If you come at the King…

Malice or incompetence? Does it matter?

I wasn’t going to write about it.

What do I know?  I’m not a sharpshooter or a former Secret Service agent or in possession of any knowledge that would make me an expert security detail.  A few things occurred to me at that point: 1) neither are most of the talking heads weighing in on matters over the last few days, 2) experts have a terrible track record over the last decade or so, and 3) you don’t have to be an expert to have watched the coverage and felt certain things to have been…”off.” 

Before we get into my observations, I want to make one of my biases clear, I’m not a conspiracy guy.  I’m not saying they don’t happen or that the government would never do such a thing.  History is full of examples of government abuse including those investigated by the Church Committee, the Iran-Contra affair, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and Watergate to name just a few.  However, I tend to take Hanlon’s Razor as my starting point when things go wrong:  "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."  It might be a conspiracy, but I’m going to need proof.  Until then I’m on the side of incompetence…and there’s no shortage of incompetence in the events surrounding the assassination attempt.  “The assassination attempt.”  Let’s start there…

The Press is Terrible

Ok, I’m painting with a broad brush here.  I’m sure there are good reporters, and some media is obviously better than others, but the coverage was awful.  As I sat and watched the coverage on tv I realized that it was going to go on for hours even if no additional information became available.  This is not a surprise.  However, multiple news reports displayed banner headlines like the one below indicating that the “shooting” was being investigated as an assassination attempt.  As opposed to what?  A gun cleaning accident? 

Even a day later some of the headlines were contemptable.  Here’s one from the New York Times:

“[H]e said he was shot in his ear!?!”  Even now this headline leaves me somewhat speechless.  The gunman and at least one innocent bystander were killed.  Where does the NYTs think the red stuff on his face and ear came from?

There were a couple of examples of good journalism including a BBC interview with an eyewitness but overall, the press was awful bordering on incompetent.

How did the shooter get that close?

I’ll say it again, I’m not an expert, but even I thought there was no way someone should have gotten that close to the president with a gun.  Anyone who’s played a first-person shooter video game would look at the picture below and think, “ya that’s where I’d put the sniper.”  So, what happened?  One former Secret Service agent stated that the roof from where the gunman fired was in a “secondary ring” patrolled by local and state police officers.  That strikes me as passing the buck.  It is starting to become apparent that civilians at the rally, like the one interviewed by the BBC above, attempted to warn the authorities that someone was on the roof with a gun well before the shooting started.  Why was he still able to get shots off and why wasn’t Trump pulled off stage before the shooting started?  Local police may have screwed up, but the Secret Service is ultimately responsible for former president Trump’s protection and so they ultimately are to blame.  Will anyone lose their job?  Time will tell.

There seemed to be lot of female agents

Ok, I may take some heat for this one so let me get this out of the way first:  I do not think there’s any reason why women can’t be Secret Service agents.  That said, my initial thought while watching the video was “if your job is to take a bullet for Trump, shouldn’t you be bigger than he is?  The female agent on the right doesn’t seem to present a big enough target.”

I don’t know about you, but if I had a protection detail, I’d want them all to be bigger and taller than I am. 

A little while later, when Trump was being stuffed in a car I thought “wow, he has quite a few female Secret Service agents.”  Again, there’s nothing wrong with this and I’m not questioning the training, dedication, or courage of any of the agents, but it did make me wonder if there was a height requirement.  As far as I can tell there isn’t.   However, there are physical fitness requirements and not surprisingly, the standards for women are lower than those for men.  The Secret Service fitness test involves push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, and a 1.5 mile run.  I’m a runner so let’s take a look at that:

A 20–29-year-old female agent must be able to run as fast as a male agent in his 50s.  Once upon a time I would have thought “of course the standards are lower.  If they weren’t not enough women would qualify” and I wouldn’t have given it any more though.  Lately I’m beginning to see things differently.  If a standard is important shouldn’t everyone have to meet it?  If it’s not important, why have one at all? 

This observation had nothing to do with anything that went wrong and consequently we needn’t decide between “malice” and “incompetence.”  However, it does make one thing clear, the Secret Service, likely under the auspices of DEI, has seen its purpose corrupted from protecting current and former presidents to protecting current and former presidents WHILE “maintaining a diverse and inclusive workplace.”  This is a concern since as we all know, “no one can serve two masters.”  One will be prioritized over the other and as the April 2021 Special Agent Training Class was the first in which women trainees outnumbered the men, I think we know which of the two goals has been prioritized.  There should be no discrimination in the Secret Service, however the standards must be the same for everyone.

The conspiracy theorists are going to be out in force tomorrow”

Yes, this was a no brainer.  Among the conspiracies are:

• Jews try to assassinate Trump

• The Left/Deep State is responsible

• The Shooting was a false flag

• The Shooting was staged

I’m sure I’ve missed a few but they’re not hard to find so feel free to google them yourselves if you’re interested.

I did miss one important reaction which, given the topics I’ve written about in the past, surprises me.  I did not expect the level of vitriol from many on the left directed at the would-be assassin for missing Trump.  Given the left’s response to the Oct 7^th Hamas attacks on Israel I really should have seen that one coming.

Many who made the potentially career ending statements on twitter quickly took the posts down.  Some weren’t quick enough though.  Democratic Rep. Steven Woodrow from Denver tweeted: “The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are” which received close to 2 million views before he managed to delete his social media account.

The deplorable behavior made its way to Canada as well.  Here’s one from my up neck of the woods:

Dr. Pinder has deleted her account as well however it may be too late as papers across the country have picked up the story and the University of British Columbia, where she works, has stated it is looking into it. 

Conclusion

A lot had to go wrong for the shooter to get eight shots off at the former president but I’m still of the opinion that incompetence is the likely explanation.  That said, it’s only been two days and as the saying goes, “we don’t know what we don’t know.”  More information will likely come out as the days pass.  I do have one more concern though.  I have seen several comments along the lines of “if you come for the king, you better not miss” and “they took their shot.  Lawfare didn’t work and trying to kill him didn’t either.”  These comments are indicative of a belief that Trump is indestructible.  He’s not, and whether you believe it was a directed attack or just a random nut, there are still 3 and a half months to go and there’s no shortage of nuts out there.  Buckle up, I fear the ride isn’t over yet