I watched the video and it’s unclear to me he was shot with a gun. Many news sites — including Fox News — are being very careful with their language given the uncertainty. I think this site ought to do the same.
See the Tweet below from the SS, also very careful with its language.Report
We don’t know at this point how many shots were fired by the shooter and how many were fired at the shooter. It seems like Secret Service spotted him right before the first shot.
The problem is that there are quite a few people out there arguing that this was entirely staged and, as such, Trump shouldn’t get a boost from it and using the “see, he wasn’t *SHOT*, it was GLASS from a teleprompter that got shot!” as evidence for it having been staged and so a lot of stuff got smooshed together.Report
An incident occurred the evening of July 13 at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. The Secret Service has implemented protective measures and the former President is safe. This is now an active Secret Service investigation and further information will be released when available.
Butler county district attorney Richard Goldinger tells me Trump was grazed by gunfire but is safe. An audience member was killed and the shooter is dead. Another person is in serious condition, the prosecutor said.
This guy claims to have seen the shooter before he fired.
IF THIS IS TRUE… man, the secret service are going to have a bad day during the “lessons learned” meeting.
this BBC interview with a guy outside the security perimeter who claims he saw the shooter before he fired is absolutely wild pic.twitter.com/vJpKZTxSAe
There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy. Although we don’t yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn’t seriously hurt, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.…
To be honest, with the proliferation of guns in the country over the last few decades, I’m kind of amazed it took this long for something like this to happen.Report
I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.
Fortunately however, the gun was not damaged and is in stable condition, expected to make a full recovery and continue to water the tree of liberty for years to come.Report
No. There has never been a point in history where violence doesn’t, ultimately, redound to the detriment of the marginalized and the minorities. It is the enemy of liberalism and the bane of the powerless and the comfort of the already comfortable who stroke their chins and dismiss the claims of the marginal because they supported violence. I hope it ultimately turns out that this was some right wing nutbag but if the shooter is in any way affiliated with anything related to the left the only response from us should be a blanket denunciation. That idiot. That indescribable idiot.Report
The worst outcome possible is if the shooter was from a marginalized community. I alreay had nightmares of people, using Fargo accents, worried about Project 2025 having a flippey they switchey moment and going “oh, that nice Mr. Trump, he was shot because he was about to spill the beans about Epstein and the elites.”Report
Haha, I don’t ever comment here, but I read the comments and my constant question for you is what are you willing to do to prevent the “fascist” from getting re-elected. You’re sticking to your principles, at least.Report
Once “the red pill metaphor took hold,” Reeve writes, “endless variations followed.” The most noxious of these is the “black pill,” “a dark but gleeful nihilism.” Those who succumb to the potent capsule believe that “the system is corrupt, and its collapse is inevitable. There is no hope.” The ideology of the black pill is that of the desperate and the disconsolate, such as mass shooters and “incels,” or involuntary celibates, who believe they are consigned to eternal loneliness by virtue of their intrinsic unlovability.
We saw this in 2016, when the dark corners of the internet were awash in the most horrific sort of boundary pushing, such as pictures of Hillary being pushed into an oven, violent Na.zi imagery and all of it pushed with a gleeful plausible deniability of absurdity, like that Sartre quote come to life.
This is what I mean by “fcuking around’, where Trumpism has gorged itself on a diet of iconoclasm, rule breaking and sneering at norms and conventions or civility, constantly pushing the envelope of violent rhetoric and cruelty.
So now they have found out, that hey guess what, once unleashed, that sort of thing tends to metastize and maybe not in the direction you were hoping for.
If they respond by sobering up and choosing to moderate the talk about dictatorship and concentration camps, well ok I will meet them halfway.
The former president has been inciting violence at his rallies for nine years now.
He’s a sheltered, privileged man who had never had to worry about violence being inflicted on him. It was always something that would happen to other people as he watched on, smiling and entertained.Report
Good to know that, since the Giffords shooting, Democrats have learned to tell the difference between metaphorical use of “bullseye” and a literal call to assassinate someone. There may be hope for you yet.Report
The idea is sound enough, that the right to free speech carries with it responsibility. The extension of it to nutcase violence was absurd though. There was actually a very good “study” of this topic on an episode of NewsRadio:
We’re responsible for what we contribute to the overall tone (the game is iterated), but can’t be held responsible for an unreasonable reaction to that tone.Report
FBI special agent in charge says they are not prepared to identify the suspect or the motive yet. Calls it an assassination attempt against former President Trump.
There’s a fun theory going around, that because Pennsylvania is a closed primary, that he must have registered Republican to screw up the primary vote.
Although that ‘Dem who wants to vote in Republican primary’ theory doesn’t really work, he appears to have voted exactly once, in the 2022 general election immediately after he registered, and never again. He’s never voted in a primary, despite the fact there actually was a primary where he could have voted against Trump 3 months ago!
Damn dude, you have no excuse, before you resort to political violence you need to at least vote against the guy, bare minimum.
But don’t worry about the Republicans, they’ve located what they think is a $15 political donation to ActBlue when he was 16 or something, that proving he is a liberal despite him registering as a Republican two years later. Assuming that actually is him, and how someone thinks politically at 16 reflects how they think at 20. (Note, it actually is very unclear whether that really is him or not.)Report
Heh. Very good point. I’ve been waiting for assassination attempt merch to start popping up on Twitter. T-shirts with the raised fist photo are already there.Report
I’m sure there will be more liberals talking about conservatives’ conspiracy theories than conservatives talking about conspiracy theories. It’s an easy way to restore the narrative.Report
Someone did the math and tried to figure out the caliber of the bullet based on it.
The distance was about 410ft. On the audio we hear the bullet impact 0.232s before the report is heard. Speed of sound in 80F air is about 1138ft/s. So if I'm not goofing up the math, that's: t = d/v v1 = 1138ft/s, v2 = unknown bullet speed t1=410/v1, t2=410/v2 t1 – t2 = 0.232s… pic.twitter.com/XpUUKg2G58
Neat, will be interesting to see how accurate it is. Hopefully some creative high school math teachers are already adapting this for a fall quiz.Report
They found the gun, and it was, indeed, a .223/5.56.Report
Okay. Now *THIS* is my current favorite conspiracy theory.
BREAKING: @BlackRock has removed any future airing of a company commercial featuring a Bethel Park PA football coach and econ teacher that included scenes of gunman Thomas Crooks in his class. Crooks was a high school student at the time. $BLK statement coming momentarily
If I told you that the Trump would-be assassin had Blackrock ties, would that sound crazy to you?Report
I’m referring to the social media thing. People pointing out that it’d odd a 20-year-old has zero social media presence isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a reasonable observation. It IS odd.
I saw the report on Blackrock. Him being in the video is a total nothingburger. Them taking down the video doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. If you had he had ties to Blackrock and meant it in any more than the odd video coincedence, I’d laugh.Report
Oh, for the social media thing, here’s the conspiracy theory.
“Of course he has social media. The government just cleaned it up.”
There. If the counter-argument is something like “is there any evidence that social media cleans up the personal sites of shooters?”, we can point to stuff like Youtube or whomever taking down videos.
I did not intend them as “scare quotes.” Every major headline I saw to that point avoided confirming it was a shooting/he was shot. CNN, NYTimes, Fox News… even the SS tweet linked here avoided it. The post here went right to naming it as such, which I thought was premature. And I explained as much in my follow up comment 33 minutes later.
But if you want to think I’m evil and/or stupid because I called attention to the choice of language amidst lots of uncertainty, by all means, be my guest.Report
The ActBlue donating Thomas Crook appears to be a 69 year old from PittsburghReport
Apparently the social-media-comber crew is going for this guy instead of the shooter (because the shooter hasn’t got much) and hoo boy, they’re finding a ton of fun stuff. This dude was real fond of being a piece of shit online.
I’m glad that in the moment he had the right instincts and the needed reflexes, but it just goes to show that physical courage and being a decent human being are not always related.Report
physical courage and being a decent human being are not always related
Eh, I’m not sure that someone who says the right things online but fails to protect his family should get eulogized with something like “physical cowardice and being a decent human being are not always related”.
There are a lot of ways to be a decent human. Lotta ways to fail at being one. Some are better than others.Report
Oh, there are! What I’m saying here is, let’s not go out of our way to make this guy over as some kind of secular saint. “We can all hope to react so well when it comes to such a moment,” and move on.Report
So when a Democrat is attacked, Republicans are to blame. Even when it turns out to be a random skel with schizoprhenia and there’s no evidence of politics being involved.
And when a Republican is attacked, Republicans are also to blame.
I know it’s a cliche to bring up Orwell, but he really did nail the Left to a tee.Report
You know, after Ulvalde, stuff like this just hits different.
AP: Local cop climbed a ladder to confront assassin. Assassin pointed a gun at him, he retreated. Assassin was able to fire off shots before being killed by Secret Service counter snipers pic.twitter.com/o4AtXfeReM
Everything I read about this makes it very clear how badly all law enforcement completely screwed up.
Like, I don’t want to get into the details here, but apparently some people there reported that there was someone on the roof with a rifle, and no one did anything,and the shooter climbed up a ladder that shouldn’t have been there, and, and, and….
Honestly, it it feels somewhat amazing how close we got to one of the most conspiratorial events in American history. Like, just one inch to the side, Trump dies, yeah there’s immediate political repercussions, they probably would have been very bad. But on top of that, the events that I’m hearing about would probably replace the JFK assassination as conspiracy central, because holy crap, some of this just sounds absurd.
You know, there are organizations that have an air of perfectionism, and suddenly things hit the fan and everything just makes it very clear that there isn’t any ‘there’ there, that it was all of invented mythos to start with. Most people have sort of noticed that about the IDF recently, and now we have pretty clear evidence of Secret Service really isn’t this amazingly competent organization either, and assassinations don’t happen mostly because people don’t try to do them, and when they do, they’re kind of stupid… Or, in this case, just missed.Report
oh hey, another one of those situations where a local cop thinks “maybe what the brave thin-blue-line hero ought to do here is put a couple walls between himself and that rifle”Report
What should the local cop have done that he didn’t? What did he do that he should not have done? Other than arranging back-up rather than acting solo, which probably would have delayed things to the point that any action would have been irrelevant. Once that decision was made, what were his reasonable options?Report
Yeah, I can think of few positions more disadvantaged than climbing a ladder, with your hands occupied by the ladder rungs, and your head just clearing the roofline where an active shooter is.
I think criticizing multiple police who seemingly couldn’t find any way at all into a school is one thing; I think criticizing a single policeman in that specific situation for thinking, “getting my head immediately and pointlessly blown off with near-100% certainty helps no one” is another. If he took a look and ideally confirmed there was just one guy up there and maybe got a look at the weapons and relayed that info to others so that effective response could be taken, he did all I’d expect anyone in his position to do.Report
A gunshot is a real good signal that someone with a gun and willingness to use it is nearby; and the Secret Service might have been interested to have that information before an ex-President got shot in the face.Report
My understanding is that many PDs have policies against firing warning shots (which I assume is what we’re talking about here – a shot with no “target”, intended strictly to be used as a signal) due to the danger that an errant bullet still may injure SOMEONE whenever/wherever it lands.
The idea being if you have a plausible shot at the suspect/perp you take it; but you don’t discharge your weapon willy-nilly otherwise. Ideally, a cop has to account for every bullet he fires.
The cop was on a ladder, hands presumably occupied with that ladder, and was reportedly seen when he cleared the roofline. It doesn’t sound to me like he had a shot at the perp.
So perhaps he should have been willing to stand there on the ladder and helplessly take a bullet to the face, and let THAT function as our “warning shot”, signaling the SS?
However, I’d argue that the cop serves more purpose if he scrambles down the ladder, gets on his radio, and reports things like, “How many shooters”, “what is their exact location”, “how are they armed”, and “are there hostages up there too?” so that appropriate tactics can be applied. “Recon” is a valid tactic.
I don’t think I’d expect a real person to do something that not even John McClane did. Even McClane knew when it was clearly time to retreat, provide valuable information to Al over the radio, and prepare the next attack.Report
He should have been willing to take a bullet to save a life.
We can’t reasonably expect a police officer not to want to go home at the end of his shift. Wait for the gunman to run out of bullets and *THEN* arrest him.
“I’m pretty sure that most people would agree that they should be willing to do that, as part of their jobs.
Is it reasonable to expect that.
No. It is not reasonable to expect that.”
So it’s not reasonable to expect cops to do their jobs?
Or people who agree that they should be willing to take a bullet to save a life as part of their jobs are wrong?Report
The question was what he could have done, not what he might, or might not, in a given situation, been willing to do. The cop is holding onto a ladder and is poking his head up. Can he draw his weapon there and get off a shot? Maybe in the comic books, but not in real life. By the time he could scramble onto the roof and get his gun out, the shooter would have gotten the shot off. If he announced his presence, the shooter could either get off the shot, then turn and kill the cop, or turn and kill the cop and get the shot off two seconds later. Neither of these courses of action was likely to do a damn bit of good, and the cop would have been dead for nothing.
Remember during the Iraq War all the bloggers who earned the nickname the 101st Fighting Keyboards? There’s a cop version of that, too, apparently.Report
The question was what he could have done, not what he might, or might not, in a given situation, been willing to do.
You’re using different words than I used.
Are you doing that deliberately or did you just not notice?Report
I’m using the words I used, or their close equivalents, since I asked the question. If you don’t want to answer the question and want to say something else, just say so.Report
rather amused to see someone whose whole job on this Earth is words claim that “could” and “should” are close enough to be considered identicalReport
As the philosophers will tell you, should implies can.Report
I already said what I said.
Thanks for telling me that you’re using different words than I am deliberately.Report
And thanks for telling everyone you didn’t want to answer the question.Report
I’m pretty sure that I answered in my 12:42 comment.
At the very least, I don’t understand how it is not an answer.Report
Ah, “Once that decision was made, what were his reasonable options?”
I see.
“Assuming he did what he did, what else could he have done?”
Fired a shot into the ground, I guess.
But if I assume that the situation starts when you want it to start than when I assumed that it started, you’re absolutely right.Report
“What should the local cop have done that he didn’t”
First thought was get out of the way and fire shots into the air.
Then radio contact.
I haven’t seen solid reporting yet on the time between the shooter allegedly pointing his gun at the cop, and then taking his shot at Trump. If it was as immediate as some reports suggest, then the cop wouldn’t have had time to fire… but then the cop probably disrupted the shot that was subsequently taken in haste. If he had time to scramble to safety and used his radio; well that was probably good training, but poor prudence.Report
So what? He retreats a bit to not challenge the gunman (I’m not even expecting heroics) … then he discharges his firearm to spoil the surprise and get the Secret Service moving.
I covered several timing issues that we don’t know as to whether he was thinking of doing that but didn’t have time… so maybe he would have. Don’t know.
But the idea — in an emergency — of at least ruining the ambush isn’t a bad use of your firearm.Report
Retreats to where? He’s on a ladder near the top of the building. Does he go half-way down, hold on with one hand, draw his gun with the other and fire? Does he drop to the ground and do it? Try either and see how long that takes.Report
“I haven’t seen solid reporting yet on the time between the shooter allegedly pointing his gun at the cop, and then taking his shot at Trump. If it was as immediate as some reports suggest, then the cop wouldn’t have had time to fire… but then the cop probably disrupted the shot that was subsequently taken in haste.”
If the cop’s, er, intervention, went as he described and the shooter did indeed point his weapon at the cop, then the timing feels REALLY important. If it was immediate, then that means the shooter was able to reposition himself, under duress, and get off a shot that missed his target by centimeters. That would make him either one HELL of a shot or thisclose to being incredibly “lucky.” If he was almost lucky, well, thank goodness he wasn’t ACTUALLY lucky. If he was that good of a shot, I’d be curious to know how he gained such skill at such a young age.Report
My skills are rusty now, but in my 20’s I could have made the shot, though I wouldn’t have used an AR-15. I’d have used something more suited to distance shooting and aimed lower, greatly improving the odds of a damaging hit.Report
Secret Service says local police were responsible for securing the shelters outside the security perimeter.
So, mistake #1 was not having those structures *inside* the primary security zone, leaving them to local police.
Mistake #2 is the local police not already having someone on top of those structures, if only to monitor happenings below if not to ensure no one climbed up.
It seems the horse was essentially out of the barn by the time the local cop climbed up somone else’s ladder to see what he saw.Report
Idle curiosity, and I haven’t seen it anywhere, which local police organization was responsible? Small town police department? Sheriff’s office? How many officers would they normally have available?Report
I have not either. Between state and county, no one in is in a rush to own it.
Hopefully the police officer had a body camera w working audio on. At least we’d know the timing from when he dropped from the roof and shots being fired. That’s assuming the FBI releases it before we are all dead.Report
Very likely true that the local cops screwed up as an organization. That left the individual cop on the ladder literally hanging with no good moves. Or at least none that work outside of comic books.Report
You can’t account for every elevated potential danger zone in a city.
This, however, is such an abysmal, avoidable security failure, I can’t believe the level of incompetence. They were in the middle of a field! There was one building within close range of the stage!
It’s hard to imagine a scenario that doesn’t end with the Secret Service leadership getting cleaned out. It was their show. They direct the local yokals. You don’t just leave it to them as if they were the NYPD and they have experience working these events.Report
That was my reaction. ‘Have people stationed on only somewhat tall building near event’ seems like the kind of thing the Secret Service could handle. I guess not.Report
“What should the local cop have done that he didn’t?”
Get shot.
Setting aside the exigent circumstances of “there’s a former President with nothing between him and this rooftop but a couple hundred yards of air”, the deal that we were told to accept was that we don’t carry our own guns and in return, the cops take a bullet if that’s what’s warranted. If you want to tell me that the cops are going to back off and look to their own safety before mine and that’s okay, then maybe that deal needs to be re-negotiated.Report
They would have heard shots, taken a few seconds to determine where the shooter was, in which time the shooter gets off a couple rounds.
Seriously, when a guy is in position with the rifle aimed and finger on the trigger, nothing short of a direct head shot is going to prevent that finger from curling. In fact, a sudden loud gunshot at close range might guarantee it.Report
Based on what I saw when Reagan got shot, the SS would have reacted immediately, blocking line of sight for the shooter and covering Trump’s body while moving him away from the area. Other SS not near Trump would be scanning for the shooter/shooting at him.
I don’t know if the shooter had a scope. I assume so, but it can be difficult if you shot at someone that’s behind you and then pivot around to reacquire you real target. I don’t that’s something easily done without a fair amount of training, depending upon how powerful the scope is.Report
” when a guy is in position with the rifle aimed and finger on the trigger, ”
(if the rifle wasn’t pointed at the ladder then the cop wouldn’t have got shot climbing it)Report
“Get shot.”
As General Patton said, the point is not to die for your country, it’s to make the other sonofabitch die for his country.Report
“the point is not to die for your country, it’s to make the other sonofabitch die for his country.”
Sounds great. I’ll be at the gun store tomorrow, making sure that when there’s trouble and a cop is standing outside the door thinking “well it’s not my job to die here” I have some options.Report
As I said elsewhere, this seems pretty different from Uvalde to me, based on what I believe to be the situation right now.
The outrage in Uvalde is that dozens of cops with dozens of weapons and SWAT-type protective gear and dozens of points of possible ingress to the building, waited outside and did jack for over an hour. Surely there was SOME way SOMEONE could have gotten in there and tried SOMETHING, right?
Here – and setting aside the larger massive obvious failure of not securing *the only roof in the vicinity* (!!!) – we appear to be talking about ONE cop, with a single point of ingress, likely unable to use his hands for his weapon (due to climbing a ladder) deciding that discretion is the better part of valor and living to fight another day.
As long as he then did his best to immediately raise the alarm and communicate valuable intel about the shooter, it seems to me he probably did what he could best do.
In Uvalde, I wouldn’t have a beef with ONE officer throwing open a school door or sticking their head into a window, getting a gun pointed at them, slamming the door/window again and yelling over the radio, “HE’S IN THERE!”. For all I know, some similar scenario DID happen, early on.
The beef I have is with ALL of them apparently then just deciding to wait it out, despite presumably-overwhelming force on their side, while hearing more and more victims being shot. THAT’S where Uvalde becomes outrageous to me.Report
I landed in moderation, probably due to originally using a mild no-no potty word that often follows the word “jack”. I took it out, can anyone clear me?
In an email Saturday at 7:34 pm that appeared to be addressed to sympathetic journalists, and which was also sent to Semafor, Mehlhorn wrote that one “possibility — which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally — is that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash. This is a classic Russian tactic, such as when Putin killed 300 civilians in 1999 and blamed it on terrorists to ride the backlash to winning power. Others who have embraced this tactic of committing raw evil and then benefitting from the backlash include Hamas on October 7. If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack, that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.”
The other possibility, Mehlhorn wrote, “is that some crazy anti-Trumper in this chaotic moment decided to assassinate the former President.”
Mehlhorn, who co-founded a fund called “Investing in US” with Hoffman, made clear his impulse was toward the false flag theory. “I know I am prone to bias on this, but this is a classic Putin play and given the facts seems more plausible. Look at the actual shot. Look at the staging. Look at how ready Trump is to rally; this pampered baby shit his pants when an eagle lunged at his food. Look at how quickly Trump protects himself at the expense of others, but showed few of those lifelong instincts in this moment. And consider how often Putin and his allies run this play.”
He continued: “I know it feels yucky to discuss such a possibility. But in this case, the odds are so high, and the stakes so consequential, we must as[k] the question.”
Mehlhorn wrote that he was disappointed that journalists were not already raising the possibility of a fake shooting. “Ask the question, people. If it proves wrong, we should respond appropriately to a non-staged act of political violence, as outlined above. But your credibility and our entire system of truth and justice depends on being certain of the answer.”
Funny, the first one I heard was you. Even now, some on the left seem to be afraid to acknowledge that it was a bullet, as if they’d be conceding something.Report
No, you said “‘shot'”. You later clarified that you meant something different from the conspiracy theorists. I, for one, didn’t assume you were being stupid though. I thought you were being evil.Report
I was being neither. “Prudent” is the word.
I was taking my lead from the SS and Fox News and others who were using careful language absent confirmed facts.Report
FWIW, I wasn’t exactly sure how to interpret your first comment, but scare quotes to me suggests not just “let’s wait and see” but actual skepticism. Sounds like that’s not what you meant by it though.Report
Other countries have memes too:
Some Chinese netizens joke that Trump's right ear being pierced makes him like Chinese panda Abao, who is missing part of his right ear after being bitten by another panda. pic.twitter.com/y3iBGKPh5X
I haven’t heard anybody talk about the attempted murder of Trump in real life. Even if you can’t stand the man, and people on this blog should know I can’t, you would think that the attempted murder of a former President, and nominee for the Republicans to be President, would be a big event that people would talk about like 9/11. That I haven’t even heard as a sort of background thing, “did you hear that somebody attempted to kill Trump” is weird in a rather bad way.Report
I got a text from a fairly non-political (though, granted, conservative) normie friend. He asked me if I thought that this just gave Trump another term.
I gave him a short essay about it being an inside job because the Republicans wanted to change the narrative away from the Democrats talking about Project 2025 but then, halfway through, conceded that Trump got some really, really good pictures from the rally that are likely to show up in campaign commercials and they’re likely to be better pictures than any pictures of Biden that show up.
Now that it’s a workday, see if anybody at work mentions it. Do they make jokes about how they’re sorry that the sniper missed or do they speculate that it was staged or do they lament that this might have been a news cycle that Trump might have won?
I will report what I experience today from a vaguely conservative city, I promise.Report
My interactions were all of the professional nature. Meetings with no BS, doctor’s visit, Chipotle, and Pharmacist. No one mentioned anything but what we were there for.
I did see my first Kennedy/Shanahan yard sign.
(I checked. Sadly, she’s neither Mike Shanahan nor Kyle Shanahan.)Report
Okay, not to get all ‘it was a piece of debris and not a bullet’ truther here, but have we actually had any reports of where Trump went and what sort of medical treatment he got? I don’t think we have, and that feels very odd. I get not knowing that well he was still being treated, but that’s well over now.
In fact, I’m not sure what sort of announcement was made, it really sort of seems like these events happened, we were assured he was fine, and then we saw him golfing? I admit I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to this, so maybe I missed something, or is just the campaign being very incompetent?
In actuality, it probably shouldn’t matter if he got hit by a bullet or if he got hit by debris thrown up by a bullet, the actual important thing is that someone tried to shoot him and got very close and probably entirely missed by bad aim. But I think that would not be true in reality, it would matter and I think everyone knows it.Report
Okay, I was being a little unclear there, my point was not that we don’t know where he went, because we do, it would be extremely weird if the media could not track down where a former president had gone.
My point is neither the hospital nor the campaign (or, I guess, the Secret Service?) has made any official statements about this. We actually don’t even know how we know what hospital he went to, it seems entirely possible that the local TV station that reported on this just checked which local hospitals had seriously heightened security.
I don’t think it’s actually too much to ask, after attempted assassination, that someone actually make statements about the treatment given and how close it was. Not during the situation, let me be clear, I don’t expect to be updated live, especially not when there are security concerns, but afterwards.
And about the only reason I can think of no one actually saying that is they don’t want to say that he was ‘treated for shrapnel’ not ‘treated for being grazed by a bullet’. The only person who’s actually said it was a bullet who could possibly have knowledge (as opposed to people just guessing cause the blood appeared simultaneous with a gunshot) was Trump himself.Report
This series of pictures allegedly shows the bullet in the first one, then Trump putting his hand to his ear, then pulling it back and showing blood.
I can try to dig up the post where another guy did the math and talked about shutter speed and how it’d catch a bullet going about a foot, given the likely shutter speed on a bright sunny day and assuming the bullet was going a certain speed, if you want.Report
Oh, and people might know this by now, but considering I said it, it was wrong, and no one said the right thing on this page yet: he is apparently the person who made the donation, but the donation was not to ActBlue, the donation was to a democratic-leaning Get Out The Vote effort, which actually makes it a lot more understandable for a conservative to do..especially if they are trying to stop Trump.
Which, to be clear, he was a conservative. The national media seems to not be covering it very much, but the local Philly media has talked to his classmates, and they all talk about how he was an conservative guy, to the point it was a noticeable part of his personality and friend group.
It’s actually sounding to me, and I admit this is just a feeling, but it sounds to me like he was someone with actual conservative beliefs, a True Believer in conservatism (because he’s a dumb kid, and kids tend to do that in all political directions), who feels Trump betrayed him/conservativism somehow. That really is feeling like the thing that happened.Report
Most post-Kennedy assassination attempts seem to have been the work of whack jobs without a coherent political motivation, or at least not one on the standard spectrum. It’s too early to say whether that’s true here, but on the odds it’s the way to bet.Report
It’s certainly possible. I would very much like to have Trump out of the picture, though ideally in a way that makes him a laughingstock rather than a martyr. It’s also possible that somewhere between high school and age 20, he had his mind warped by social media and took a sharp left turn. Many such cases.
Though as CJ says, straight-up mental illness is always a pretty good bet. Remember how it turned out that that guy who shot Giffords had a beef with her because she wouldn’t answer the question “What is government if words have no meaning?”Report
If he was of sound mind, he would have known this was a suicide mission. That he undertook it anyway means he probably wasn’t of sound mind. If he wasn’t of sound mind, that is likely the first and strongest reason for his actions.
If he didn’t know this was a suicide mission… if he thought he’d take a shot at a former President/current candidate for President from a few hundred feet away alive, he probably wasn’t of sound mind. If he wasn’t of sound mind, that is likely the first and strongest reason for his actions.
It’s possible he fully knew and understood the stakes of his action and was so true to his convictions that he felt death was a reasonable cost in their pursuit. If this was the case, I’d be much more curious to learn about his convictions. I also think this is the least likely case of the three I’ve outlined here.Report
I would think that if he undertook a suicide attack out of some sort of conviction he’d have left behind a manifesto. So, I think the overwhelming likelihood is that he’s a nut with a gun.Report
“Shot.”Report
So, have you just given up and turned evil?Report
Until we know the shooter, we don’t know whether it was a false flag attempt to make democrats look bad.
We just need to wait and withhold judgment until we learn whether it was a legitimate assassination attempt or merely a fake one.
Trump has done work with the WWE. Falling down and blading is something that a wrestler could have taught him.Report
I watched the video and it’s unclear to me he was shot with a gun. Many news sites — including Fox News — are being very careful with their language given the uncertainty. I think this site ought to do the same.
See the Tweet below from the SS, also very careful with its language.Report
Sling shot?Report
Secret ServiceReport
At least one reporter is claiming a source said it was a glass fragment. Nothing yet officially confirmed one way or the other.Report
Trump is reporting that he got shot. We will continue to wait for a credible source.
Report
8 shots were fired directly at the guy from 200 yards away, but we cannot rule out “just hit by glass fragments” just yet..Report
We don’t know at this point how many shots were fired by the shooter and how many were fired at the shooter. It seems like Secret Service spotted him right before the first shot.
https://x.com/BNONews/status/1812299014437552637Report
If it matters, there’s footage that shows that the teleprompters are still intact after the incident.Report
A local Pittsburgh news station reports that four cops standing near Trump “suffered minor injuries from flying debris caused by the bullets.”
https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/shots-fired-trump-rally-donald-trump-rushed-off-stage/GRXLQ67PEVDPDKDPNNE3AEGMGU/Report
Did they report that Trump suffered a minor injury from glass from broken teleprompters?Report
AFAIK the only word on Trump’s injury comes from Trump himself.Report
There’s at least one live news report that talks about bullets hitting Trump’s ear.
Perhaps we will never know.Report
It is honestly amazing to me that there are truthers about this.Report
There *WERE* reports that it was glass and not bullets and the report came from OANN and not Democracy Now.
The problem is that the report came from a police officer.
OANN reported that a police officer said that it was teleprompter glass and not a bullet.
Heck, Newsmax still has its report up.
It’s fair to pull a “we don’t know”.
The problem is that there are quite a few people out there arguing that this was entirely staged and, as such, Trump shouldn’t get a boost from it and using the “see, he wasn’t *SHOT*, it was GLASS from a teleprompter that got shot!” as evidence for it having been staged and so a lot of stuff got smooshed together.Report
#BlueAnonReport
The bullet, as I understand it, would not have been lodged into his ear.
The glass would have probably come from somewhere and the photographic evidence we have of the teleprompters shows them intact.Report
Republicans pounce.Report
Secret Service Spokesperson:
Report
Rumors flying fast and furious.
The shooter has been neutralized, I’ve seen reports that he’s been arrested and I’ve seen reports that he is dead.
I’ve seen reports that the police department identified him but I haven’t seen the police department saying as such.Report
This is official enough:
Report
CBS reporting 2 dead (shooter and a person who took a head shot).Report
Ugh, whoever that dumb fisher is can rot in hell. The absolutely worst thing to do.Report
Report
This guy claims to have seen the shooter before he fired.
IF THIS IS TRUE… man, the secret service are going to have a bad day during the “lessons learned” meeting.
Report
Obama has given a statement:
Report
To be honest, with the proliferation of guns in the country over the last few decades, I’m kind of amazed it took this long for something like this to happen.Report
Biden has given one too:
Report
This picture from the rally is causing discussions.
Some argue that it’s evidence that the whole thing was staged.
Others argue that it’s evidence of Trump being a badass.
Fortunately however, the gun was not damaged and is in stable condition, expected to make a full recovery and continue to water the tree of liberty for years to come.Report
Pretty sure that the CIA would still have gun access even after mass confiscation.Report
Trump, fcuking around:
“I am going to be a dictator!”
Trump, finding out what the 2nd Amendment was for.Report
No. There has never been a point in history where violence doesn’t, ultimately, redound to the detriment of the marginalized and the minorities. It is the enemy of liberalism and the bane of the powerless and the comfort of the already comfortable who stroke their chins and dismiss the claims of the marginal because they supported violence. I hope it ultimately turns out that this was some right wing nutbag but if the shooter is in any way affiliated with anything related to the left the only response from us should be a blanket denunciation. That idiot. That indescribable idiot.Report
I remember LeeEsq telling me that during the Ferguson riots and it made a deep impact on me.
And I still agree with you and Lee’s sentiment.
But I need to stress, that violence is only off the table when other means are still available.
So as of July 13, 2024, other options are still available and I agree that violence is not necessary to save America.
Check back with me later.Report
The worst outcome possible is if the shooter was from a marginalized community. I alreay had nightmares of people, using Fargo accents, worried about Project 2025 having a flippey they switchey moment and going “oh, that nice Mr. Trump, he was shot because he was about to spill the beans about Epstein and the elites.”Report
I pray to agnostic jebus that it’s some obvious right coded kook or some nut but I fear you’re right.Report
Haha, I don’t ever comment here, but I read the comments and my constant question for you is what are you willing to do to prevent the “fascist” from getting re-elected. You’re sticking to your principles, at least.Report
Here’s an article from just yesterday on the “black pill” meme culture that is Trumpism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/10/black-pill-elle-reeve-review/
Once “the red pill metaphor took hold,” Reeve writes, “endless variations followed.” The most noxious of these is the “black pill,” “a dark but gleeful nihilism.” Those who succumb to the potent capsule believe that “the system is corrupt, and its collapse is inevitable. There is no hope.” The ideology of the black pill is that of the desperate and the disconsolate, such as mass shooters and “incels,” or involuntary celibates, who believe they are consigned to eternal loneliness by virtue of their intrinsic unlovability.
We saw this in 2016, when the dark corners of the internet were awash in the most horrific sort of boundary pushing, such as pictures of Hillary being pushed into an oven, violent Na.zi imagery and all of it pushed with a gleeful plausible deniability of absurdity, like that Sartre quote come to life.
This is what I mean by “fcuking around’, where Trumpism has gorged itself on a diet of iconoclasm, rule breaking and sneering at norms and conventions or civility, constantly pushing the envelope of violent rhetoric and cruelty.
So now they have found out, that hey guess what, once unleashed, that sort of thing tends to metastize and maybe not in the direction you were hoping for.
If they respond by sobering up and choosing to moderate the talk about dictatorship and concentration camps, well ok I will meet them halfway.
But I suspect they won’t.Report
Remember when FDR put Japanese American in concentration camps?Report
Yep.
The former president has been inciting violence at his rallies for nine years now.
He’s a sheltered, privileged man who had never had to worry about violence being inflicted on him. It was always something that would happen to other people as he watched on, smiling and entertained.Report
J.D Vance is having a normal
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GSaIhpoXsAAfyp1.jpegReport
Remember when the NYT blamed Sarah Palin for Gabby Giffords?Report
Rep Mike Collins immediately accused Biden of doing it
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/republican-mike-collins-accuses-biden-ordering-trump-shooting-1235059900/Report
Good thing Biden is immune!Report
“See? Biden isn’t too old!”Report
Good to know that, since the Giffords shooting, Democrats have learned to tell the difference between metaphorical use of “bullseye” and a literal call to assassinate someone. There may be hope for you yet.Report
“Stochastic Terrorism” was always a confusing concept in the first place.Report
The idea is sound enough, that the right to free speech carries with it responsibility. The extension of it to nutcase violence was absurd though. There was actually a very good “study” of this topic on an episode of NewsRadio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNwlJOwXo4
We’re responsible for what we contribute to the overall tone (the game is iterated), but can’t be held responsible for an unreasonable reaction to that tone.Report
The Right is already jumping into conspiracy theories rather than doing the more intelligent play.Report
Mike Collins also called for the Butler County DA to bring charges against Biden
https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1812274045406302298?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1812274045406302298%7Ctwgr%5Efa54b8026e5de7aadcb3cce1d5b4cf0d2638da75%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14297020https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D142970t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F072Fburning-down-the-reichstagt_e%3DBurning20down20the20ReichstagC2A0t_d%3DBurning20down20the20ReichstagC2A020-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DBurning20down20the20ReichstagC2A0s_o%3Ddescversion%3D6c27b7b2e58aef7c0a19eb6da9bdf7b0Report
“Jews tried to assassinate Trump” is trending on Twitter. Is there anything that we Jews aren’t responsible for?Report
Overpopulation. You gotta pump up those fertility numbers if you want to replace us.Report
Toxic masculinity.
Report
Here’s the r/politics megathread. I’ve taken the liberty of sorting by controversial.Report
Well, it’s official:
Any theories that the shooter was more interested in shooting the woman behind Trump can now be put to bed.Report
The gunman was identified as 20 year Thomas Matthew Crooks, who apparently is a registered Republican and last voted in 2022.Report
There’s a fun theory going around, that because Pennsylvania is a closed primary, that he must have registered Republican to screw up the primary vote.
Although that ‘Dem who wants to vote in Republican primary’ theory doesn’t really work, he appears to have voted exactly once, in the 2022 general election immediately after he registered, and never again. He’s never voted in a primary, despite the fact there actually was a primary where he could have voted against Trump 3 months ago!
Damn dude, you have no excuse, before you resort to political violence you need to at least vote against the guy, bare minimum.
But don’t worry about the Republicans, they’ve located what they think is a $15 political donation to ActBlue when he was 16 or something, that proving he is a liberal despite him registering as a Republican two years later. Assuming that actually is him, and how someone thinks politically at 16 reflects how they think at 20. (Note, it actually is very unclear whether that really is him or not.)Report
Current conspiracy theory flying around this morning is that it was a failed deep state assassination.Report
We’re living the famous Chinese curse and truly is one.Report
At least we’re not talking about Biden’s debate performance anymore!Report
Heh. Very good point. I’ve been waiting for assassination attempt merch to start popping up on Twitter. T-shirts with the raised fist photo are already there.Report
I’m sure there will be more liberals talking about conservatives’ conspiracy theories than conservatives talking about conspiracy theories. It’s an easy way to restore the narrative.Report
There will be conspiracies that have legs and conspiracies that don’t.
My current favorite is “how was the shooter the *ONE* 20-year-old in the country that didn’t have any social media?!?”Report
I typically don’t follow news stories within the first 48 hours of a major event, and this has been a good reminder to me why.Report
Here is a good explainer against one of the theories that has popped up (that I in my naïveté had not even considered).Report
That’s a good essay.
Someone did the math and tried to figure out the caliber of the bullet based on it.
“.223/5.56 fits.”Report
Neat, will be interesting to see how accurate it is. Hopefully some creative high school math teachers are already adapting this for a fall quiz.Report
They found the gun, and it was, indeed, a .223/5.56.Report
Okay. Now *THIS* is my current favorite conspiracy theory.
Report
I’m confused… how is that a conspiracy theory…?Report
If I told you that the Trump would-be assassin had Blackrock ties, would that sound crazy to you?Report
I’m referring to the social media thing. People pointing out that it’d odd a 20-year-old has zero social media presence isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a reasonable observation. It IS odd.
I saw the report on Blackrock. Him being in the video is a total nothingburger. Them taking down the video doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. If you had he had ties to Blackrock and meant it in any more than the odd video coincedence, I’d laugh.Report
Oh, for the social media thing, here’s the conspiracy theory.
“Of course he has social media. The government just cleaned it up.”
There. If the counter-argument is something like “is there any evidence that social media cleans up the personal sites of shooters?”, we can point to stuff like Youtube or whomever taking down videos.
Did he have social media and was it taken down?
I don’t know.Report
I did not intend them as “scare quotes.” Every major headline I saw to that point avoided confirming it was a shooting/he was shot. CNN, NYTimes, Fox News… even the SS tweet linked here avoided it. The post here went right to naming it as such, which I thought was premature. And I explained as much in my follow up comment 33 minutes later.
But if you want to think I’m evil and/or stupid because I called attention to the choice of language amidst lots of uncertainty, by all means, be my guest.Report
The ActBlue donating Thomas Crook appears to be a 69 year old from PittsburghReport
That appears to have been debunked. Ryan Grim (Hey, we were just talking about him the other day!) has the details.
In a nutshell: The street address on the FEC record is identical to that from the voter file record of the 20-year old shooter.Report
The guy who was killed at the rally has been named:
Report
Official gofundme for the shooting victims:
Report
Apparently the social-media-comber crew is going for this guy instead of the shooter (because the shooter hasn’t got much) and hoo boy, they’re finding a ton of fun stuff. This dude was real fond of being a piece of shit online.
I’m glad that in the moment he had the right instincts and the needed reflexes, but it just goes to show that physical courage and being a decent human being are not always related.Report
physical courage and being a decent human being are not always related
Eh, I’m not sure that someone who says the right things online but fails to protect his family should get eulogized with something like “physical cowardice and being a decent human being are not always related”.
There are a lot of ways to be a decent human. Lotta ways to fail at being one. Some are better than others.Report
“There are a lot of ways to be a decent human. ”
Oh, there are! What I’m saying here is, let’s not go out of our way to make this guy over as some kind of secular saint. “We can all hope to react so well when it comes to such a moment,” and move on.Report
So when a Democrat is attacked, Republicans are to blame. Even when it turns out to be a random skel with schizoprhenia and there’s no evidence of politics being involved.
And when a Republican is attacked, Republicans are also to blame.
I know it’s a cliche to bring up Orwell, but he really did nail the Left to a tee.Report
“So when a Democrat is attacked, Republicans are to blame.”
Do you think Orwell would approve of that statement? If so, why?Report
You know, after Ulvalde, stuff like this just hits different.
Report
Everything I read about this makes it very clear how badly all law enforcement completely screwed up.
Like, I don’t want to get into the details here, but apparently some people there reported that there was someone on the roof with a rifle, and no one did anything,and the shooter climbed up a ladder that shouldn’t have been there, and, and, and….
Honestly, it it feels somewhat amazing how close we got to one of the most conspiratorial events in American history. Like, just one inch to the side, Trump dies, yeah there’s immediate political repercussions, they probably would have been very bad. But on top of that, the events that I’m hearing about would probably replace the JFK assassination as conspiracy central, because holy crap, some of this just sounds absurd.
You know, there are organizations that have an air of perfectionism, and suddenly things hit the fan and everything just makes it very clear that there isn’t any ‘there’ there, that it was all of invented mythos to start with. Most people have sort of noticed that about the IDF recently, and now we have pretty clear evidence of Secret Service really isn’t this amazingly competent organization either, and assassinations don’t happen mostly because people don’t try to do them, and when they do, they’re kind of stupid… Or, in this case, just missed.Report
oh hey, another one of those situations where a local cop thinks “maybe what the brave thin-blue-line hero ought to do here is put a couple walls between himself and that rifle”Report
What should the local cop have done that he didn’t? What did he do that he should not have done? Other than arranging back-up rather than acting solo, which probably would have delayed things to the point that any action would have been irrelevant. Once that decision was made, what were his reasonable options?Report
Yeah, I can think of few positions more disadvantaged than climbing a ladder, with your hands occupied by the ladder rungs, and your head just clearing the roofline where an active shooter is.
I think criticizing multiple police who seemingly couldn’t find any way at all into a school is one thing; I think criticizing a single policeman in that specific situation for thinking, “getting my head immediately and pointlessly blown off with near-100% certainty helps no one” is another. If he took a look and ideally confirmed there was just one guy up there and maybe got a look at the weapons and relayed that info to others so that effective response could be taken, he did all I’d expect anyone in his position to do.Report
A gunshot is a real good signal that someone with a gun and willingness to use it is nearby; and the Secret Service might have been interested to have that information before an ex-President got shot in the face.Report
My understanding is that many PDs have policies against firing warning shots (which I assume is what we’re talking about here – a shot with no “target”, intended strictly to be used as a signal) due to the danger that an errant bullet still may injure SOMEONE whenever/wherever it lands.
The idea being if you have a plausible shot at the suspect/perp you take it; but you don’t discharge your weapon willy-nilly otherwise. Ideally, a cop has to account for every bullet he fires.
The cop was on a ladder, hands presumably occupied with that ladder, and was reportedly seen when he cleared the roofline. It doesn’t sound to me like he had a shot at the perp.
So perhaps he should have been willing to stand there on the ladder and helplessly take a bullet to the face, and let THAT function as our “warning shot”, signaling the SS?
However, I’d argue that the cop serves more purpose if he scrambles down the ladder, gets on his radio, and reports things like, “How many shooters”, “what is their exact location”, “how are they armed”, and “are there hostages up there too?” so that appropriate tactics can be applied. “Recon” is a valid tactic.
I don’t think I’d expect a real person to do something that not even John McClane did. Even McClane knew when it was clearly time to retreat, provide valuable information to Al over the radio, and prepare the next attack.Report
“Should”?
That question has a different answer than “could be reasonably expected to do”.
As Ulvalde taught us.Report
Please proceed.Report
He should have been willing to take a bullet to save a life.
We can’t reasonably expect a police officer not to want to go home at the end of his shift. Wait for the gunman to run out of bullets and *THEN* arrest him.
As Ulvalde taught us.Report
Wait, you’re not mocking the whole “Thin Blue Line” superhero cop nonsense, you’re angry because he didn’t conform to it.
Man, you are going to be so disappointed when you meet a real member of the armed forces.Report
No, I’m 100% understanding why the cop did what he did.
He wanted to go home at the end of his shift.
Hey, as a systems administrator, I sympathize. I want to go home at the end of mine too.Report
I didn’t say otherwise.
I was just quoting you, where you said you wanted him to be willing to take a bullet to save a life.Report
No, I made a distinction between “should” and “could be reasonably expected to do”.
Should cops be willing to take a bullet to save a life (let’s assume a civilian and not a gang banger or something)?
I’m pretty sure that most people would agree that they should be willing to do that, as part of their jobs.
Is it reasonable to expect that.
No. It is not reasonable to expect that.Report
“I’m pretty sure that most people would agree that they should be willing to do that, as part of their jobs.
Is it reasonable to expect that.
No. It is not reasonable to expect that.”
So it’s not reasonable to expect cops to do their jobs?
Or people who agree that they should be willing to take a bullet to save a life as part of their jobs are wrong?Report
The question was what he could have done, not what he might, or might not, in a given situation, been willing to do. The cop is holding onto a ladder and is poking his head up. Can he draw his weapon there and get off a shot? Maybe in the comic books, but not in real life. By the time he could scramble onto the roof and get his gun out, the shooter would have gotten the shot off. If he announced his presence, the shooter could either get off the shot, then turn and kill the cop, or turn and kill the cop and get the shot off two seconds later. Neither of these courses of action was likely to do a damn bit of good, and the cop would have been dead for nothing.
Remember during the Iraq War all the bloggers who earned the nickname the 101st Fighting Keyboards? There’s a cop version of that, too, apparently.Report
The question was what he could have done, not what he might, or might not, in a given situation, been willing to do.
You’re using different words than I used.
Are you doing that deliberately or did you just not notice?Report
I’m using the words I used, or their close equivalents, since I asked the question. If you don’t want to answer the question and want to say something else, just say so.Report
rather amused to see someone whose whole job on this Earth is words claim that “could” and “should” are close enough to be considered identicalReport
As the philosophers will tell you, should implies can.Report
I already said what I said.
Thanks for telling me that you’re using different words than I am deliberately.Report
And thanks for telling everyone you didn’t want to answer the question.Report
I’m pretty sure that I answered in my 12:42 comment.
At the very least, I don’t understand how it is not an answer.Report
No, you didn’t. Look at my 10:47 comment.Report
Ah, “Once that decision was made, what were his reasonable options?”
I see.
“Assuming he did what he did, what else could he have done?”
Fired a shot into the ground, I guess.
But if I assume that the situation starts when you want it to start than when I assumed that it started, you’re absolutely right.Report
“What should the local cop have done that he didn’t”
First thought was get out of the way and fire shots into the air.
Then radio contact.
I haven’t seen solid reporting yet on the time between the shooter allegedly pointing his gun at the cop, and then taking his shot at Trump. If it was as immediate as some reports suggest, then the cop wouldn’t have had time to fire… but then the cop probably disrupted the shot that was subsequently taken in haste. If he had time to scramble to safety and used his radio; well that was probably good training, but poor prudence.Report
He’s on a ladder.Report
So what? He retreats a bit to not challenge the gunman (I’m not even expecting heroics) … then he discharges his firearm to spoil the surprise and get the Secret Service moving.
I covered several timing issues that we don’t know as to whether he was thinking of doing that but didn’t have time… so maybe he would have. Don’t know.
But the idea — in an emergency — of at least ruining the ambush isn’t a bad use of your firearm.Report
Retreats to where? He’s on a ladder near the top of the building. Does he go half-way down, hold on with one hand, draw his gun with the other and fire? Does he drop to the ground and do it? Try either and see how long that takes.Report
“I haven’t seen solid reporting yet on the time between the shooter allegedly pointing his gun at the cop, and then taking his shot at Trump. If it was as immediate as some reports suggest, then the cop wouldn’t have had time to fire… but then the cop probably disrupted the shot that was subsequently taken in haste.”
If the cop’s, er, intervention, went as he described and the shooter did indeed point his weapon at the cop, then the timing feels REALLY important. If it was immediate, then that means the shooter was able to reposition himself, under duress, and get off a shot that missed his target by centimeters. That would make him either one HELL of a shot or thisclose to being incredibly “lucky.” If he was almost lucky, well, thank goodness he wasn’t ACTUALLY lucky. If he was that good of a shot, I’d be curious to know how he gained such skill at such a young age.Report
My skills are rusty now, but in my 20’s I could have made the shot, though I wouldn’t have used an AR-15. I’d have used something more suited to distance shooting and aimed lower, greatly improving the odds of a damaging hit.Report
I agree… I think the timing *is* important to the question of what happened and what might have happened.Report
Secret Service says local police were responsible for securing the shelters outside the security perimeter.
So, mistake #1 was not having those structures *inside* the primary security zone, leaving them to local police.
Mistake #2 is the local police not already having someone on top of those structures, if only to monitor happenings below if not to ensure no one climbed up.
It seems the horse was essentially out of the barn by the time the local cop climbed up somone else’s ladder to see what he saw.Report
Idle curiosity, and I haven’t seen it anywhere, which local police organization was responsible? Small town police department? Sheriff’s office? How many officers would they normally have available?Report
I have not either. Between state and county, no one in is in a rush to own it.
Hopefully the police officer had a body camera w working audio on. At least we’d know the timing from when he dropped from the roof and shots being fired. That’s assuming the FBI releases it before we are all dead.Report
Very likely true that the local cops screwed up as an organization. That left the individual cop on the ladder literally hanging with no good moves. Or at least none that work outside of comic books.Report
Maybe he should have fired his gun up in the air and gone “AHHHH”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9d_sLRXOH4Report
At a party in DC once, I saw the VP briefly in the street from a third-story window. Neat, but unsettling.Report
You can’t account for every elevated potential danger zone in a city.
This, however, is such an abysmal, avoidable security failure, I can’t believe the level of incompetence. They were in the middle of a field! There was one building within close range of the stage!
It’s hard to imagine a scenario that doesn’t end with the Secret Service leadership getting cleaned out. It was their show. They direct the local yokals. You don’t just leave it to them as if they were the NYPD and they have experience working these events.Report
That was my reaction. ‘Have people stationed on only somewhat tall building near event’ seems like the kind of thing the Secret Service could handle. I guess not.Report
“What should the local cop have done that he didn’t?”
Get shot.
Setting aside the exigent circumstances of “there’s a former President with nothing between him and this rooftop but a couple hundred yards of air”, the deal that we were told to accept was that we don’t carry our own guns and in return, the cops take a bullet if that’s what’s warranted. If you want to tell me that the cops are going to back off and look to their own safety before mine and that’s okay, then maybe that deal needs to be re-negotiated.Report
First- What makes you think the shooter couldn’t have shot the cop, then shot the President, making the cop’s sacrifice pointless?
Second- Who told you that the government having a monopoly on legitimate violence was some sort of “deal”?Report
“What makes you think the shooter couldn’t have shot the cop, then shot the President, making the cop’s sacrifice pointless?”
because the Secret Service is not gonna hear gunshots and think “eh, probably nothing”Report
They would have heard shots, taken a few seconds to determine where the shooter was, in which time the shooter gets off a couple rounds.
Seriously, when a guy is in position with the rifle aimed and finger on the trigger, nothing short of a direct head shot is going to prevent that finger from curling. In fact, a sudden loud gunshot at close range might guarantee it.Report
Based on what I saw when Reagan got shot, the SS would have reacted immediately, blocking line of sight for the shooter and covering Trump’s body while moving him away from the area. Other SS not near Trump would be scanning for the shooter/shooting at him.
I don’t know if the shooter had a scope. I assume so, but it can be difficult if you shot at someone that’s behind you and then pivot around to reacquire you real target. I don’t that’s something easily done without a fair amount of training, depending upon how powerful the scope is.Report
” when a guy is in position with the rifle aimed and finger on the trigger, ”
(if the rifle wasn’t pointed at the ladder then the cop wouldn’t have got shot climbing it)Report
“Get shot.”
As General Patton said, the point is not to die for your country, it’s to make the other sonofabitch die for his country.Report
“the point is not to die for your country, it’s to make the other sonofabitch die for his country.”
Sounds great. I’ll be at the gun store tomorrow, making sure that when there’s trouble and a cop is standing outside the door thinking “well it’s not my job to die here” I have some options.Report
Didn’t we learn this lesson in Uvalde?Report
As I said elsewhere, this seems pretty different from Uvalde to me, based on what I believe to be the situation right now.
The outrage in Uvalde is that dozens of cops with dozens of weapons and SWAT-type protective gear and dozens of points of possible ingress to the building, waited outside and did jack for over an hour. Surely there was SOME way SOMEONE could have gotten in there and tried SOMETHING, right?
Here – and setting aside the larger massive obvious failure of not securing *the only roof in the vicinity* (!!!) – we appear to be talking about ONE cop, with a single point of ingress, likely unable to use his hands for his weapon (due to climbing a ladder) deciding that discretion is the better part of valor and living to fight another day.
As long as he then did his best to immediately raise the alarm and communicate valuable intel about the shooter, it seems to me he probably did what he could best do.
In Uvalde, I wouldn’t have a beef with ONE officer throwing open a school door or sticking their head into a window, getting a gun pointed at them, slamming the door/window again and yelling over the radio, “HE’S IN THERE!”. For all I know, some similar scenario DID happen, early on.
The beef I have is with ALL of them apparently then just deciding to wait it out, despite presumably-overwhelming force on their side, while hearing more and more victims being shot. THAT’S where Uvalde becomes outrageous to me.Report
I landed in moderation, probably due to originally using a mild no-no potty word that often follows the word “jack”. I took it out, can anyone clear me?
(Hi Kaz!)Report
Semafor is reporting: Top Democratic strategist pushed reporters to consider ‘staged’ shooting
He’s since apologized for sending it.Report
https://thehill.com/elections/4772083-axelrod-vances-post-on-trump-rally-shooting-ought-to-disqualify-him/amp/?nxs-test=amp
Dumb people do dumb things.Report
Disqualifying? We are talking about Trump.Report
The Republican VP pick lost David Axelrod?!!?Report
My point was Vance said something really stupid after the shooting. Lots of people said stupid things after the shooting.Report
Funny, the first one I heard was you. Even now, some on the left seem to be afraid to acknowledge that it was a bullet, as if they’d be conceding something.Report
Yes, I was stupid to say, “Let’s wait for all the facts.”
And you are smart for pointing that out!Report
No, you said “‘shot'”. You later clarified that you meant something different from the conspiracy theorists. I, for one, didn’t assume you were being stupid though. I thought you were being evil.Report
I was being neither. “Prudent” is the word.
I was taking my lead from the SS and Fox News and others who were using careful language absent confirmed facts.Report
FWIW, I wasn’t exactly sure how to interpret your first comment, but scare quotes to me suggests not just “let’s wait and see” but actual skepticism. Sounds like that’s not what you meant by it though.Report
Other countries have memes too:
Report
The Rhode Island State Police have issued an update:
Report
It’s about time – their silence was deafening.Report
I haven’t heard anybody talk about the attempted murder of Trump in real life. Even if you can’t stand the man, and people on this blog should know I can’t, you would think that the attempted murder of a former President, and nominee for the Republicans to be President, would be a big event that people would talk about like 9/11. That I haven’t even heard as a sort of background thing, “did you hear that somebody attempted to kill Trump” is weird in a rather bad way.Report
I got a text from a fairly non-political (though, granted, conservative) normie friend. He asked me if I thought that this just gave Trump another term.
I gave him a short essay about it being an inside job because the Republicans wanted to change the narrative away from the Democrats talking about Project 2025 but then, halfway through, conceded that Trump got some really, really good pictures from the rally that are likely to show up in campaign commercials and they’re likely to be better pictures than any pictures of Biden that show up.
Now that it’s a workday, see if anybody at work mentions it. Do they make jokes about how they’re sorry that the sniper missed or do they speculate that it was staged or do they lament that this might have been a news cycle that Trump might have won?
I will report what I experience today from a vaguely conservative city, I promise.Report
My interactions were all of the professional nature. Meetings with no BS, doctor’s visit, Chipotle, and Pharmacist. No one mentioned anything but what we were there for.
I did see my first Kennedy/Shanahan yard sign.
(I checked. Sadly, she’s neither Mike Shanahan nor Kyle Shanahan.)Report
https://www.rawstory.com/joe-biden-circled-square-oval-address/Report
Okay, not to get all ‘it was a piece of debris and not a bullet’ truther here, but have we actually had any reports of where Trump went and what sort of medical treatment he got? I don’t think we have, and that feels very odd. I get not knowing that well he was still being treated, but that’s well over now.
In fact, I’m not sure what sort of announcement was made, it really sort of seems like these events happened, we were assured he was fine, and then we saw him golfing? I admit I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to this, so maybe I missed something, or is just the campaign being very incompetent?
In actuality, it probably shouldn’t matter if he got hit by a bullet or if he got hit by debris thrown up by a bullet, the actual important thing is that someone tried to shoot him and got very close and probably entirely missed by bad aim. But I think that would not be true in reality, it would matter and I think everyone knows it.Report
I googled “where was trump treated?” and this was the top story.Report
Okay, I was being a little unclear there, my point was not that we don’t know where he went, because we do, it would be extremely weird if the media could not track down where a former president had gone.
My point is neither the hospital nor the campaign (or, I guess, the Secret Service?) has made any official statements about this. We actually don’t even know how we know what hospital he went to, it seems entirely possible that the local TV station that reported on this just checked which local hospitals had seriously heightened security.
I don’t think it’s actually too much to ask, after attempted assassination, that someone actually make statements about the treatment given and how close it was. Not during the situation, let me be clear, I don’t expect to be updated live, especially not when there are security concerns, but afterwards.
And about the only reason I can think of no one actually saying that is they don’t want to say that he was ‘treated for shrapnel’ not ‘treated for being grazed by a bullet’. The only person who’s actually said it was a bullet who could possibly have knowledge (as opposed to people just guessing cause the blood appeared simultaneous with a gunshot) was Trump himself.Report
This story shows the presidential motorcade leaving the hospital. I suppose that that’s not proof either.Report
Two days after, there does seem to be lack of official information. I wonder if the apparent failure in security has anything to do with that.Report
This series of pictures allegedly shows the bullet in the first one, then Trump putting his hand to his ear, then pulling it back and showing blood.
I can try to dig up the post where another guy did the math and talked about shutter speed and how it’d catch a bullet going about a foot, given the likely shutter speed on a bright sunny day and assuming the bullet was going a certain speed, if you want.Report
Oh, and people might know this by now, but considering I said it, it was wrong, and no one said the right thing on this page yet: he is apparently the person who made the donation, but the donation was not to ActBlue, the donation was to a democratic-leaning Get Out The Vote effort, which actually makes it a lot more understandable for a conservative to do..especially if they are trying to stop Trump.
Which, to be clear, he was a conservative. The national media seems to not be covering it very much, but the local Philly media has talked to his classmates, and they all talk about how he was an conservative guy, to the point it was a noticeable part of his personality and friend group.
It’s actually sounding to me, and I admit this is just a feeling, but it sounds to me like he was someone with actual conservative beliefs, a True Believer in conservatism (because he’s a dumb kid, and kids tend to do that in all political directions), who feels Trump betrayed him/conservativism somehow. That really is feeling like the thing that happened.Report
Most post-Kennedy assassination attempts seem to have been the work of whack jobs without a coherent political motivation, or at least not one on the standard spectrum. It’s too early to say whether that’s true here, but on the odds it’s the way to bet.Report
I’m very amused that you made up a way in your head for someone shooting at Donald Trump to somehow be the Republicans’ fault.Report
It’s certainly possible. I would very much like to have Trump out of the picture, though ideally in a way that makes him a laughingstock rather than a martyr. It’s also possible that somewhere between high school and age 20, he had his mind warped by social media and took a sharp left turn. Many such cases.
Though as CJ says, straight-up mental illness is always a pretty good bet. Remember how it turned out that that guy who shot Giffords had a beef with her because she wouldn’t answer the question “What is government if words have no meaning?”Report
If he was of sound mind, he would have known this was a suicide mission. That he undertook it anyway means he probably wasn’t of sound mind. If he wasn’t of sound mind, that is likely the first and strongest reason for his actions.
If he didn’t know this was a suicide mission… if he thought he’d take a shot at a former President/current candidate for President from a few hundred feet away alive, he probably wasn’t of sound mind. If he wasn’t of sound mind, that is likely the first and strongest reason for his actions.
It’s possible he fully knew and understood the stakes of his action and was so true to his convictions that he felt death was a reasonable cost in their pursuit. If this was the case, I’d be much more curious to learn about his convictions. I also think this is the least likely case of the three I’ve outlined here.Report
I would think that if he undertook a suicide attack out of some sort of conviction he’d have left behind a manifesto. So, I think the overwhelming likelihood is that he’s a nut with a gun.Report