On the menu today: It appears that July 13, 2024, was not Donald Trump’s time to go. The nation and the world witnessed something uncanny or miraculous this past weekend. Had the gunman’s bullet been just one inch closer to its intended target, everything in our national life would be different now, and worse. It’s easy to feel angry, or sad, or anxious in the face of events like this, but we can also feel grateful. The Donald Trump we see at the convention this week may be different from the one we’re used to; there are still lots of troubling, unanswered questions about the U.S. Secret Service’s preparation for Saturday’s event; and it appears the effort to replace Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee has fizzled out. As the song goes, “Everything can change in a New York minute.”
‘It Was God Alone Who Prevented the Unthinkable from Happening’
This may well be the best statement Donald Trump has ever made:
Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness. Our love goes out to the other victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded, and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed. In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win. I truly love our Country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our Great Nation this week from Wisconsin.
Trump told the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito — who was at the Pennsylvania rally, just feet away from the former president when the shooting occurred — that in his convention address, he will attempt to play the role of a national uniter:
Trump said people all across the country from different walks of life and different political views have called him, and he noted that he was saved from death because he turned from the crowd to look at a screen showing data he was using in his speech.
“That reality is just setting in,” he said. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
Talking as he boarded his plane in Bedminster, New Jersey, for Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention starts Monday and lasts through Thursday, Trump said his speech will meet the moment that history demands. “It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance.”
After the assassination attempt and consequential killing and wounding of innocent rally attendees, everyone in America is scared, angry, upset, and anxious enough as is. We need people who pour water on the fire, not gasoline. A Donald Trump who wants to raise everyone’s spirits, and unify us at this moment, will be a particularly formidable presidential candidate, the man meeting the moment. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
On Sunday, the FBI said investigators had not yet identified any ideology fueling the shooter*. He may have been a garden-variety nut, the kind who wanted to take a shot at a political figure to impress Jodie Foster or to prove that grammar was a form of mind control. Or he may have been a more overtly political kind of nut, who believed that by killing Trump, he would somehow be seen as a hero who saved the country from another Trump presidency.
(As the Post delicately puts it, “Someone with his name and street address gave $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a Democratic voter-turnout organization, in January 2021.”)
It’s a little frustrating to see the “shooter’s motive still unclear” headlines, because it seems pretty clear that when a guy picks up a rifle and shoots an estimated eight shots at a former president and current presidential candidate, he intended to kill him. The only remaining question is why this disturbed young man attempted to do that.
As of this writing, the American public still has large and pressing questions about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Had the shooter been planning an assassination attempt on Trump for a long time? The rally was announced and publicized by Wednesday, July 10. (The linked article is from Thursday the 11th, meaning it had been announced the previous day.) Would three days have been enough time for him to case the location of the Butler Farm Show complex? The shooter was located on the roof of an office building belonging to American Glass Research, roughly 400 feet from where Trump was standing.
How did the shooter, carrying an AR-15, get to the location without being noticed? How did he get to the roof? Eyewitnesses claimed they saw the shooter and attempted to warn law enforcement; new video shows people pointing him out on the building’s roof. How was the shooter able to get off an estimated eight shots that killed one spectator, critically injured two others, and clipped President Trump in his ear, before the Secret Service “neutralized” him?
The New York Times reported, “Law enforcement officials also found two explosive devices in [the shooter’s] car — and believe they have may have found a third at his residence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.”
At this point, there is no indication that the shooter was on any government “watch list.” Had he done anything that indicated he should be on a watch list? Did any of the shooter’s friends and acquaintances see or hear anything that warranted a call to law-enforcement authorities?
The U.S. Secret Service employs “approximately 3,200 special agents, 1,300 Uniformed Division officers, and more than 2,000 other technical, professional and administrative support personnel.”
Is that sufficient?
By law, the Secret Service is authorized to protect:
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The president, the vice president, (or other individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President), the president-elect and vice president-elect
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The immediate families of the above individuals
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Former presidents, their spouses, except when the spouse re-marries
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Children of former presidents until age 16
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Visiting heads of foreign states or governments and their spouses traveling with them, other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States, and official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad
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Major presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election
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Other individuals as designated per Executive Order of the President and
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National Special Security Events, when designated as such by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
Security details of varying sizes are required for the current president, the current vice president, five former presidents (Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Carter) four former vice presidents (Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle) and four former first ladies (Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Laura Bush).
Is the Secret Service undermanned? Sunday afternoon, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig — author of the 2021 book, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, wrote:
Responding to questions from The Post, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed Sunday that the agency relied on local police at the Trump rally to fill out significant parts of its typical array of specialized protective units — including its heavily armed counterassault team that provided cover as Trump’s detail evacuated him and the countersniper teams that ultimately spotted and killed the shooter. . . .
The Secret Service had two of its counterassault agents on the scene and filled out the rest of the typical platoon with at least six members of Butler County tactical units, Guglielmi said. Two Secret Service countersniper teams were on the scene, but two additional teams that had been recommended for adequate protection at the rally were staffed by local units, he said.
When there’s a counter-sniper team on the scene, is there slower or less efficient communication when they’re a mix of Secret Service counter-assault agents and local police tactical units?
Our Dominic Pino quickly wrote up a thorough review of the scandals, embarrassing moments, and other recurring problems in the U.S. Secret Service — from cavorting with prostitutes in Venezuela to misplaced firearms to public drunkenness to slow responses to intruders at the White House to sleeping on the job.
The organization’s image, for decades, was one of professionalism, courage, and steely eyed willingness to jump in front of an assassin’s bullet — the stuff of Clint Eastwood and Gerard Butler films. The reality is not quite so reassuring.
Still, until some sort of sweeping change is made, the U.S. Secret Service is the only option for protection of prominent elected officials. And that brings us to a point that some of us have been making for nearly a year: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should have Secret Service protection, and it is a scandal that the Department of Homeland Security has refused to offer him that protection. As I wrote back in September, “This issue is entirely separate from what you think of Kennedy as a candidate or potential president. He stands out as a potential target because this country has an ugly tradition of nutjobs assassinating presidents and presidential candidates named Kennedy.”
This is a dark moment, but dark moments pass. Right around eight years ago, we were on the eve of another Republican National Convention in a Rust Belt city that was nominating Donald Trump, when a horrific, racially motivated terrorist attack struck in the heart of Dallas. The pieces appeared to be falling into place for some horrific violence at the RNC gathering . . . and yet, the Cleveland convention in 2016 came and went without incident.
It may feel like our political rhetoric has never been so heated — that’s debatable — but within living memory, we’ve had periods of much more widespread political violence. Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence is the most complete history of the political violence perpetrated by groups such as the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army, FALN, and the Black Liberation Army. Early on, Burrough quotes retired FBI agent Max Noel:
People have completely forgotten that in 1972, we had over 1900 domestic bombings in the United States. People don’t want to listen to that. They can’t believe it. One bombing now and everyone gets excited. In 1972? It was every day. Buildings getting bombed, policemen getting killed. It was commonplace.
This, too, shall pass.
*I am continuing my policy of not naming mass shooters and would-be assassins, lest they gain any glory or fame for their heinous deeds.
ADDENDUM: It’s a second-tier story at the moment, but the effort to oust Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee is sputtering out. There’s little sign Democrats have the stomach for a delegate fight in Chicago, there are some unusual indications that Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t interested in replacing Biden before November, and some Democratic sources are openly declaring surrender.
“The presidential contest ended last night,” said a veteran Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment of his own party’s standing less than four months before the election.
“Now it’s time to focus on keeping the Senate and trying to pick up the House,” he said. “The only positive thing to come out of last night for Democrats is we are no longer talking about Joe Biden’s age today.”
The second senior House Democrat offered one reason for why it might: “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”