The assumption that law enforcement is competent is behind any conspiracy theory. It's just the insane level of incompetency that people cannot fathom.
The FBI shutting down their investigation immediately though raises a lot of red flags. That's not incompetence that is intentional.
i have little doubt that no one will want to get to the bottom of this.
that said, i can also see the angle on "do not investigate this too hard if the results will show the teams to be rubes. that breaks the reputational deterrence they posses and invites future attacks."
we will be able to tell what "the problem" was when he see how the SS handles these assignments in the future. Govt never admits a mistake, it just quietly makes a few changes. Video from the RNC shows that Trump's retinue is now 100% giant men, for example.
We will be able to tell when we see who runs the SS--Pepsico or real men--and who gets hired as field agents: DEI hires or real men. Hopefully, in 6 months she'll be back at PepsiCo.
Clearly. I've always thought that the run in 2016 was precipitated by a conversation in which, while hanging out with friends, someone said "he Donnie, I bet you couldn't get elected to public office" and he responded "yeah? hold my diet coke and watch this"
There are lots of connections made by various people on X. The building is owned by a glass company that specializes in making vials for vaccines. The CEO seems to have questionable connections.....
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — who oversees the Secret Service — conceded on “Good Morning America” yesterday that “a direct line of sight like that to the former president” should never have been possible. “That’s why President Biden directed an independent review of the incident,” Mayorkas quipped. By “independent,” the impeached Secretary meant a totally controlled internal FBI whitewash by the same field office that “debunked” the Hunter Biden laptop.
Incompetence does not mean there was no internal or external control/manipulation. In fact, an insider who knew what a fuster cluck the security arrangements were or were likely to be is something that clearly needs to be examined carefully...but very likely won't be.
Like one head officer who says "It's too dang hot on the roof, we can see just as well and aim through these windows if we need to and the AC in here feels pretty good!"
Exactly. If it was just an issue of " zone security ", incompetence could be a stand alone option. But, a BIG BUT, when you add in factors such as - ....by any means necessary, Trump cannot be...., or, that the shooter fits the profile - manipulated loner, drugged?, known to and used by intel agencies/operators, or that the shooter knew to access that location and have a ladder somewhere accessible -as if he was provided those details, pre-planning and prior scouting has never been a strong suit for impulse actors. There's a point where B.S. is an acceptable conclusion, without adding on the TOTAL LACK OF credibility of Fed investigating agencies.
THIS. This is what I keep thinking. The SS are highly trained and would know for certain that less trained and less experienced local small town cops not routinely exposed to this level of security would indeed cause a weak link, and the head of SS could easily take advantage of that if she wanted to, letting the cacophony of errors fall where they may and onto blaming local law enforcement.
I see how the “stupidity” angle can assuage a sinister plot, but only if the SS were stupid too, or if not then intentional.
That's why there should be a SS agent at each zone location. Someone needs to coordinate the security. If the middle or outer zone discovers a threat, they need to immediately inform the inner zone so the VIP can be brought to a safe place. If they are not doing this, they are not security professionals. A SS agent would have told the local PD, "Yeah, its hot. So rotate your rooftop observers, but never leave the spot empty." Proper defense in depth requires communication between the zones.
The SS is stupid was basically the point of this essay. Highly trained according to whom?? I saw video of an overweight woman that couldn’t holster her pistol, and 2 ponytailed women that seemed pretty much clueless, and they were the ones closest to trump. They also allowed trump to stand back up for the fist pump, before the threat was for sure taken care of, which while making great theater should have been a no go. We are an unserious country with unserious people at the helm.
Gotta agree with you on this. The Ponytail Posse was classic Keystone Kops. “How do I get this thing back into its holster?” “Gotta get my shades back on so I look official!” “Which way did he go, George?” “I REALLY need to get into shape!”
It was ridiculous. The agent that appeared like she was trying to hide under Trump created a perfect head shot. And the rest of them dancing around the limo was…well, you know…the thing.
an aside..but shouldn't we Americans or anyone in the world really have a team or a division that can be shortened to "SS?" You would think we would have seen this coming. Like the UK when they decided to start a Krispy Kreme Klub to further promote those donuts in their country. These are not good ideas.
You are the first person to say what I have been thinking this entire time. I used to work as a translator and one company had a T&A abbreviation in their text which I flagged and explained that would not fly for their target audience. They were of course pleased with my attention to detail.
I don't even like the term "unserious" when silly or ridiculous works just as easily.Then again, I wasn't onboard with "incentivize" when "motivate" was already in our parlance.
Very true. And with this new info that gato shared from bravo kilo, all it would take for an assassination conspiracy is one of the local swat snipers to be in on it say "Whew! It's way to hot up here!" and effectively replace himself with the assassin...
When government is the actor, Hanlon’s Razor is inverted.
I’m not being cute. I’m totally serious. Government incompetence is a feature not a bug. It’s ready cover for misdeeds. It’s invoked literally every time. We always hear, “mistakes were made.” As sentence without a subject. Maybe, only maybe, some low-level flunky gets put on leave or (gasp) fired.
And it’s always believed immediately because it’s always plausible.
But government does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. We must start with the base assumption it’s malice and start asking, cui bono. Proponents of incompetence theory deserve the full burden of proof here.
You’ve admirably taken on that burden, but you do not persuade. Your whole theory is based on the perspective of one insider on how things work. But I’m guessing you haven’t look very hard for insiders with a different perspectives, which likely abound. Your case relies on us assuming the whole thing is always a shit show with massive QA holes. Plausible yes. But I’m not convinced. This is basically “you had one job” level incompetence.
Thanks. I’ve been saying this for years. Basic pattern recognition.
Another reason it works so well is the everyone was propagandized all their childhood about “public servants,” and they just can’t believe they could be capable of such acts. People suffer severe emotional pain looking into the face if evil. They much prefer to pretend it away.
Thanks. I only came to awareness that objective evil is here--it is not an abstraction any longer. So when KJP calls for unity----uhh no. Your side has unmasked itself.
PS: Just back from Amherst. Beautiful countryside campus. Looks like a fine school academically. The young tour guide - Econometrics/CS double major; stepson plans to major in Math so a good match - was an absolutely wonderful ambassador for his school and its mission.
And I totally saw all of the, well, Evil of which you and Mr. V3 warned me.
Sure is a beautiful countryside campus. Mount Holyoke has that as well (but not for your boy). Spent many happy hours in the Phi Gamma Chi house (w. the not-yet Mr. V3)--the white Greek "temple" upon the hill. immediately uphill from Emily Dickinson's home. V. glad you saw the other side clearly. Thx for message!
Not that I think it's in the running but the 5 colleges are now a consortium and students can take a class - even at Holyoke or Smith - if they don't offer it at Amherst, although I imagine UMass is leveraged in this way the most.
I was impressed to know that Dickinson - the first woman undergrad at Amherst - and Robert Frost and Calvin Coolidge (Silent Cal's my Fave Prez of all time) are also alums.
I imagine DJT is pleading for unity from Never-Trumpers and pro/anti vaxxers. Not from the left which has clearly now, if not before, unmasked itself—in Karen Pinder fashion.
I wasn't quite sure why so many famous professional actors aggressively loathed Trump. TDS? Were they conscientiously playing part/role then? Now I get it differently. They are insanely jealous. He has the best role ever and they also know and resent that he is the greatest actor ever. #MaybeOtherSecretServicesActedDeceitfully.
There is perception, and there is reality. At least back in the seventies there was some semblance of a veneer. but now its just laughable. Politicians pontificating about "saving democracy" through invoking tyranny.
And my answer is, if government is incompetent, then it is obvious what needs to be done. and that is remove them from the levers of power. Let individuals who are competent act independently. Since the government is so good at incomptence™ they should be in charge of identifying it and weeding it out.
"everyone was propagandized all their childhood about “public servants,” "
I just flew from Baltimore to Harford CT and it seems (Pattern Alert) and it seems that the TSA selects for a certain type. This is not limited to race or country of origin. Nor gender... shall we say, certainty in more than a few.
Point being, they'll take just about anybody now, at all the alphabets. And I suspect it goes all the way down to the Assistant Front Desk Greeter at the Office of the County Dog Catcher.
There's just an absolute mess of them. We largely don't feel that we're getting the scope or quality of services we should for the taxes we pay for the bloated workforce. And they pretty much all understand their plight and will vote for the most progressive, socialist, and it seems (Pattern Alert) the authoritative actor available - as long as it makes them comfortable saying, "I'm Doing My Part!" *involuntary eye twitch*
It gives my the Flying Heebie Jeebies every time someone says, "I'm Doing My Part!" *involuntary eye twitch*
Razor Man, I'm with you and would take the childhood propaganda so much further than "public servants". "Greatest country ever", "heroes" (for every person who ever wore a uniform of any kind), "democracy". The list could go on forever.
Watching TV really ruins people for how incompetent actual police work is. It’s not like CSI. They’re not doing meticulous detective work and lab analysis. Also your doctor is often less like House and more like the mechanic who’s looked at 50 other cars this week and isn’t all that invested in yours.
A bit tangential, but here’s another trick they constantly use to great effect.
They conflate evidence and proof. The aim is to set the bar at proof, so unless you have it all tied up, the conversation is over. Then they’ll just say “no evidence” a bazillion times, despite there being plenty of evidence.
This tactic worked especially well to knock back the stolen 2020 election theories. They had the advantage that it all had to be put to bed very quickly. And every journo robotically repeated “no evidence.”
Hanlon’s only works when there’s trust involved. Like if I’m asking if my friend just forgot my bday or intentionally ignored it to spite me, I’m going with the former.
In all other cases, incompetence is people’s first defense when caught doing something wrong:
“I wasn’t speeding. I thought this was a 70 zone”
“I wasn’t shoplifting. I thought I paid for these”
“I wasn’t parking illegally. I didn’t see the sign”
We should have as much trust for our government as a police officer has for a suspect. Maybe it was incompetence/ignorance, but you wouldn’t automatically take them at their word, because it’s literally what they all say.
"It’s ready cover for misdeeds. It’s invoked literally every time. We always hear, “mistakes were made.”"
Like with the FISA warrants. "Mistakes were made." Yes... and 100% of them went *against* Trump. Mathematically impossible to be random. Ditto here. EVERY alleged security failure went *against* Trump.
AND, if it *was* just massive incompetence, why has no one, most of all the f'n Director, been fired?
I'm not buying incompetence. Why was RFK, Jr denied Secret Service protection? Are you suggesting that seemingly every other area of the government, including the FBI, has been weaponized against the Democrat's political opponents, but not Secret Service?
RFK had no SS detail when he was murdered. His protection was Rosie Grier and 3 other professional athletes. The assassination was a CIA backed MK-Ultra candiodate and an ex-con security guard who was the genuine shooter.
SS is under Homeland Umbrella along with all the other alphabets. FBI was prosecuting him, CIA - well, whonose what they do? Black Rock or third party? Just as easy, still under the Umbrella. Take ya pick.
I have seen reports that the USSS detail was mostly substitutes drawn from surrounding areas. The primary team was off, and the best of the rest were assigned to FLOTUS that day. I can imagine how botched everything can get. But I am still puzzled at one thing - how did they get a near-instant DNA match of someone with no criminal background and, seemingly, no digital footprint. Still fishy.
I’ve thought about that too. I’m no expert but I wonder if they tentatively ID’d him from facial recognition, then got some known DNA from a personal item of the shooter’s from home to compare to? But it still seems unlikely that they could have had the lab analysis done so quickly.
David didn't murder Bathsheba's husband - he was just careless about his life & then "luck" solved his problem. But God knew it was murder because it was murder. Strategic recklessness is 3rd path between malice & stupidity. You are careless enough about risks you want to see come to fruition & "luck" will solve your problems for you, but it's perfectly malicious "stupidity" so you can't be blamed for your DELIBERATE act.
There is video from DC Draino on X that clearly shows, hundreds of people saw him on that roof, minutes before. People were shouting about it.
Trump should not have been on that stage after that.
That does not mean conspiracy, but the combination of stochastic terrorism and deliberate refusal to allow for sufficient staff, tech and training essentially makes it so.
"Crooks came back, sat down and looked at his phone. At that point, one of the snipers took a picture of him. Crooks took out a rangefinder and the sniper radioed to the command post. Crooks disappeared again and then came back a 3RD TIME with a backpack. The snipers called in with the information that he had a backpack and said he was walking towards the back of the building"
Would their jobs have been over if Trump had been more seriously injured or killed? Someone’s life is over because of this. Jobs are over because of media events mistakes but not deaths and injuries? Something very wrong here.
Seriously. It's like a perfect example of one of the many things that are wrong in our country - appearance being so much more important than substance and intent. Heartbreaking.
They had at least two minutes to figure it out. That seems more than enough time to make a determination, if comms are working, and how can't that be working?. That does not imply malice, but then malice absolutely describes the attitude of media and the deep state about Trump and MAGA.
Raised on a ranch. Thirty miles from the nearest paved highway. And a lot further from town. We got electricity when I was seven. And running water when I was 12. Didn't see a TV until I went to high school. Didn't think much of it then. And even less now.
But our house was full of books - so after chores...
“According to the AP, who spoke to two law enforcement officials on condition of anonymity, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the top of the roof of the nearby building and warned local law enforcement. This is when one local officer climbed to the roof and confronted Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder [?] as Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump...” https://www.newsweek.com/police-officer-found-trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-roof-minutes-before-shooting-report-1925027
We can't scapegoat that one officer. Local law enforcement one would hope, would have a direct comm to SS. Spotters would have been able to see if he had a gun. But none of that seems to have happened. That, and the fact that the roof was unsecure, makes it seem to me like gross incompetence caused by systemic malice.
There has been a massive coordination of communications from top to bottom for decades. That goes back to Columbine in 1999 when local police departments around suburban Denver couldn't talk to each other. Now 25 years later it is exceedingly rare not to have mutual aid communication at the local, county and state level and dovetailing that with federal directly or via dispatcher is not a far fetched concept. Not just LEO but fire rescue and aviation. The nation has spent many billions of dollars with contractors such as Motorola to develop this infrastructure. I'd be highly suspicious to hear elements of a detail such as this took more than a few seconds for information to be passed from the individual sheriff's deputy to the USSS incident commander. If the communication system was compromised and not functioning that alone would should be a reason to implement a procedure to figure out why and protect people. If nothing else, never mind the president and USSS responsibility, the local and state police should have done something to watch out for their citizens in the crowd. If this was a concert or county fair and some nut climbed up on a roof with a rifle wouldn't the police swarm to stop it? When detailed to a federal event do they no longer have a responsibility to their primary job? Maybe they only swarm like that when it's lucrative and a civil forfeiture is afoot.
Reports that the snipers were told TWICE not to shoot, and the shooter was in a BlackRock ad 2 years before. (Again, I believe Feds keep a list of crazies who can be rallied at just the right time to do their dirty work.) I could believe stupidity if all the other “stupid” take outs hadn’t happened. The left was frothing at the mouth to get Trump incarcerated so he could be “Epsteined”. When that failed, a new plan was hastily put together. Telling sign was how quickly FBI was on site and how quickly investigation was over with no answers. Someone will lose their job and no one pays for the death of one and injury of two others. Business as usual.
and if the underlying feeling is that "MAGA people are all idiots" anyway....it would take even longer for the reality of the situation to fight it's way into their heads....
I've never been in a building with a quiet metal roof, but I have been in one with someone climbing around on top. It's not subtile. I'd be willing to bet the metal roof is not in any way insulated but I suppose the LEO's just thought there was a big racoon up there.
How often does it happen that a crowd starts to yell that there is a man with a gun crawling on the roof? Like, does the Secret Service have to deal with such overexcited amateur crowds at just about every rally, or a few times a month, or less than that? Like, how blasé can they reasonably be expected to be about such crowd behavior?
"Your job is over if you [pull the candidate off-stage over a false positive]" is clearly the wrong rule - are you sure it's really like that?
Creating an artificial knife's edge is terrible management. If the priority is to keep the principal safe, then you need to be allowed to err a bit on the side of caution. It's a bit of a kerfuffle, but what really is the harm if Trump is held backstage an extra 10 minutes while security re-sweeps a roof after a suspicious report, or is even quietly interrupted by a couple of agents mid-speech and comes back out after 10 minutes to finish his event? Surely much less than his getting shot.
SC put it together that for at least two minutes people were pointing at him. 30 seconds after the first person saw him, Trump should have been pulled off that stage.
The nervousness about "What happens to me if I make the wrong call?" is paralysing, and "Better wait and see" is the path of least resistance out of the paralysis.
It takes rather harsh training to teach someone awareness that we all function like that, and to make them able to curb that instinct and instead do something.
Even the Ancients knew this: "The gods hate he who hesitates" is a saying well over 2 000 years old.
Also consider the ever-present risk of someone crying "Sniper!" just to disrupt the rally. We've had such incidences here during campaign seasons, where lefties (and that's left on /our/ scale) have shown up with water gun-replicas, or have simply shouted about bombs or guns, or have phone-in bomb threats.
And police must take each one seriously - but that eats up resources and disrupts the rally, and then people have to be evacuated, and so on.
For the one targetted by the left, it's a no-win situation, which is the point.
I agree about paralyzing anxiety and the low effort limbo of hesitation. Makes the immediate clear reaction of President Trump, emerging from that fog, radiating strength and courage under fire even more impressive and remarkable.
Respectfully, I think you're creating a false dichotomy: Judge Posner famously wrote about a third option, strategic recklessness, where you make "mistakes" that you know will injure/kill the person you want to injure/kill while allowing you plausible deniability. Is that person an obvious assassin about to kill Trump? Well, I'll just be confused about whether or not a local sniper would be pointing his weapon TOWARDS the president and/or wearing civilian clothes and/or without any support because I don't care if I'm wrong as long as I can claim as I only wrong, rather than complicit. Cops who want Trump dead can be "confused" about going on the roof because that's what they'll say when Trump's dead as a result. I could go on, but NONE of these people acted like anyone would have acted had they wanted to stop this killing - instead, they acted EXACTLY like you'd act if you wanted him dead w/o being implicated in the killing. They were strategically reckless. They knew their "mistakes" could kill & they were fine w/ that result because they wanted Trump dead but they didn't want to go to jail for killing him. The law has long recognized that "mistakes" can be the moral & legal equivalent of intentional actions precisely because they can be. It's not stupidity when you know what your stupidity will do AND YOU WANT THAT RESULT! It's just being clever. These were clever murderers - but they ARE murderers in that they knew or should have known what their "mistakes" would do & their "mistakes" did exactly that. If I had a bomb to a toddler, I know what's going to happen & I'm a murderer. Same principle. They knew what these "mistakes" would do & they loved it.
Thank you so much for eloquently spelling out the jumbled mess of my own thoughts this morning. This is exactly what I have been thinking since yesterday and I was having a hard time getting these points across. Nice job
And the fact they kept letting Trump’s head be exposed after the shooting and all the way to the van for two minutes. Grateful for Trump’s fast ducking behind the podium!
slay news reported this morning that a lot of the security were replaced by reserves because the regulars had been working 7 days a week for weeks on end. Also, the available well-trained ones seem to have been replaced to a rally from Jill Biden.
Contrast J13 with the security attending Trump as he entered the RNC convention last night. Sorry; those female agents were simply not ready for prime time. Had there been a second shooter, the rather tardy exit-to-limo could have been a disaster (compounded of course by Trump himself in a political gesture for the ages!)
You make a good point there which suggests there wasn't a second shooter, but isn't it possible that the putative second shooter decided against shooting Trump at that stage because he no longer had the distracting cover of the patsy's shots and therefore risked being discovered.
I've heard this -- but wasn't Trump basically just sitting around since the debate? The Democrats were calling him out for playing golf (and not distracting the media from Biden's issues)
I don't buy it. The excuse that, "hey you guys don't realize we have different agencies working together that aren't used to working together, so they don't communicate well and mistakes happen" is total BS. This is not the first time a president has given a speech at a rally and had to be protected. If the SS hasn't worked out the "bugs" of working with other agencies, then they might as well just quit now. Here is the thing: I owned a rental house in a rural area. My insurance company said they were dropping me, so I asked why. They said it was because they noticed I had a cracked shingle on my roof. They had sent out a drone to a very rural area far away from their offices and noticed a cracked shingle on my roof! There were no lives on the line, no president to protect, just the renewal of a small rental house insurance policy. So if they can do that, don't you think the secret service has drones that could notice a 6 foot long person with a 3 foot long rifle climbing up a ladder and laying on a roof only 400 feet from a president?
And the shooter knew all this stuff? Or it happened by chance?
I dont think any sensible person can doubt these facts:
- They want Trump dead (dems, agencies, military industry, you name it).
- All of them are ok with killing people.
Combine those 2 and you have the answer. Of course this is not the 1st time this happens. They can plot it or just call for it and let it happen. I think we have witnessed the 1st approach. We will see how they try next.
or he just got really lucky and played a very stupid, blatant move to walk up to the most obvious place in the the whole set that should have been guarded but wasn't.
The question that comes to mind then is how many of these incidents happen that get thwarted by competent security? If this event happens 1000 times, is there a guy with a rifle brazenly trying to get on the roof who gets sniffed out 500 times? 100 times? 10? If something this sloppy (on the assassin’s end) happens often and we only know about this specific instance because it was the one time security was this incompetent, ok, fine. But if attempts this brazen are rare because of the inherent stupidity behind even trying it (…unless you know you’ll be granted access to the roof without interference…), I have a hard time believing that the one time that someone was dumb enough to make a move like this just happened to line up with the one time security was incompetent enough to allow it.
"how many of these incidents happen that get thwarted by competent security?"
It might be hard to tell since many it's hard to count the ones that were turned away by the right people just giving them the stinkeye, good physical security, demonstration of competent control over things like traffic where everyone has to pass multiple even soft checkpoints. Eventually they give up or the window of opportunity closes.
But _even then_ , someone will fill an inside straight if enough hands are played.
And if you're careless enough, "luck" will get your enemy. this is what posner calls "strategic recklessness." Like they guy who "falsely" accuses his foe of stealing $ because he "forgot" to ask for discovery into the books & records that would have disproven the charge. That way, you can defame your foe w/ impunity &, when you're caught, merely claim "mistake." Strategic reckless is 3rd option between stupidity & malice.
Could be. But it could also be that they let it happen. They are capable of killing a person that is an obstacle, we know it. Let it happen is perfect alibi.
I am a little skeptical of luck, if only because that’s a lot of luck that even a fairly deranged person probably wouldn’t expect to have. He picked the hq of the local police and happened to luck out that the roof was open and no one saw him approaching.
Did he know it was the police HQ?
Did he stalk around looking for roof tops or did he pick the best one accidentally?
I’d he planned this out, how did he know where good places to be were? If he acted spur of the moment, wouldn’t he have avoided the HQ?
I dunno, from the shooter’s perspective it seems like he knew where he wanted to be, and knew that it was where he wanted to be. That’s kind of surprising for a rando 20 year old with no training or info.
Drones don't care. Some humans are far easier to manipulate than others.
People have killed for "promise of heaven" or other some such imaginary business. Pick a vulnerable kid (truly 20 isn't quite adult) - and you can create what you want.
no doubt he had the "I belong here" body-language thing going. Hell, if you saw a guy carrying a ladder and a rifle in full view of a 100 snipers, without a hint of fear -- you'd figure he was supposed to be there, right?
Agreed. And, it's hard for any security to stop anyone who who gets that close with a rifle who doesn't mind dying. The shooter had only 5 seconds before he was shot by snipers. Anyone with a rifle, in a prone supported position could make that shot of only 150 yards with an iron sight.
Well, I had that conversation with My Friend From Fifth Grade last night. It was a short one. She said that she and her sister think it was all just a conspiracy by the Republicans to get sympathy for Trump and it was fake blood and he never got shot and maybe it was an inside job etc. etc. etc.
And I said no, it was an actual missed assassination and she said no it wasn't, and I told her she and her sister could sometimes be little pieces of shit and that I'd talk to her next week.
Yes, I agree with you a trazillion percent, there's no shortage of incompetent morons in the world and local law enforcement is like the magnet that attracts 'em and smacks 'em up against responsibilities they ain't got the least capacity for like watermelons bursting on sidewalks.
Take a look at the photo in the Daily Mail Online today contrasting Trump's SS detail last night in the convention, and on Saturday. It's so grimly hilarious you'll cry.
It will perhaps not shock you that her sister was an elementary school teacher and she was briefly a HS teacher and then went on to a long civil service career.
And I have always been the poor dumb one who went wrong early.
TDS sets up brain dysfunction so they’re really vulnerable to all the propaganda. Sad. I know people like this too. Amazing how the people dubbed the poor “dumb ones” are often the smartest in the room, and have more common sense.
My feelings towards Trump, until Saturday, were entirely a sort of pitying contempt.
I still feel pitying contempt for all the times he utterly failed to meet the moment but finally he met the moment and rose to it. There ain't enough ginger tea in the world to ease my kishkes.
No, I have been throughout the entire course of my life been extraordinarily fortunate in my friendships, and this one has been there for me a few times when I really absolutely needed her. I ain't been hanging on with her from sheer masochistic thrillseeking.
I get that. My little sister says, "never mistake her quietness as agreement or passivity. She’s quietly weighing your worth, and if you escape unscathed it’s because the scales were weighted in your favor."
Lots of people never graduate from school...and grow older but never become adults...I tend to think if high school was really good and fun for you( ie you were head cheerleader 9r prom queen) ....you never manage to mentally leave. If you hated it like me..school was torture until i could get the he'll out. No happy memories.
When I went to my 10th high school reunion, I saw those types of people and what the real world did to them: Bitter divorces, drugs and alcohol problems, poor choices. I was happily married with 3 kids. Went to my 20th and more were mature but a couple still held their high school mentalities. Last year was my 45th. We all got along great because we've all experienced real life. The one queen bee in high school showed up with her high profile husband in their brand new Range Rover expecting to be treated like royalty. They were actually kind of shunned and I saw it on her face. It humbled her. Yes, I'm still happily married (45 years next month) with still the 3 kids, 2 grandkids, and 1 great-granddaughter. Moderation is key in all things.
She was skipped twice in elementary school and then was in the accelerated two-year middle school track as I was and she was always one of the youngest in class while I was always one of the oldest. She started college at 16. Was never ever properly with a peer group. It's bad to be very very smart and very very young in all your classes. She never fit in anywhere but I think she thought she was less weird than I was.
This amuses me because they have spent the past four years loudly painting all of us as crazy conspiracy theorists, yet now they have the granddaddy conspiracy of all! Do they even seen themselves?? 🤣
The two of them are still trying to work that all out.
I had no patience to argue further. I'm queasy enough right now, knowing I must make that awful walk to the polling station and trash my integrity etc. etc. etc. Not much more I can handle.
I briefly considered the idea that this event was staged from Trump’s side but ultimately it just doesn’t make sense for them to do it. They were probably already going to beat Biden fairly handily so a move this desperate doesn’t make a lot of sense. Too much risk for not much reward. The only thing it accomplishes is that it probably makes it way harder to fake election results unless the democrats can find a way to replace Biden.
To stage this from Trump's side would require the collusion of Biden's Secret Service or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers turning all of those guys into pod people.
I'm gonna go now and rewatch In the Line of Fire for the trabillionth time because maybe only John Malkovich can cheer me up today.
It wasn't scolding so much as completely out of patience, after this weekend, and this is a combat-pay grade level friendship. When she's not complaining about her sister to me, the two of them are mocking that I fell into the Dark Web.
I’d mock them for believing the Russian collusion conspiracy theory and Hunter’s laptop. These two sisters would hop on the first train to Crazyville if the conspiracy theorists on their tv told them to do so.
Actually she, who watches many news channels had never heard of the Steele dossier or Hunter's laptop. She was baffled when I mentioned them recently in reference to election interference.
Lmao this comment. (To think I once did not *like* you SCA. To my lasting shame.) Anyway, I really read this first as you currently having a little 5th grader friend that you occasionally discuss current events with.
In fact she is quite little but only a year younger than I. It was a great annoyance to me always to be treated as some big hulking girl when I hit only 5'4" at maturity.
And heck. If you been around here a long time you've seen how I grow on people. They start out loathing me and eventually we're falling on one another's bosoms as the events of the day may require.
I think Occam's Razor (the most straightforward explanation is most often the correct one) trumps (no pun intended) Hanlon's. For your explanation to be true (incompetence versus conspiracy), you have to line up a significant number of security failures; and as we are learning more about the chain of events, these failures are mounting. The more straightforward, and to many the most obvious, explanation is that this was a planned event involving more than just the shooter. Hopefully, the truth will eventually come out, but don't bet on it.
BTW, Napoleon Bonaparte beat Hanlon by two centuries when he reportedly said, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." But Napoleon may not be the best source for debunking conspiracies.
The upside of presuming Luck to be the most likely reason this all worked out is that it doesn't assume malice on anyone's part and yet is still plausible.
The more you try to ascribe behavior to Malice, the more likely you'll have to walk that claim back.
some have said it's built in. not sure if this is true. even if not, how else would the police/SWAT folks be accessing that roof if that has been the intention? not hard to imagine that people just assumed it was supposed to be there.
This is all a reflection of how incompetent our government is. If it were run as a private business it could provide the same "services" throughout the entire monstrosity with 1/5th the staff and 5X deliverables.
god, I could tell you stories....but Govt is incompetent on purpose in many ways -- the more "work" you have as an agency, the more "backlogs" you have, the more funding you get, the more employees you can hire, the bigger your agencies gets, and the more prestige you get in DC. The incentives are all backwards.
Suggested edit RG: "This is all a reflection of how UTTERLY incompetent our government is".
Seems governments can no longer DO anything well. Any 'brownouts' lately? Are your local police and fire departments fully staffed, with competent, well trained people? Have you checked the condition of local highways, or your municipal or regional water supply? Does your community face an imminent crisis in garbage or sewage disposal?
How long does it take to get a building permit, or open a business, in your town? How many local businesses in your area have closed - done in by regulatory compliance costs?
And lastly - how much of your gross income goes to taxes and fees - local, regional, state, and federal taxes and fees suck up ever larger slices of our income - for ever shrinking, ever less effective "services".
Government doesn't have to turn a profit, can generate revenue without the consent of the financier - We the Little People - and largely don't fail when they miss deadlines.
Private doesn't do Cheaper so much as it pays the price for not doing it according to plan.
Perhaps they were “working faster than science” or securing faster than security.
Seems like SS should leave OUT the local yocals and take a page out of a Hollywood script. Put true badass guys everywhere. Quadruple their people. Heck, at least put up a bulletproof glass cover.
Built in ladders are bolted to the walls of the structure can easily be removed to prevent anyone from accessing them for events. I'm a retired LEO and when we hosted high security individuals we had no problem removing elements that hindered security. That ladder should have been removed or an officer placed there for the duration.
Wasn’t there a report that local LE had accessed the roof, saw that the shooter was pointing his rifle at him, and retreated? Maybe I dreamed that part.
Yes, somewhere in the comments here that info was posted.
It said the shooter pointed his rifle at the officer who had climbed the ladder, and the officer retreated back down the ladder. Seconds later, the shooter fired at Trump.
Yes, but that's according to the police, who might be covering their ass. Looks bad to admit that the shooter used a ladder the police put up against the wall. How do they KNOW he used an AC unit to get up?
Ok, so two ways for him to get up to the best position and what's now also looking like an unguarded water tower with another potential shooter. I'm looking for more on that.
No, that’s a ten foot fiberglass stepladder in the picture. The two sides fold together, but there is no way to shorten it. It also weighs over 50 pounds and is very unwieldy. No way he transported it and set it there unnoticed.
So, the helicopter video was taken AFTER the police had already been on the roof. The ladders were probably placed by them to access the roof (in another video a SWAT member is carrying a folding ladder as the State Police approached the building immediately after the shooting). I doubt the ladders have anything to do with the shooter (news reports said he had bought a 5' ladder, but it was not found on the scene.) There are several locations around the buildings where he could have climbed up without a ladder.
CNN reported @ 1:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDtxPdJ6-8 that the shooter climbed up an AC unit in one of the courtyards in the building complex. Makes sense to me, I spotted those units several days ago.
The assumption that locally sourced swat snipers were supposed to be on the roof and occupying the building would render all "odd" occurrences in and around that building to be "not a threat".
If an assassination conspiracy were afoot...all it would take is one of those local snipers to say "it's too hot up here" and leave the ladder up for anyone who might want to use it. Nobody else would need to be involved.
And even when rally goers were yelling about somebody being up on the roof....all other law enforcement officers (including secret service) would say, "well of course! It's a swat sniper dummy."
Or, the shooter could have just climbed up an AC unit or storage shed to access the roof without a ladder. It would be embarassing to the cops to admit the shooter might have used their own ladder!
The helicopter footage shows a portable ladder in the alcove with cedar trees. Google maps street view of the parking lot does not show a permanent ladder in that location.
“According to the AP, who spoke to two law enforcement officials on condition of anonymity, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the top of the roof of the nearby building and warned local law enforcement. This is when one local officer climbed to the roof and confronted Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder [?] as Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump...” https://www.newsweek.com/police-officer-found-trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-roof-minutes-before-shooting-report-1925027
7 minutes before Trump was shot, the Left Barn roof snipers behind Trump were using their eyes and binoculars to scan the perimeter. 42 seconds before Trump was shot, they were on their scoped rifles (perhaps they were told by police that bystanders spotted someone on the roof and police were investigating? Or, the snipers may have been reacting to seeing bystanders pointing at the roof? https://x.com/Rampage_Calls/status/1812465170888737059
Only after the shooter had crawled to the roof peak was he visible to the 2nd sniper team (Right Barn); as he took his 2nd burst of shots, he was then shot by them. @11:35 Kim Iversen It would take a few seconds to acquire the exposed head target, aim, and fire.
Perhaps the snipers never got a radio call from the police that someone was on a roof? Maybe the police were waiting to pass word up the chain of command until a cop confirmed the bystanders report? Instead, it's possible the snipers were responding to people pointing at the roof.
Good info. first time seeing that the shooter was directly above the ladder end of the building. If he was concealed by the trees from the SS snipers, how did they one shot, one kill him?
There were two sniper teams on the barns behind Trump; one on left side other on right side. The Left side could not see the shooter. The Right Side could see him. Scroll down to see the BBC maps/photos https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cljy6yz1j6gt?page=5 and the sniper locations.
Assuming the hypothesis of total and utter incompetence and communication failure among different LE agencies to be true, there is still a LOT of “splaining” to do about how the shooter, whoever he was, got to the building, dragging his ladder, clambering up on the roof, setting up, apparently threatening a LEO who did manage to leave the barn and see who was making those footsteps on the roof…..and fuck, this dude they are showing us, does he even remotely LOOK like your typical police/Secret Service/SWAT counter-sniper guy? Were professionals on the scene really mixing up the the guy they are telling us shot at Trump with whoever was supposed to be up there? This cat looked like a guy that had to be lured away by his parents from his basement gaming to a paintball range so he could get some sun and exercise….just saying……there is a lot of stupid out there, but there is also malice. I’d guess what happened at the farm was a combination of both.
Not only does the guy not look like a LEO counter-sniper, but he was pointing his gun in the direction of a crowd of thousands of people. This fact alone should have gotten him taken out immediately. The counter-snipers that we see in all the photos, that presumably killed him, clearly had him in their sights already, because they immediately opened fire. Through their scopes, they would have been able to see every detail and easily recognize him as a non-friendly.
surely he would have seen the ar-15 and immediately known he was not a cop! The LEO ought to have had his rifle/pistol already drawn and understood the situation.
The assumption that law enforcement is competent is behind any conspiracy theory. It's just the insane level of incompetency that people cannot fathom.
The FBI shutting down their investigation immediately though raises a lot of red flags. That's not incompetence that is intentional.
i have little doubt that no one will want to get to the bottom of this.
that said, i can also see the angle on "do not investigate this too hard if the results will show the teams to be rubes. that breaks the reputational deterrence they posses and invites future attacks."
we will be able to tell what "the problem" was when he see how the SS handles these assignments in the future. Govt never admits a mistake, it just quietly makes a few changes. Video from the RNC shows that Trump's retinue is now 100% giant men, for example.
We will be able to tell when we see who runs the SS--Pepsico or real men--and who gets hired as field agents: DEI hires or real men. Hopefully, in 6 months she'll be back at PepsiCo.
Maybe someone competent from Anheuser-Busch 🤭
I would try for Jack Daniels.
lol
I apologize for laughing at that, it was in poor taste (dodgy beer pun).
She worked for Pepsi. Trump drinks Diet Coke. Vengeance?
One must be on the lookout for misplaced loyalties!
Trump drinks Diet Coke? There goes my vote
lol
Clearly. I've always thought that the run in 2016 was precipitated by a conversation in which, while hanging out with friends, someone said "he Donnie, I bet you couldn't get elected to public office" and he responded "yeah? hold my diet coke and watch this"
You may be more correct than you realize ;)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/watch-inside-the-night-president-obama-took-on-donald-trump/
Probably Trump private hires as Biden refuses extra SS support for the convention.
Except Biden doesn't accept or refuse anything, really, does he?
His handlers.
Agree w/ private hires for the convention. SS detail parking cars.
retinue - good word!
Maybe in three years (ala Hunter laptop) we will learn what was on the shooter's phone.
Remember, if it were up to the FBI, we still wouldn't know what's on that laptop. We know, because: private citizens
yes
and it will turn out to be Ashley Biden's diary.
And the Tranny Manifesto written by the Covenant School shooter
Or maybe not!
It doesn't sound like you knew about this tidbit.
"These facts are coming out against the backdrop of information suggesting that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was put in her position at the request of Jill Biden personally. In short, she did not climb the ladder based on performance. She was promoted based on who she knew." https://open.substack.com/pub/andmagazine/p/trump-attempted-assassination-some?r=b84py&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"
OMG
All the times I thought “how hard would it really be to get around government security?”
Solved.
Update to Hanlons razor: Always attribute to malice that which has continued too long to be explained by stupidity.
And then there is this: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” I have a feeling we are in this territory now.
Grey's Law.
odd that incompetence is seemingly always rewarded isnt it?
Agree
me too
Yes Yuri! Agree.
BTW, I wonder, who owns AGR, and who is the CEO. It seems there may some interesting connections there. Hmmmm.
What are we not viewing all of the 1000’s of spectator videos?
There are lots of connections made by various people on X. The building is owned by a glass company that specializes in making vials for vaccines. The CEO seems to have questionable connections.....
the capability exists for those phones to be tracked and wiped without the knowledge of the owner.
At the level of stupidity and laziness, probably not done.
the capability exists for those phones to be tracked and wiped without the knowledge of the owner.
At the level of stupidity and laziness, probably not done.
the capability exists for those phones to be tracked and wiped without the knowledge of the owner.
At the level of stupidity and laziness, probably not done.
or... Oh look, a squirrel!
Or "It is logical to assume that incompetency could be engendered through malicious intent."
Or "how many coincidences before coincidence is impossible?"
Or perhaps: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, **or corruption**.
Any ideas why in the photo his shirt is not full of blood. Ear cuts tend to bleed massively.
As Jeff Childers put it in his post today:
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — who oversees the Secret Service — conceded on “Good Morning America” yesterday that “a direct line of sight like that to the former president” should never have been possible. “That’s why President Biden directed an independent review of the incident,” Mayorkas quipped. By “independent,” the impeached Secretary meant a totally controlled internal FBI whitewash by the same field office that “debunked” the Hunter Biden laptop.
Quis costodiet ipsos custodies? (Who will watch the watchers?)
Juvenal
LIKE
I understand that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith may be looking for a job.
Incompetence does not mean there was no internal or external control/manipulation. In fact, an insider who knew what a fuster cluck the security arrangements were or were likely to be is something that clearly needs to be examined carefully...but very likely won't be.
It only took one "inside" person with info or deliberately planning for a softness in the zone...or just looking away...or guilt by ommission.
Like one head officer who says "It's too dang hot on the roof, we can see just as well and aim through these windows if we need to and the AC in here feels pretty good!"
one word: Uvalde
I was thinking same.
My husband and I talking about homes still without power in Houston. How trimming trees and asking for help somehow was skipped.
That thought had occurred Saturday eve, over here.
Exactly. If it was just an issue of " zone security ", incompetence could be a stand alone option. But, a BIG BUT, when you add in factors such as - ....by any means necessary, Trump cannot be...., or, that the shooter fits the profile - manipulated loner, drugged?, known to and used by intel agencies/operators, or that the shooter knew to access that location and have a ladder somewhere accessible -as if he was provided those details, pre-planning and prior scouting has never been a strong suit for impulse actors. There's a point where B.S. is an acceptable conclusion, without adding on the TOTAL LACK OF credibility of Fed investigating agencies.
Whenever we do IT Security Refresher Training they always start with Physical Security.
It doesn't have to be too sophisticated if someone can just wander on in like they own the place.
In this case...simply not looking up.
THIS. This is what I keep thinking. The SS are highly trained and would know for certain that less trained and less experienced local small town cops not routinely exposed to this level of security would indeed cause a weak link, and the head of SS could easily take advantage of that if she wanted to, letting the cacophony of errors fall where they may and onto blaming local law enforcement.
I see how the “stupidity” angle can assuage a sinister plot, but only if the SS were stupid too, or if not then intentional.
That's why there should be a SS agent at each zone location. Someone needs to coordinate the security. If the middle or outer zone discovers a threat, they need to immediately inform the inner zone so the VIP can be brought to a safe place. If they are not doing this, they are not security professionals. A SS agent would have told the local PD, "Yeah, its hot. So rotate your rooftop observers, but never leave the spot empty." Proper defense in depth requires communication between the zones.
The SS is stupid was basically the point of this essay. Highly trained according to whom?? I saw video of an overweight woman that couldn’t holster her pistol, and 2 ponytailed women that seemed pretty much clueless, and they were the ones closest to trump. They also allowed trump to stand back up for the fist pump, before the threat was for sure taken care of, which while making great theater should have been a no go. We are an unserious country with unserious people at the helm.
Gotta agree with you on this. The Ponytail Posse was classic Keystone Kops. “How do I get this thing back into its holster?” “Gotta get my shades back on so I look official!” “Which way did he go, George?” “I REALLY need to get into shape!”
It was ridiculous. The agent that appeared like she was trying to hide under Trump created a perfect head shot. And the rest of them dancing around the limo was…well, you know…the thing.
If someone told me that was Melissa McCarthy, Tina fey and Kristen wiig filming a new movie called “Secret Service Chicks” I’d believe them.
lol, like
an aside..but shouldn't we Americans or anyone in the world really have a team or a division that can be shortened to "SS?" You would think we would have seen this coming. Like the UK when they decided to start a Krispy Kreme Klub to further promote those donuts in their country. These are not good ideas.
You are the first person to say what I have been thinking this entire time. I used to work as a translator and one company had a T&A abbreviation in their text which I flagged and explained that would not fly for their target audience. They were of course pleased with my attention to detail.
I don't even like the term "unserious" when silly or ridiculous works just as easily.Then again, I wasn't onboard with "incentivize" when "motivate" was already in our parlance.
"The SS are highly trained..."
Facts not in evidence!
I'm not so sure about Highly trained anymore....when it comes to any Government employees😁
100 million % spot on!!
Very true. And with this new info that gato shared from bravo kilo, all it would take for an assassination conspiracy is one of the local swat snipers to be in on it say "Whew! It's way to hot up here!" and effectively replace himself with the assassin...
This isn't a bad take:
https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/16/bidens-team-deliberately-kneecapped-trumps-security-to-allow-an-assassination-attempt/
The FBI shut down their investigation? I did not know that.
Like immediately shipping all the bent and burned steel from the collapsed WTC to China -- "Crime scene? Nah, best to just put it behind us."
Totally agree with you!
Tim’s Razor:
When government is the actor, Hanlon’s Razor is inverted.
I’m not being cute. I’m totally serious. Government incompetence is a feature not a bug. It’s ready cover for misdeeds. It’s invoked literally every time. We always hear, “mistakes were made.” As sentence without a subject. Maybe, only maybe, some low-level flunky gets put on leave or (gasp) fired.
And it’s always believed immediately because it’s always plausible.
But government does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. We must start with the base assumption it’s malice and start asking, cui bono. Proponents of incompetence theory deserve the full burden of proof here.
You’ve admirably taken on that burden, but you do not persuade. Your whole theory is based on the perspective of one insider on how things work. But I’m guessing you haven’t look very hard for insiders with a different perspectives, which likely abound. Your case relies on us assuming the whole thing is always a shit show with massive QA holes. Plausible yes. But I’m not convinced. This is basically “you had one job” level incompetence.
i like Tim's Razor
Thanks. I’ve been saying this for years. Basic pattern recognition.
Another reason it works so well is the everyone was propagandized all their childhood about “public servants,” and they just can’t believe they could be capable of such acts. People suffer severe emotional pain looking into the face if evil. They much prefer to pretend it away.
Thanks. I only came to awareness that objective evil is here--it is not an abstraction any longer. So when KJP calls for unity----uhh no. Your side has unmasked itself.
PS: Just back from Amherst. Beautiful countryside campus. Looks like a fine school academically. The young tour guide - Econometrics/CS double major; stepson plans to major in Math so a good match - was an absolutely wonderful ambassador for his school and its mission.
And I totally saw all of the, well, Evil of which you and Mr. V3 warned me.
2nd thought--you were there outside of term time and saw the rot!
LOL I suggested that to the fam.
Sure is a beautiful countryside campus. Mount Holyoke has that as well (but not for your boy). Spent many happy hours in the Phi Gamma Chi house (w. the not-yet Mr. V3)--the white Greek "temple" upon the hill. immediately uphill from Emily Dickinson's home. V. glad you saw the other side clearly. Thx for message!
Not that I think it's in the running but the 5 colleges are now a consortium and students can take a class - even at Holyoke or Smith - if they don't offer it at Amherst, although I imagine UMass is leveraged in this way the most.
I was impressed to know that Dickinson - the first woman undergrad at Amherst - and Robert Frost and Calvin Coolidge (Silent Cal's my Fave Prez of all time) are also alums.
What do you think of Trump also calling for unity? I take it as a terrible sign.
I imagine DJT is pleading for unity from Never-Trumpers and pro/anti vaxxers. Not from the left which has clearly now, if not before, unmasked itself—in Karen Pinder fashion.
Maybe he's leading them on. But I'm seeing a repeat of last time, trying to make nice with people who only want him gone.
I wasn't quite sure why so many famous professional actors aggressively loathed Trump. TDS? Were they conscientiously playing part/role then? Now I get it differently. They are insanely jealous. He has the best role ever and they also know and resent that he is the greatest actor ever. #MaybeOtherSecretServicesActedDeceitfully.
you nailed it
There is perception, and there is reality. At least back in the seventies there was some semblance of a veneer. but now its just laughable. Politicians pontificating about "saving democracy" through invoking tyranny.
And my answer is, if government is incompetent, then it is obvious what needs to be done. and that is remove them from the levers of power. Let individuals who are competent act independently. Since the government is so good at incomptence™ they should be in charge of identifying it and weeding it out.
"everyone was propagandized all their childhood about “public servants,” "
I just flew from Baltimore to Harford CT and it seems (Pattern Alert) and it seems that the TSA selects for a certain type. This is not limited to race or country of origin. Nor gender... shall we say, certainty in more than a few.
Point being, they'll take just about anybody now, at all the alphabets. And I suspect it goes all the way down to the Assistant Front Desk Greeter at the Office of the County Dog Catcher.
There's just an absolute mess of them. We largely don't feel that we're getting the scope or quality of services we should for the taxes we pay for the bloated workforce. And they pretty much all understand their plight and will vote for the most progressive, socialist, and it seems (Pattern Alert) the authoritative actor available - as long as it makes them comfortable saying, "I'm Doing My Part!" *involuntary eye twitch*
It gives my the Flying Heebie Jeebies every time someone says, "I'm Doing My Part!" *involuntary eye twitch*
They're nimrods...just say it...;]
https://imgflip.com/i/8xblzy
Razor Man, I'm with you and would take the childhood propaganda so much further than "public servants". "Greatest country ever", "heroes" (for every person who ever wore a uniform of any kind), "democracy". The list could go on forever.
Watching TV really ruins people for how incompetent actual police work is. It’s not like CSI. They’re not doing meticulous detective work and lab analysis. Also your doctor is often less like House and more like the mechanic who’s looked at 50 other cars this week and isn’t all that invested in yours.
Man- that's a clarifying point!
“Government incompetence is a feature, not a bug.”. Behold, i give you the DOD Gaza Bridge…
Oh GADS, I forgot about the "Pier"
A bit tangential, but here’s another trick they constantly use to great effect.
They conflate evidence and proof. The aim is to set the bar at proof, so unless you have it all tied up, the conversation is over. Then they’ll just say “no evidence” a bazillion times, despite there being plenty of evidence.
This tactic worked especially well to knock back the stolen 2020 election theories. They had the advantage that it all had to be put to bed very quickly. And every journo robotically repeated “no evidence.”
Brilliant insight and explication. Tim’s Razor it is
"It’s ready cover for misdeeds."
Create more Noise than Signal.
Hanlon’s only works when there’s trust involved. Like if I’m asking if my friend just forgot my bday or intentionally ignored it to spite me, I’m going with the former.
In all other cases, incompetence is people’s first defense when caught doing something wrong:
“I wasn’t speeding. I thought this was a 70 zone”
“I wasn’t shoplifting. I thought I paid for these”
“I wasn’t parking illegally. I didn’t see the sign”
We should have as much trust for our government as a police officer has for a suspect. Maybe it was incompetence/ignorance, but you wouldn’t automatically take them at their word, because it’s literally what they all say.
Or at least not distrust. I might give a total stranger the benefit of the doubt. But, as you kinda hinted at, government is no stranger to us.
"It’s ready cover for misdeeds. It’s invoked literally every time. We always hear, “mistakes were made.”"
Like with the FISA warrants. "Mistakes were made." Yes... and 100% of them went *against* Trump. Mathematically impossible to be random. Ditto here. EVERY alleged security failure went *against* Trump.
AND, if it *was* just massive incompetence, why has no one, most of all the f'n Director, been fired?
I'm not buying incompetence. Why was RFK, Jr denied Secret Service protection? Are you suggesting that seemingly every other area of the government, including the FBI, has been weaponized against the Democrat's political opponents, but not Secret Service?
I think personally I would feel safer without the protection of these people. Both his dad and his uncle were murdered surrounded by security.
RFK had no SS detail when he was murdered. His protection was Rosie Grier and 3 other professional athletes. The assassination was a CIA backed MK-Ultra candiodate and an ex-con security guard who was the genuine shooter.
Yep
SS is under Homeland Umbrella along with all the other alphabets. FBI was prosecuting him, CIA - well, whonose what they do? Black Rock or third party? Just as easy, still under the Umbrella. Take ya pick.
First let's disassemble the DHS....
Yes. Think Big.
The Alphabets - all of the other Alphabets - ¡AUFERA!
https://youtu.be/kUYPNsTpO4Y?si=__KHayRuiWLDdEMW&t=27
I have seen reports that the USSS detail was mostly substitutes drawn from surrounding areas. The primary team was off, and the best of the rest were assigned to FLOTUS that day. I can imagine how botched everything can get. But I am still puzzled at one thing - how did they get a near-instant DNA match of someone with no criminal background and, seemingly, no digital footprint. Still fishy.
They must have called his handlers at the CIA.
lol
Good one
He actually died of Covid, tested positive by PCR test.
Just like George Floyd :(
An innocent hero, taken way before his time.
I’ve thought about that too. I’m no expert but I wonder if they tentatively ID’d him from facial recognition, then got some known DNA from a personal item of the shooter’s from home to compare to? But it still seems unlikely that they could have had the lab analysis done so quickly.
The gun was legally purchased by his father so this part makes sense to me.
I dunno. The report is a DNA match, not the gun serial number. Still fishy.
To be fair, we don’t even know if it was Crooks. Who can verify even that?
I read a report somewhere that the shooter had no ID, but the serial number of the rifle led to his father
David didn't murder Bathsheba's husband - he was just careless about his life & then "luck" solved his problem. But God knew it was murder because it was murder. Strategic recklessness is 3rd path between malice & stupidity. You are careless enough about risks you want to see come to fruition & "luck" will solve your problems for you, but it's perfectly malicious "stupidity" so you can't be blamed for your DELIBERATE act.
Roll the dice enough times and eventually you’ll get a six.
There is video from DC Draino on X that clearly shows, hundreds of people saw him on that roof, minutes before. People were shouting about it.
Trump should not have been on that stage after that.
That does not mean conspiracy, but the combination of stochastic terrorism and deliberate refusal to allow for sufficient staff, tech and training essentially makes it so.
but if SS just thought people were wrongly identifying a local LEO as a threat, they may have just thought the crowd was wrong.
pulling a candidate off a stage is a major media event and your job is over if you get it wrong.
"Crooks came back, sat down and looked at his phone. At that point, one of the snipers took a picture of him. Crooks took out a rangefinder and the sniper radioed to the command post. Crooks disappeared again and then came back a 3RD TIME with a backpack. The snipers called in with the information that he had a backpack and said he was walking towards the back of the building"
- CBS
This is galactic ineptitude.
This seems to refute the fact that they were just a bunch individuals passing each other like ships in the night
Would their jobs have been over if Trump had been more seriously injured or killed? Someone’s life is over because of this. Jobs are over because of media events mistakes but not deaths and injuries? Something very wrong here.
Seriously. It's like a perfect example of one of the many things that are wrong in our country - appearance being so much more important than substance and intent. Heartbreaking.
You're right. Nuclear weapons lab security, TSA security, Homeland Security - all form over content.
oh gawd TSA. when will that circus pack up and go home?
They had at least two minutes to figure it out. That seems more than enough time to make a determination, if comms are working, and how can't that be working?. That does not imply malice, but then malice absolutely describes the attitude of media and the deep state about Trump and MAGA.
Absolutely this. When the safety of your potential next president is clearly WtF?d... you pull him back, verify, and look sheepish if you must.
That's what competent people might do.
Which apparently excludes a significant percentage of ALL government employees.
Why do you have to be so dang logical, Andy??
Raised on a ranch. Thirty miles from the nearest paved highway. And a lot further from town. We got electricity when I was seven. And running water when I was 12. Didn't see a TV until I went to high school. Didn't think much of it then. And even less now.
But our house was full of books - so after chores...
“According to the AP, who spoke to two law enforcement officials on condition of anonymity, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the top of the roof of the nearby building and warned local law enforcement. This is when one local officer climbed to the roof and confronted Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder [?] as Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump...” https://www.newsweek.com/police-officer-found-trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-roof-minutes-before-shooting-report-1925027
We can't scapegoat that one officer. Local law enforcement one would hope, would have a direct comm to SS. Spotters would have been able to see if he had a gun. But none of that seems to have happened. That, and the fact that the roof was unsecure, makes it seem to me like gross incompetence caused by systemic malice.
There has been a massive coordination of communications from top to bottom for decades. That goes back to Columbine in 1999 when local police departments around suburban Denver couldn't talk to each other. Now 25 years later it is exceedingly rare not to have mutual aid communication at the local, county and state level and dovetailing that with federal directly or via dispatcher is not a far fetched concept. Not just LEO but fire rescue and aviation. The nation has spent many billions of dollars with contractors such as Motorola to develop this infrastructure. I'd be highly suspicious to hear elements of a detail such as this took more than a few seconds for information to be passed from the individual sheriff's deputy to the USSS incident commander. If the communication system was compromised and not functioning that alone would should be a reason to implement a procedure to figure out why and protect people. If nothing else, never mind the president and USSS responsibility, the local and state police should have done something to watch out for their citizens in the crowd. If this was a concert or county fair and some nut climbed up on a roof with a rifle wouldn't the police swarm to stop it? When detailed to a federal event do they no longer have a responsibility to their primary job? Maybe they only swarm like that when it's lucrative and a civil forfeiture is afoot.
Reports that the snipers were told TWICE not to shoot, and the shooter was in a BlackRock ad 2 years before. (Again, I believe Feds keep a list of crazies who can be rallied at just the right time to do their dirty work.) I could believe stupidity if all the other “stupid” take outs hadn’t happened. The left was frothing at the mouth to get Trump incarcerated so he could be “Epsteined”. When that failed, a new plan was hastily put together. Telling sign was how quickly FBI was on site and how quickly investigation was over with no answers. Someone will lose their job and no one pays for the death of one and injury of two others. Business as usual.
Bet no job loss at all. Just keep your mouth shut and you can keep your job.
Trump's life is over if you mess it up!
Yep. As another poster observed: “One more inch and Trump would be voting for Biden.”
Lmao!
and if the underlying feeling is that "MAGA people are all idiots" anyway....it would take even longer for the reality of the situation to fight it's way into their heads....
a lot of new info coming out this morning.
have you checked these two articles out?:
local paper:
https://beavercountian.com/content/daily/beaver-county-officer-warned-of-seeing-man-with-rangefinder-before-trump-was-shot?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#google_vignette
three snipers located IN THE BUILDING the assailant staged his assassination attempt:
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-shooting-statement-joe-biden-updates/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I've never been in a building with a quiet metal roof, but I have been in one with someone climbing around on top. It's not subtile. I'd be willing to bet the metal roof is not in any way insulated but I suppose the LEO's just thought there was a big racoon up there.
THIS is such a great point. I used to be a roofing grunt to make money during the summers for 6 years to pay for college.
I can't believe I didn't think of this. That roof looks like corrugated metal clapboard.
No way you can't hear if someone is on the roof and you're in the building.
Excellent post.
agree. Why do you think people w/ metal roofs like the rain at night?
Soooo... you're saying they had a clean shot?
How often does it happen that a crowd starts to yell that there is a man with a gun crawling on the roof? Like, does the Secret Service have to deal with such overexcited amateur crowds at just about every rally, or a few times a month, or less than that? Like, how blasé can they reasonably be expected to be about such crowd behavior?
"Your job is over if you [pull the candidate off-stage over a false positive]" is clearly the wrong rule - are you sure it's really like that?
Creating an artificial knife's edge is terrible management. If the priority is to keep the principal safe, then you need to be allowed to err a bit on the side of caution. It's a bit of a kerfuffle, but what really is the harm if Trump is held backstage an extra 10 minutes while security re-sweeps a roof after a suspicious report, or is even quietly interrupted by a couple of agents mid-speech and comes back out after 10 minutes to finish his event? Surely much less than his getting shot.
Well their jobs are certainly over now then.
why would a local law enforcement be dressed like that? Were others undercover? Would a roof top sniper go under cover? Unlikey
Is your job over if your protectee is assassinated?
exactly.
thirty minutes before President Trump arrived there was already concern just from the gathering attendees. This is terrible.
I am still in shock that Trump survived this -- Simulation Commander had a graphic on his recent blog that showed the movement of PDJTs head
SC put it together that for at least two minutes people were pointing at him. 30 seconds after the first person saw him, Trump should have been pulled off that stage.
This is exactly what I don't understand
Malice very much describes the attitude of the media and deep state, about Trump and MAGA.
Better safe than sorry never more applicable
The nervousness about "What happens to me if I make the wrong call?" is paralysing, and "Better wait and see" is the path of least resistance out of the paralysis.
It takes rather harsh training to teach someone awareness that we all function like that, and to make them able to curb that instinct and instead do something.
Even the Ancients knew this: "The gods hate he who hesitates" is a saying well over 2 000 years old.
Also consider the ever-present risk of someone crying "Sniper!" just to disrupt the rally. We've had such incidences here during campaign seasons, where lefties (and that's left on /our/ scale) have shown up with water gun-replicas, or have simply shouted about bombs or guns, or have phone-in bomb threats.
And police must take each one seriously - but that eats up resources and disrupts the rally, and then people have to be evacuated, and so on.
For the one targetted by the left, it's a no-win situation, which is the point.
I agree about paralyzing anxiety and the low effort limbo of hesitation. Makes the immediate clear reaction of President Trump, emerging from that fog, radiating strength and courage under fire even more impressive and remarkable.
Respectfully, I think you're creating a false dichotomy: Judge Posner famously wrote about a third option, strategic recklessness, where you make "mistakes" that you know will injure/kill the person you want to injure/kill while allowing you plausible deniability. Is that person an obvious assassin about to kill Trump? Well, I'll just be confused about whether or not a local sniper would be pointing his weapon TOWARDS the president and/or wearing civilian clothes and/or without any support because I don't care if I'm wrong as long as I can claim as I only wrong, rather than complicit. Cops who want Trump dead can be "confused" about going on the roof because that's what they'll say when Trump's dead as a result. I could go on, but NONE of these people acted like anyone would have acted had they wanted to stop this killing - instead, they acted EXACTLY like you'd act if you wanted him dead w/o being implicated in the killing. They were strategically reckless. They knew their "mistakes" could kill & they were fine w/ that result because they wanted Trump dead but they didn't want to go to jail for killing him. The law has long recognized that "mistakes" can be the moral & legal equivalent of intentional actions precisely because they can be. It's not stupidity when you know what your stupidity will do AND YOU WANT THAT RESULT! It's just being clever. These were clever murderers - but they ARE murderers in that they knew or should have known what their "mistakes" would do & their "mistakes" did exactly that. If I had a bomb to a toddler, I know what's going to happen & I'm a murderer. Same principle. They knew what these "mistakes" would do & they loved it.
Thank you so much for eloquently spelling out the jumbled mess of my own thoughts this morning. This is exactly what I have been thinking since yesterday and I was having a hard time getting these points across. Nice job
And the fact they kept letting Trump’s head be exposed after the shooting and all the way to the van for two minutes. Grateful for Trump’s fast ducking behind the podium!
excellent comment
slay news reported this morning that a lot of the security were replaced by reserves because the regulars had been working 7 days a week for weeks on end. Also, the available well-trained ones seem to have been replaced to a rally from Jill Biden.
https://slaynews.com/news/secret-service-diverted-resources-jill-biden-saturday-assigned-temps-trump/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter
Contrast J13 with the security attending Trump as he entered the RNC convention last night. Sorry; those female agents were simply not ready for prime time. Had there been a second shooter, the rather tardy exit-to-limo could have been a disaster (compounded of course by Trump himself in a political gesture for the ages!)
CNN had video with audio of the shooting and you hear female SS agent say, “What’s happening? What do we do? Where do we go?” Seriously???
No surprise. They only make women look good in Hollywood. In real life a totally different thing.
You make a good point there which suggests there wasn't a second shooter, but isn't it possible that the putative second shooter decided against shooting Trump at that stage because he no longer had the distracting cover of the patsy's shots and therefore risked being discovered.
Exactly. At the very least his security was not prioritized.
That's too coincidental to be a coincidence.
Yogi Berra
lol, like
I've heard this -- but wasn't Trump basically just sitting around since the debate? The Democrats were calling him out for playing golf (and not distracting the media from Biden's issues)
I'd heard the Jill thing Sun., hadn"t any back-up. Be terribly handy.
I don't buy it. The excuse that, "hey you guys don't realize we have different agencies working together that aren't used to working together, so they don't communicate well and mistakes happen" is total BS. This is not the first time a president has given a speech at a rally and had to be protected. If the SS hasn't worked out the "bugs" of working with other agencies, then they might as well just quit now. Here is the thing: I owned a rental house in a rural area. My insurance company said they were dropping me, so I asked why. They said it was because they noticed I had a cracked shingle on my roof. They had sent out a drone to a very rural area far away from their offices and noticed a cracked shingle on my roof! There were no lives on the line, no president to protect, just the renewal of a small rental house insurance policy. So if they can do that, don't you think the secret service has drones that could notice a 6 foot long person with a 3 foot long rifle climbing up a ladder and laying on a roof only 400 feet from a president?
Well, the insurance company has _money_ on the line. That's a whole lot different than government agencies that don't have to turn a profit. :/
And the shooter knew all this stuff? Or it happened by chance?
I dont think any sensible person can doubt these facts:
- They want Trump dead (dems, agencies, military industry, you name it).
- All of them are ok with killing people.
Combine those 2 and you have the answer. Of course this is not the 1st time this happens. They can plot it or just call for it and let it happen. I think we have witnessed the 1st approach. We will see how they try next.
or he just got really lucky and played a very stupid, blatant move to walk up to the most obvious place in the the whole set that should have been guarded but wasn't.
it's exactly where someone like him would go.
sometimes people just get lucky.
The question that comes to mind then is how many of these incidents happen that get thwarted by competent security? If this event happens 1000 times, is there a guy with a rifle brazenly trying to get on the roof who gets sniffed out 500 times? 100 times? 10? If something this sloppy (on the assassin’s end) happens often and we only know about this specific instance because it was the one time security was this incompetent, ok, fine. But if attempts this brazen are rare because of the inherent stupidity behind even trying it (…unless you know you’ll be granted access to the roof without interference…), I have a hard time believing that the one time that someone was dumb enough to make a move like this just happened to line up with the one time security was incompetent enough to allow it.
"how many of these incidents happen that get thwarted by competent security?"
It might be hard to tell since many it's hard to count the ones that were turned away by the right people just giving them the stinkeye, good physical security, demonstration of competent control over things like traffic where everyone has to pass multiple even soft checkpoints. Eventually they give up or the window of opportunity closes.
But _even then_ , someone will fill an inside straight if enough hands are played.
https://youtu.be/zMRrNY0pxfM?si=qs1LSCypksN7UORk
And if you're careless enough, "luck" will get your enemy. this is what posner calls "strategic recklessness." Like they guy who "falsely" accuses his foe of stealing $ because he "forgot" to ask for discovery into the books & records that would have disproven the charge. That way, you can defame your foe w/ impunity &, when you're caught, merely claim "mistake." Strategic reckless is 3rd option between stupidity & malice.
Could be. But it could also be that they let it happen. They are capable of killing a person that is an obstacle, we know it. Let it happen is perfect alibi.
agree
I am a little skeptical of luck, if only because that’s a lot of luck that even a fairly deranged person probably wouldn’t expect to have. He picked the hq of the local police and happened to luck out that the roof was open and no one saw him approaching.
Did he know it was the police HQ?
Did he stalk around looking for roof tops or did he pick the best one accidentally?
I’d he planned this out, how did he know where good places to be were? If he acted spur of the moment, wouldn’t he have avoided the HQ?
I dunno, from the shooter’s perspective it seems like he knew where he wanted to be, and knew that it was where he wanted to be. That’s kind of surprising for a rando 20 year old with no training or info.
It's too easy to make drones these days.
Exactly. Was this kid put up to it somehow? Maybe with a promise of a position in LE or something?
Drones don't care. Some humans are far easier to manipulate than others.
People have killed for "promise of heaven" or other some such imaginary business. Pick a vulnerable kid (truly 20 isn't quite adult) - and you can create what you want.
Sounds like he just wanted to be SOMEONE in this world.
Apparently no letters, no declaration on FB. If they could just open that darn phone 🙄
Seems to be another iteration of all the others. Off. Weak. Suggestible. Distracted parents.
My wife routinely wins at poker because she doesn't know what she's doing, and she plays a very unpredictable game as a result.
EGM, I sense you are playing devil’s advocate to stir the pot. 👍
Lolol.
I sense he's being totally sincere to stir the pot.
One word: ladder
no doubt he had the "I belong here" body-language thing going. Hell, if you saw a guy carrying a ladder and a rifle in full view of a 100 snipers, without a hint of fear -- you'd figure he was supposed to be there, right?
Also, his clothing didn’t match any of the other security’s.
He was disguised like this:
https://youtu.be/lO9oT-PZqOU?si=JXWUXuPFWOZ7YCG_&t=7s
Agreed. And, it's hard for any security to stop anyone who who gets that close with a rifle who doesn't mind dying. The shooter had only 5 seconds before he was shot by snipers. Anyone with a rifle, in a prone supported position could make that shot of only 150 yards with an iron sight.
Even a blind squirrel and all that…
Edit. Need more info on kid.
poison
Well, I had that conversation with My Friend From Fifth Grade last night. It was a short one. She said that she and her sister think it was all just a conspiracy by the Republicans to get sympathy for Trump and it was fake blood and he never got shot and maybe it was an inside job etc. etc. etc.
And I said no, it was an actual missed assassination and she said no it wasn't, and I told her she and her sister could sometimes be little pieces of shit and that I'd talk to her next week.
Yes, I agree with you a trazillion percent, there's no shortage of incompetent morons in the world and local law enforcement is like the magnet that attracts 'em and smacks 'em up against responsibilities they ain't got the least capacity for like watermelons bursting on sidewalks.
Take a look at the photo in the Daily Mail Online today contrasting Trump's SS detail last night in the convention, and on Saturday. It's so grimly hilarious you'll cry.
Your friend sounds like she never graduated from fifth grade. Either did her sister.
It will perhaps not shock you that her sister was an elementary school teacher and she was briefly a HS teacher and then went on to a long civil service career.
And I have always been the poor dumb one who went wrong early.
Come over here and sit by me.
Just make tender stroking motions from afar and I'll feel 'em.
TDS sets up brain dysfunction so they’re really vulnerable to all the propaganda. Sad. I know people like this too. Amazing how the people dubbed the poor “dumb ones” are often the smartest in the room, and have more common sense.
My feelings towards Trump, until Saturday, were entirely a sort of pitying contempt.
I still feel pitying contempt for all the times he utterly failed to meet the moment but finally he met the moment and rose to it. There ain't enough ginger tea in the world to ease my kishkes.
Had to look up 'kishkes' and was not disappointed.
A little familiarity with Yiddish is good for everyone.
Lmao
Trust me there's zero hilarity. Since Saturday I've been unable to find the words to describe what I'm feeling.
You poor soul
No, I have been throughout the entire course of my life been extraordinarily fortunate in my friendships, and this one has been there for me a few times when I really absolutely needed her. I ain't been hanging on with her from sheer masochistic thrillseeking.
Substack needs a laughing button
When they add this feature, SCA will jump straight to the Top 10 Board.
I get that. My little sister says, "never mistake her quietness as agreement or passivity. She’s quietly weighing your worth, and if you escape unscathed it’s because the scales were weighted in your favor."
Lots of people never graduate from school...and grow older but never become adults...I tend to think if high school was really good and fun for you( ie you were head cheerleader 9r prom queen) ....you never manage to mentally leave. If you hated it like me..school was torture until i could get the he'll out. No happy memories.
When I went to my 10th high school reunion, I saw those types of people and what the real world did to them: Bitter divorces, drugs and alcohol problems, poor choices. I was happily married with 3 kids. Went to my 20th and more were mature but a couple still held their high school mentalities. Last year was my 45th. We all got along great because we've all experienced real life. The one queen bee in high school showed up with her high profile husband in their brand new Range Rover expecting to be treated like royalty. They were actually kind of shunned and I saw it on her face. It humbled her. Yes, I'm still happily married (45 years next month) with still the 3 kids, 2 grandkids, and 1 great-granddaughter. Moderation is key in all things.
She was skipped twice in elementary school and then was in the accelerated two-year middle school track as I was and she was always one of the youngest in class while I was always one of the oldest. She started college at 16. Was never ever properly with a peer group. It's bad to be very very smart and very very young in all your classes. She never fit in anywhere but I think she thought she was less weird than I was.
Me--like you I hated school.
This amuses me because they have spent the past four years loudly painting all of us as crazy conspiracy theorists, yet now they have the granddaddy conspiracy of all! Do they even seen themselves?? 🤣
The true glory of the situation is that she voted for Trump in 2016 and I voted for him never.
Too funny!
And to stage a fake assassination they murdered a 20-year-old kid and a certain Trump voter, and risked killing many others in a swing state?
The two of them are still trying to work that all out.
I had no patience to argue further. I'm queasy enough right now, knowing I must make that awful walk to the polling station and trash my integrity etc. etc. etc. Not much more I can handle.
My admiration for your efforts is unbounded! As Yoda might say, the TDS is very strong with some people.
Let me make clear to you my feelings about Trump:
https://redfoliot.substack.com/p/the-human-smelter
Nice, honest essay. I try, every time I get to thinking I actually know someone in the public eye, to think of O. J. Simpson and John Lennon.
https://www.youtube.com/live/EC3yGf6SLOc?si=Yrv2ub82c3wVPyrn
I briefly considered the idea that this event was staged from Trump’s side but ultimately it just doesn’t make sense for them to do it. They were probably already going to beat Biden fairly handily so a move this desperate doesn’t make a lot of sense. Too much risk for not much reward. The only thing it accomplishes is that it probably makes it way harder to fake election results unless the democrats can find a way to replace Biden.
To stage this from Trump's side would require the collusion of Biden's Secret Service or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers turning all of those guys into pod people.
I'm gonna go now and rewatch In the Line of Fire for the trabillionth time because maybe only John Malkovich can cheer me up today.
It was definitely staged, for what purpose I can't understand.
Civil war?
The entire event was staged. No one was shot.
Nothing in the narrative adds up.
When has there ever been a Trump Rally that did not
have thousands of people? This was a controlled set with actors and extras.
Yes kid you've solved it.
Peggy Hall lays it logically here.
https://www.youtube.com/live/EC3yGf6SLOc?si=Yrv2ub82c3wVPyrn
And here
https://peggyhall.substack.com/p/strange-things-about-the-trump-shooting/comments?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&publication_id=1094625&post_id=146650817&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&isFreemail=true&comments=true&utm_campaign=email-half-magic-comments
Absolutely. Sure. Totally nails it. The genius problem-solver we needed.
Let's review the questions and try to make some sense of things.
Why were there so few attendees at a Trump Rally?
Where is the proof of Trump's injuries?
No, absolutely, Peggy is the one, thank God she saw the Masonic hand, that was all the guarantee I needed of her discerning genius.
Did you mention the death and injuries from the “fake assassination?”
Can you prove that anyone was actually shot?
They're trying to fit those into their theory. Like I said, I cut it short, I ain't got the stomach for it this week.
there has been a few on substack that have written about the set-up. That is insanity.
I refuse to even go there.
I am glad you have friends that you can scold and still be friends with.
It wasn't scolding so much as completely out of patience, after this weekend, and this is a combat-pay grade level friendship. When she's not complaining about her sister to me, the two of them are mocking that I fell into the Dark Web.
Definitely you should come and sit by me. We have a lot in common it seems....
I’d mock them for believing the Russian collusion conspiracy theory and Hunter’s laptop. These two sisters would hop on the first train to Crazyville if the conspiracy theorists on their tv told them to do so.
Actually she, who watches many news channels had never heard of the Steele dossier or Hunter's laptop. She was baffled when I mentioned them recently in reference to election interference.
Alternative takes, and fair questions.
https://www.youtube.com/live/EC3yGf6SLOc?si=Yrv2ub82c3wVPyrn
Lmao this comment. (To think I once did not *like* you SCA. To my lasting shame.) Anyway, I really read this first as you currently having a little 5th grader friend that you occasionally discuss current events with.
In fact she is quite little but only a year younger than I. It was a great annoyance to me always to be treated as some big hulking girl when I hit only 5'4" at maturity.
And heck. If you been around here a long time you've seen how I grow on people. They start out loathing me and eventually we're falling on one another's bosoms as the events of the day may require.
I think Occam's Razor (the most straightforward explanation is most often the correct one) trumps (no pun intended) Hanlon's. For your explanation to be true (incompetence versus conspiracy), you have to line up a significant number of security failures; and as we are learning more about the chain of events, these failures are mounting. The more straightforward, and to many the most obvious, explanation is that this was a planned event involving more than just the shooter. Hopefully, the truth will eventually come out, but don't bet on it.
BTW, Napoleon Bonaparte beat Hanlon by two centuries when he reportedly said, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." But Napoleon may not be the best source for debunking conspiracies.
The upside of presuming Luck to be the most likely reason this all worked out is that it doesn't assume malice on anyone's part and yet is still plausible.
The more you try to ascribe behavior to Malice, the more likely you'll have to walk that claim back.
I think he said ‘stupidity’ instead of ‘incompetence’ and in French, no doubt but it’s Napoleon’s remark, 200 years ago.
As usual, no talk of the ladder that the whole plan hinged on. That's a tough one to explain.
that does not seem hard to explain.
some have said it's built in. not sure if this is true. even if not, how else would the police/SWAT folks be accessing that roof if that has been the intention? not hard to imagine that people just assumed it was supposed to be there.
This is all a reflection of how incompetent our government is. If it were run as a private business it could provide the same "services" throughout the entire monstrosity with 1/5th the staff and 5X deliverables.
Not to mention a balanced budget.
god, I could tell you stories....but Govt is incompetent on purpose in many ways -- the more "work" you have as an agency, the more "backlogs" you have, the more funding you get, the more employees you can hire, the bigger your agencies gets, and the more prestige you get in DC. The incentives are all backwards.
Never. Truer. Words.
"but Govt is incompetent on purpose in many ways"
Having lots of slop in your accounting makes it easier to dip your beak.
#TeamSnoutsInTrough
Suggested edit RG: "This is all a reflection of how UTTERLY incompetent our government is".
Seems governments can no longer DO anything well. Any 'brownouts' lately? Are your local police and fire departments fully staffed, with competent, well trained people? Have you checked the condition of local highways, or your municipal or regional water supply? Does your community face an imminent crisis in garbage or sewage disposal?
How long does it take to get a building permit, or open a business, in your town? How many local businesses in your area have closed - done in by regulatory compliance costs?
And lastly - how much of your gross income goes to taxes and fees - local, regional, state, and federal taxes and fees suck up ever larger slices of our income - for ever shrinking, ever less effective "services".
It's ALL broken.
D. E. I.
Took me 13 months to get my replacement Original Birth Certificate (born in London while dad was serving in USAF) to get my Real ID driver's license.
That's because you are a taxpaying citizen.
Drug smugglers, arms dealers, and human traffickers get theirs much faster.
Looks like it's time to Go Pirate!
Better!
But then it would cease to be a jobs program for otherwise unemployable women of color.
ouch. but that made me LOL. do I get the gulag now?
Government doesn't have to turn a profit, can generate revenue without the consent of the financier - We the Little People - and largely don't fail when they miss deadlines.
Private doesn't do Cheaper so much as it pays the price for not doing it according to plan.
indeed
If you were a good Canuck, you’d know that budgets balance themselves! 🤡
I thought that, and then I thought, wow, this is a better "mistakes were made" than Covid.
This made me LOL!
Perhaps they were “working faster than science” or securing faster than security.
Seems like SS should leave OUT the local yocals and take a page out of a Hollywood script. Put true badass guys everywhere. Quadruple their people. Heck, at least put up a bulletproof glass cover.
There’s no DEI in that plan.
😝 You are
correct!
In the case of secret service/security, the ONLY DEI should be DODGE EVERY INCOMING.
Built in ladders are bolted to the walls of the structure can easily be removed to prevent anyone from accessing them for events. I'm a retired LEO and when we hosted high security individuals we had no problem removing elements that hindered security. That ladder should have been removed or an officer placed there for the duration.
Not built in. Use google maps street view of the building. There is no permanent ladder there. You can see a portable ladder in the helicopter footage https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-shooting-video-shows-apparent-gunman-on-roof-13177673
Nice work!
news reports say he bought a ladder and ammo at hardware store that day before going to the site????
The helicopter footage shows a portable ladder in the alcove with the cedar trees. Placed by shooter or police? https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-shooting-video-shows-apparent-gunman-on-roof-13177673
The police claimed the shooter climbed up on an AC unit to get up to the roof. He could have then worked his way to his firing position and stayed concealed using the roof slope and trees for concealment until he got there. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/07/16/trump-assassination-attempt-three-police-snipers-were-reportedly-inside-building-where-gunman-fired-from/
Or, to be cynical, the police may be covering their ass and the shooter just climbed up an unprotected ladder!
Wasn’t there a report that local LE had accessed the roof, saw that the shooter was pointing his rifle at him, and retreated? Maybe I dreamed that part.
Yes, somewhere in the comments here that info was posted.
It said the shooter pointed his rifle at the officer who had climbed the ladder, and the officer retreated back down the ladder. Seconds later, the shooter fired at Trump.
That makes the most sense, and am shamed to say it had not occurred.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/07/16/trump-assassination-attempt-three-police-snipers-were-reportedly-inside-building-where-gunman-fired-from/
forbes reporting that crooks did not use that ladder to get to the roof.
Yes, but that's according to the police, who might be covering their ass. Looks bad to admit that the shooter used a ladder the police put up against the wall. How do they KNOW he used an AC unit to get up?
Ok, so two ways for him to get up to the best position and what's now also looking like an unguarded water tower with another potential shooter. I'm looking for more on that.
I’m curious about the water tower as well. Could that have been a SS counter-sniper?
Supposedly not.
see https://arngrimr.substack.com/p/trump-shooting-update-no-second-shooter for great analysis
Cnn (and gateway pundit repeating the scoop) reporting he purchased the ladder and ammo that day...
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/failed-trump-assassin-purchased-ladder-50-rounds-ammo/
Then store computer receipts should show type/height of ladder. How many hardware stores in area?
Just to be sure - did you forget to close your /sarc tag?
CNN reported that he purchased a 5 foot ladder, which if true is definitely not the one in the pictures.
Yeah there is a LOT not adding up. Would have to be insanely lucky for him to do this with zero foresight, no planning, no pre-op, no help.
Could be one of those "little giant" ladders that fold up to about 5 ft.
Those nimrods wouldn't know the difference
that's what it looked like - an expandable ladder in the poor photo i saw.
have intel from a bona fide source that the perp knocked on the command post door and asked to borrow a ladder.....:)
No, that’s a ten foot fiberglass stepladder in the picture. The two sides fold together, but there is no way to shorten it. It also weighs over 50 pounds and is very unwieldy. No way he transported it and set it there unnoticed.
For sure. Lots taller than 5 ft and how would you haul on a Sonata??
Update: The ladder(s) visible from the helicopter video were probably not there BEFORE the shooting. In a video before the shooting https://rumble.com/v573obu-different-angles-of-attempted-trump-assassination.html , you see a couple of police cars in the parking lot. In the helicopter video https://news.sky.com/video/trump-shooting-gunman-identified-as-video-shows-body-and-rifle-on-roof-13177746 , you see more cars in the lot and one parked on the grass in front of the building.
So, the helicopter video was taken AFTER the police had already been on the roof. The ladders were probably placed by them to access the roof (in another video a SWAT member is carrying a folding ladder as the State Police approached the building immediately after the shooting). I doubt the ladders have anything to do with the shooter (news reports said he had bought a 5' ladder, but it was not found on the scene.) There are several locations around the buildings where he could have climbed up without a ladder.
CNN reported @ 1:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDtxPdJ6-8 that the shooter climbed up an AC unit in one of the courtyards in the building complex. Makes sense to me, I spotted those units several days ago.
The assumption that locally sourced swat snipers were supposed to be on the roof and occupying the building would render all "odd" occurrences in and around that building to be "not a threat".
If an assassination conspiracy were afoot...all it would take is one of those local snipers to say "it's too hot up here" and leave the ladder up for anyone who might want to use it. Nobody else would need to be involved.
And even when rally goers were yelling about somebody being up on the roof....all other law enforcement officers (including secret service) would say, "well of course! It's a swat sniper dummy."
It might just be Dunning Kruger effect with a z-axis for TDS.
The helicopter footage shows a portable ladder in the alcove with the cedar trees. Placed by shooter or police? https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-shooting-video-shows-apparent-gunman-on-roof-13177673
Or, the shooter could have just climbed up an AC unit or storage shed to access the roof without a ladder. It would be embarassing to the cops to admit the shooter might have used their own ladder!
has it been confirmed whether the ladder was portable or an appurtenance to the building?
that seems to be the most critical aspect surrounding the events of that evening.
The helicopter footage shows a portable ladder in the alcove with cedar trees. Google maps street view of the parking lot does not show a permanent ladder in that location.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.858306,-79.9702189,3a,75y,269.58h,83.74t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sjgILfjfowqDj0wrjAoRIIw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DjgILfjfowqDj0wrjAoRIIw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D269.57586347569145%26pitch%3D6.263936002349979%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu
Thanks, man
"appurtenance "
TIL...
2 ladders
https://x.com/StinkhornPress/status/1812960190406533589
"Ladder #2" is a storage cabinet, not a ladder. See Google Maps street view of the parking lot: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8584853,-79.9702323,3a,51.5y,252.2h,90.36t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sQQF9jQocqCS9A86Jy71uQQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DQQF9jQocqCS9A86Jy71uQQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D252.20121669486264%26pitch%3D-0.36167808486325725%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu
what are you talking about? the ladder is right there in the image, behind and to the left of the (OPEN) storage unit?
Picture is too grainy for me to be positive, but it sure could be. Thanks!
“According to the AP, who spoke to two law enforcement officials on condition of anonymity, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the top of the roof of the nearby building and warned local law enforcement. This is when one local officer climbed to the roof and confronted Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder [?] as Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump...” https://www.newsweek.com/police-officer-found-trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-roof-minutes-before-shooting-report-1925027
7 minutes before Trump was shot, the Left Barn roof snipers behind Trump were using their eyes and binoculars to scan the perimeter. 42 seconds before Trump was shot, they were on their scoped rifles (perhaps they were told by police that bystanders spotted someone on the roof and police were investigating? Or, the snipers may have been reacting to seeing bystanders pointing at the roof? https://x.com/Rampage_Calls/status/1812465170888737059
But, Left side snipers could NOT see the shooter when he started shooting; their line-of-sight to the shooter was blocked by a tree; use googlemaps and take a look at the helicopter footage https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-shooting-video-shows-apparent-gunman-on-roof-13177673 and https://www.google.com/maps/search/Butler,+PA+fairgrounds/@40.8595313,-79.9701657,227a,35y,180h,39.32t/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu and ground view @11:32 Kim Iversen Show https://rumble.com/v573obu-different-angles-of-attempted-trump-assassination.html
Note: Most maps show shooter in wrong location! Helicopter video shows actual location on other side of building, on east end. https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-shooting-video-shows-apparent-gunman-on-roof-13177673
Only after the shooter had crawled to the roof peak was he visible to the 2nd sniper team (Right Barn); as he took his 2nd burst of shots, he was then shot by them. @11:35 Kim Iversen It would take a few seconds to acquire the exposed head target, aim, and fire.
Also, note the helicopter footage shows a ladder in the alcove with the cedar trees. Placed by shooter or police? https://www.wtae.com/article/trump-rally-gunman-thomas-crooks-roof/61600437?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)
P.S. Late last night Forbes reported that the shooter was carrying a backpack and did not use a ladder to get on the roof. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/07/16/trump-assassination-attempt-three-police-snipers-were-reportedly-inside-building-where-gunman-fired-from/
I would guess the shooter had broken down his AR-15 to fit into his backpack. After he got on the roof, he reassembled it, leaving the bag visible at the bottom edge of the roof. https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-shooting-video-shows-apparent-gunman-on-roof-13177673
If you look at google maps street view around the buildings, you can see several places where the shooter could have used an AC unit or storage shed to access the roof out of sight. He could then move roof-to-roof, using the reverse slopes and trees to provide concealment from the snipers. https://www.google.com/maps/search/Butler,+PA+fairgrounds/@40.8595313,-79.9701657,227a,35y,180h,39.32t/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
It appears that the shooter may have been on the roofs for about 30 minutes prior to the shooting! https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/alleged-trump-shooter-spotted-by-law-enforcement-nearly-30-minutes-before-shots-fired-sources-say/Q6GIK5RP6RBY5PHIMYBNXRTEBI/
Perhaps the snipers never got a radio call from the police that someone was on a roof? Maybe the police were waiting to pass word up the chain of command until a cop confirmed the bystanders report? Instead, it's possible the snipers were responding to people pointing at the roof.
Good info. first time seeing that the shooter was directly above the ladder end of the building. If he was concealed by the trees from the SS snipers, how did they one shot, one kill him?
There were two sniper teams on the barns behind Trump; one on left side other on right side. The Left side could not see the shooter. The Right Side could see him. Scroll down to see the BBC maps/photos https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cljy6yz1j6gt?page=5 and the sniper locations.
Assuming the hypothesis of total and utter incompetence and communication failure among different LE agencies to be true, there is still a LOT of “splaining” to do about how the shooter, whoever he was, got to the building, dragging his ladder, clambering up on the roof, setting up, apparently threatening a LEO who did manage to leave the barn and see who was making those footsteps on the roof…..and fuck, this dude they are showing us, does he even remotely LOOK like your typical police/Secret Service/SWAT counter-sniper guy? Were professionals on the scene really mixing up the the guy they are telling us shot at Trump with whoever was supposed to be up there? This cat looked like a guy that had to be lured away by his parents from his basement gaming to a paintball range so he could get some sun and exercise….just saying……there is a lot of stupid out there, but there is also malice. I’d guess what happened at the farm was a combination of both.
Not only does the guy not look like a LEO counter-sniper, but he was pointing his gun in the direction of a crowd of thousands of people. This fact alone should have gotten him taken out immediately. The counter-snipers that we see in all the photos, that presumably killed him, clearly had him in their sights already, because they immediately opened fire. Through their scopes, they would have been able to see every detail and easily recognize him as a non-friendly.
bingo
surely he would have seen the ar-15 and immediately known he was not a cop! The LEO ought to have had his rifle/pistol already drawn and understood the situation.
So the guy was on the roof with his grey t-shirt and cream jeans and nobody bothered to ask why this "officer" was not wearing a uniform? Hmmm....
Or his age? He was spotted, right? Nobody found it strange to have such a young "officer" on the force?
Such a damn scraggly looking youngster? This is not Seal Team scruffies situation.