A spray of bullets may have only grazed Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, but they killed one rally attendee and critically wounded two others.
They have also torn through the 2024 presidential campaign, damaging the social and cultural fabric of the nation. The illusion of security and safety in American politics – built over decades - has
I hate that this is the new narrative, like violence against political opponents is a new thing in this country. Obama survived MULTIPLE assassination attempts. Bill Clinton and George Bush both survived multiple assassination attempts. Sectarian violence has been a thing in this country since its inception. The fact that the secret service failed to do their due diligence at policing the buildings surrounding Trump’s latest rallies doesn’t somehow mean that sectarian violence has reached some momentous peak. It simply means that people didn’t do their jobs properly. Maybe because, like, why would they? I know that if I was a secret service agent assigned to the duty of watching after Trump, I wouldn’t be particularly committed to the task. Maybe they felt the same way.
Edit: Here’s the NY Times image of the vicinity surrounding the Trump rally. Why the fuck wasn’t that place watched by the Secret Service? Any competent agency looking to protect someone would have 100% had agents watching that building.
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Yeah; the FBI were doing undercover operations with them for 15 months before arresting them. I don’t know any more details of the case than the wikipedia article highlights, but surely you’d have enough evidence to arrest people trying to build a death ray at some point prior to 15 months. Maybe our gov’t just thought that their innovation was useful and figured they’d wait and see where they went with it.
Why would they pass up free R&D on a potential death ray?
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How is that not something that a lot more people know? That’s nuts.
Did the secret service allow this? In the TMZ video of the return fire, it looks like the sniper on the roof was already aiming at the shooter well before he shot. And only after he shot did the sniper take him out.
Maybe coincidence…but seeing this level of incompetence from the secret service makes this whole thing seem very very fishy.
Did anyone even scatter when the gunfire went off? Thats a lot of shots. From the clips I’ve seen they stare.
I noticed that, too, but I just chalk that up to people freezing (fight, flight, freeze).
One interviewee said they thought it was fireworks.
The secret service are cops and ACAB holds as true as it always does.
But if the secret service had shot first it would be a VERY different news story. And while all the youtubes about how amazing the secret service are from former SS officers who now run private security firms talk about their training and planning… politics is their first priority. An SS officer who pulls out an uzi to protect a fallen president is one thing. An SS officer who pulls out an uzi to unload on someone who “might have a gun” is a very different story.
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It was kind of a perfect storm that is going to change how basically every protective force maintains security.
The shooter was (allegedly?) 130 something meters away.
Snipers are generally focused on distances greater than 150 meters. So it would be the guys with assault rifles who are responsible for targets within that radius. Their optics are going to heavily favor closer ranges and people (who play call of duty) very much overestimate just how good of a view you get through those optics. You have more than enough clarity to aim for a center mass shot or even a headshot but you aren’t making out fine grain details.
So you have someone who has a large “something”. Maybe you are hearing “it is a gun” from eyewitnesses but eyewitnesses are morons. So you have people squinting and trying to get a clear picture through fairly close range optics and trying to figure out if that is a rifle or a camera on a tripod or what. Because the people with “sniper scopes”? If they pivot to look at the shooter then they are now ignoring what they are ACTUALLY supposed to be watching and… that is a known tactic.
So you have secret service squinting while people are sprinting to go storm the building. Because even if it is a gunman, the best case scenario is to capture them alive so that the speech is not disrupted and you have zero risk of executing a civillian.
I feel like there’s a difference between stopping and assassination plot and stopping an assassination attempt.
Sounds like this kid did it all on his own. Harder to stop a plot when you don’t tell anyone.
I mean, sure. There were plenty of both.
Trump chose his secret service detail based on loyalty, not competence.