The three top stories of the week are the Crowdstrike failure that interrupted internet service to millions; the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump, and the ongoing Democratic coup against President Biden. You may recall that Crowdstrike was the source of the lie that Russians hacked the DNC files, so I have no sympathy for them. Apparently, there is little legal recourse for the victims of this outage, but I can imagine many institutions and businesses will be reconsidering continuing this service.
As for the attempted assassination, it bears a resemblance to the Crowdstrike outage in that it underscores the growing incompetence, lack of resilience, and poor preparation that marks so much of modern life here. Many have linked to a wonderful must-watch video of Ugandan kids reenacting the event. To me, the most amazing thing is that within 24 hours of the event, these kids in apparently a poor neighborhood in Africa, saw what happened, reenacted it with Trump as the hero, and then it was videoed, posted on Tik Tok, and seen around the world without filtering. The ability to instantly see, video, and transmit around the globe is amazing and underscores how rapidly the news business is changing. (It’s another reason why X, the largest free speech platform in the world, is so successful.)
As for the performance of the Secret Service, the number of shooters and the backstory about the attempted assassin itself, there are many questions that require further investigation and analysis. For one thing, there are reports that the Service was shorthanded because it had to assign its best agents to another event that day by Jill Biden in Pittsburgh. Was this a deliberate attempt to draw off agents? One commentator thinks it was suspiciously so.
Here’s… the White House press release that announced Jill Biden’s trip to Pittsburgh on the evening of Saturday, July 13th, to address the Italian Sons and Daughters of America dinner. Note the date is July 10th, and the time is 11:58 a.m. Pre-credentialed media had but two days to sign up to accompany her. Judging by the lack of pool reports, it appears she traveled without a press contingent. Her speech was brief and personal — relating more to her Italian heritage than stumping for votes. It was about 10 minutes in duration, and she spoke ever so briefly about Joe and his accomplishments — only three sentences [snip]
There’s no indication she stayed for the dinner. Probably she took some photos, gave her speech, and then left. Her total time on the ground was maybe an hour and a half. Why? Why such a short, apolitical trip, to that area at that time?
Why indeed.
The earliest public announcement I’ve seen of Former President Trump’s now infamous rally at the Butler Farm Show Grounds, roughly 40 miles from Pittsburgh, was the evening of July 3rd, ten days before the attempted assassination in the evening of July 13th.
Ten days is a reasonable amount of time for a presidential candidate to alert the public of his plans to address them in person. Trump’s campaign clearly was acting reasonably with their preparations for his appearance in Butler.
The Secret Service contingent that was assigned to the Butler event failed to properly secure the perimeter, allowed the shooter to surveil the area with a drone, approach the grounds with a range finder, rifle, and ladder, and mount the roof of a building which provided the clearest shot of Trump. Kimberly Cheatle, the head of the Secret Service, preposterously defended not covering the roof the shooter used because it was sloped and dangerous, but it was practically flat and the agency’s snipers shot him from a roof with a much greater slope. The administration’s refusal to date to answer legitimate inquiries adds to suspicion.
Conspiracy or Miscommunication and Conflicting Recollections?
And then there’s the question of whether this was a lone shooter or not. As usual the FBI, before a serious investigation, announced it was a lone assassin. (Compare to the JFK assassination where 50 years later 61 percent of Americans discount the single-bullet explanation and believe the killing was part of a conspiracy.) But without more, we have no reason to credit an agency that in recent years does not warrant it. The first account made it seem as though the Secret Service sniper shot Crooks immediately after he shot Trump, but then how to explain the murder of one spectator and the wounding of two others? Apparently, there were more shots than just Crooks and the sniper’s single shots.
Here’s a simulation which shows that Trump and David Dutch were hit in Crooks’ first three-shot volley and Corey Comperatore and James Copenhaver were struck by Crooks’ follow-up volley a few seconds later.
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