quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
TDS: There's no cure, but this debilitating chronic condition can be managed.

The video is hilarious. The comments are hilariouser...

The new AF1 looks fantastic, the paint colors and scheme are perfect, much better than robins egg blue of the past.

Liberal heads are exploding that Trump is flying in a new AF1 and the new paint colors are Trumps teams doing..

https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2072484638359003243

“Secret Service agents knew Thomas Crooks had a rifle and had made his way onto a rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania with a clear shot at Donald Trump— and never issued a word to the president's own protective detail. [Biden’s Secret Service agents]

Those details were revealed in a damning and newly unredacted report released Thursday the DHS's Office of Inspector General. 

According to the report, the Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt Thomas Crooks’s attempted assassination of then-former President Donald Trump during the July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

'The Secret Service’s overall lack of policy and processes coupled with limited intelligence sharing and poor collaboration and communication with protectee staff and state and local law enforcement set the conditions that led to missing opportunities to prevent and detect the attempted assassination,' the OIG report said. …”

https://mol.im/a/15949349

Thanks for the article, but I don’t understand what this refers to:

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
[Biden’s Secret Service agents] [Emphasis added.]

I don’t see any mention of Biden’s agents in the linked article. What would Biden’s detail have to do with the incident?

It was also telling that the Secret Service wanted to park trucks in a place that would have blocked the killer’s line of sight to President Trump, but Trump’s staff vetoed it because it would have messed with photographs. That was just one of countless examples of how it’s not always the security personnel who are at fault for security lapses. In my admittedly limited and lower level experience that is extremely common. I could cite far worse examples that I personally observed.

^^^^^
I intended the square brackets to indicate my comment on the article text. Just as your “[Emphasis added.]” was doing.

It was Biden’s SS because, as president, he’s ultimately responsible.

Ah. Thanks.

Two minutes is a LONG time to have known an assassin was staged to take a shot.

Remember Kimberly Cheatle?


"Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is facing congressional outcry and calls to resign over security lapses leading to former President Donald Trump’s near-assassination Saturday, landed her role thanks largely to a close relationship with first lady Jill Biden, The Post has learned.

Cheatle, 53, is the second woman to lead the presidential protection agency and secured the non-Senate-confirmed role in August 2022 after a three-year stint as senior director of global security at PepsiCo.

Before that, she had served 27 years in the Secret Service, beginning in the Clinton administration.

Four sources close to President Biden’s family, including people who interacted with Cheatle during the Obama-Biden administration, said she was well liked by the future first lady and her most senior aides, including top adviser Anthony Bernal."

https://nypost.com/2024/07/15/...dens-office-sources/

Another related article:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...Ap58j8Nk0gDuka5oc%3D

Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings Before Trump Assassination Attempt in Butler: Report

The Homeland Security Department report lists communications failures and security lapses that led up to the gunman opening fire from a rooftop.

The U.S. Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, including missing more than 102 radio transmissions warning of a suspicious person, a Department of Homeland Security report concluded.

The report, released on July 2 by the department’s Office of Inspector General, chronicles a series of communication failures, inadequate planning, limited intelligence sharing, and security lapses that combined to create the conditions that allowed gunman Thomas Crooks to open fire from the roof of a nearby building during a July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler. Crooks was fatally shot by a Secret Service agent.
Among the report’s most significant findings was that Secret Service members did not receive 102 radio transmissions “that local law enforcement officers in a separate communications room received concerning an increasingly intense search for a suspicious person. Instead, we found that the Secret Service received only five phone calls and three text messages about Crooks. As a result, Secret Service members did not alert President Trump’s protective detail about concerns of a suspicious person.”

The Secret Service would have delayed Trump’s speech or removed him from the stage had they been aware of the search for Crooks, the report stated.

The report also said the Secret Service failed to detect a drone that Crooks flew over the rally site about two hours before the shooting. Investigators said the agency’s counter-drone system was inoperable because of a malfunction, and the lone operator assigned to the event lacked sufficient training to repair the equipment. The system remained offline while Crooks flew the drone for nearly nine minutes, allowing him to survey both the stage and the rooftop he later used to carry out the attack.

The report also found serious communication breakdowns between the Secret Service and local law enforcement. The Secret Service never received three radio reports from law enforcement that Crooks had climbed onto a roof with a rifle.

The inspector general also found that classified intelligence concerning a long-range threat to Trump was not shared with the Pittsburgh field office or agents responsible for planning security at the rally. The report said broader dissemination of that intelligence likely would have resulted in additional security personnel being assigned to the event.

Investigators further concluded that the Secret Service failed to ensure the American Glass Research complex, where Crooks launched the attack, was secured by state and local law enforcement. In addition, the agency did not use available resources to block the rooftop’s line of sight to the stage, despite recognizing it as a potential vulnerability.

The inspector general issued seven recommendations to improve protective operations. The Secret Service agreed with all of them, and the report said some have already been implemented while others remain in progress.

Another:

https://www.newsmax.com/us/dhs...dkt_nbr=010502tu4aje

So now we have the what. When do we get the who and why?

I'm sure there are many who will not be satisfied with "we'll try to do better in the future."

That is a total croc. You are talking about protecting the most powerful man on the planet. Against any and all threats, foreign or domestic. . And this is what you come up with. Total horseshit. To think anyone with half a brain would buy that is unbelievable. There is only one explanation. And we all know what it is.

Biden (as the potato in Chief) was responsible for Trump's security, but we all know that Biden wasn't in charge of anything other than his bowel movements

Hillary and Barack were running the government using Joe as a shield, and we all know what Hillary's favorite method of eliminating potential enemies is.

It fits with history.

^^ Uhhh, Point of Order...There's ample evidence that ol' sleepy Joe was NOT 'in control' of his bowel movements either!

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
Anyone comparing the Trump children to Hunter Biden are out of their fuckin minds.

I do not run in the big circles; just by the luck of happenstance, I spent several hours, an afternoon and evening, with Eric and Don Jr in an intimate extended family setting during President Trump's first term. This was not anything official; it was not a republican event, a fundraiser, etc. It was purely a fun gathering that had nothing to do with politics.

I knew they would be attending, but I expected a quick pop-in and pop-out. Much to my surprise, both were there for the entire event and both were very accessible and easy to talk to, especially Eric. Don Jr. was slightly more reserved, but that just seemed to be his personality. He was still very approachable.

They had no airs about them. If you didn't know who they were, you would have just thought they were regular joes. And they were not solicitous, or phony, like politicians, they just talked with you about whatever, anything. And they mingled well, no security and no handlers. This all occurred over a period of 5-6 hours.

If any of you have not read Don Jr's autobiography "Triggered", I recommend it. It gives you insight as to why the Trump children are so down-to-earth and grounded as people.

I cannot say that I am friends with the sons. I am sure they would not know me if they saw me again. But I feel like I got a rare, and accurate, glimpse of them when they were not "on" and could just be themselves.


.

^^^ Thanks for that insight, TD.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which spearheaded job and funding cuts throughout the federal government, shut down operations on July 4.

In a Saturday social media post, the department quoted former President Teddy Roosevelt, writing, “‘Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.'”

“While the formal mission of DOGE has come to an end, the mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse will continue,” DOGE added. “Good stewardship of taxpayer dollars and accountable government are not temporary initiatives. We hope those principles endure long into America’s next 250 years.”

Under an executive order President Trump signed on his first day back in office, DOGE was set to expire on America’s semiquincentennial. Trump’s order renamed the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service and directed the heads of every federal agency to “ensure” officials from the new department had “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

While Amy Gleason served as the acting administrator of DOGE from February 2025 until Saturday, Elon Musk oversaw the department’s work during the early months of the second Trump administration. Gleason is now the chief product officer at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Musk, who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the president’s 2024 presidential campaign, reported directly to Trump during his 130-day stint as a special government employee. After leaving the administration, Musk and Trump feuded over the former’s opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the latter ended up signing into law in July 2025.

During Musk’s time overseeing DOGE, shares of his company Tesla dipped considerably. Multiple individuals also burned Tesla vehicles.

As of October, DOGE estimated it saved $214 billion through asset sales; contract, lease and grant cancellations; fraud and improper payment deletion; savings on interest; programmatic changes; regulatory savings; and workforce reductions. That amounted to $1,329 saved per each of the roughly 161 million taxpayers in the U.S. and reduced the national debt by 0.54 percent, according to a site tracking the national debt.

But the initiative did not come without a cost to taxpayers. In December, the executive director of the environmental nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) claimed the Trump administration cost taxpayers an estimated $10 billion in 2025 through its deferred resignation program.

“Ironically, this unreasonably costly mass idling of civil servants was done in the name of ‘government efficiency,’” PEER executive director Timothy White wrote in a letter to Shirley Jones, the managing associate general counsel at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

For fiscal 2027, the administration also requested $35 million from Congress in “reimbursable program activity” for DOGE. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment on its cost-cutting efforts in the absence of DOGE.

Since Trump’s first day back in office, the number of federal employees has declined by more than 272,000 thanks to a months-long hiring freeze, early retirement offerings and reductions in force, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Nearly 140,000 employees agreed to leave the federal government through the deferred resignation program, which allowed employees to receive full pay and benefits until they left the force by Sept. 30, 2025, OPM noted.

The departments had employees departing and more than 23,000 Treasury Department employees leaving.

The federal government, though, rehired hundreds of employees in the fall who were laid off due to DOGE. Other employees, meanwhile, maintained their jobs thanks to litigation.

In its early weeks, DOGE targeted the IRS, housed under the Treasury Department. It also sought individual tax return information of American households and businesses from the IRS, raising privacy concerns.

Musk, his advisers Steve Davis and Katie Miller — the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — and DOGE general counsel James Burnham departed the federal government in May 2025.

However, a number of former DOGE employees remain scattered throughout the administration. Gavin Kilger and Sam Corcos serve as the chief data officer at the Pentagon and the chief information officer at the Treasury Department, respectively.

Edward Coristine, the programmer known as “Big Balls” who was assaulted in an attempted carjacking last August in Washington, D.C., works at the National Design Studio.

Joe Gebbia, who was involved with DOGE, is overseeing the National Design Studio, which Trump tasked last year with improving federal agency websites.

https://thehill.com/homenews/a...uts-down-operations/

As NATO Summit Braces For Trump, Ambassador Warns Allies: 'We're Not Going Away, Just Doing Less'

Just on the eve of the annual NATO summit, and as President Trump is en route to attend the Ankara-hosted meeting, Washington has reaffirmed its vision of withdrawing from NATO leadership in order to allow other countries to shoulder the collective defense burden.

America's ambassador to the alliance told CNBC on Monday that pressuring allies to spend more - which has created tension among some European allies - reflects necessary "growing pains" rather than a crisis,

"The target is that Europe takes over the conventional defense of the European continent," Ambassador Matthew Whitaker stated. That's when he emphasized: "We’re not going away, we’re just doing less."

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...away-just-doing-less

Probably as good a place as any to put this. Compare and contrast gratitude vs. victimhood. VP JD Vance and Michelle Obama.

^^^ Thank you!

Trump Says Truce With Iran Is ‘Over’ And Blasts European Allies At NATO Summit

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the interim peace deal with Iran is “over” as he described the country’s leaders as “sick people,” while speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, on Wednesday, where he also blasted other members of the alliance for not previously backing him in the war with Tehran.

Trump Says Truce With Iran Is ‘Over’ And Blasts European Allies At NATO Summit
BySiladitya Ray,Forbes Staff. Siladitya Ray is a New Delhi-based Forbes news team reporter.


President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the interim peace deal with Iran is “over” as he described the country’s leaders as “sick people,” while speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, on Wednesday, where he also blasted other members of the alliance for not previously backing him in the war with Tehran.

Trump Says Truce With Iran Is ‘Over’ And Blasts European Allies At NATO Summit
BySiladitya Ray,Forbes Staff. Siladitya Ray is a New Delhi-based Forbes news team reporter.


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Jul 08, 2026, 05:45am EDTJul 08, 2026, 06:26am EDT



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Topline
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the interim peace deal with Iran is “over” as he described the country’s leaders as “sick people,” while speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Turkey, on Wednesday, where he also blasted other members of the alliance for not previously backing him in the war with Tehran.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...lies-at-nato-summit/