The Trump Assignation Attempt Was a Failure to Communicate – Top 3 Takeaways – July 30th, 2024
- But wait there’s more. The more that’s learned the worse it gets. Most people are familiar with the expression “the emperor has no clothes” and what that statement implies. Few are familiar with its origins. It was in 1837 that Hans Christian Anderson brought about the timeless phrase in his story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. The plot of the story is that a particularly pretentious emperor was taken in by two alleged tailors who would be able to create clothes for the emperor that only the wise could see. In reality, the emperor is naked and spends the balance of the story galivanting around in his birthday suit but because he was the emperor, no one felt comfortable questioning him about his lack of clothes. That was until the end when a young boy innocently spoke up saying “The Emperor has no Clothes”. In the grand scheme of the dumpster fire that the Biden administration happens to be, the expression could apply to just about all of it. But it’s of no surprise, for example, that Dementia Joe has no clothes – though thank God Jill at least knows to still dress him. It’s also no surprise that his agency heads are about thinly veiled as he is. None of this, and by “this” I mean insert Biden administration debacle here is terribly complicated. How many organizations have you worked for that had utterly incompetent management at the top but that have otherwise been well run throughout the organization? Of course, such a thing doesn’t exist. It's for that reason that the more we learn of the abject failure of the Secret Service in protecting the former and God-willing future president of the United States, it really shouldn’t be such a surprise. As we came to learn former Secret Service Director Kimberly “Cheetos” Cheatle was given the top job, why? Because she was the best choice to lead the Secret Service? Nope. Because she was at least vetted by top government security experts? Nope. She got her post because she had been part of the not-so-doctor Jill Biden’s detail and she really liked her...and because her top adviser Anthony Bernal, who likewise has no national security or law enforcement experience, did too. That’s why when the conspiracy theories immediately went flying, I instead offered this:
- 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? After all, when there are real conspiratorial assassinations that take place at that high of a level (say for example, hypothetically of course, a number people who’ve gotten a bit too close to the Clintons), they’re good enough at what they do to take someone out in a maximum-security facility under 24-7 supervision without a trace of an assassin to be found. As for an initial explanation as to what went so incredibly wrong after working sources, I said this: 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. Clearly there was extensive failure. The bottom line is that the Secret Service never should have ceded so much responsibility to local agencies – especially given the heightened state of alert with an alleged Iranian assassination threat against Trump that had been on the Secret Service’s radar weeks in advance. And what have we learned since...? We’ve learned that the Secret Service only manned security for those inside of the event venue who’d already been through security and delegated everything outside of the event to local authorities. We’ve learned the shooter used an AR-15 rather than a sniper rifle which would not make any sense at all if this were an inside job. We’ve learned Crooks searched the scene leading up to the event and that he was observed wandering around well before the rally that Saturday (Not exactly the kind of profile that an assassin-for-hire from the inside would be keeping). And now we’ve learned that through text messages local law enforcement on the scene was aware of the would-be assassin with a range finder on him about 90 minutes before the attack. And it’s within those texts that...
- We’re able to gain the greatest insight yet into how the failures played out. We’ve learned that Crooks, identified in the texts as a “kid”, was spotted well before the shooting with a range finder looking towards the stage by local law enforcement. In fact, an officer took a picture of him, shared it with the group text chain for local law enforcement and said...“If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out, I lost sight of him”. We learned that two members of a local sniper team said “roger that” with a thumbs up but...that they never appeared to have contacted the Secret Service. There was also a follow up message that said Call it in to command and have a uniform check it out. Again, there’s no indication that they communicated with the Secret Service. It was also learned that they became aware that a bike and a backpack also had arrived on the scene but still nothing was done to stop it. In the words of the local SWAT sniper who spotted Crooks on the scene and sent the info to the group text chain: I assumed that there would be somebody coming out to, you know, speak with this individual or me. And you know the saying about assuming. In the words of Donn Pearce in Cool Hand Luke...What we’ve got here is...failure to communicate. The Secret Service never should have been put in a position to cede the entire perimeter outside of the secured venue to local law enforcement and local law enforcement certainly should have communicated with the Secret Service right away and no one should ever assume anything is being handled by somebody else when your job is to secure the former and future president of the United States and you spot a suspicious “kid” with a range finder looking at the stage.