Trump just survided an assassination attempt
- Thread starter Phil C. McNasty
- Start date
have no faith or trust in the DOJ or FBI to investigate this attack on President Trump. We need an independent commission to conduct this investigation. These are my concerns: Where was the outer perimeter counter sniper observation posts? Why wasn’t there SS or local LE on or near that roof? Why wasn’t there direct comms from the outer security ring to the inner ring around the stage/podium/president? The president’s detail had several female agents within the inner ring. The purpose of a protective agent is to shield the principal and if necessary, physically lift and extract the principal in the event of a catastrophic event. Given the size of the female agents I saw around President Trump, they would be unable to appropriately shield him, and I question whether they would be in a position to physically lift him and remove him from the stage if necessary. Who was the Secret Service advance for this event and were considerations made concerning those outer buildings? Are the reports true that the Trump team has been requesting additional Secret Service staffing and been denied? These are just some of my concerns, but in in-depth investigations must be conducted by a non-bias investigative group that is not politically motivated, such as DOJ or the FBI.
Trump needs to immediately fire anyone in his inner circle still pushing for him to pick someone like Tim Scott or Doug Burgum as VP. Anyone giving that advice is trying to get Trump killed, or doesn’t care if he is killed. Only choice now is someone like Vance, Vivek, or someone even more repulsive to Trump’s enemies. He cannot pick anyone that his enemies would want to have in power.
No one knows.
No one even knows what the shooter being registered as a Republican actually means. (Anyone can register as anything and changing parties is pretty trivial in most states.)
People are going to wildly speculate for a while.
If I were a betting man, I would say his actual motives are going to be pretty incoherent, ideologically. Something fairly fringe and idiosyncratic.
We shall see.
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Oh. Congratulations on the bass.
150 yards on iron sights is decent shooting indeed.
As a kid with a Cooey single shot .22 with open iron sights I could hit a groundhog at 150 yards maybe only 1/3 times. At 100… 1/2. However, with an old M1 Garand with a peephole sight, I could hit a hubcap at 200 yards every time.
I am astonished that he would do all that planning and recon for that position and shot, and not used a scope. And from what little I can see of the rifle, it looks like a typical hunting rifle.
Complete speculation here but given this kid was an outcast and was bullied, maybe that gun was just from his grandpa or his dad‘s closet… He decided to end his life in a blaze of infamy. He would’ve had to know that once he got a shot off, that there is no way he would’ve escaped and likely shot by a sniper.
Again, pure speculation. So much of this info has been contradicted and superseded anyways
We’ll just have to wait another 50 years for the next WarrenCcommission report to be released.
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so what’s that work out to?
$10,000 for each of the two other wounded.
$25,000 to bury the man that was killed.
leaving $1,955,000 for Trump
Here’s my reporting on why the Secret Service did not shoot until AFTER the shooter engaged and some context about the House Republicans’ investigation already underway (months before Trump’s assassination attempt) into whether the agency’s DEI policies are affecting its readiness. The blowback against the Secret Service started within the hour of the assassination attempt and continued even after Trump and other credited the agency with saving Trump’s life by quickly killing a shooter crawling across a nearby rooftop. But a source within the Secret Service community tells RealClearPolitics that the agency rules of engagement in this situation are to wait until the president is fired upon to return fire. “You want to take a shot then find out the guy was holding a telescope?” the source suggested. “The Secret Service is by nature reactive…and you better be right when you do react or you’re f-----d.” The Secret Service protocol requires that a counter sniper aware of a potential shooter to radio directly to intelligence division team to respond and investigate. In this case, the investigation may have been cut short by the shooter firing his weapon, so the counter sniper then fired as quickly as possible in return. The source praised the counter sniper who acquired the target and responded within three seconds, calling their performance “incredible.” “The counter snipers are highly trained and extremely accurate,” he said. Others with law enforcement and military backgrounds want to know whether the Secret Service utilized drones, i.e. small unmanned aircraft systems, to provide detailed situational awareness. If the agency did not use drones, why not, these experts ask. The use of drones has been a controversial issue within the agency since at least 2016. Implementing drones would have provided detailed line-of-site analysis and aerial surveillance that would have easily identified the rooftop as a potential threat area. “The USSS has access to all the best imagery and elevation data,” the military expert told RCP. “I’m not saying they didn’t [use drones], but it’s an open question.” The once vaunted Secret Service lost some of its former respect after a string of fence-jumping incidents and other security lapses came to light during the Obama administration. At the beginning of the Trump administration, a senior special agent in the Secret Service came under fire for suggesting in a Facebook post that she wouldn’t “take a bullet” for Trump. Kerry O’Grady, the former agent in question, was placed on administrative leave but was allowed to retire with full benefits, which outraged many in the Secret Service community. The agency, more recently, has come under scrutiny for its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, after a female agency attached to Vice President Kamala Harris’s protective detail and identified as Michelle Herczeg, had an apparent mental breakdown and physically attacked her senior officers at Joint Base Andrews before a trip. An agency spokesman called the issue a “medical incident,” but other members of the Secret Service launched a petition over the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion hiring and vetting policies during the Biden administration, asfirst reported by RCP. In addition, after the attempted assassination of Trump Saturday night, conservatives blasted Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, for earlier this year introducing a bill co-sponsored by several other Democrats that would have denied Service Service protection to Trump if he were convicted of a felony. The measure never gained traction in the GOP-controlled House. After the attempted assassination, which killed one innocent spectator and injured at least two others, Thompson tweeted that he is “glad that the former president is safe” and is “gratefully for law enforcement’s fast response.”
I am pretty sure there have been attempts on every President's life while they are in office.
I haven't heard about one killing Trump's bodyguard before, but it is possible.
What we know about the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump
wASHINGTON (AP) — The 20-year-old nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump was a registered Republican who packed explosives in the vehicle he drove to the campaign rally an hour from his home.
Law enforcement officials were working Sunday to learn more about Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, to determine what motivated him to open fire on the rally from a nearby rooftop, killing one spectator, before he was shot dead by the Secret Service.
The FBI said Sunday it has not yet identified any threatening writing or social media posts from Crooks, who graduated from high school two years ago and had no past criminal cases against him, according to public court records. The FBI believes he acted alone.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said on social media the upper part of his right ear was pierced in the shooting. Two spectators were critically injured, authorities said. The man killed was Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief from the area who Pennsylvania's governor says died a “hero” by diving onto his family to protect them.
Relatives of Crooks didn’t immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press. His father, Matthew Crooks, told CNN late Saturday that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but wouldn’t speak about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. In a video of the school’s graduation ceremony posted online, Crooks can be seen crossing the stage to receive his diploma, appearing slight of build and wearing glasses. The school district said it will cooperate fully with investigators. His senior year, Crooks was among several students given an award for math and science, according to a Tribune-Review story at the time.
Jason Kohler, who said he attended the same high school but did not share any classes with Crooks, said Crooks was bullied at school and sat alone at lunch time. Other students mocked him for the way he dressed, such as hunting outfits, Kohler said.
“He was bullied almost every day,” Kohler told reporters. “He was just a outcast, and you know how kids are nowadays.”
Crooks worked at a nursing home as a dietary aid, a job that generally involves food preparation. Marcie Grimm, the administrator of Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation, said in a statement she was “shocked and saddened to learn of his involvement.” Grimm added that Crooks had a clean background check when he was hired.
Crooks’ political leanings were not immediately clear. Records show Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.
Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger told AP on Sunday that Crooks had been previously unknown to investigators in his county and had not been on their radar. He said the investigation had so far not turned up any evidence that he had coordinated with anyone else in the region.
A blockade had been set up Sunday preventing traffic near Crooks’ house, which is in an enclave of modest brick houses in the hills outside blue-collar Pittsburgh and about an hour's drive from the site of the Trump rally. Police cars were stationed at an intersection near the house and officers were seen walking through the neighborhood.
Bomb-making materials were found inside Crooks' vehicle near the Trump rally and at his home, according to two officials who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A white Allegheny County Police truck identified as bomb squad pulled up to the home late Sunday morning.
Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene of the shooting, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Investigators believe the weapon was bought by the father at least six months ago, two law enforcement officials told AP.
One local police officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump, and that’s when Secret Service snipers shot him, said the officials, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
A video posted to social media and geolocated by AP shows Crooks wearing a gray t-shirt with a black American flag on the right arm lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held.
The roof where Crooks lay was less than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle.
Images of Crooks’ body reviewed by AP shows he appears to have been wearing a T-shirt from Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel with more than 11.6 million subscribers that regularly posts videos that show creator Matt Carriker firing off handguns and assault rifles at targets that include human mannequins and vehicles.
Carriker, who lives in Texas, did not respond to a phone message or email on Sunday, but posted a photo of Crooks' bloody corpse wearing his brand's T-shirt on social media with the comment “What the hell.”
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