A gunman apparently tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania today. Responses from the right came quickly. Noted without comment.
168 thoughts on “Trump escapes assassination and the right wing knows who to blame”
Comments are closed.
Biden needs to come right out and own this as a public event.
This is exactly why our gun laws need to be massively reformed.
Let's hear Republicans defend that guy's right to shoot whoever he wants to.
Totally agree with this. Biden has one move: come out for real gun control.
Biden needs to come right out and own this as a public event.This is exactly why our gun laws need to be massively reformed.
Horrible advice. Like it or not Trump is widely beloved by millions of Americans. Calls for gun control on the part of Biden would be widely condemned.
In general I think accusations of "politicization" of mass shootings are off the mark: politics is how we effect change in a democracy. If we don't call for sane gun laws when shootings happen, when, exactly, are we supposed to call for them?
But this really is different. Biden should act like a dignified unifier*. And so far he's doing that.
*And then he should brace himself as Trump's polling lead widens further.
He's already pledged to bring back the assualt weapon ban.
Key words. “I think.” “Polling lead.”
I’m a lifelong, full time Democrat Labor political hack.
Polling is broken, done and useless.
528 PREDICTED that 2022 was going to be the biggest GOP Congressional win in a century. The REALITY is that the GQP ended up with the worst midterm results either out of office party had experienced in near 80 years.
EVERY self defined political pundit “expert” pontificating endlessly on our cable news shows pretends that reality never happened. The multi gazillion dollar polling industry goes on pretending this never happened and they now use opt in online polling to stretch their data pools which makes their aggregates absolutely useless. But this is a media that actually believes that baseball nerd Nate Silver, who has never spent one day getting out the vote for one candidate is a “political expert.” The reality is that he got hyped up by the DC media in 2007 by pushing data that said Obama (who he SUPPORTED) could beat Hillary, which was the desired dream of the Clinton hating DC press corp. His numbers have been wrong endlessly since but once someone in our press corp defines themselves as a “political expert” that is just that!
You missed his sarcastic announcement when he referred to "thoughts and prayers".
Joe Biden seems pretty quick to me.
that's one reason i think biden could get something like his own rally round the flag effect from this. if he handles the aftermath of the attempted assassination of his predecessor & continuing opponent with his typical empathy & professionalism, that might quiet some of the "he's an abject invalid who needs to be as far from the oval as possible" catastrophizing that has been commonplace in gop & centrist dem circles since the debate, & even on this very blog, which demanded biden retire from thr presidency.
I think that peppering in a lot of "I can only imagine how terrified poor Donald was" and "I am deeply grateful that the secret service were able to protect poor vulnerable Donald" sorts of statements would be a nice touch, too.
yup.
put butter on a burn.
Biden and pretty much every Democrat condemned this violence as they should.
If the shoe was on the other foot, I wouldn't be sure about every Republican
Oh, you can be sure. We all saw their disgusting responses to the Paul Pelosi attack.
When they go low we go high.
High and dry. Don't get me wrong, you lie down with the dogs and wake up with fleas but you can't practice unilateral disbarment, you use PR professionals to craft just right responses to what happened.
exactly.
you've always been a voice of reason I these comments, especially in contrast to jasper, whose beijing residency, rather than give him a clearer view of things has mostly detached him from them.
but you can't practice unilateral disbarment
I'm not advocating unilateral disarmament. I'm not advocating taking the high road (or low road).
I'm observing that, for better or worse, that's what Democrats tend to do.
Yeah and in a bunch of historical instances it's been a very bad strategy. Bush vs. Gore comes to mind as does the team handling John Kerry's run for President and Hillary Clinton's strategy in the creepy debates with Trump. I swear she might have scored a ton of goodwill with women voters if she had turned around the stalking Trump and gave him a cold steely gaze of death.
Paranoiacs will be paranoid. If I were as paranoid as they, I would say it was staged, because it’s AWFULLY convenient for the Felon.
But no. It’s guns and violence. Republican staples. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap” MFs.
people are saying this hands trump the election.
i don't recall anyone saying January 6th handed biden a reelect cakewalk. & i distinctly remember republicans saying the paul pelosi assault was a lovers quarrel, including both trump & musk in that coterie of yuksters.
If January 6th had somehow taken place five months before the election instead of four years, I think it's fair to say it would go a long way toward handing the election to Biden.
This shooting by itself won't win the election for Trump. But it strengthens his hand, which was already pretty goddamn strong. And it strengthens the hand of the extremists on the right who want to abandon democracy and plunge headlong into rule by force.
Trump's election is now more likely, and the likely consequences of a Trump restoration are now worse.
This doesn't guarantee Trump the election any more than Squeaky Fromme guaranteed Gerald Ford's re-election.
Trump’s whole shtick is “tough guy” and he really played the part today. That picture of him defiantly shaking his fist with blood on his face and the American flag in the background is going to work well for his campaign and during the Republican convention. But I suppose it will be mostly forgotten by September.
I don't know about that--I saw a terrified and bloody old man being hustled out of danger.
That's what I saw, and that's how I'll keep talking about it.
yup.
the angles i saw before he started pumping his fist like a jersey guido in the club, his maga hat knocked of, the agents struggling to remove his lifted shoes from his slumping body, his face looked older than biden ever has.
also, great view of trump's chrome dome as he approached his suv.
That picture is already everywhere. They even have t-shirts. Interviews with the photographer. Republican shills raving about it. MSM commenters raving about it. It will, I’m sure, be featured at the Republican convention. If you think your comments will hold sway over all that, well, forgive me if I have my doubts.
Not with that photo being all over the place every day until the election, including on MAGA tee shirts and everywhere else.
Who else on earth when their face and hand are full of blood and experiencing instant pain would instantly think of posing for a photo op?
It's like his mug shot pose - which is exactly the same one as on "his" previous book jacket.
the constructed glamour piece.
(as articulated in 2001's fargo rock city.)
more like the queen lyric.
blood on his face... big disgrace.
yup.
there was no rally around the flag moment when he almost died from the 'vid. & that was mere weeks before the election.
he also did that macho man tough guy fist raise before & after his hospitalization, much as he did while his praetorian guard were trying to get him off the stage.
I'm less concerned about how this impacts Trump's poll numbers than how this impacts Trump. Due was a vindictive, paranoid, and delusional weirdo before; now that somebody very nearly killed him, who knows how the asshole is going to react to it?
Normal people get PTSD from being shot at; what will change about Trump?
& even though the altright media & assorted gop thought leaders will persist in touting matthew crooks as an antifa supersoldier, trump having to know it was a registered republican who shot (at) him will just make him paranoid about not just his opposition but his own team.
2024 campaign os going to be like olivia colman in the favourite.
>>But it strengthens his hand<<
Maybe, but a sympathy effect could prompt a modest poll surge for Trump, And that would strengthen the hands of those on the Democratic side who seek to install a different ticket. I note as of today, Washington Post’s poll tracker has Trump ahead by at least two points in every single swing state except Wisconsin.
I note that as of today, we're a little less than four months out from the election. Who had an assassination attempt on their bingo card? Think nothing else will happen?
Polls today are nowcasts, not forecasts.
Smarter trolls, please.
Polls today are nowcasts, not forecasts.
Polls are indeed nowcasts. But analysis of what these nowcasts tell us about what is happening in real time—viewed through the prism of what past cycles suggest are plausible outcomes—can indeed tell us about the likely trajectory of the race. In 1980 Jimmy Carter had consistently bad numbers throughout the campaign. He went on to lose. In 2012 Obama held a modest lead over Romney. He survived the first debate and went on to victory. In 2020 Donald Trump trailed Joe Biden in most polls throughout the summer and fall. He went on to lose, And so on.
Less poll truther commenters, please.
Romney had slight leads over Obama in a number of polls in October 2012. Don’t think that wasn’t worrying Democrats.
In 1980 Jimmy Carter had consistently bad numbers throughout the campaign. He went on to lose..
That's not true. Carter's numbers bounced around quite a bit. He started very low in the summer and early fall of '79, managed to catch up to Ted Kennedy even before the hostage crisis, soared when the hostage crisis and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan took place, went back down as those crisies continued and Kennedy continued his campaign, cratered over the summer after the failed rescue attempt of the hostages, the economy going into recession, managed to come back even after a divisive Democratic National Convention that year and was even (and in some polls ahead) in the fall campaign until after the debate with Reagan and in the final week of the campaign.
Carter's advisers and campaign people will tell you they knew they lost in the final weekend before the 1980 election, which happened to be the anniversary of the hostage crisis. All the networks played that up and if you were an undecided voter, well, it's not surprising they all went to Reagan and decisively so.
Hey, you forgot to say….”in your Opinion.”
J6 was 2 months after biden was elected
thank you, sean trende for demonstrating you are starting to understand the linear passage of time.
have any outback steakhouse lately, or still too bideninflated menu for you?
they have a point; if trump's coup attempt had been successful no one would be calling him an authoritarian
Not one mention of the idiocy of concealed weapons and the Dooshbag Supremes who over turn every gun law imaginable. A free for all and the logical consequence's of their idiocy.
Trump Republicans and their online supporters have been condemning Biden and Democrats in general, along with teachers, journalists, academics, and a range of other public figures from Anthony Fauci to Alvin Bragg, as radical Marxists intent on destroying American values by replacing real Americans with illegal invaders.
But of course they mock the very idea of "stochastic terrorism" as liberal gibberish.
Is this standard hypocrisy or conscious "sauce for the goose" re incitement? Or a little of both?
not sure how to answer since i can't say if you're mocking the gop stochastics or kenalovell.
I think it’s awesome. But you all have to be properly somber and serious. Biden has to say what he said. I’m having a party to celebrate. Cheers!
The US government has, for many years now, assassinated all manner of terrorists and foreign leaders. Trump assassinated that Iranian general. Police kill suspected criminals. So… stuff happens. I hope he shit his pants and his cult riots in protest.
Ridiculous, grow up. Celebrating when an American politician nearly gets murdered. And BTW, others did get murdered.
Your statement captures pretty well the state of our toxic politics. I can imagine similar statements to yours from the MAGA right if it had been Biden on that stage.
You’re just afraid now. I understand. This is the world you live in. Hamas terrorist kill 1000 and Israelis respond by killing 50,000 and counting. Russians kill thousands of people in Ukraine. They bomb a children’s hospital. People fall out of windows. Planes explode mid air. Heck, they shoot down civilian aircraft. Saudi dissidents are hacked to pieces. Our allies.
Toxic American politics are no different. Not anymore.
They tell you to grow up because you clearly revel in chaos, like a child or a disaffected teenager.
But tell us more about your enlightening eye for an eye policy celebrations. I'm sure it takes a lot of vision and farsightedness to espouse.
Justin is a total fucking monster. Just ignore his nihilistic trolling ass.
1000%
And I sincerely believe that Trump is a Putinist traitor who would end NATO and destroy our Democracy.
But, applauding a deranged wannabe assassin is absolutely deranged and disgusting.
What’s awesome about it? Even by your cynical, crass and sick mindset, the attempt obviously was not successful. Maybe in the karmic sense, Trump indeed deserved to go, but the innocent bystander who was murdered, certainly did not. And now, in addition to enjoying a poll surge, the Trump campaign has an indelible new image they will use from now until November: the chieftain hero triumphantly walking away with blood on his face, fist raised in triumph. The assassin probably accomplished the very opposite of what he set out to do.
what if i told you the alleged shooter was a 20 year old registered republican?
The small ActBlue donation in 2021 complicates things.
ActBlue handles donations for every Dem candidate, even crappy ones.
does it?
that's the kind of bipartisanship the lamestream media thinks is missing in this country.
the shooter is basically kyrsten sinema or joe manchin, or maybe even james lankford or lisa murkowski, not some extremist like alexandria ocasio-cortez or marjorie taylor-greene.
None of the people you mentioned would assassinate a political opponent. So, the guy is not REALLY "basically" them.
& that turned out wrong.
sane name, different guy.
what if i told you the alleged shooter was a 20 year old registered republican?
I'm aware of this report. Because conspiracy theories almost never pan out, I'm not buying the implication that he was trying to help the Trump campaign, if that's your take.
i think it's probably more a charles guiteau situation.
rejected by project 2025 after he submitted his cv for review for an entrylevel opening.
Interesting reference.
I'm sort of shocked it hasn't come up in all the mega coverage of this, it does seem like it might be a good analog and cautionary tale about politicizing the Civil Service.
Is "rejected by project 2025" documented or a speculation.
correction to my post about justin: you do not in fact have to hand it to him.
though he cooked here.
Eh, price of freedom and all that.
the tree of liberty got a light sprinkling at least.
Hey, wingnuts!
Who knew secret government, Deep State assassins were this inept?
You have to catch up to the developing narrative. Biden or Democratic operatives cut Trump's security budget which set this all up. There was not enough secret service to monitor that roof. And so on.
or, trump did his own version of dei in picking his secret service assignees, selecting them for loyalty to him, not competence in doing their job.
George Carlin was right. The fundamental problem with our politics is that the median IQ is 100, which is pretty dang dumb, and HALF the population is dumber than that.
Another way I like to look at this was pointed out by my old friend, the indomitable Daily Howler, Bob Somerby, when he highlighted a poll that showed that over 60% of Americans believed in angels. Actual angels.
Oh Jeeze. And we wonder why we can’t have a logical or peaceful political Conversation in this Nation and why our political press remains so stupid.
Also, they hire girls now because of DEI.
the two women secret service agents who were among the five or six total who were trying to escort trump off the stage were hot. definitely would, even knowing they have trump induced stockholm syndrome at best, but are likely fullon maga, actually.
Not inept at all. The shooter had the yardage nailed, but apparently got the windage very slightly wrong.
Of course the shit head billionaire Elon Musk doesn’t even know how apostrophes work.
Well, I’m not so sure you’re correct on that. He would certainlybe wrong if he was trying to pluralize an object, but he pluralized a person. And in that case, what is the correct grammatical preference? I don’t know. But it seems wrong to add letters to a person’s name to achieve the effect. And also, if so, do you add just one s, or an ‘es’ as well? “The Reid Hoffmanes of this world…” I suppose in this case I would not add the ‘es’ but what if the name ended in the letter ‘x’ instead? Then what?
reids hoffman.
The winner!
apostrophes are basically never used to show any kind of plural. They show possession or contraction.
There are plenty of rules for how adding letters to show plurals work, and a word like "Hoffman" doesn't get any more complicated simply because it's a proper name. Example:
"Elon Musk is one of the world's annoying dicks, and I say that with apologies to all the Dicks out there."
First thought: Somebody's been listening to Mark Robinson.
But that was churlish. So as a second thought I'll go with this: Outrage when the Dear Leader is shot at and nicked, but no more than thoughts and prayers and a few tut-tuts when classrooms full of kids and courtyards full of concert-goers are mowed down. Outrage, price of freedom, how *does* one decide?
+1
+1, too
feb 15, 2018
WASHINGTON (WJLA) - The day after one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, President Donald Trump tweeted about how there were "many signs" the suspect was "mentally disturbed."
Nikolas Cruz, 19, was charged with multiple counts of premeditated murder in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead and multiple others injured. Cruz was a student at the school until he was expelled.
"So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior," Trump said in his tweet. "Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!"
Trump tweeted out his condolences to the victims and their families the day before.
The Associated Press said Cruz is an orphan whose mother died in November. The AP reported Cruz was staying with a family friend, whose lawyer says they knew that Cruz owned an AR-15.
https://wwmt.com/news/nation-world/trump-says-florida-shooter-showed-many-signs-he-was-mentally-disturbed
November 22, 2016
Why Won’t Donald Trump Denounce Sandy Hook Deniers?
Last December, as a guest on Jones’s radio show, Trump told his host, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-wont-donald-trump-denounce-sandy-hook-deniers
they always say every accusation is a confession.
is this event the trump campaign doing an actual false flag?
No.
Nobody is a good enough shot to entrust him to miss by an inch.
Trump, in 2016:
"If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know."
I wonder if he still thinks shooting people is funny?
Of course he does. Trump is cut from the same cloth as Justin above. Those asshats always find gun violence to be hilarious, unless it specifically happens to them, because the rest of us are all just Non Player Characters in the video game that is Their Life. So Trump and that troll Justin will continue to call for more violence and yuck it up when it happens.
Opportunistic cretins, all of them. If it comes out tomorrow that the gunman was a lone nutcase, not one of them will issue a mea culpa - they probably won't even delete the tweets, and will no doubt still nurse conspiracy theories about it.
The sniper caught his ear. Trump survived by a matter of inches.
Such fascinating timing with Trump bringing up the subject a few weeks ago of a Manchurian Candidate. Trump's already said he'd like to be a dictator 'for a day', and now we have a sniper who missed by inches and an upcoming convention.
In a dramatic thriller, I believe this is called foreshadowing.
I might even go so far to say as it was a matter of centimeters.
aren't those cheeseeating surrendermonkey units?
why bring them up in america?
Oh, sometimes those units are ok. For example, 5.56mm …
Nah, looks like they hit the bullet proof glass and it was the glass that struck Trump.
Huh. I didn't see the safety glass; all I saw were two teleprompters.
They're generally made of safety glass or plastic.
Even so, the teleprompters looked completely intact after the shots were fired.
There is an amazing photo in the Times that actually shows a bullet a foot or so behind Trump. It was total serendipity and the result of the photographer using a macho camera at 30 frames per second auto and 1/8000 exposure time. There is a bullet in the picture.
It looks too low to have been the one that nicked Trump's ear, but the shooter did get eight shots off, and he was using an AR15 which can shoot over 100 rounds/minute with trigger pulls. That first bullet was probably the announcement; it travels five times the speed of sound so a second shot was certainly in the air at the same time as the one photographes was passing by.
I was surprised not to see any safety glass in the wide pictures either.
He said he'd be a dictator on day one. So that was to be the starting date of his dictatorship, but he didn't mention the ending day. He's already tried once to remain in power despite an electoral loss. Do we think he'd ever give up dictatorial powers?
Condolences and commiseration. Trump will have a swashbuckling scar, though, that he will make billions off.
People tell me t-shirts already being sold.
Yes they are. Twitter has seveal postings of differnt t-shirts of the photo of Trump fist pumping.
They're quite good at this.
J.D. Vance:
"The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
So, now, unlike January 6, rhetoric led to violence. Good to know.
Now now, everybody knows that only words from Democrats can have that effect . . .
murc's law.
Poor Murc.
ashli babbitt is dead because of trump and JD is fine with that
it did upset him a little bit more, at least, than heather heyer dying.
The out patients are out in force
I prefer presidents who were not shot at.
john mccain got no sympathy from trump
gerald ford is both the worst & the goat.
bbc:
A man with a rifle was seen on a rooftop minutes before shots were fired at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania, a witness has told the BBC.
Greg Smith said the man had crawled on top of a building just outside the event in Butler County on Friday evening.
He said he pointed the gunman out to police.
"I'm thinking to myself 'Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage'... the next thing you know, five shots ring out."
Mr Smith was listening from outside the rally and said he saw the gunman around five minutes into Trump's speech.
"We noticed the guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away," he said. "He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle.
"We're pointing at him, the police are down there running around on the ground, we're like 'Hey man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle'... and the police did not know what was going on."
Mr Smith said he tried to alert the authorities for three to four minutes, but thought they probably could not see the gunman because of the slope of the roof.
"Why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here?" he asked. "This is not a big place. "[It's a] security failure, 100% security failure."
He said he later saw the agents shoot the gunman: "They crawled up on the roof, they had their guns pointed at him, made sure he was dead. He was dead, and that was it - it was over."
because the secret service agents were rapt to trump's narrative of restoring american greatness.
I'm simply reminded of all the stories that came out about 6-7 years ago about general Secret Service ineptitude.
but mostly to the detriment of democrats protection. the cocaine 'n hooker orgies in colombia when secretary clinton was on an official visit. multiple breaches of the obama white house by armed men. aiding & abetting trump's election certification scheme.
speaking of, still waiting on the three secret service agents who told nbc's pete marshall they would testify underoath to the perfidy of lying husky cassidy hutchinson. where are they?
I heard this on the radio and this prompts somewhat skeptical questions from me:
1.) Why is there no video coverage of this? Why didn’t this guy film this on the cell phone to show the police?
2.) How could the gunman on the roof been neutralized so fast after the shooting? How did the secret service/police incapacitate this man on the roof so fast, especially if he was in a prone concealed position? Were they already up there on the roof investigating and were thus available to respond so fast?
So after reading more, secret service snipers on the roof of the building nearest to the stage (and directly behind it) neutralized the assassin, who was on top of the only other building in the vicinity, which was a bit farther away from the stage and also roughly 90 degrees stage-right to Trump as he stood.
The snipers responded fast by finding and neutralizing the assassin. It seems amazing they were able to locate him that fast.
But more disturbing is just how shockingly poor the security was to not have eyes on the rooftop of the *only other* building in the vicinity. There were trees nearby where an assassin could have much more reasonably had been concealed, but on a wide open relatively flat roof? That’s a huge lapse in security detail and warrants much more explanation.
I found this news on Al Jazeera. they posted the picture of this whole scenario. I did not confirm the picture elsewhere, so I can’t be positive, but I don’t have any reason to believe it’s false.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/7/14/donald-trump-rally-shooting-live-coverage?update=3046193
A white guy with an AR-15 managed to climb up on an unguarded roof without being stopped. Apparently both our gun laws and our law enforcement need a bit of fixing.
This was clearly not a sophisticated attack. Why didn't police react to a guy in camo with a long gun faster? Is it because that sort of thing has been so normalized in the US that people don't react to it until it's too late?
In some parts of the country (white) guys “in camo with a long gun” are everywhere. The cops would be doing nothing else but responding to them going into Walmarts or whatever, if people called 911 every time they saw one. You answered your own question with your second question: this behavior (by white men) been largely normalized in vast parts of the US, including most of western PA.
A guy in Camo with a rifle is NOT normal at ANY political rally. They have magneto screening and gun detectors at these events for a reason.
didn't attend may c. 2009-10 tea party rallies, i see.
Yes, magneto screening and gun detectors "protected" donnie at his "Eclipse" rally on 6Jan.
But he did try to have the screening stopped to permit his followers to keep their weapons before they broke through the double fencing & entered the closed Capitol.
martyr complex on steroids...
Violence is not the answer
I've heard that it was a 200 yard shot, two football fields, it may seem easy, but I assure that hitting the center of a small target, (a person' head), is damned difficult at at that distance,
I am a little bit with Justin on this...I wish he had been a better shot....the is very much like the Reichstag fire to me...convenient and very bad for the United States. Traveller
Let me further note that already within the evangelical community this is being touted as proof that Mr Trump is God's chosen. (I spit on the ground)
I'm not ashamed to say that "Reichstag fire" popped into my mind too. Suicide missions aren't easy to recruit for, but stranger things have happened. And could there be a more dramatic setup for Milwaukee, after all.
My first thought when I heard it: "Reichstag moment". And that was before I saw Trump's raised fist which will absolutely win him the election. Barring Michèle Obama's nomination I see nothing that can stop the slide now. This is so screwed.
It occurred to me that if this were a movie, the shooter would have been hired by Trump and the injury to his ear would have been faked for the sake of drama.
what's one dead maga in pennsylvania when trump's body count with the 'vid is 500,000 times that?
"I've heard that it was a 200 yard shot, two football fields, it may seem easy, but I assure that hitting the center of a small target, (a person' head), is damned difficult at at that distance,"
Especially with an AR, which is designed for rapid fire more than accuracy.
Absolutely. The guy had the yardage nailed, because the top of the ear is at the vertical midpoint of the brain. Had he shot when Trump was turned to face the crowd the shot would have been deadly. As it was, he only mis-calculated the windage by a tiny amount.
We've already got Project 2024 fueling a long hard look at these people and their rhetoric. I dunno if this does anything to help them, seems to me it's already setting them off down the road to even more howling for blood, which is not a good look. If they could play it straight and shed crocodile tears without that, then they might make it play, but they don't know the meaning of restraint.
Do you mean Project 2025 or something else?
This is going to be the repulsives JFK moment and will grab t-rump a whole pile of deplorable votes.
In the short term this will
1. Mute criticism of Trump’s fascistic impulses
2. Excite Trumpers who might not have been inclined to GOTV
Three and a half months from now
1. Trump et al will have overplayed this and been themselves the ones to make their fascistic tendencies clear
2. Lazy Trumpers will revert to form
That said, Team Blue still has a lot of work to do
But more disturbing is just how shockingly poor the security was to not have eyes on the rooftop of the *only other* building in the vicinity. There were trees nearby where an assassin could have much more reasonably had been concealed, but on a wide open relatively flat roof? That’s a huge lapse in security detail and warrants much more explanation.
This to me is the key question, because knowing what the Secret Service usually does when it comes to security, to leave such a gaping hole like that to is downright disturbing
the goatse piece.
Absolutely. Whoever did site evaluation has a LOT of 'splainin' to do.
Go to the New York Times website and look at the photo of the rally site. The would-be assassin had a clear shot at the stage from behind. Even an amateur shooter with a gun as powerful as the AR-15 would be hard-pressed to miss and that was true in this case. Again for the Secret Service to leave that roof unguarded, I mean, I don't want top hear any crap about "lack of agents". It would have only taken one agent on top of the roof to prevent what happened yesterday. There was nobody there other than the shooter. It's incredible!
Not just that he was able to get onto the roof, but that he was able to find the one roof all around there that wasn't being monitored by Secret Service.
Looking at the NYT picture I find it puzzling that the other shots appear to have been directed into the crowd rather than in the vicinity of Trump. Could there have been 2 gunmen, one the guy that was killed and the real assassin hiding behind a grassy knoll not seen in the picture?
Ok, jk
The position was ca. 150 yards away, so not an easy shot. The anti-sniper fire was fast--rumor has it that the would be assassin was in their sights, but they were assessing the situation. He could have been local law enforcement or even a Trump supporter suppling his own protection--but that is purely speculation--I don't know what the Secret Service agents were thinking.
There's a lot we don't know.
the trump praetorian guard were thinking of their successful banboozlement of the lamestream media at the oct 2016 rally, when they hustled trump off the stage without explanation.
Pingback: A single unknown Democrat suggested the Trump attack was staged and has apologized – Kevin Drum
"On a daily basis, MSNBC tells its audience that Trump is a threat to democracy, an authoritarian in waiting, and a would-be dictator if no one stops him. What did they think would happen?"
Their audience would spread the word, enough people would vote Democrat, and democracy would be saved from the would-be dictator? That be my guess.
yup.
Like the debate, I doubt this is going to have much of an impact on the election. Peoples view are baked in and the election outcome will be the result of turnout- this is where abortion provides a real edge. On the shooting itself, as long as we keep selling assault weapons in the open market (and PA is particularly bad on gun control), disturbed people will be able to get hold of them and these types of incident will keep happening.