Dakota Beacon

The story of the week - indeed of the summer - is not the Republican National Convention’s coronation of Donald Trump as its nominee once more for President, but rather the dramatic and shocking incident immediately preceding the Convention.  The following are my impressions as of the Tuesday following the event, so it’s still early, but that said, it’s not too early to ask some pertinent questions.

Late on Saturday afternoon I got a phone call from my sister to tell me that our cousin had just texted her that Trump had been shot.  He would have been accurately informed of the event because as a strong Trump supporter he would have been watching coverage of the rally in Butler, PA, where it happened.  At first all we knew was that Trump had been grazed by a bullet but was not seriously injured and others had been injured and one man killed by the would-be assassin.

As the details emerge we are seeing a deeply concerning sequence of events which points to a catastrophic failure in the protection of our presidential candidates.  Questions are flying around but answers seem evasive at best and completely implausible in the main.  A democratic republic cannot survive this way - we should all be disturbed by what happened last weekend in that rural area of Pennsylvania, and its implications.

As more is learned about this incident, more are questioning whether this could have happened under normal circumstances.  Were resources for Trump’s protection withheld?  A reasonable question, inasmuch as Biden directed his bureaucrats to outright deny any protection at all for a leading contender for the office, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been polling around 20% and has repeatedly asked for and petitioned for Secret Service protection.  It is even more pointed in that case because the 14-year-old Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,  was present in California when his own father, a presidential candidate, was assassinated and most famous of all assassinations, his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated while in office.  How Biden could in good conscience deny anyone protection, is impossible to imagine, except that Biden doesn’t really have consciousness in the true sense of the word, so I guess we’d have to put the blame for this denial directly on Jill.

So, in the series of events leading to the attempt to kill Donald Trump, there are some very weird anomalies.  The shooter, a 21-year-old man, eerily, like the (falsely accused) JFK “shooter”, Oswald, was a notoriously bad shot.  He supposedly was not accepted into his high school’s shooting team because of his poor marksmanship.  The weapon he chose for this occasion was an AR-15, not a sharpshooter’s weapon at all.  He was noticed at the event, beforehand, and was “being monitored”.  His photograph was actually being circulated among security personnel but they lost track of him when he hid inside a building.  Somehow this guy got a ladder up to the rooftop - a very gently sloping roof, barely sloping, in fact, and managed to crawl up on his belly to the best position to take aim.  A local police officer saw something amiss and followed up to this same rooftop, confronted the shooter and backed off when the rifle was trained on him.  Now here are some questions right off the bat:  1) why was this officer not getting back-up as he scaled the ladder to this rooftop and 2) why did he not have his own gun drawn, and 3) why didn’t he have someone get Trump off the stage?  Could he have gotten down and at least fired a shot in the air or something?  Could he perhaps have radioed to have Trump moved to safety?

The days prior to this rally provided ample opportunity for security services to assess the potential threats and sensitive areas which could pose special risks.  Obviously this rooftop would have been one, and was so identified in planning.  Counter-snipers were, in fact, positioned with a view of this particular rooftop.  Why were there no Secret Service snipers on that rooftop?  SS Director, Kimberly Cheatle, had the remarkable excuse that because the roof was sloped, it was deemed “too dangerous” for Secret Service personnel to be on.  What??  It was not too dangerous for a sniper to crawl up onto, not too dangerous for the law enforcement officer to follow him up there.  It was no more sloped than the rooftops where the SS counter-snipers were, in fact, across the way.  This simply does not wash.  (Nonetheless, Cheatle is not stepping down.)

Some people looking to get the SS off the hook for this have claimed that the Secret Service had requested more resources to protect Trump but were denied.  Well, I wouldn’t doubt that, inasmuch as Biden’s administration had denied any protection at all for Kennedy.  But why keep this under wraps?  If there was denial of resources, just make that public.  Lives are at stake.  One life was taken last Saturday - an innocent rally attendee.  Not to mention the risk to the leader of the opposition party or to independent candidates.  That excuse is also inadequate.

Members of the audience saw all of this happening in real time and were alarmed, screaming at security personnel that there was a shooter on the roof, pointing at him - minutes before the first shot was fired.  Here is another question:  Why, given that there was a loose suspect out there, and security were looking for him and he had presumably disappeared in the crowd, did the Secret Service not simply delay the opening of the event?  Why not make the crowd listen to a couple more rounds of Lee Greenwood?  It wouldn’t have hurt anyone that much.  They tend to sing along.  Meanwhile, Trump would have been out of danger until this shooter was located and taken into custody.  

This shooter was milling about in and around the rally crowd for a full 30 minutes before he took his first shot at Trump. He very nearly had a direct hit.  Had Trump not, at that very second, bent down and turned his head, this bullet would have changed history in a very tragic way.  There simply is no good excuse for this.  

Much has been made of the inept-looking behavior and demeanor of the two female Secret Service agents on stage with Trump - all five feet of them “protecting” the six-foot-plus Trump.  This was of minor consequence in view of the other even more serious lapses throughout this entire event.  

The shooter - the guy who couldn’t make the high school shooting team - was supposedly something of a loner.  No one can find any social media posts from this 21-year-old kid, his phone hasn’t been cracked as of this writing, there was no written “manifesto”, typical of many mass shooters.  So we don’t know much about him.  Oddly, he showed up in a Blackrock ad.  He registered as a Republican, presumably so that he could vote for someone else in the primary, although his parents reportedly had Trump yard signs in the past.   A footnote to the JFK story and the frail system of justice we rely on in America, a book by John D. Williams, Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson and the JFK Assassination (2019) provides detailed history and analysis.  We will likely have far less to go on with Thomas Matthew Crooks, the alleged would-be assassin in this case, now deceased.  

All of these weird discrepancies have led to speculation that this was more than it appears on the surface.  Was this an “inside job”, as many are asking?  Is this an impossible level of incompetence?   My own guess is that “someone” (who knows exactly who?) ordered the Secret Service to let things happen.  We know this to have been the case in the famous JFK assassination.  Local law enforcement was told to “stand down”, the local coroner was shoved aside and the body whisked - against Texas law - out of the state to a facility better equipped to “handle” the details, Bethesda Naval Hospital.  So this is not untrod ground, exactly.  It’s happened before - eerily.  Why wasn’t Trump hustled off stage when people were frantically pointing at the rooftop where the would-be assassin was taking aim?  Why, in fact, did the rally start on time when there was reason to believe that a killer was lurking among the crowd, armed and presumably stalking Trump as his prey?  Until we have the answers - reasonable answers - to these questions, it is entirely appropriate that we should be looking at this as highly suspect with regard to security and law enforcement.  

Trump wisely announced his Vice Presidential running mate immediately - J.D. Vance, not at all well-liked by the Left.  This is a sort of “insurance policy” against a next attempt.  I wouldn’t be too sanguine, however.  There is time for anything to happen.  It only took a half-hour, after all, in Butler, and about a quarter of an inch between Trump’s fist pump (by the way, a good instinct) and a national tragedy which would have been the final nail in the coffin of the Republic.  So it’s way too early to think we are safely home.  As for Kennedy, if I were him I think that I would decline Secret Service protection in view of the events of last weekend.  I have personally always thought that the kill shot to JFK came from the Secret Service - just an opinion, and not a popular one.  I thought it likely came from within his own limo.  Of course shots were fired from a number of places in Dealey Plaza that day (none, I think, from the School Book Depository, by the way), so it’s difficult to sort that one out, although Arlen Specter offered an incredible theory to the Warren Commission, which they swallowed whole.  People will try very hard to believe what they want to believe, or will promote and stand by the most absurd theories to attempt to force them on the rest of us if it suits their purpose.

In the end, much like the various other shooting incidents such as mass shootings, much of this has to do with setting the stage for it.  The Secret Service and local law enforcement had time and opportunity to secure this venue and even after the shooter was identified as a suspect, there was a solid half hour which lapsed in which to delay the event long enough to prevent the injuries and loss of life and the potential loss of a major political leader.  

Some even posed the absurd theory that the Trump campaign set the whole thing up as a publicity stunt.  Well, why not?  Why not arrange to have someone on a rooftop try to shoot you in the head to get attention?  You can answer that one yourself.  There is another one that suggests that the shot was just a threat to scare Trump into dropping out.  Well, that seems unlikely.  If it were, that gamble came to a miserable end with Trump’s fist pump.

General opinion seems to be that this incident has guaranteed Trump’s election in 2024.  That does seem odd to me.  No one in his right mind condones this kind of thing - normal people are shocked and disgusted by it.  At least anyone who values a free country.  Trump was already favored to win.  Biden just basically ruined himself first in a disastrous debate performance which, if I were Trump, I’d have been embarrassed to claim I’d “won”, just because it was impossible not to.  Biden went from that wreckage to a “Big Boy” interview with George Stephanopolis, which I am quite sure was a set-up that a trusting Biden stumbled into.  Then he careened into his press conference re NATO, in which he talked about his Vice President - Donald Trump - and introduced Ukrainian dictator Zelenskyy as “Putin”.  "Well . . .  anyway . . . . "  About all the Biden administration can do now to pull this one out is start a hot war and "unify Americans".   Let's hope they don't go there.

If Trump had not won the election last Saturday I would suggest to Biden (through Jill) that he hire a food taster and get some private security himself.  Every Democrat was on the spot to endorse Biden or try any way they could to push him out to make room for a really viable candidate.  But now it appears that Biden is the perfect candidate to lose this year.  

As for me, I do not decide to vote for anyone simply because someone shot at him.  He survived, which might be a sign.  But I am not particularly superstitious, either.  I will still evaluate the options in view of what I know of their likely behavior once in office.  In any case, this event has changed the picture dramatically.  Biden has faded into obscurity and Trump is surging back.  Many took great comfort in the sight of his TRUMP plane cruising to a halt in Milwaukee.  Trump knows how to make an entrance.   He’s back and ready to fight.  The year 2024 has already been full of surprises and will probably give us more.  

We do live in “interesting times” and we are watching history being made and to a great extent, shaping it. 

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