willing to resign, that means that they are now doing everything in their power to find scapegoats. I really fear for the local cops and USSS members who tried to do their best with lousy resources and sloppy work at or near the top - this is the stuff of suicides.
Hear, Hear.
I would still like to know how many seconds elapsed between the first shot by the assassin and the first shot by the SS. I would assume it it is less than 2 seconds.
Blogger MartyH said..."Has a similar vulnerability occurred in any of Trump’s previous rallies? If the most obvious place for a sniper is regularly left unsecured, then the SS is hoping for some stochastic terrorism."
That data would be very interesting. I've been thinking about how you'd get it. Perhaps a whistleblower. SS agents not "in on it", which I presume would be most of them, should have noticed fishy behavior like that.
Or a Congressional hearing. Put them under oath and ask if they'd seen it before.
I'm increasingly persuaded by the Achilles case. Malign neglect has a long history. King David resorted to ever more desperate measures to conceal his adultery in 2 Samuel 11. He brought Bathsheba's husband Uriah back home so he'd sleep with her; he refused out of loyalty to his fellow soldiers. So he invited Uriah to a party to get him drunk so he'd go home to her; he still refused. The next morning
David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die" (2 Sam 11:14-15 ESV).
Who killed Uriah? The Ammonites, right?
This was a good king with deep faith and a conscience, and he still resorted to murder to cover his tracks. Nathan got through to him, but Israel's later kings just killed the prophets who confronted them with the truth. The Bible is pretty realistic about human nature.
Jupiter said...
"Sounds plausible. But I'd still like to hear them say it."
This. About everything.
We're used to getting just rumors and snippets of gossip in the 24-48 hours after a major event, but it's been four days and the investigation and official statements are producing more confusion than information.
Can you imagine the description of an action move based on this event? "Action-comedy."
Incompetence doesn't seem to be an adequate explanation. It doesn't explain why the SS sniper was denied permission to shoot the unauthorized man with a rifle less than 500' from Trump. Who did that? And why would a team this incompetent, if they were merely incompetent, be assigned to Trump? Who did that?
I think, in a Gadfly comment in another thread- either one later than on this post or on the one from yesterday- you see the possible motive for shorting the Trump Secret Service personnel- the desire to make it harder or impossible to hold the big open-air rallies. That would be malicious behavior and it isn't a stand-alone point either- we have the fact that RFK Jr. had been denied Secret Service protection until this week even though he is drawing 10% in some polls- a real candidate for the office.
So, I don't think Crooks was actively given a hole in security by the people on the ground in Butler on Saturday, but people like Cheatle, Mayorkas, and whoever is Biden's hand-puppeteer did actively make his security weaker than it needs to be and I guarantee you that if you knew their real thoughts it would probably demonstrate that they would not have been unhappy to have contributed in some small measure to Trump's demise.
I wonder how much the George Floyd arrest and subsequent death affects law enforcement's willingness to confront someone based on a subjective assessment of concerning behavior. I'm sure nobody wants to be the next Derek Chauvin.
Blogger Enigma said..."The counter snipers had premium/pro grade 35x magnification riflescopes that cost maybe $3,000 each. This means the distance would appear to be 35 times closer: 150 yards / 35 = 4.28 yards away. They could have counted the hairs in his eyebrows, counted his pimples, read printed text from a book, and easily identified his weapon type."
Thanks for that. It's helpful.
This idea that the SS has to wait until the shooter shoots first is just nuts. That's counting on the guy to miss!!! I just can't believe it.
Are the same rules in place for Biden? I. Don't. Believe. It.
That kid knew he could carry a 10 foot orange ladder through that parking lot and get on that roof.
Someone told him.
The big glaring thing that still hasn't been addressed by anyone in a position to know is this- why was Trump allowed to continue to speak even after the snipers behind him had Crooks in their cross-hairs. Where was the communication to the security personnel immediately around Trump? That, for me, is the biggest reason to suspect someone in the team on the ground itself.
Some residue of 0bambi’s “stray revoltage”, the wanker.
"I now repeat myself; it is already clear many Democrats were willing to allow harm to their opponents. If they want to clear their name, then they should want a transparent independent investigation to do it."
How many Democrats wanted a transparent independent investigation of the 2020 election?
It couldn't be any more clear what it is that the Democrats want.
If we had competent leaders we wouldn't be having this discussion. Everything starts at the top and the guy at the top checked out long ago.
People who think these events are highly unlikely need to consider one thing. We pay millions each year to have USSS protection of all sorts of people, including Jack Smith. We pay those millions because these threats are common. We don't hear about the guy stopped by his car with a gun, who said "oh, I keep there for hunting" and was sent home with just some report written no one will read again. We sometimes hear about the guy stopped outside the home of a Supreme Court Justice. You can bet this wasn't the first time someone tried to do this. They simply were not intercepted or otherwise deterred from their task.
Something to remember when we discuss negligence.
We were told Trump was gagged because his speech was causing threats. Don't tell me Democrats calling Trump "literally Hitler" and seeking to strip his USSS protection were not causing threats. We know the people that claim "words are violence", so those people need to own up to their words now.
"Cheatle Cheats Cheeto" Film at eleven.
"***The left is perfectly able to game this out past Trump getting assassinated. What would actually happen if that occurred? Massive riots and civil mayhem most likely. Way beyond J6. Enough so that Biden would have to call on the military to quell it. Not quite martial law, but lasting at least til Nov 4. For the good of the country, and to "secure an orderly election". Run that scenario out and see where it leads. Who would benefit from it?"
Yeah, someone yesterday stated they couldn't believe the dems would do this because a wave of sympathy would sweep a Republican into office. I tried imagining that. Which Republican? How would a candidate even be fielded at this point? And the sympathy for Trump would extend to him 4 months from now?
I think the quoted scenario above is a much more likely post-assassination sequence. My "it was a conspiracy" ledger just got updated.
The roof was dangerous. It was slopped.
That link should be enough for Cheatle and whoever gave here that excuse to both resign.
Dixcus said:
“That might just be a lack of imagination in the press, but I'm still waiting to see evidence that Donald Trump was rushed to a hospital. I've seen none yet. That dog is strangely quiet.”
Here’s an article about the hospital:
“Butler Memorial Hospital has confirmed that former president Donald Trump was treated there for injuries sustained during the assassination attempt at a rally on Saturday.
After hospital officials received news of the shooting, the facility went on a three-hour lockdown during which nobody could leave or enter the building, said Karen Allen, president for Butler Memorial and Clarion hospitals.”
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2024/07/15/butler-memorial-hospital-trump/stories/202407160009
Here’s video: (via CFP)
https://x.com/citizenfreepres/status/1813594899947905353?s=46
After the attempt on Pres Reagan, Secret Service drove him back to the White House. Midway, they realized he was shot and drove him to GWU Hospital. After that the protocol was changed so that victims of attempted assassinations are immediately taken to a hospital.
Blogger Enigma said...
"The counter snipers had premium/pro grade 35x magnification riflescopes that cost maybe $3,000 each. This means the distance would appear to be 35 times closer: 150 yards / 35 = 4.28 yards away. They could have counted the hairs in his eyebrows, counted his pimples, read printed text from a book, and easily identified his weapon type."
At 150 meters he would at most be at 4x mag.
I never really mag in until around 150.
People move too fast and you want a bit of “window.”
I would be curious how much they spent on optics. 3k is less than I would guess for a tier 1 unit.
Blogger doctrev said...
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Secret Service wanted to get to a hospital, but Trump snapped that only his ear was bleeding. Aside from the fact that a totally unsecured hospital is an even larger security risk, it's very likely that Trump's medical staff simply stopped the bleeding and proceeded to monitor him for PTSD.
There will be a hospital emergency plan that includes securing safe access to emergency medical care.
They will have a route detailed in the conop and a plan to secure every part of the transport to the hospital that will happen as quickly as an ambulance ride.
This will be done in 100 out of 100 events.
Cheatle also said the inner perimeter was appropriate and locals were in charge of the outer.
Two lies/admissions of incompetence there.
No high point in relatively easy shooting distance should be outside the inner perimeter. Locals may provide manpower and some supervision. But the Secret Service is in charge of the entire effort including setting up the local effort and training them in their role.
I watch a lot of disaster videos on YouTube.
The thing about life is that sometimes disasters require multiple things to go wrong for the disaster to occur. It makes the disaster look like it required a conspiracy, but whenever many humans are involved, multiple failures are just more likely.
Unless someone can produce some evidence of a conspiracy other than saying that events were just too unlikely, I'm sticking with "multiple people screwed up" theory. And that theory does not automatically let anyone off the hook for not doing their job correctly.
The more that comes out, the more Achilles' position looks like reality. Secret Service takes and circulates pictures of the shooter hours before the event, trying to get into the venue with a range finder. But no reason to take him into custody, why would they do that? And Secret Service anti-snipers had him in their scopes for at least 25 minutes, while he used the range finder from his shooting position. But no reason to stop Trump from coning on stage. Clearly they were under orders to not fire on the sniper until he shot first. Pretty damning evidence. Way beyond mere negligence. No one is that stupid.
loudogblog:
How are we going to get the evidence of the conspiracy when the FBI is doing the investigation?
Who watches the guardians?
Achilles commented on ""Good Lord. I do not want any of this to be the case. I'd far rather have the whole thing have been simple incompetence.""
2 hours ago
That kid knew he could carry a 10 foot orange ladder through that parking lot and get on that roof.
Someone told him.
——————————-
Bullseye.
@Achilles: I would be curious how much they spent on optics. 3k is less than I would guess for a tier 1 unit.
The source below indicates they used the Nightforce ATACR 7-35x56 with laser rangefinders. I presumed a police/military discount in guessing $3K, and did not count the laser.
I also presumed that one member of the two-person team would zoom (even briefly) to spot while the other would be set up as the shooter.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/secret-service-guns-and-gear-of-july-13th-2024-44814994
loudogblog said...
Unless someone can produce some evidence of a conspiracy other than saying that events were just too unlikely, I'm sticking with "multiple people screwed up" theory. And that theory does not automatically let anyone off the hook for not doing their job correctly.
The SS knew there was a person between 150 and 300 meters of the president 30 minutes before he was shot. Local law enforcement took a picture of him surveilling the area and called it out.
The shooter carried a 10' ladder and a backpack with an AR 15 in it from his car which was a mile away through the most obvious avenue of approach through a tree line and across a parking lot in broad daylight.
He put a 10 foot ladder on the side of a building after walking through the parking lot that was full of LEOs.
The SS Counter Sniper Team had eyes on the shooter for 3 minutes before he took the shot. The Counter Sniper Team watched him point his weapon at an LEO that was reacting to local people who were watching this guy and yelling at people that there was a guy with a gun on the roof.
The CS team was watching that roof because it was the most obvious place.
Most importantly through all of this THEY DID NOT GET TRUMP OFF THE STAGE.
Multiple people were yelling about a guy on the roof and they just let Trump keep talking.
The CS team was watching a guy on a roof with a gun and they just let Trump keep talking.
An LEO went up the ladder and the shooter pointed a gun at him and they just let Trump keep talking.
Bullshit. Pure absolute bullshit.
Anyone who accepts this is just shoving their head up their ass on purpose because they do not want to contemplate what these obvious facts mean.
I do find it entertaining that the murderous Democrat regime tool used a laser range finder/spotting scope at ~130 meters.
Surprised he didn't take a selfie and Facebook it.
Wait this guy had absolutely no social media...
And he has the only apparently unhackable phone in the world...
Yeah this will not end well.
Enigma said...
@Achilles: I would be curious how much they spent on optics. 3k is less than I would guess for a tier 1 unit.
The source below indicates they used the Nightforce ATACR 7-35x56 with laser rangefinders. I presumed a police/military discount in guessing $3K, and did not count the laser.
Good deductions.
I also presumed that one member of the two-person team would zoom (even briefly) to spot while the other would be set up as the shooter.
The spotter is usually there to do math and call adjustments and be aware of peripheral.
The problem with all of this is 130 meters is such a ridiculous threat distance. It is so absurd that snipers were engaging a threat at 130 meters in the first place. A roof 130 meters away with over watch was not secured.
130 meters.
No cover on a roof.
The second he got off that ladder the CS team saw him and he was not hiding the gun because he couldn't. No trench coat.
People cannot actually say these things out loud and think the SS had no part in this.
Broken link: https://x.com/DC_Draino/status/1813575130565542036
The Achilles position is: The negligence theory is beyond belief.
And that is the correct position.
The Jamie position, if I may rephrase it, is: I hope the Secret Service is as bad as it would need to be for this to have all been mere negligence
You are allowed to hope that. Or, at least you were allowed to hope that until the head of the SS came out and said in an ABC interview that there were no snipers on that roof because it was "lunated", and a "security hazard" for the snipers.
As that's an obvious flat out lie, hope is no longer reasonably possible.
The Great position:
The people running the SS want and wanted Trump assassinated, and did everything in their power to sabotage Trump's security.
The people there on the ground, however, were not actively working with Re Tardy Oswald.
Some of the SS people were incompetent and should never have been hired (see: fat female officers hiding rather than protecting Trump, & unable to even holster her gun w/o looking). Some were following bad orders (snipers inside the building, not on it). none, I think, were active participants.
I agree with Yancey at 11:58. That is the hardest part to excuse.
"Most importantly through all of this THEY DID NOT GET TRUMP OFF THE STAGE.
Multiple people were yelling about a guy on the roof and they just let Trump keep talking.
The CS team was watching a guy on a roof with a gun and they just let Trump keep talking.
An LEO went up the ladder and the shooter pointed a gun at him and they just let Trump keep talking."
How does this accidentally happen? I'm willing to be convinced, but I'd need to hear some pretty compelling explanations.
Is it a "conspiracy" if Mayorkas wanted gross negligence, and so kept cutting Cheatle's budget and/or stretching personnel thin with extraneous but nearby high-value (cough cough) protectees like fake doctor Jill and Kamalalala? Did all those schedules just, you know, organically appear the same weekend?
Let’s not forget the authorization of deadly force for the Mar-a-Lago raid.
So there were explosives in the killer's car, and there are pictures of a garage door remote sitting next to the assassin's phone on the roof (Daily Mail says it's a "device," but I recognize the brand of garage door opener my neighbors have). In Iraq, garage door openers were the most frequently used devices for triggering IEDs.
It has also been reported that the killer set off the metal detector because he was carrying a RANGE FINDER in his backpack, but security let him into the secure area anyway, though after being there a while he exited. So he went in, figured the distance from where he was going to be shooting, went back out of security, dialed the distance into his scope, got his ladder . . .
Do you still believe that this kid, who appears to be the only human being in the United States under the age of 25 who doesn't have a social-media presence, acted entirely alone? They were casual shooters but they had a range finder on hand, and the kid somehow got a bunch of explosive and put together an IED-trigger all by himself?
Also, for a kid who supposedly got rejected by his school rifle team, he shot well enough. 130 yards isn't elite or anything, but he managed to control his breathing and adrenaline enough to make the shots. And he knew how to use a range finder and how to adjust his scope. Bespeaks SOME training, does it?
Was the plan to shoot and then trigger the car-bomb to try to provide a diversion in which he could escape? It's a terrible plan if he wants to survive, but it seems like exactly the sort of thing you'd set up for a patsy so that he didn't know he was on a suicide mission. And you know, those garage door openers come with at least two remotes. I wonder where the other one is. I wonder if, for some reason, he had bailed out on the attempt, if the other garage door remote would have made sure that he couldn't talk. I also wonder when the garage door opener was purchased. The loose battery is an Energizer, not the off-brand batteries that usually come with cheap electronic goods. Does a lone-wolf confused kid have the foresight and discipline--giving everything else that is rushing around in his head--to replace the batteries in his remote "just in case"?
Too bad that I have zero confidence that we will ever have truthful answers to these questions.
Jupiter said...It sure looks like a Secret Service agent is telling people standing behind the stage to get out of the way
He looks like SS, but he didn't draw a weapon, so he's most likely a campaign official who likes to dress like Trump.
Scott Adams is asking why aren’t reporters asking the shooter’s classmates if he had an online presence?
We're used to getting just rumors and snippets of gossip in the 24-48 hours after a major event,
Unfortunately, what we're even more used to hearing these days is, "This was the [superlative][event] in our history! Anyone who questions that fact is a [type of denial] denier!"
I'm looking forward to that phase...
Whatever conspiracy theory you are contemplating, just include the data point that LOTS of Democrats in positions of power are just fine with murdering their Republican political opponents.
Quoted for truth.
Where was the communication to the security personnel immediately around Trump?
The agent in charge was too busy talking about sending a LEO to check the roof and waiting for a response. They trust the public even less than we now trust them.
Butler, Pa. township commissioner: "Our local township police, their duties that were assigned to them and we have an operational plan that details all that, were strictly traffic detailed. They were not required or detailed to any security detail related to the event... I was so frustrated and quite frankly hit my limit again last night when I saw again, Secret Service says it was the responsibility of the local police department. That's absolutely not correct."
(transcribed from an audio clip)
To address Temujin's question and Rory's comment on what other local agencies were involved, the Butler County sheriff's office had people on site (the sheriff later spoke to media about the attack). PA State Police were there also, although usually "state" is not the same as "local". So between township police, county sheriff's office, state police, and USSS, there were at least four law enforcement agencies on site.
I'm with Achilles. For all the reasons he advances, which I won't rehash, and others -- including details (and lack of details) regarding the shooter which are deeply troubling. The minute he was ID'd media had his voter registration (Yay! he's Rethuglican!), but there is an almost deliberate vaccuum of info about his parents and the people he spends time with. The fact that his parents have not instantly been outed as HardRight tells me they are the opposite; the media silence is damning. So, hard leftwing family environment, both parents counselors/therapists, complete media silence about his medical history -- and the press is being astoundingly delicate about the parents' gun collection and his access to it. They would be baying like hunting hounds under any other circumstances. and screeching to have the guns confiscated and melted down. The silence,again, makes my point for me.
That said, his leaving home and the absence of a gun from Dad's collection, seems to have been a matter of enough concern that Dad reported this to police. What was said? Don't know. Why the report on an absent adult? Don't know. He lived an hour away from the Butler County site and nothing has explained how he would know anything about the layout of an unassociated business building proximate to it. Or that the building was empty (except for a few LEOs) and thus available for access.
When the press was initially trying to get its story straight on the shooter their tack was, Oh he was such a crappy shot he couldn't even make the high school rifle team. But they interviewed someone who was at the tryout, and I got a totally different picture. The interviewee said (to demonstrate he was a lousy shot) that he couldn't hit any of the targets and in fact wound up firing into a side wall at the range. Whatever the impression he made on his fellow team candidates, I say he obviously impressed the team coach as an arrogant, reckless a^^holw who had absolutely no business anywhere near a weapon and an instant liability, whatever his shooting score might have been.
Apart from anything else, the fact that the FBI is the sole investigating agency, an entity wholly corrupted, was bad enough, but when the CIA launched itself into the sewer stream alongside the Bureau via the bizarre Iran-connection announcement, well, the two most corrupt entities in the government do not instill anything but confidence that whatever they are saying is the opposite of truth. Sorry, not sorry.
I wonder… who is/are the "right hand of Biden's security regime"?
An LEO went up the ladder and the shooter pointed a gun at him and they just let Trump keep talking.
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turns out officer boosted by another officer to take a look.
so what happened to ladder?
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