Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
I wouldn't describe myself as a Trump supporter, but I don't think everything he does is despicable just because he's a Republican. I look at the evidence. What did Trump really say? Is it despicable if it's true?
I watched the video. Did the guy fall harder than was pushed? It's hard to tell, but perhaps. If I am not sure then how can we blame Trump for thinking it looked like he did? But liberals will disagree of course, so I analyzed the video frame by frame and compared the time to that of a natural fall. According to my calculations he hit the ground ~0.001 seconds earlier than expected from just a shove. So Trump may be right about this. But even if he was mistaken, this alone doesn't rise to the level of 'despicable' IMO.
Was he aiming a scanner? Again, it's hard to tell from the video. He was definitely aiming something. Maybe it was a scanner, or perhaps something less sinister, but he was certainly pointing it in a suggestive manner. Until the device is properly analyzed I don't think we can rule out the possibility of it being a scanner. And once again Trump may have been genuinely mistaken - should we vilify him for that?
Liberals have made a lot of mileage out of the supposed size and technology required to 'black out' police communications. But any Ham radio operator can tell you it doesn't take much if the signal is carefully crafted to 'black out' certain frequencies. The few watts produced by a handheld CB radio would be quite sufficient.
But could this old man have had such equipment? He is described as a 'longtime protester' who may have been playing this game for many years. So I did some digging. Turns out a person with almost the same name was active on the HAM band a few years ago. Is it this guy? We don't know, but if it is then he probably has the skills to make a handheld jamming device.
So what if Trump is right? We shouldn't jump to conclusions until we have all the facts (which
Could it be a setup? Perhaps. But Trump didn't say it was a setup, he was asking if it was - big difference. How can you call Just Asking Questions despicable? OTOH, if this guy (who has a long history of 'peaceful' protesting) was trying to 'black out' police communications, and did deliberately fall harder so he could hit his head to make it look like police brutality, then it's looking a lot like a setup.
I abhor unanswered questions though, so I analyzed the video with a spectrometer. After correcting for gamma and color balance I found something surprising. The 'blood' was closer to the shade of ketchup than real blood! What does this mean? Maybe nothing, but it makes you wonder...
In conclusion, nothing that Trump said in this tweet can be unequivocally described as 'despicable'. On the contrary, Trump used his awesome powers of observation and deduction to highlight some important facts and possible anomalies in this case. And I say that as someone who is definitely not a Trump supporter (well OK, I did vote for him, but what choice did I have?).
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