quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
Would it be considered treasonous if she intentionally denied augmented protection levels knowing that current levels were insufficient for the threat level?

Is it just incompetence or is it worse?

She's an incompetent DEI hire whose highest priority is having 30% female agents by 2030. The treason is putting such a jackwad in charge in the first place.

Steve,

A rooftop within 200 yards of Trump with IDEAL shooting position was left un-controlled by USSS. This is the most incompetent thing I have ever seen the USSS allow. Don't make excuses for them. They screwed the pooch royally on this and there is no excuse whatsoever.

This was 100% a failure of site prep and planning. The officers on the scene I will assume did their best to react to the situation as it unfolded.

But there is still CLEAR evidence that witnesses SAW the shooter climb onto the roof and set up his position and nothing was done by the LEO's it was reported to.

I will await the congressional hearings on the matter and the testimony of the witness and the officers. But mark my words, HEADS WILL ROLL over this.

The #1 purpose of the USSS is TO NOT LOSE A PRESIDENT ON YOUR WATCH. They came within millimeters of losing President Trump due to gross incompetence. The fact that anyone was allowed within close shooting distance is a massive failure.

BREAKING NEWS: Cop confronted Trump shooter but RETREATED when rifle was aimed at him - then would-be assassin quickly fired at ex-president

By CHARLIE SPIERING, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM IN BETHEL PARK, PENNSYLVANIA
PUBLISHED: 08:18 EDT, 14 July 2024 | UPDATED: 15:46 EDT, 14 July 2024

Donald Trump has vowed to attend the Republican Convention on Monday in Milwaukee, one day after he was nearly assassinated by a 20-year-old in Pennsylvania - while new details begin to emerge about the abhorrent security failures that took place.

According to sources, a police officer sheepishly backed away when the would-be assassin pointed a gun at him, just moments before he then fired in Trump's direction, clipping his ear.

Trump announced he will not be delaying his Wisconsin trip - less than 24 hours after he was shot by Thomas Matthew Crooks from a rooftop 130 yards away.

The former president said he would remain 'Defiant in the face of Wickedness' hours after being shot on stage at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump echoed Ronald Reagan who said 'I owe my life to God' after he survived being shot in 1981.

---

14:48
BREAKING:Local police officer came face-to-face with would-be assassin but backed away, sources say

Not long before shots rang out, rally goers noticed a man climbing to the top of a roof of a nearby building and warned local law enforcement, according to two law enforcement officials.

One officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer.

The officer retreated down the ladder and Crooks quickly took a shot toward former President Donald Trump, and that’s when the U.S. Secret Service counter snipers shot him, said the officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Steve,

... Don't make excuses for them.

I'm not. It's kind of obvious that those rooftops should have had law enforcement presence lock them down to prevent any sort of access. My comment is focused on the action and reaction of the counter sniper on the roof.

I'm just hearing different things, including the stuff about them "letting" him shoot before engaging him and I think that's wrong.

Given the pics and what seems to be a high power scope on the sniper rifle, one would imagine that a rifle would be easily discernible at 150 yards. And perhaps even that the shooter was not tactically geared up (wearing a t-shirt?).

It's not clear what sight image the sniper really had. Or the prone one.

But if the shooter was at all visible and spotted, it doesn't seem like it would be difficult to determine.

Fox just referred to a "five-fifty-six" rifle.

Mike Glover of FCS talks about and gives insights to several of the things we are discussing in this thread.

He starts off giving a quick overview of what is happening in his personal life. Skip ahead to the 3min mark to start his assessments regarding the shooting.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Fox just referred to a "five-fifty-six" rifle.

Could it have been a Ruger or some other AR-15 style rifle with a 556 name?

quote:

Originally posted by 911Boss:

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
Latest headline on the NewsX video news crawl says the FBI has yet to determine a motive

Why in the fuck are they wasting their time to figure out a motive

Have they not been paying attention? Oh yeah, the FBI is part of the problem. They don’t want to find a motive because anyone connecting the dots
will find the FBI is one of the dots

Is motive really that hard of a puzzle?

Somebody shoots gun at someone else’s head, why? Maybe cause they want to kill the person?

Why do they want to kill the person? Maybe because they don’t like or disagree with the person?

Ain’t rocket science…

It is possible this kid had no real motive, or one so convoluted it has to yet be pieced together. Hinckly tried to kill Reagan as an attempt to impress Jodie Foster. Politics never came into it.

I'm not saying that the left's hate rhetoric didn't play a part or wasn't the reason, but this kid also wasn't out lighting fires for BLM or antifa (that we know of). He donated 15 bucks to a lefty organization a couple of years ago but otherwise doesn't really seem to be political so far.

I don't know what this kid's motive really was or what influenced his decision to do something this stupid. I'm not part of the investigation.

But I do know people do stupid shit all the time for the most illogical or delusional of reasons. Every first responder on this board can attest to that.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Fox just referred to a "five-fifty-six" rifle.

Could it have been a Ruger or some other AR-15 style rifle with a 556 name?

The media knows fuckall about guns.

Recall the Navy Yard nutcase. He used a sawn off pump Remington 870 shotgun.

The local media called it a “Bushmaster” after the type of weapons were announced.

^^^ Headline should have read "Standing for America".
It's how I see it.

quote:

Originally posted by OcCurt:

It is possible this kid had no real motive, or one so convoluted it has to yet be pieced together. Hinckly tried to kill Reagan as an attempt to impress Jodie Foster. Politics never came into it.

I'm not saying that the left's hate rhetoric didn't play a part or wasn't the reason, but this kid also wasn't out lighting fires for BLM or antifa (that we know of). He donated 15 bucks to a lefty organization a couple of years ago but otherwise doesn't really seem to be political so far.

I don't know what this kid's motive really was or what influenced his decision to do something this stupid. I'm not part of the investigation.

But I do know people do stupid shit all the time for the most illogical or delusional of reasons. Every first responder on this board can attest to that.

The current Wikipedia article article on him describes him as an oft-bullied student in high school. It's possible his actions were more psychologically motivated. (I understand a Wiki entry this early on is especially fraught with spurious information.)

Still searching for a motive. Preventing Tromp from being reelected is a little too easy is it? Media always has to find that 'something else' to blame.

Reddit managed to stay relatively civil yesterday mainly because I think mods there were forced to start banning people right and left for their vile behavior.

But today? Here’s a breakdown:

“This really wasn’t an assassination attempt you know. Trump was ‘only’ wounded with shards of glass and not hit by a bullet so it doesn’t count.”

“This was all staged by the Trump campaign.”

Many Redditors today: “I’m only sorry that the guy missed, I’m not sorry for Donald Trump. He had it coming.”

What a toxic, vile cesspool of liberal filth. This is the perfect place to see the true mindset of your typical leftist.

If it weren’t for some useful subs there, I’d already have bailed on that place.

The only thing I have to look forward to is watching these shitheads melt down in November when Trump wins again.

If one wants a clear mental picture of how these people think, look no further than The Atlantic, this published post shooting is exactly the problem in America, and wouldn't be surprised to see The View and others come out with similar shows on Monday. Vile, despicable, and clearly part of the problem.

This is who they are, what they think, what they say about us, not only behind our backs when we walk by, but now, right out in the open.

The link is to a MSN copy of the article, but for those who don't want to click, the article is posted.


Link

The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator Opinion by David Frum



When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.
Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.

t is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message in the 2024 election.

Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.

[Christopher R. Browning: A new kind of fascism]

The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution. To date, Trump has led only a minority of U.S. voters, but that minority’s passion and audacity have offset what it lacks in numbers. After the shooting, Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to “Fight!” to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anti-constitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.

Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptly turned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during his term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country’s problems indirectly confirm the country’s success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands, because they know, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on Earth.

Yet despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d’état return to office to try again.

One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe”: Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.

Trump is different. His abuses have been ratified by powerful constituencies. He has conquered and colonized one of the two major parties. He has defeated—or is on the way to defeating—every impeachment and prosecution to hold him to account for his frauds and crimes. He has assembled a mass following that is larger, more permanent, and more national in reach than any previous American demagogue. He has dominated the scene for nine years already, and he and his supporters hope they can use yesterday’s appalling event to extend the Trump era to the end of his life and beyond.

The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien. It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him. His counselors, even the thugs and felons, join the point-counterpoint dialogue at the summit of the American elite. President Joe Biden nearly wrecked his campaign because he felt obliged to meet Trump in debate. How could Biden have done otherwise? Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party; it’s awkward and strange to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state—though that’s what Trump was and is.

[David Frum: Biden’s heartbreaking press conference]

The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump’s legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more things in common than that divide them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subdued to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle.

Conventional phrases and polite hypocrisy fill a useful function in social life. We say “Thank you for your service” both to the decorated hero and to the veteran who barely escaped dishonorable discharge. It’s easier than deciphering which was which. We wish “Happy New Year!” even when we dread the months ahead.

[Adrienne LaFrance: Thoughts, prayers, and Facebook rants aren’t enough]

But conventional phrases don’t go unheard. They carry meanings, meanings no less powerful for being rote and reflexive. In rightly denouncing violence, we are extending an implicit pardon to the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics. In asserting unity, we are absolving a man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others.

Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.

Anyone remember when Katie Couric had a cow about calling Clinton an ex-president. “There’s no such thing as an ex-president.” I guess that’s only for democrat presidents.

she's been off the rails lately with her pissing match with Shapiro, but here she makes some good points

https://x.com/CensoredMen/status/1812545151769653520