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Okay. Okay. Every talking head from every medium in the world has already given their analysis of the Trump shooting in Pennsylvania. I almost decided to NOT write on this because, after all, virtually everything that can be said about it has been said—everyone from the conventional, mockingbird media to the most fanciful conspiracy theorist and everyone in between.
But, alas, here I am writing about the Trump shooting. At this point, I have mostly observations and questions regarding those observations—quite a few questions.
My biggest questions concern the Secret Service (SS) itself. I’ve heard people say that the SS was ordered to “stand down,” thus giving the shooter a prime position and plenty of time to take his shot. I even saw a video of one guy who claimed to be one of the SS snipers in the now-famous photos who said he had the bad guy in his sights for over 3 minutes and was ordered to not fire. I will not even begin to comment on the legitimacy of that claim.
But based on the reasonable takeaways from the footage that we all have seen repeatedly, I have several serious questions, most of which concern the Secret Service as an agency.
First, it defies all logic that the professional federal agency tasked with the sole responsibility of protecting America’s presidents, vice presidents, their wives and families as well as the major presidential candidates could be as lax, as unprofessional and as downright inept as what we witnessed last Saturday.
What? A twenty-year-old man with a rifle climbs on and then crawls across the roof of a building a mere 130 yards away from Trump? Are you kidding? That’s Keystone Cops-level incompetency.
Spectators saw the man for several minutes (at least 3 or 4) crawling his way into position. They shouted the warning to both local and federal police officers about what was happening, and nothing was done. Yeah, I know one cop supposedly tried to pull himself up on the roof, and the bad guy pointed his gun at him, so he dropped to the ground. Again, more Keystone Cops stuff.
Why did the SS NOT recognize that rooftop as a high-priority area and have agents posted there before people even started arriving? Even amateur security people would have noticed and protected that vulnerable position.
To me, that is the single most glaring question in this entire episode. To not have protected that position was imbecilic to a magnitude that was off the charts. Use any word you want: Stupid. Inept. Idiotic. Sophomoric. Moronic. Dumb. Unbelievable. Unfathomable. Nincompoopish. They all fit.
I can easily understand why some people are saying that the SS was told to “stand down” or deliberately leave this location unguarded. It’s hard to fathom a professional agency trained to protect America’s presidential personnel showing themselves to be that inept.
But what if they really ARE that inept?
The one thing I’ve heard very few people discuss is how four years of the Biden administration’s moronic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies have affected agencies within the federal government.
Colonel Douglas Macgregor and other military professionals have been warning the American people for over three years as to the deleterious effects that Biden’s DEI policies have had in weakening the U.S. military. Seasoned pilots have been sounding the alarm for the same amount of time about the way Biden’s DEI policies have reduced the overall proficiency status of America’s airline industry. One pilot said words to the effect that it’s only a matter of time before an airliner falls out of the sky due to lax policies enacted to accommodate Biden’s DEI agenda.
Folks, just look at EVERY federal agency. Inefficiency, incompetence and indifference rule. Look at the U.S. Postal Service. Look at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Look at the Department of Transportation. Look at the Agriculture Department, the Education Department, many of our U.S. ambassadors, our Secretary of State, the Pentagon, the BATFE, the FBI, ad infinitum. Under Joe Biden, the entire federal government is in the hands of a bunch of woke, DEI nincompoops.
And that’s exactly what we saw at the Trump rally last Saturday from the Secret Service.
One thing that leads me to believe that this was not a serious Deep State effort is the shooter himself: a young man with no military training; a kid who was kicked off his high school rifle team because he was such a lousy shot. And a lousy shot he really was.
Had professionals inside the Deep State really wanted to kill Trump, a professional sniper could have done the job with one shot from a mile away and not even been seen. This Crooks idiot fires 5 – 8 shots (depending on who is telling the story) and only manages to graze Trump’s right ear with one of the shots? And some witnesses said his rifle was even scoped. Maybe his marksmanship skills were so bad he didn’t even know how to properly sight in his scope.
I am a fair shot. I have hunted and shot pistols and rifles (and shotguns to a lesser degree) for over 50 years. I dare say I could hit a melon-size object with a rifle from 130 yards (even using aperture sights) all day long. Give me a scoped rifle on a steady rest, and my score would increase exponentially. And I am FAR from being an expert. Experts don’t miss—especially from 130 yards. For a real marksman, 130 yards is a “chip shot.”
I’ll tell you what this has accomplished: It has made Donald Trump invincible. He’s being called “Braveheart” at the Republican National Convention. Evangelicals are comparing him to Jesus Christ. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said it was her belief that Trump’s and Jesus’ personal sacrifices were “identical.” What sacrilege—and idolatry!
I have tried to warn people from Trump’s first administration that the man is NOT a Washington outsider. He is NOT anti-establishment. He is NOT anti-Deep State. Trump was, is and always will be a conman.
It will not surprise me one bit if, after becoming president, Trump launches an anti-Second Amendment attack against AR-15 rifles like we’ve never seen before. He’s already on record as supporting Red Flag gun confiscation laws. Don’t be surprised if he uses his attempted assassination as a rallying cry to confiscate all semi-automatic rifles in the country. He could do what no Democrat could ever do. Wait and see.
Again, what is the end product?
The end product is that Donald Trump is now a martyr. He is more popular than at any time before. He is now regarded as the uber-leader. Unless something happens on a supernatural level, Trump is now politically invincible. This event secures Trump’s victory in November.
So, if the idea was to really take Trump out, it was a colossal failure!
But I’m not finished with my questions. I’m thinking now about what we witnessed on the stage.
When Trump’s ear was grazed, he instinctively grabbed his ear and dropped to the ground. That would be a very natural reaction. But what the SS did next was more Keystone Cops stuff.
First, it seemed to take forever for agents to get into a position to protect Trump. We saw one SS agent so befuddled, she seemed to not have any idea what to do. At first she drew her sidearm; then she fumbled around attempting to re-holster her sidearm. Indecision. Lack of training. Unprofessionalism. And the rest of the agents simply huddled around Trump at the base of the podium.
The podium holding the lectern was quite narrow. Bodies, including Trump’s, were exposed to any further shots or shooters (had there been more than one). Question: Why did they keep Trump on the stage for so long? It was almost a full minute before they tried to escort him off the stage. In that situation, a minute was an eternity. And then when they did attempt to take him out of the area, they allowed the 6’3” Trump to stand up erect with his head and orange hair fully exposed to the public as he shook his fist in the air.
What???
During all of that, Trump was still very much a viable, visible target. Are these really the most highly trained professional bodyguards in the world?
If the shooter had any brains, all he needed to do was pour his second volley of five or six rounds at the base of the podium, and there would have been several dead bodies, including Trump and some of the SS agents. That skinny podium offered ZERO protection against a high-powered rifle.
In my former pastorate, I had a very large pulpit that was made from solid oak. It weighed over 400 pounds. Four strong men could only move it a few feet at a time. After I began my radio talk show, it didn’t take long for death threats to start coming in. This was in 1994.
One of the members of my congregation was a former police officer and ex-Green Beret. He organized our first safety team at the church. I might add that most of the rest of the pastors and churches in the area laughed us to scorn for being so “faithless” as to have an in-house safety team. Of course, you can hardly find a church today that doesn’t have their own in-house safety team—or the larger, richer ones pay professionals to guard the services. But at the time, we were the very first church in our area to have such a team.
One of the first things that the former police officer and ex-Green Beret did was to line the inside of that giant oak pulpit with heavyweight Kevlar, so, in the event of an attempted assassination, I could duck inside that pulpit and have a genuine layer of protection around me.
The podium Trump used in Pennsylvania was NOT designed to stop a bullet. Of that you can be certain. So, why did those SS agents keep Trump huddled at the bottom of the skinny podium for so long?
I confess, it seems to me that these people were hired from a DEI-preferred roster the week before, given 40 hours of introductory training and sent out to guard the Republican nominee for president.
We can (and will) spend the next several years conjecturing about conspiracy theories—and some of them will probably be accurate. But the one thing I believe we can all take away from the Trump shooting is the degree to which the woke agenda has wreaked havoc with the most basic functions of the American government—and American society.
If America’s Secret Service is THAT inept at protecting a presidential nominee, do we really think that our woke-obsessed Pentagon and DOD are going to do any better in a war with Russia?
What we all witnessed last Saturday was a Red Alert as to how deeply into the muck that the woke agenda has plunged us.
© Chuck Baldwin
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