Biden’s Faculties & A Clearer Picture of The Failures Surrounding Trump’s Assassination Attempt – Top 3 Takeaways – July 17th, 2024
- I have command of all my faculties. How many times in your life have you found yourself in a situation where you’re in the middle of a job interview and you’ve felt compelled to say, “I have command of all my faculties”? And how well do you think that job interview is going if that’s where the conversation landed? In President Biden’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt...that’s where the conversation landed. And as I illustrated yesterday with my updated look at President Biden’s reelection odds which I currently have pegged at 17%, as his approval rating is seven points lower on this date than any incumbent president who’s ever gone on to win reelection... Biden’s current job interview seems be going about as well as one might imagine for a process that includes conversations about his ability to command his faculties. But while that interview was mostly noted for the president’s excuse for saying to donors that it was time to “put Trump in the bullseye" only six days prior to an assignation attempt on the former and future President of the United States – Biden said it “was a mistake” to have used that word. Whoopsie right? After all it wasn’t like Trump was shot along with his supporters one of whom died or anything...oh wait. But as long as it was just a mistake that surely makes everything a okay. After all it wasn’t like Jill Biden recently called Trump “evil”. It wasn’t like Joe Biden hadn’t recently referred to Trump as the “one existential threat” or that for over three and a half years he and his party have called Trump and his supporters threats to democracy...oh wait. That’s right that’s all happened too. Well, I’m sure it was just a mistake in terminology after all, not an effort to dehumanize political opposition and to radicalize a base of voters into hatred against others. Except no, in that interview, he actually defended calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy. Apparently, Joe Biden and his commanded faculties think that as long as you aren’t using language that literally suggests the taking out of Donald Trump then that’s completely cool. It’s the equivalent of lowering the temperature, which of course only one day earlier he called on the country to do. But speaking of the attempted assassination...
- We’re gaining an increasingly clearer picture of what happened. First, let’s address one commonly floated notion on social media that I’ve been asked to account for numerous times. There is almost certainly no grand conspiracy here. It's reckless to suggest that the administration was somehow involved or complicit in the assassination attempt without highly compelling evidence of that having been the case. Second, even if one wanted to entertain that notion minus the evidence, do you really think that the “A” plan inside job would involve officials going to a 20-year-old shooter who practiced in a neighborhood range to carry out the attack? And that takes us to where the inexcusable breakdown in security occurred. Piecing together facts I’ve learned from multiples sources, in addition to sourcing from major news organizations a la Fox News, we’re starting to get a likely picture of how the failure occurred.
- The size of Trump’s rallies obviously require extensive security, far beyond what’s historically been needed to provide adequate security for either a former president and/or that of a presidential candidate. When Donald Trump was president, he had the level of Secret Service detail that was sufficient to more effectively cover his massive rallies. When he became a former president, his detail was dramatically scaled down to the size former presidents historically have received. When he started up his rallies for this presidential campaign it seems his security team had concerns about holding similar-sized rallies but with a much smaller Secret Service detail. Where there are perceived security gaps in Secret Service protection, they’ve been filled with other, commonly state and local, law enforcement agencies. Each of those additional layers create potential points of failure. Fast forward to Saturday. There were four sniper teams. Two manned by the Secret Service and two manned by local law enforcement. There were also numerous local law enforcement officers on the ground in the surrounding area. When the suspect was identified following reports of a suspicious person, local law enforcement took the lead to engage, with the plan being that they would interdict the shooter on the roof of the building. Two local officers were at the building with one having made it to the roof prior to the shooting, however, the suspect spotted him, pointed his gun at him, and the officer dropped off the roof to avoid being shot. Moments later the shooter, realizing he’d been found out, turned back towards Trump and began firing at which point one of the Secret Service sniper teams returned fire killing the shooter. If that picture roughly holds, there are still numerous questions to account for. How were there not eyes on the rooftop of the building the entire time given its vantage point and proximity to the stage? Why did it take so long for law enforcement to identify/interdict the suspect once tipped off to the suspect? Was it appropriate to attempt to interdict an armed suspect on the rooftop as opposed to snipers taking proactive action? What was the level of communication like between local law enforcement and the Secret Service during those moments? Was the officer’s response to drop from the roof as opposed to engaging appropriate? How differently would the response have been from Secret Service agents as opposed to local law enforcement had Donald Trump had the level of Secret Service protection he had while he was president. But that’s where there’s an additional complication to account for. We’ve learned over the past day that Trump’s Secret Service detail had been expanded in recent weeks, prior to Saturday’s attack, due to an alleged Iranian assassination plot against Donald Trump. We don’t know what increased detail means in context to what he had as president, and regardless it wasn’t enough to avoid leaning significantly on local law enforcement in Butler, PA, but it’s yet one more major question that needs to be addressed. There was already credible concern about a possible assignation attempt against Donald Trump and yet an assassination attempt against him was able to be carried out. There’s still so much to learn, to account for and to question independent of conspiracy theories.