By Jim Geraghty
Monday, July 15, 2024
This may well be the best statement Donald Trump has ever made:
Thank you to everyone for your
thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the
unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in
our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness. Our love goes out to the other
victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded,
and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed. In
this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our
True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing
Evil to Win. I truly love our Country, and love you all, and look forward to
speaking to our Great Nation this week from Wisconsin.
Trump told the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito —
who was at the Pennsylvania rally, just feet away from the former
president when the shooting occurred — that in his convention address, he
will attempt to play the role of a national uniter:
Trump said people all across the
country from different walks of life and different political views have called
him, and he noted that he was saved from death because he turned from the crowd
to look at a screen showing data he was using in his speech.
“That reality is just setting in,”
he said. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that
moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
Talking as he boarded his plane in
Bedminster, New Jersey, for Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention
starts Monday and lasts through Thursday, Trump said his speech will meet the
moment that history demands. “It is a chance to bring the country together. I
was given that chance.”
After the assassination attempt and consequential killing
and wounding of innocent rally attendees, everyone in America is scared, angry,
upset, and anxious enough as is. We need people who pour water on the fire, not
gasoline. A Donald Trump who wants to raise everyone’s spirits, and unify us at
this moment, will be a particularly formidable presidential candidate, the man
meeting the moment. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
I am loath to close. We are not
enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union,
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
On Sunday, the FBI said investigators had not yet
identified any ideology fueling the shooter*. He may have been a garden-variety
nut, the kind who wanted to take a shot at a political figure to impress Jodie Foster or to prove that grammar was a form of mind control. Or he may have been a
more overtly political kind of nut, who believed that by killing Trump, he
would somehow be seen as a hero who saved the country from another Trump
presidency.
(As the Post delicately puts it, “Someone with his name and street
address gave $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a Democratic voter-turnout
organization, in January 2021.”)
It’s a little frustrating to see the “shooter’s motive still unclear” headlines, because it seems
pretty clear that when a guy picks up a rifle and shoots an estimated eight
shots at a former president and current presidential candidate, he intended to
kill him. The only remaining question is why this disturbed young man
attempted to do that.
As of this writing, the American public still has large
and pressing questions about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Had the shooter been planning an assassination attempt
on Trump for a long time? The rally was announced and publicized by Wednesday, July 10. (The linked
article is from Thursday the 11th, meaning it had been announced the previous
day.) Would three days have been enough time for him to case the location of
the Butler Farm Show complex? The shooter was located on the roof of an office
building belonging to American Glass Research, roughly 400 feet from where
Trump was standing.
How did the shooter, carrying an AR-15, get to the
location without being noticed? How did he get to the roof? Eyewitnesses
claimed they saw the shooter and attempted to warn law enforcement; new video
shows people pointing him out on the building’s roof. How was the shooter
able to get off an estimated eight shots that killed one spectator, critically
injured two others, and clipped President Trump in his ear, before the Secret
Service “neutralized” him?
The New York Times reported, “Law enforcement
officials also found two explosive devices in [the shooter’s] car — and believe
they have may have found a third at his residence, according to a person with
knowledge of the investigation.”
At this point, there is no indication that the shooter
was on any government “watch list.” Had he done anything that indicated he
should be on a watch list? Did any of the shooter’s friends and acquaintances
see or hear anything that warranted a call to law-enforcement authorities?
The U.S. Secret Service employs “approximately 3,200
special agents, 1,300 Uniformed Division officers, and more than 2,000 other
technical, professional and administrative support personnel.”
Is that sufficient?
By law, the
Secret Service is authorized to protect:
·
The president, the vice president, (or other
individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President), the
president-elect and vice president-elect
·
The immediate families of the above individuals
·
Former presidents, their spouses, except when
the spouse re-marries
·
Children of former presidents until age 16
·
Visiting heads of foreign states or governments
and their spouses traveling with them, other distinguished foreign visitors to
the United States, and official representatives of the United States performing
special missions abroad
·
Major presidential and vice-presidential
candidates, and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential
election
·
Other individuals as designated per Executive
Order of the President and
·
National Special Security Events, when
designated as such by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
Security details of varying sizes are required for the
current president, the current vice president, five former presidents (Donald
Trump, Barack Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Carter) four former vice presidents
(Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle) and four former first ladies
(Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Laura Bush).
Is the Secret Service undermanned? Sunday
afternoon, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig — author of
the 2021 book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, wrote:
Responding to questions from The
Post, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed Sunday that the
agency relied on local police at the Trump rally to fill out significant parts
of its typical array of specialized protective units — including its heavily
armed counterassault team that provided cover as Trump’s detail evacuated him
and the countersniper teams that ultimately spotted and killed the
shooter. . . .
The Secret Service had two of its
counterassault agents on the scene and filled out the rest of the typical
platoon with at least six members of Butler County tactical units, Guglielmi
said. Two Secret Service countersniper teams were on the scene, but two
additional teams that had been recommended for adequate protection at the rally
were staffed by local units, he said.
When there’s a counter-sniper team on the scene, is there
slower or less efficient communication when they’re a mix of Secret Service
counter-assault agents and local police tactical units?
Our Dominic Pino quickly wrote up a thorough review of the
scandals, embarrassing moments, and other recurring problems in the U.S. Secret
Service — from cavorting with prostitutes in Venezuela to misplaced firearms to
public drunkenness to slow responses to intruders at the White House to
sleeping on the job.
The organization’s image, for decades, was one of
professionalism, courage, and steely eyed willingness to jump in front of an
assassin’s bullet — the stuff of Clint Eastwood and Gerard Butler films. The
reality is not quite so reassuring.
Still, until some sort of sweeping change is made, the
U.S. Secret Service is the only option for protection of prominent elected
officials. And that brings us to a point that some of us have been making for
nearly a year: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should have Secret Service protection,
and it is a scandal that the Department of Homeland Security has refused to
offer him that protection. As I wrote back in September, “This issue is
entirely separate from what you think of Kennedy as a candidate or potential
president. He stands out as a potential target because this country has an ugly
tradition of nutjobs assassinating presidents and presidential candidates named
Kennedy.”
This is a dark moment, but dark moments pass. Right
around eight years ago, we were on the eve of another Republican National
Convention in a Rust Belt city that was nominating Donald Trump, when a
horrific, racially motivated terrorist attack struck in the heart of
Dallas. The pieces appeared to be falling into place for some horrific
violence at the RNC gathering . . . and yet, the Cleveland convention in 2016 came and went without incident.
It may feel like our political rhetoric has never been so
heated — that’s debatable — but within living memory, we’ve had periods of much
more widespread political violence. Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and
the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence is the most complete
history of the political violence perpetrated by groups such as the Weathermen,
the Symbionese Liberation Army, FALN, and the Black Liberation Army. Early on,
Burrough quotes retired FBI agent Max Noel:
People have completely forgotten
that in 1972, we had over 1900 domestic bombings in the United States. People
don’t want to listen to that. They can’t believe it. One bombing now and
everyone gets excited. In 1972? It was every day. Buildings getting bombed,
policemen getting killed. It was commonplace.
This, too, shall pass.
*I am continuing my policy of not naming mass shooters
and would-be assassins, lest they gain any glory or fame for their heinous
deeds.
ADDENDUM: It’s a second-tier story at the
moment, but the effort to oust Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee is
sputtering out. There’s little sign Democrats have the stomach for a delegate fight in Chicago, there are some unusual indications that Vice President Kamala Harris
isn’t interested in replacing Biden before November, and some Democratic
sources are openly declaring surrender.
“The presidential contest ended
last night,” said a veteran Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to give a candid assessment of his own party’s standing less than
four months before the election.
“Now it’s time to focus on keeping
the Senate and trying to pick up the House,” he said. “The only positive thing
to come out of last night for Democrats is we are no longer talking about Joe
Biden’s age today.”
The second senior House Democrat offered one reason for why it might: “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”
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