The Democrats have placed their bet on people hating Trump in sufficient numbers to get them back into power – in their world, what is on the news is real. The protests are real. The polls are real. The endless articles and talking heads saying that Trump is doomed and MAGA is dead are real.
Could they be right?
Infinite universe: anything is possible.
But now that SPLC has been indicted for essentially funding the KKK for years, we really do see that the opposition is manufactured on all levels. We know the votes are fake – the Democrats only have significant national power because they have One Party control over quite a lot of America. Forty percent of New England voted for the GOP in the 2024 House elections and yet not one of New England’s 21 House members are GOP. Any sort of fair and honest system and the GOP should have six to eight of those seats. We got thirty nine percent of the House vote in California but only seventeen percent of the House seats. Should have 20. Think of that – Democrat corrupt politics have denied us at least twenty six seats just in those two States. Sure, there are some Red States which might have got a few more Democrats in but the GOP hasn’t been nearly as ruthless in gerrymandering as the Democrats plus we don’t cheat. That is, we don’t find votes weeks after election day to make sure our guy gets in. Democrat cheating over 2022 and 2024 probably cost is four or five Senate seats as well. And with the fake votes giving Democrats power they have not earned so, too, fake protests against us. All ginned up via Democrat money to give the appearance of actual opposition. Same with the lawsuits – Democrats under Obama and Biden stuffed the federal courts with rank partisans of the worst sort; people who know their job is to rule in favor of Democrats no matter how absurd and illegal the argument is. Just do it. Don’t care. You’ll be protected.
For many years this fraud has given the Democrats power and they are confident it will continue to do so. But here’s the real weakness of the One Party State – it moves itself into increasing insanity. Without any check on power, the most stupidly extreme rule the roost. The Democrats are expecting a snap-back in November because people hate Trump. But if people don’t hate Trump – at least, not in sufficient numbers – then the driver of the vote will be how insanely stupid the Democrats are. Illegals. Criminals. Welfare and Medicaid corruption. They’re defending all of this – and promising a Day One impeachment of Trump. Do the American people want to vote for a two year impeachment drama in DC? We’re going to find out – but my expectation is that they’ll reject it. Especially as Trump and the GOP are floating on money while the Democrats are broke. Not for nothing was Trump’s first target NGO funding…because he knew that Democrat donors are also fake. It was all just kickbacks…get the grant, kick back a percentage of it to the DNC. The grants have dried up and so has Democrat money. And that means as we get into September Democrat insanity will be playing on a loop on TV while the Democrats simply don’t have enough money to counter it.
Don’t get me wrong – they do still loom up powerful in front of us. Trump still doesn’t have 100% control over all federal agencies…Democrat moles plus lawfare have curbed Trump’s ability to gain control of the Executive power which is solely vested in him as President. Every national institution is still dead set against us. We still have RINOs sabotaging us…and attention-hound Righties willing to sell us out for a few Democrat dollars. Against all of this is Trump and MAGA. Are we strong enough? We know Trump is, but are we? Will we let the Democrat pysop get to us? Depress us? Convince us to stay home? We’ll find that out, too.
2026 and 2028 will be the crucial elections in the life of America. If we can hang on to Congressional power in 2026 and get Vance or just about any other GOPer in for 2028, then we’re going to win all down the line. The Democrats will have less and less money. More and more criminal investigations will grind forward. More and more DNC moles in the Executive branch will be booted. We’ll reach the tipping point probably in 2030 as the census comes in and the shift of House and Electoral College power to the GOP will start a stampede for the exits on those who support the Democrats. The Democrats won’t be the Establishment any longer. We will be. And one thing Establishment people demand is to be part of the game…they’ll make their peace with us and turn with fury and scorn upon those they backed the day before. And even though most Republicans don’t know this – and most Democrats don’t, either – the Democrat leaders do. Oh, they know. They know how only corruption keeps them in power. That the longer MAGA remains in control the more of their scam will be revealed. They know they are doomed if they don’t win it all by 2028 – they need a trifecta in order to undo Trump’s legacy, pack the Court and simply rule being American unconstitutional. Forever. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent this.
Personally, I think we’re going to win – that there is just enough patriotism left in America to prevent us from falling into the death spiral of Europe and Canada.
Blogs For Victory 
The irony about the future is that regardless of which side wins, we’re probably going to end up shooting at each other, albeit for completely opposite reasons. If MAGA prevails, the Left will surely resort to violence to regain power and impose their will on the rest of us, and if the Left wins, Conservatives will eventually fight to regain freedom. Fortunately, thanks to COVID, we pretty much know what the Left will do if they regain power. I don’t know ANYONE who wants to go through that again. And, seeing as how the yearning for freedom is an integral part of the human spirit, the incentive to fight for it is orders of magnitude greater than the incentive to get someone to lay down their life so you can achieve power.
And, of course, WE have most of the guns and ammo.
In all of the speculation about a shooting war in the United States, the biggest speed bump I have seen is my inability to imagine an actual army on the Left. As I have always asked, when the subject came up, “who are you going to shoot”?
I don’t doubt that they could come up with several thousand armed thugs, even well-armed thugs, and even some well-trained militias. But when I have tried to envision what this would all look like, it has come down to our military taking on the trained insurrectionists and, basically, a nod to the Average Armed Citizen indicating “go for it”, which is when the gun safes would be opened and the magazines loaded in millions of houses across the country. But it would be guerilla warfare, with no uniforms to identify the Other Guy, and people having to wonder if they should shoot their pharmacists or kids’ soccer coaches.
One thing that does come to mind is the hundreds of thousands of single, military-aged, men allowed to flow across our borders. Where are they, and are they banding together in quasi-military groups? These men could be the core of an imported anti-American army. Biden et al have imported their insurrectionist army and all we can do is hope the FBI has kept track of them.
Because when we look at the average Democrat we don’t see a warrior. Even those who posture as warriors, like Kinzinger, are weak and flaccid. We know about the cadres of professional rioters, who could be dangerous if armed with real weapons instead of frozen water bottles, but as far as we can tell they number in the hundreds—and we have seen how they react to real force, thinking of the Antifa thug curled up in the fetal position whimpering when taken down by cops at a riot. There may very well be a few thousand young Libs who have played enough video games to feel pretty cocky about their ability to pick up a real bangstick and shoot some real people in some real heads to see some real brains fly, but they would be able to inflict minimal damage because reality is a far cry from a Dorito-littered basement with a big computer and gaming chair.
While a shooting war between the Left and Right is a terrible thing to imagine, I have come to think it may be on our horizon, but limited to pockets of violence where Leftists try their games of intimidation. If so, I hope it happens under Trump, with Hegseth as a true warrior leader, with the understanding that this would have to be a war of total annihilation of the Left in this country. That is, trials for treason for citizens, and the application of the death penalty according to the Constitutional definition of the crime and the punishment. It would have to be expulsion from the country for any foreign person who has supported insurrection and/or anarchy. It would have to be a big black line between the right to express opposing political views and advocating for the violation of the Constitution and/or overthrow of the country.
And please, for the sake of the country, finally an understanding of the value of propaganda, of the absolute need to control the flow of information. Later, in a calmed and recovering society, this could be relaxed, but if the excrement really does hit the ventilator we should control the airwaves and focus on serious education of a dumbed-down populace on the history of our country, on our Constitutional rule of law, and the brutal and bloody history of the Left.
“who are you going to shoot”?
I’m sincerely hoping that I never have to shoot anyone, but I think I’m going to know when and if I have to. Like you, I think it’s becoming more and more inevitable. The Left cannot win without cheating and violence, and given enough power they will NEVER leave people like you and me alone. And the desire to rule over others is almost completely one sided.
If I were writing a script about a population fighting back against attempted insurrection, basing it on the strategies already exhibited by the American Left, I would put together a small group of trained military people and, when hearing of a planned riot (and they are all planned) pre-emptively set up a killing field of sniper positions in buildings, attack locations at street level, and then wait for the hired thugs to show up. I would have every possible exit blocked when things start blow up, and I would make sure that every single participant is taken out—including so-called “peaceful protestors”. Anyone who shows up gets shot. Period.
It could be done in less than five minutes, after which every gunman simply disappears.
How many times do you think this would have to happen to have this entire strategy dropped? The Left has big pockets, but limited manpower, depending on chaos and civil unrest in place of actual armed conflict, counting on the politicians and media mouthpieces to provide emotional content. They have their small paid mercenary group and a lot of hysterical cannon-fodder types they can throw into any situation to emote and get crazy and even try some violence of their own like driving cars into people, but their resources are limited and easily depleted by a populace willing to do the dirty work.
Ben Roberts-Smith is Australia’s most decorated living soldier – and he’s now been arrested on war crimes charges. Look up a picture of him – he’s the kind of man who allowed Australia to punch massively above her weight in two world wars. Just this big, hulking man…and like all true heroes, someone you know would never harm the weak, but is absolutely deadly to the enemy. But, he’s been charged. Here’s the thing – as far as I can determine, there is no actual evidence of a crime. And this is even if you want to call what he’s accused of doing “crimes”. To me, what’s he’s accused of doing amounts to “wow, war really sucks” kind of things.
Keep in mind that all of the “crimes” happened more than a decade ago. In a country Australian investigators can’t visit. With no “crime scene”. No forensic evidence. Just hearsay. That’s it. And whatever happened was in a war zone with an enemy who literally stops at nothing.
He’s not really being charged with war crimes – he’s on trial for being Australian. The Australian Ruling Class wants to burn out the whole concept of the Digger. The brave man who will fight hard for Australia. What they want is a new type of soldier – a coward. Quite sniveling. People who will obey any order. And who will then transmit those orders to foreigners who have been recruited into Australia’s defense forces…foreigners who will positively enjoy shooting Australians who step out of line.
They’re all doing it – all across the West: beating the bushes trying to find foreigners to fill out the ranks. They won’t want their own people – unless they have been fully conditioned to be cowardly slaves of the Ruling Class. That is what the Democrats have tried to do as well – importing foreigners and getting them to be the political and (eventually) military muscle necessary to suppress Americans. We stopped it just in the nick of time.
Speaking of Biden importing an army, this seems to be a Dem strategy: Newsom’s Billion Dollar Op to Replace Californians With Illegals
California Gov. Gavin Newsom spent $1 billion of taxpayer money to replace taxpayers fleeing the state for more freedom. He replaced them with illegal aliens. It’s not about voting so much as it’s about flooding Democrat zones to arrogate more congressional power.
City Journal’s Chris Rufo and Susan Crabtree found that Newsom spent $1 billion on organizations to bring in illegal aliens from all over the world.
[We traced] the money and can reveal that Governor Gavin Newsom has granted approximately $1 billion to an army of nonprofits that has encouraged unchecked numbers of migrants to enter the country, fought deportation orders in the courts, and led street protests against ICE. [emphasis added]
[…] One of the myriad groups given California taxpayer funding through NGOs and non-profits is a group whose sole mission is to get rid of sovereign borders.
[…] According to its own materials, Al Otro Lado is anti-borders and openly hostile to the American nation.
[…] Since the beginning of his term, he has granted more than $100 million to nonprofits that fight deportation orders—sometimes even for clients with criminal convictions.
At the center of the web of NGOs paid to destroy borders is CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles.
Shots fired at White House correspondents dinner. Being that this takes place on the White House grounds one would think security would be high. The secret service isn’t doing themselves any favors with the ongoing poor or even abysmal performance over the past year. There’s a part of me that thinks there are members within the SS that are leftist bent on tearing down Trump and anything he wants to achieve.
I first thought it was on the White House grounds and then read that the event was held at a Hilton hotel, and that the shooter was a guest there. (And he was a shooter—shot a SS agent in the chest, hitting an armored vest.)
The jackals immediately started howling, claiming this was “a setup because Trump’s numbers are low” and/or posting grieving that he was not killed—SDDS for the Lowlife Left.
Example from X:
“Don Winslow
@donwinslow
F A L S E F L A G:
A false flag operation is A COVERT ACTION —such as an attack—DESIGNED to look like it was perpetrated by a different party.
These operations aim to create a false pretext for military action or to MANIPULATE PUBLIC OPINION.”
These people have been pushing their fear-mongering claims that Trump is just waiting for the right moment/excuse to put the entire nation under martial law ever since he got elected. They are so desperate for their dark and murky fantasies to come true, it is truly pathetic to watch them flopping around the way they do.
Within ten minutes of the event they were saying that – which tells me that the conductors of the Orchestra of the Insane have pre-set talking points…”if this happens, you are to say that and keep saying it until the millions of braying asses are also saying it”.
I honestly rate Trump’s chances of making it to 1/20/2029 at 50/50. All credit to him for being the happy warrior…but the lies work; they create in the weak minded a certain idea and as we can see, they keep trying to get the job done. We need to start punishing the purveyors of lies.
Spot on comment by Jeff Childers:
OT, but…
Spook, you once commented here on my coon-proof cat food feeder. (When someone asked if a raccoon could get into it I said yes—if he brings a chainsaw)
Dr. Malone’s Sunday Funnies this morning hooked me with a Southern Gothic music video called Murder Chicken but it led to this:
He took a train. He had lots of weapons. He was in one of the most expensive hotels in DC at a time when its going to be booked solid for the WHCD. This is not a lone wolf.
It’s not a lone wolf and it wasn’t a spur of the moment spontaneous idea.
“He even acknowledged he’d felt this way “a long time ago” but called Saturday night “the first real opportunity” to act on it.
He then laid out a chilling target list with the clinical detachment of someone who’d thought about this for a long time. Administration officials were the top priority, ranked from highest to lowest. Secret Service agents were targets “only if necessary,” and he hoped to incapacitate them non-lethally — noting that “center mass with shotguns messes up people who aren’t” wearing body armor. Hotel security, Capitol Police, and National Guard troops were off-limits unless they fired first. Employees and guests were listed as “not targets at all” — unless, apparently, they got in the way.
He clearly had a well-thought-out plan.
In fact, he put thought into the kind of ammunition he wanted to use.
“In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs,” he wrote, citing less wall penetration.
How thoughtful.
But he made one thing clear about the dinner guests: he considered them “complicit” for showing up. “Most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor,” he wrote, “and are thus complicit.” He added that he “really hoped it doesn’t come to that” — but the door was open.”
One thing that jumped out at me was the claim that Trump is a “pedophile”. This has been popping up a lot lately, enough to indicate that it is a new narrative being pushed by the increasingly frantic Left. I don’t remember a single accusation or even implication that Trump was or is sexually interested in young children (unlike Joe Biden, though he did seem to prefer girls barely post-pubescent). But the need to find something salacious enough to appeal to a certain mentality made this a logical effort.
They have been claiming “rapist” for a long time, though Trump was not convicted of rape—but when has a Lib let fact get in the way of a good spittle-flying personal attack? At least rape was a claim, though rejected by a jury, but pedophilia is just something they have dug out of their tighty whities to throw, chimp-like, at the Big Scary Orange Man who is systematically destroying their party.
(Side note: The party enabling true pedophilia in supporting practices that drag children, even infants, into sex slavery is simultaneously clutching its pearls about invented claims about Republicans. I think it started when they needed to be able to attack the Catholic Church and its priests for sexual abuses while dodging the fact that these abuses were by homosexual priests on young men, leading to the misleading claim of “pedophilia” which let them create an image of dirty old men molesting young girls. Then for some reason Epstein was accused of and convicted of pedophilia though I believe his offenses were really of sexual relationships with teen-aged girls, not children and therefore not really “pedophilia” but statutory rape based on the ages of the girls. But let the Left get its teeth into something really juicy, like the image of child molestation, and it will slaver over it endlessly, knowing its base needs shorthand phrases that they can howl without concern for accuracy.)
What a hoot! “Where’s the tuna?” LOL!!
Most of our raccoons seem to have died off or moved elsewhere in recent years. When we first moved to my present place in 1997, we had raccoons out the ying yang. It wasn’t uncommon to see a half dozen or more at my deer feeder in the evening. We had one that my granddaughter named Meeko after the raccoon in the Disney movie Pocahontas. He go so tame he would come up on the deck while I was sitting in the swing, put his front paws on my knees, and eat out of my hand.
I have cameras in my garage and have enjoyed watching the coons trying to figure out how to get to the cat food in the feeders. I just laugh and laugh at their creativity.
(I built a heavy plywood box and mounted it to the wall, and about a third of the way down from the top I built a shelf that holds two automatic feeders. Twice a day they drop cat food into two vertical chutes that are about two feet long, that deliver the food into a pan below the box. The chutes are anchored to the inside of the box so even when they try to shake them loose they are stable, and the actual food itself is locked up and unreachable. It’s almost a form of raccoon torture. There isn’t room for them to get their heads under the box to look up the chutes, they can’t get a grip on them and can’t move them, and it drives them crazy.)
You should consider making a YouTube video. I’d watch it.
My Blink cameras only give very short little clips, so I would need a better camera. But I have thought of getting better surveillance cameras.
I went into the garage yesterday and found two peacocks. My neighbor has peacocks but I haven’t seen them visiting and they were pretty big, making me wonder if they came in through the cat flap—and why.
I love the animal stories and videos from Dr. Malone.
To be fair, the comment about wanting streets running in blood was not from “just days ago” but, according to Hasan Piker. the man who said this he made the comment about landlords back in 2018, it was made “sarcastically” in a private conversation with a friend who was a landlord. I can see that kind of comment being made in that context, and don’t like seeing it quoted out of context or the claim it was recent.
Not that Piker is innocent of trash talk, slander and general anti-Trump viciousness. He’s really a disgusting person. I’m only commenting on the reference to this statement being recent.
As usual, Jeff Childers nails it with insightful analysis not just of what has happened and the Left’s reaction to it, but concern for what this may portend. After quoting some truly horrific examples of radical Leftist support for political violence, he says:
He goes on to point out that;
This is what I have been saying—that we have the legitimate legal and constitutional machinery to respond to a pattern of political violence against local and federal government officials with overwhelming institutional force. Yet we are being very sensitive about using it.
Childers also points out that “The people celebrating on BlueSky never ask themselves what happens if they succeed? ” Not even going to his second question, which is “what happens if enough people who read their posts try and fail.” Here is where Identity Politics comes in–these people are not engaging in a principled rebellion against an analyzed and identified system, with the goal of replacing it with a “better one”. No, they are just having huge public hissy fits based on wholly emotion-based outrage directed at some PEOPLE. More to the point, against one person. They are examples of what the dog might do if it actually catches the car.
Because they don’t have a coherent POLITICAL philosophy that goes beyond Pedophile Cheeto Man. They are not acting out of zeal for an understood and adopted structure of government they prefer to the Constitutional model. They are wholly in AGAINST mode–against Trump, against the new East Wing building, against enforcement of federal immigration laws, against against against.
We can, and do, laugh at them for their infantile temper tantrums—but these intellectual infants have guns, and are putting together justifications for using them. Which takes us back to my old question—who are you going to shoot?
Because if these blowhards actually try to act on their delusions they are very likely to run up against vigilante justice, as well as a federal government finally willing to take the gloves off and start acting like the adults in the room.
I keep getting Facebook notifications that are either ads or short reels ranging from talking dogs and dancing cats to clips of people like Sheriff Grady Judd and political commentator Andrew Klavan, whose comment are outrageously funny. Check out Klavan on YouTube. He is very smart as well as merciless as he disembowels Leftist nonsense, starting with his references to the New York Times as a ‘former newspaper”.
And he is also a Christian and every now and then lets this become part of a commentary. In his episode about the murder of Charlie Kirk, which he could barely get through, he referred to Psalm 11.2-4, and when I looked it up it resonated for what we face today as well:
for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
they have fitted their arrow to the string
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
if the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do
“Without Evidence” Why Nobody Investigates?
Six years after 2020 – nobody will compare the numbers. Why?
Anyone on any social media platform, including the smaller ones like Next Door, has seen the same old same old arguments for enabling election fraud, though the arguments do not go under that name. The frantic arguments against the SAVE Act fall into two basic categories:
1)It is about voter suppression, which includes the theme that if a woman’s name on her birth certificate is not the same name on her driver’s license she can’t vote to the whine that this would require producing all identification documents to vote, to the alleged burdens of proving citizenship. This theme depends on variations of “Americans are too stupid to be able to comply”.
2) Revisiting the old whines about how there was never any voter fraud, courts found no fraud, mis-citing the Heritage Foundation findings, etc. This theme depends on the theory that if there has never been any fraud there never will be/can be any fraud so this is all just a big scam.
The area the fraud defenders studiously avoid is the real problem, which is the mailing of hundreds of thousands of ballots, which might even be addressed to legitimate voters, to ineligible addresses. Any effort to talk about this just prompts howling about how only three people in the history of some state have been found to be an illegal voter, blah blah blah.
And this is the battle omega4america has been fighting. They can prove that hundreds of thousands of ballots, even legitimate ballots, are sent to addresses where no one lives, and then seemingly disappear into the void. What happens to them?
The ballots sent to apartment buildings and dorms, etc. where mail is actually deliverable, just pile up till “someone” picks them up. The key element here is the identity of the “someone”, followed by what happens to them next. So an investigation would look into whether or not the state has a way to track ballots that have been returned, unopened, as undeliverable.
But if those orphan ballots are not dutifully returned to the state, what happens to them? Here, if we ever get this far, we hit the screeching level of how every single returned ballot is carefully and dutifully screened with the envelope signature matched to the signature on the registration. Yeah, right. We know two things here—that many envelopes are accepted with no signature at all, and that the allegedly rigorous comparison of signatures is a joke. Every envelope is not matched with a visual record of the registration, to make a comparison of signatures, and a legitimate comparison would take more than the few seconds allotted to each “examination”. In other words once those envelopes hit the system they are opened and the ballots mixed in with every other returned ballot, where they become part of the fungible stream of votes, legitimate and illegitimate.
And here we hit a big issue—that of the lack of chain of custody in post offices. We have multiple affidavits of witnesses stating that undeliverable ballots are bundled together with each bundle secured by six rubber bands. Always six rubber bands. And they they are tossed into open bins, where eventually another “someone” picks them up and where they, too, can be delivered to be opened and counted after blending in with every other vote cast.
This is an interesting short video of one example, in one Nevada county, of how ballots can accumulate after being sent to various non-residential addresses.
I am quite convinced that in the Deep Blue areas, the reported vote totals are fake. Sure, the upper class white women vote on their way to pick up another box of wine…but if anyone thinks a Cheeto-munching welfare bum who is barely literate and doesn’t even know how many States the USA has is voting? A person who can’t take the time to clean up the living room is going to try, with barely legible scrawl, to fill out a ballot? A ballot they might not be able to read and literally can’t tell the difference between the letters “t r u m p” and “c l i n t o n”? No. Ain’t happening. And, in fact, their non-voting is counted on…so someone works up a fake absentee ballot for them.
It’s easy to find out who votes and how often. So if someone is registered and has not voted in the past four elections, it’s pretty safe to get a ballot in his name—if you’re in a state that even requires a request for a mail-in ballot.
Let’s not pretend that all Post Office employees are honest. We hear stories every now and then about a mail carrier just dumping bags of mail in his garden shed for years, on days when he just didn’t feel like delivering the mail. We already have many accounts of Post Office employees bundling undeliverable ballots and marking those bundles with six rubber bands, and putting them in open boxes where they are “picked up”—but without, evidently, any record of who did the picking-up. This leads to the inevitable conclusion, or at least speculation, that Post Office employees are complicit in making undelivered ballots available to unidentified persons, who are not required to provide identification or proof of authority to pick them up.
It was the Post Office that sent tens of thousands of filled-in ballots, overnight, in a specially scheduled delivery truck, from New York to Pennsylvania the day votes were being counted in Pennsylvania, requiring the driver to drop the trailer containing the ballots in a parking lot and drive away. This is complicity on several levels.
Mailed ballots + dishonest Post Office employees = ease of fraud.
There is literally no chain of custody in place or required for ballots.
I’ve been watching the coverage of the latest assassination attempt (and isn’t it a sign of the times that there is even a phrase “latest assassination attempt”?) and the associated comments on how this points out the need for a secure venue on White House grounds.
One thing I have not seen mentioned is that this level of security is essential for visiting dignitaries, as well. How can we expect to entertain foreign presidents, kings, etc. if we can’t even provide secure venues?
And, of course, there is the need for secure security, as well. The video of the hotel lobby as the gunman entered should be used as an object lesson in How To Get Fired From The Secret Service. No one was paying attention. Well, one guy was paying attention to a woman. Two others were chatting, paying no attention to the door. The gunman was well into the lobby by the time anyone noticed—and then one agent fired at the intruder, with another agent in the line of fire, and it looks like the agent who got shot was not shot by the intruder but by the other agent.
And then there is the report that the only reason the gunman got caught was because he tripped.
Following the assassination attempt in Butler, PA, 6 Secret Service agents were suspended for 6 weeks, but, in spite of the abysmal performance of the SS in all three assassination attempts, I don’t believe anyone has been fired. That’s incredible when you think about it.
It was reported that the agent who spotted Ryan Wesley Routh, the assassin on the golf course at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, emptied his Glock 19 (16 rounds – 15 + 1 in the chamber) at Routh from nearly point blank range and missed every shot. I’m betting he’s still working for the SS.
I got to thinking that it would be impossible for a 6-year-old who had never fired a gun to miss someone a few feet away 16 times, and maybe I’m remembering the initial report wrong. Wikipedia says the agent fired 4 times, and other reports say 6. Still pretty pathetic for people who are supposed to be the best of the best.
The firearms training is supposed to be intensive enough to help overcome the adrenaline rush of a crisis. I guess I can understand the impulse to fire at someone without first making sure there was no one behind him, especially if the primary goal is to protect the president, but it’s still bad form.
And remember, they were shooting at him as they were chasing him—a completely inexcusable scenario, by the way. There might have been a shot or two fired as he went past, but it looked like they were running and shooting, never a very productive plan. If they had been stationed properly and been alert, he would have been running AT agents instead of past or away from them.
I find myself wondering just how much emphasis is placed on firearm skills and training in the Secret Service. I think police officers have to requalify on a regular basis but don’t know about the SS. But because protective details involve close quarters with the high likelihood of a lot of people around it would seem to be a good idea to have regular, focused, intensive gun training for every agent.
Aside from that—-why weren’t agents in front of the doors? Why did they depend on becoming alerted, somehow, enough to distract them from their conversations and then reacting fast enough to intercept an intruder, instead of being in front of those doors in the first place? That video made it look so casual, just a few guys hanging out, chatting, like they were killing time waiting for the church bingo game to end, with a wide open corridor between the doors and the stairs–stairs which would have provided an excellent firing location. There should have been agents in front of the doors and additional agents on the lower steps of the stairway, at the very least—for the entire duration of the event. An alert agent on a stair would have had a second or two from the time the guy came through the door to draw, aim and fire—at a target coming toward him.
I understand why Trump praises the Secret Service—the last guys you want mad at you are your protective detail—-but someone else ought to be able to be the fall guy and take the rap for a review and shake-up. Just look at the rumble when they were trying to get Trump out of the room—-they actually knocked him down, and looked totally uncoordinated. I know he was trying to make sure Melania was OK before being ushered out, but look at the video—while Trump was doing this agents stood, helpless, at a distance from him across the table, with plenty of room in front of him to give a shot to a second assassin. Even while Trump was focused on Melania, some agent or agent should have been on that table, filling in that space and blocking the president and his wife, instead of just standing there looking confused.
That video should be a training video, on how NOT to protect a president.