Trump Assassination Attempt Conspiracy Theories

[The Great Zaganza]

Serious now:

I think the Motive is pretty obvious, and it's the one of most Shooters in the US when there is no obvious motive: Fame, Immortality.

Mass Shooters, including School Shooters, have become a dime a dozen - no one remembers them.
Everyone remembers Oswald.

The guy was just going OG, realizing that Soft Targets are not the way to get the attention they think they could never get in a life lived ordinarily. Only High Profile Kills assure you a place in the History Books.

Trump was a Target of Convenience: very high profile, easy access because of rallies, short commute (i.e. home town).
If Biden had been on Stage that day, he would have been the target.

I wouldn't be surprised if this kicked off a wave of assassination attempts. And not for any political reasons, but purely for infamy.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Question from elsewhere: The sniper defence team apparently had this guy in their sights fora few minutes prior to the shooting. And he was prone and aiming for some time. Why did they wait for him to actually shoot first?

 

[dann]

Serious now:

It's a possible motive, but t this point: Motive still unknown.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

It's a possible motive, but t this point: Motive still unknown.

And the fact that it still is is in itself a relevant data point.

If this was a political act, we would have known by now.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Question from elsewhere: The sniper defence team apparently had this guy in their sights fora few minutes prior to the shooting. And he was prone and aiming for some time. Why did they wait for him to actually shoot first?

My guess:

there are multiple sniper teams, probably from multiple agencies, all wanting to have a part of action to justify their budgets, and most people not knowing who is who (no one knows how many Law Enforcement organizations there are in the US).

So if you are a cop of a sort and you see someone in an obvious sniper position at such an event, your gut instinct is not:
"OMG! Assassin!!"
it's
"I wonder which agency that guy belongs to."

 

[Puppycow]

Question from elsewhere: The sniper defence team apparently had this guy in their sights fora few minutes prior to the shooting. And he was prone and aiming for some time. Why did they wait for him to actually shoot first?

My guess:

there are multiple sniper teams, probably from multiple agencies, all wanting to have a part of action to justify their budgets, and most people not knowing who is who (no one knows how many Law Enforcement organizations there are in the US).

So if you are a cop of a sort and you see someone in an obvious sniper position at such an event, your gut instinct is not:
"OMG! Assassin!!"
it's
"I wonder which agency that guy belongs to."

I wondered the same thing and reached the same conclusion as TGZ. They were less than 100% certain that he was a bad guy with ill intent. They may have suspected as much and were probably asking whoever was in charge what to do, but that person too probably wanted to double check to be 100% certain that the person wasn't a local LEO who was supposed to be there. Imperfect knowledge caused them to hesitate and this is the result. If you shoot first and ask questions later, you better be right.

 

[Cat Not Included]

If you shoot first and ask questions later, you better be right.

Unless the target is black.

 

[bruto]

The crazy-person explanation explains nothing. Specific crazies have specific motives. There is never "just (!) a crazy person doing a crazy thing."

Sure, everyone has a motive for such a thing, and it's useful to find out what it was even if it's crazy, though I suspect useful conclusions about the role of gun culture and violent rhetoric and the like will be ignored. But my point was that it is unlikely to be a conspiracy of the sort some are speculating about. As usual, most of the conspiracy theories I've heard are complex and filled with potential failure points.

 

[dann]

Agreed.
- - -
Pretty good short video, mainly about this tweet from Matt Walsh:

Right-wingers, including Matt Walsh, Candace Owens and Lauren Boebert, erupt in various conspiracies over the background of the Trump rally shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and the Secret Service after details of Crooks' Republican and MAGA affiliations are exposed. John Iadarola and Michael Shure break it down on The Damage Report.
Unhinged Republicans ERUPT In Trump Rally Shooter Conspiracies (The Damage Report on YouTube, July 16, 2024 - 5:04 min.)

 

[Axxman300]

Question from elsewhere: The sniper defence team apparently had this guy in their sights fora few minutes prior to the shooting. And he was prone and aiming for some time. Why did they wait for him to actually shoot first?

Domestic US Law Enforcement has strict rules of engagement. The building the shooter climbing onto was the staging area for the local SWAT team, who were inside while he got into the position (according to recent news stories). The Secret Service would be thinking the guy taking position should be the local SWAT team sniper.

Police/Federal Law Enforcement snipers have the toughest job. They cannot make a mistake, and if they do they can end up in prison. The average beat cop has latitude for lethal force a sniper does not. The sniper has, or should have hundreds of hours of training. Not just marksmanship at long range, but spotting ability, and judgement. The sniper has a scope, and must have a clear mental picture of what he is viewing.

I think the Secret Service sniper only fired twice. Not bad.

 

[ahhell]

Serious now:

I think the Motive is pretty obvious, and it's the one of most Shooters in the US when there is no obvious motive: Fame, Immortality.

Mass Shooters, including School Shooters, have become a dime a dozen - no one remembers them.
Everyone remembers Oswald.

The guy was just going OG, realizing that Soft Targets are not the way to get the attention they think they could never get in a life lived ordinarily. Only High Profile Kills assure you a place in the History Books.

Trump was a Target of Convenience: very high profile, easy access because of rallies, short commute (i.e. home town).
If Biden had been on Stage that day, he would have been the target.

I wouldn't be surprised if this kicked off a wave of assassination attempts. And not for any political reasons, but purely for infamy.

Pretty much all of that.

The crazy-person explanation explains nothing. Specific crazies have specific motives. There is never "just (!) a crazy person doing a crazy thing."

Sure, but much like not crazy people, those motives are often just a rationalizations.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Domestic US Law Enforcement has strict rules of engagement. The building the shooter climbing onto was the staging area for the local SWAT team, who were inside while he got into the position (according to recent news stories). The Secret Service would be thinking the guy taking position should be the local SWAT team sniper.

Police/Federal Law Enforcement snipers have the toughest job. They cannot make a mistake, and if they do they can end up in prison. The average beat cop has latitude for lethal force a sniper does not. The sniper has, or should have hundreds of hours of training. Not just marksmanship at long range, but spotting ability, and judgement. The sniper has a scope, and must have a clear mental picture of what he is viewing.

I think the Secret Service sniper only fired twice. Not bad.

Understood. And no discredit to the sniper team. At the distance they were, it was pretty easy to do their job right.

However the notion that "the protective forces have to wait until the [supposed] bad guy shoots first" sounds like nonsense to me. Presidential protection logically doesn't work like that. No protection team is going to hold back like a football lineup waiting for the "hut!" for some guy to actually shoot the gun he is pointing at "their guy" before making a rush to stop them. They will give them no chance and either drop him where he stands, or crowd up, rush and pile on in a heartbeat. Same with sniper support.

The sniper team could see the gunman (he was less than a hundred yards away - a simple shot), they could clearly see he was pointing a long weapon at the stage, so obviously he was pointing at Trump or perhaps one of the other attendees. He was a clear and obvious threat. Dozens of people were shouting for minutes beforehand about him, raising a commotion. The gunman even gun-threatened a cop who climbed up to stop him a few moments before the shooting. Surely the sniper team would have seen all that. And yet they waited for him to shoot first...

Frankly, at the short range they were at, the snipers could have put a couple of warning shots into the roof just a few inches either side of this guy well before he shot at Trump, or even just in front. I reckon a couple of heavy calibre shots smashing into the ground right by my head would certainly make me instantly rethink my life choices right about then!

 

[Axxman300]

Understood. And no discredit to the sniper team. At the distance they were, it was pretty easy to do their job right.

However the notion that "the protective forces have to wait until the [supposed] bad guy shoots first" sounds like nonsense to me. Presidential protection logically doesn't work like that. No protection team is going to hold back like a football lineup waiting for the "hut!" for some guy to actually shoot the gun he is pointing at "their guy" before making a rush to stop them. They will give them no chance and either drop him where he stands, or crowd up, rush and pile on in a heartbeat. Same with sniper support.

The sniper team could see the gunman (he was less than a hundred yards away - a simple shot), they could clearly see he was pointing a long weapon at the stage, so obviously he was pointing at Trump or perhaps one of the other attendees. He was a clear and obvious threat. Dozens of people were shouting for minutes beforehand about him, raising a commotion. The gunman even gun-threatened a cop who climbed up to stop him a few moments before the shooting. Surely the sniper team would have seen all that. And yet they waited for him to shoot first...

Frankly, at the short range they were at, the snipers could have put a couple of warning shots into the roof just a few inches either side of this guy well before he shot at Trump, or even just in front. I reckon a couple of heavy calibre shots smashing into the ground right by my head would certainly make me instantly rethink my life choices right about then!

First, all we have are unsubstantiated stories from unnamed sources surrounding this event. It will be a few weeks before an initial report will be issued by the Secret Service and FBI, separately. From the growing number of cell-phone camera videos it seems like the local police reported the shooter casing the perimeter of the event with a range-finder, but lost him in the crowd. It is not clear if this fact was reported to the Secret Service, and this will be key to the chain of events since in most cases the would have had their plain clothed security converge on the suspect to detain him to find out why the hell he had a range-finder at a political rally.

Second, police, and specifically snipers of any kind can't just fire a warning shot. The better question should be if the snipers were in communication with the rest of the team about an unknown on the nearby rooftop, and if so, why allow the speech to continue instead of surrounding Trump to escort him off-stage until the unknown on the roof could be detained?

All law enforcement officers have to account for every bullet fired. Even if that local police officer could have engaged the suspect on the rooftop, many of his rounds would have continued into the crowd 140 yards away. What goes up must come down. And the moment this officer encountered the shooter seems to be the instigating moment where he decided to open fire as he knew he'd been made.

The local Police Academy here in Monterey teaches lethal force as lethal force. Students can't miss, and cannot make mistakes. If they're not 100% certain about a target they don't shoot. And these are decisions made in a split second. As we too often see, some cops get this wrong, and kill unarmed people. Snipers do not have that leeway.

It needs to be pointed out that Trump is very much alive thanks to his security detail. They are on top of him, surrounding him in seconds taking him to the ground to check for wounds, and getting him to the SUV. And you can see the layers of security as they move him. The rapid response team was out and in position onstage within seconds. Only thing slowing them down was Trump.

For the record, I'm not apologizing for the Secret Service. I'm one of those guys who has to wait for the official reports, and or substantiated reporting on the incident. This is already being politicized by the GOP, who will demand some kind of independent investigation (something the conspiracy board is all too familiar with by now), and will hold pointless hearings to rake the Secret Service over the coals for political gain. We have a JFK Assassination thread, and all of those BS CTs started in the days and weeks after the event, and never stopped in spite of the facts.

 

[CarbShark]

• The sniper team should not have shot before they determined he was a threat.
• A warning shot was out of the question (it was an occupied building)
• The building was where the local LE sniper team was stationed and there was probably confusion about whether or not the shooter was one of them or not
• The mistake the snipers made and the Secret Service made was not getting Trump off the stage until they could make sure that was not a threat. That's all they had to do.

 

[Explorer]

Here's something from a more public forum than here: Trump got hit by a round from an assault rifle. Those rounds are notorious for chewing up flesh. But first pics of Trump's ear show no obvious impact damage whatever. It would be expected he would at least have some chunks taken out if he was genuinely hit. But the pics show just a normal apparently undamaged ear with a few drops of blood running from the tip. So was he REALLY shot? If not, where did the blood come from?

The blood that was Trumps own and sampled earlier, came from a small capsule concealed in his hand. The first shot fired was the signal for Trump to quickly raise his hand as if a reflex action, and touch his right ear and burst the capsule against his skull. The next shot was the signal for him to drop down behind the podium and discard the used capsule. The next step was for the photographer plant who had the freedom to move around in the front of the stage to position and wait until Trump was bundled along with the flag hung above to obtain the classic shot as Trump pump fisted again for the image.

Obviously real shots needed to be fired in the interests of authenticity, and unfortunately there was some collateral damage in the process, but the means justified the end in gun ridden America, where casual mindless shootings are not uncommon and seemingly tolerated.

All made up of course.

 

[dann]

Jon Stewart about the conspiracy theories and other lies on the internet:

Jon Stewart unpacks the opening night of the RNC, where Republicans called for unity while attacking the Democrats’ agenda, and J.D. Vance made his big reveal as VP candidate. Plus, Jon weighs in on Biden's feisty NBC interview with Lester Holt, and the flood of internet conspiracies in the wake of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump.
Jon Stewart Tackles the RNC and Trump Assassination Attempt (The Daily Show on YouTube, July 17, 2024 - 17:05 min.)

From 12:55 to 15:15:

But of course, this entire debate over rhetoric is happening because of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump over the weekend at a rally in Pennsylvania, which was obviouslyterrifying and disorienting.
And I think I learned that, in an emergency, when **** hits the fan in this country, the internet is a great source of information.
[LAUGHTER]
For instance, within minutes, I found out that this is staged.
And then I found out that it was actually an inside job.
And then I found out that it was Joe Biden who ordered it.
And then I found out that this guy is the shooter.
Great job, internet! You did it!
Except it turns out that that guy is an Italian football commentator named Marco Violi, who does, to be fair,
look a little shootery, but I can only assume he was in Italy, sipping Aperol spritzes on the piazza when he got a panicked call from his nonna:
'Marco! Marco! Why, Marco? Why'd you do it?'
[APPLAUSE]
And I have to say, and I mean this, and I'm not -- I have a slight confession to make, and I am not proud of this in any way, shape, or form, but I'm following social media during all this to find out who did it, because it's this pattern, I feel
like, we now have in the country, when we hear about a horrific event.
You're on pins and needles, in this sort of reverse demographic lottery to make sure that the psychopathic shooter doesn't belong to one of your team, you know?
You just sit there, going, 'Please, no Democrats, no liberals, no progressives'.
It's like that Press Your Luck game: 'No Jewy. No Jewy. No Jewy. No Jewy. No Jewy!'
And we're all doing it.
We're all doing it, because we have to know what our posture will be on the tragedy.
Will it be a haughty "I told you," or perhaps a circumspect "Well, let's not rush to judgment.
We shouldn't generalize."
And then it ends up being someone we can't even [BLEEP] figure out in the first place, a bullied, loner white guy, registered Republican, donated to a blue PAC, argued conservative causes, is a dude, but if you flip his picture upside down, kind of looks like an old lady.
I don't know what's going on with this guy!
[LAUGHTER]
It's a jump ball.
We don't know yet, who's got dibs, who wins, and none of us knows what's gonna happen next, other than there will be another tragedy in this country, self-inflicted, by us, to us.
And then we'll have this feeling again. I remember it on 9/11, this disorienting, holy-****, stop the world I would like to get off feeling.

There's more after that.

 

[ahhell]

All of that checks out as true. It clearly doesn't matter if this guy was registered republican for all of 3 years or once gave 15 dollars to liberal cause. That's only indicates a guy looking for something to believe in. But know, I'll latch on to his lefty donation or his GOP affiliation and assume that's what matters.

Side note of no conseqence, both bipolor and schizophrenian tend to show symptons in the late teens and early 20s, I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

On the other hand, Trump routinely uses dehumanizing language to decribe his enemies and lefties routinely say his election will mean the end of American democracy.

I'm sure none of that has anything to do with this.

Also, the only real conspiracy around this, the Secret Service will now circel the wagons to find some way for avoiding taking any responsiblity.

 

[JayUtah]

All of that checks out as true.

Boy howdy, Jon Stewart really did say what we're all thinking. My knee jerk reaction was, "I hope the shooter's perceived or speculated ideology won't be politically embarrassing."

It clearly doesn't matter if this guy was registered republican for all of 3 years or once gave 15 dollars to liberal cause.

My second thought, after the knee-jerk reaction, is the hypothesis that if history teaches us anything, the "disaffected loner" archetype is mostly likely going to play out again and that everything else is a red herring. When we reach a ripe enough age, we've seen or experienced enough to look mostly to individual life circumstances to explain tragic behavior rather than imagine conspiratorially that there has to be some larger set of circumstances to blame. But I think everyone's knee-jerk reaction is to imagine some larger, more ideological influence.

Side note of no conseqence, both bipolor and schizophrenian tend to show symptons in the late teens and early 20s, I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

I'm sure it doesn't,

I've witnessed this. A kid I used to mentor had a schizophrenic mother. He's now in his early 30s and showing symptoms himself. Luckily he's being properly cared for and seems to be doing well.

As regards Trump's would-be assassin, I'm sure our modern fact-agnostic culture will make all kinds of hay about his mental health, and all kinds of hay about his mental health being a cover story for some other "real" issue.

Also, the only real conspiracy around this, the Secret Service will now circel the wagons to find some way for avoiding taking any responsiblity.

It might be harder for that to happen, but we've already seen the fingers being pointed by everyone involved at everyone else.

The Secret Service related conspiracy theory I've seen get a lot of ugly traction is the DEI one: that the woman on Trump's protective detail was either unqualified or involved as a conspirator. This has been fueled by Trump's detail at his RNC convention appearance, manned (and I use the term intentionally) by tall, robustly masculine agents.

I'm more worried for her safety now than Trump's or Biden's.

 

[ahhell]

The Secret Service related conspiracy theory I've seen get a lot of ugly traction is the DEI one: that the woman on Trump's protective detail was either unqualified or involved as a conspirator. This has been fueled by Trump's detail at his RNC convention appearance, manned (and I use the term intentionally) by tall, robustly masculine agents.

I'm more worried for her safety now than Trump's or Biden's.

To be fair, if someone's job is to take a bullet for me, I want them to be more on the scale of Dwayne Johnson than Tom Cruise.

 

[crescent]

My new head canon is that he was aiming to stage an attempted assassination to make Trump look good. Didn't care about his own life nor that of the crowd, he was mentally ill and probably considered everyone but himself and Trump to be NPCs.

In this version he was not aiming to hit Trump at all, probably trying to miss him by several feet. But the guy was known to be a terrible shot and nearly missed the nothing he was aiming at and grazed something instead.

 

[JayUtah]

To be fair, if someone's job is to take a bullet for me, I want them to be more on the scale of Dwayne Johnson than Tom Cruise.

That's actually a fair point. The agent in question is short, but (politely stated) thick. So that may be a point in her favor on that concern. However, most of the criticism was against her being a woman. My cousin was in the Secret Service for 25 years on protective detail, and according to him there's more to the job than just being a human shield.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It's possible to be pro-Republican but anti-Trump or ambivalent about him, it could be internally consistent for someone to either oppose Trump's leadership of the party or think he was going to lose the election and be so opposed to the Democrats winning that they'd assassinate Trump in the belief that the sympathy vote would sweep his successor to power. In a case like this the over the top rhetoric about the Democrats would be a direct cause.


Obviously pure speculation.

 

[Axxman300]

That's actually a fair point. The agent in question is short, but (politely stated) thick. So that may be a point in her favor on that concern. However, most of the criticism was against her being a woman. My cousin was in the Secret Service for 25 years on protective detail, and according to him there's more to the job than just being a human shield.

So much more.

If you watch a good video of the incident from start to finish you'll see concentric layers of security. His close security are top of him in three seconds, and take him down to check for wounds, and wait for orders to move. Behind them are the counter-sniper teams (we still don't know which one made the kill-shot). The reaction force (the guys in black helmets, and ARs) are on the stage a few seconds after the close security team, and they cover the stage looking for additional threats from all sides. Additional QRF appear in green/multicam uniforms from their position behind the bleachers to augment security around the stage. The female agents seem to be perimeter security serving as a layer between the crowd and the close security.

Honestly, the Secret Service did a good job after the shots were fired. Had Trump been less interested in a photo-op they would have had him out faster. At this point it seems to be a communication issue between local law enforcement, and the Secret Service. It will take time to sort out, but maybe comms are recorded at these things (I don't know).

 

[ahhell]

Right wing media seems to be full off, "We should not what went wrong already!" Sure, if you want a scape goat and to have a likely false narrative, get that out quickly, don't give anyone time to actually figure out what went wrong.

 

[Ranb]

Possible, not unlikely, but still weird for a conservative to try to shoot the guy that conservatives worship.

Look at it this way. Perhaps Crooks was an actual conservative Republican, something that Trump is absolutely not. Trump is a gun grabbing RINO. He had a gun grab back in 2018; he might push for gun confiscation and raising the age to buy firearms like he did during his last administration.

Some actual Republicans are not happy with this. The GOP is not entirely trumper.

The irony for Trump is that he encouraged 2nd Amendment solutions; he wanted his supporters to shoot the enemies of the GOP. The idiot never thought the Leopard Eating People's Faces party would take a chunk out of his ear.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...stop-clintons-supreme-court/story?id=41239648

ETA; But attention seeking glory-hound is probably a better fitting label for Crooks.

 

[ahhell]

Possible, not unlikely, but still weird for a conservative to try to shoot the guy that conservatives worship. On the other hand, Chapman was a fan of John Lennon ...

Depends on what kind of conservative. Trump has basically changed the definition of conservative in the US, his economic policy is basically in line with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and his foreign policy is pro-Russia, anti-NATO. I could see some old style conservative trying to kill him on that score.

 

[ahhell]

The latest fuel for the conspiracy, apparently the secret service had knowledge of a suspicious potential shooter 10min+ before it happened and didn't keep trump off the stage.

Is there anyone who doesn't think it's entirely possible that they warned Trump and tried to get him to not go out and he did it anyway? That seems far more likely to me than him actually listening to the SS.

 

[Mike!]

The latest fuel for the conspiracy, apparently the secret service had knowledge of a suspicious potential shooter 10min+ before it happened and didn't keep trump off the stage.

Is there anyone who doesn't think it's entirely possible that they warned Trump and tried to get him to not go out and he did it anyway? That seems far more likely to me than him actually listening to the SS.

This, a thousand times this.
"Those are MY people! No one out there wants to hurt me. Everyone knows this. This show starts on time, dammit!"

 

[theprestige]

This, a thousand times this.
"Those are MY people! No one out there wants to hurt me. Everyone knows this. This show starts on time, dammit!"

What's your hypothesis? The Secret Service told Trump to stand by while they neutralized the threat, and when he said no they assumed he meant they shouldn't neutralize the threat?

 

[Mike!]

What's your hypothesis? The Secret Service told Trump to stand by while they neutralized the threat, and when he said no they assumed he meant they shouldn't neutralize the threat?

I'm going with the, Trump says "There is no threat" hypothesis. No threat, nothing to neutralize. I thought that was made clear.

I assume there isn't a single Secret Service Agent in Trump's detail that he didn't personally approve, and part of that approval process includes, 'What I say goes. Period. Am I clear?' Those that answer, 'Yes Sir, of course Sir, no question Sir.' get approved.

With that said, I guess in the end, it's all on Trump in the first place then.

 

[dudalb]

It's incredibly frustrating, especially from people who I expected to know better.

The anger from the trumpkins is scary, too. I mean, I knew it would come, but seeing them fuming in comment threads, even here in Norway, is downright frightening. Their Führer, their Holy cult leader, has been attacked, and they are up in arms, probably literally in the case of some of them. If I was a liberal or moderate, or, heck, a minority, in the States right now, I'd be downright terrified. I hope all of you are taking care.

I hope they have seriously reconsidered their oppostion to private gun owndershp.

 

[dudalb]

I'm going with the, Trump says "There is no threat" hypothesis. No threat, nothing to neutralize. I thought that was made clear.

I assume there isn't a single Secret Service Agent in Trump's detail that he didn't personally approve, and part of that approval process includes, 'What I say goes. Period. Am I clear?' Those that answer, 'Yes Sir, of course Sir, no question Sir.' get approved.

With that said, I guess in the end, it's all on Trump in the first place then.

One of the biggest problems the Secret Service has is that evry President often are very resistant to their advice. THey don't want the Service to come between them and "the People". Trump just takes this to extremes.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Will be interesting to see how Trump reacts to a couple of balloons popping near him at the convention.

 

[Segnosaur]

The security breach is what I'm the most curious about...I know Dump hires 'the best people', but Secret Service, thank god, operates independently of him. Weird that they would mess up like this.

In theory the secret service is a professional, non-political organization that should perform its tasks without any sort of bias.

But... wasn't there an issue earlier in Biden's term where it was found that some of the agents assigned to Trump were thought to be "too friendly" with him? And didn't Biden replace several agents on his detail because it was thought they were loyal to Trump?

From: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/31/joe-biden-secret-service-team-trump-loyalty
Joe Biden is expected to receive Secret Service protection with a new team that is more familiar to him and replacing some agents amid concerns that they may be politically allied with Donald Trump.

Maybe the agents guarding Trump were 2nd tier, picked for their political leanings rather than their competency.

 

[KDLarsen]

There was the story that some Secret Service agents had gotten in hot water, after it was found they had deleted messages related to January 6 from their devices.

Edit: https://www.citizensforethics.org/l...rvice-likely-broke-the-law-by-deleting-texts/

 

[The Great Zaganza]

What's so bad about trying to kidnap the VP so he can't conduct the counting of the Votes?

 

[Axxman300]

I view this as an opportunity to gauge just how bad the network, print, and digital news media have become. So many "tactical experts" making the rounds on cable news, and social media talking about what should have happened, and what they would have done. Followed by those spinning this for political points: Trump, Trumpistas, anti-gun, anti-government, anti-Trump, etc.

As of the time of this post we are six days past the event. The only part of the story that hasn't changed is some of the security was aware of the shooter as a "suspicious individual", but lost track of him until he appeared on the roof of a building where the local SWAT was inside, giving pause to the Secret Service sniper teams long enough for the guy to get shots off.

What we don't know yet is what actions were taken by local law enforcement, the PA State Police, and the Secret Service from the time the Shooter was identified as suspicious. And we don't know how this information was communicated, and distributed throughout the body of the security element.

We've had the Secret Service deploy here over the years with the last time to cover Al Gore for a speech. They show up about a month before the event to meet with local LE, and assess the event location from all angles, and plan a route from the airport. About three days from the event in our small downtown all the homeless disappeared along with trash cans, and mailboxes, and newspaper machines. There were new faces loitering the streets around the theater where Gore would speak. I didn't bother going downtown on the day of the speech. Two days later the mailboxes, newspaper machines, trashcans, and homeless people were back.

That's a lot of planning and work for a three hour event. I can't wait to read the Secret Service report on this one.

 

[Egg]

Depends on what kind of conservative. Trump has basically changed the definition of conservative in the US, his economic policy is basically in line with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and his foreign policy is pro-Russia, anti-NATO. I could see some old style conservative trying to kill him on that score.

I'm surprised I have heard any conspiracy speculation about how he'd crossed the Cheney family.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Of course, the main reason why this could happen is because Trump is a cheap stake who does his Rallies in open public places where he has to pay nothing or little for, instead of an actual venue.
They are always insecure.

A more skilled and prepared shooter could have found a position to kill him from further away, making a kill and getway easy.

 

[zorro99]

A week has passed and precious little has been shared about the investigation.