The since-resigned Secret Service director conceded before House lawmakers Monday that this month’s shooting of former President Donald Trump was the worst agency security failure since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
“On July 13th, we failed,” Kimberly Cheatle said.
But was the assassination attempt a failure because Trump survived? Or was it a failure because he was shot in the first place? It’s easy to blow off a government attempt to kill the former and potential future president as an episode of conspiratorial paranoia, but not so much when one is reminded of the extent to which Trump has remained the Washington regime’s Public Enemy No. 1 since 2015.
Trump’s bloodied fist-pump wasn’t just an expression of patriotic defiance in the face of a near-assassin’s bullet. The former president’s display of physical courage was much larger than that. The dramatic images of Trump’s heroism in the moment reflected the triumph of an ex-commander-in-chief who’s conquered not one but two impeachments, serially fabricated financial scandals, and 91 state and federal charges in a weaponized legal system run by ideological opponents who smear him as Adolf Hitler. An entire decade of character assassinations culminated in a bullet blowing through the right ear of a leader who emerged from the latest assault as a lionized icon of American perseverance and determination just months from an election.
The FBI and the Department of Justice failed to take Trump down through the Russia hoax. Then the intelligence state failed to bring Trump down through impeachment with a hoax on aid to Ukraine. Then congressional Democrats failed to keep Trump down with another hoax surrounding the capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As the DOJ’s lawfare campaign to imprison Trump with a series of charges brought by prosecutors of the incumbent regime began to derail this summer, the Secret Service naturally became the agency of last resort through which Trump’s opponents could finally execute their “insurance policy” against another Trump presidency.
Trump’s shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, might not have deliberately coordinated with deep state security to pull the trigger on the Republican presidential nominee. But the string of security lapses in the former president’s detail clearly left the door open for any number of the crazies who wish to carry out an assassination, including even a deranged 20-year-old, to succeed just once.
On Wednesday, the FBI confirmed Crooks had been able to fly a reconnaissance drone just roughly 200 yards from the rally fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, only hours before the event. The news had already been leaked to The Wall Street Journal, which reported a programmed flight path “suggests Crooks flew the drone more than once as he researched and scoped out the event site.”
Several law enforcement officials were apparently stationed inside the building from which Crooks was able to fire off eight gunshots in under six seconds, injuring two rallygoers and killing one. According to the disgraced ex-Secret Service director, however, the rooftop from which the gunman fired was left vacant because it was “sloped.” A former roofer explained in a column for The Federalist why Cheatle’s “‘Sloped’ Roof Excuse Is Total Nonsense.”
“Contrary to Director Cheatle’s statement,” wrote Dmitri Rutkowski, the “two- to four-pitch industrial roof is not too ‘sloped.’”
“It presents no special ‘safety factor’ for agents to walk,” Rutkowski explained. “It is low-pitch, and people can comfortably stand and maneuver upon it. The killer easily climbed and moved around on it, and the internet is replete with images of agents comfortably walking it.”
The courageous commitment of front-line agents to take a bullet for the former president was on clear display at this month’s rally, but the leadership within the upper echelons of the federal security agency obviously carries no such mandate. The Secret Service director who finally stepped down was also an appointee of First Lady Jill Biden’s, whose own detail was apparently beefed up while Trump’s team was stripped down. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the Trump campaign’s requests for additional security “time and again,” and yet Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas still hasn’t joined Cheatle in resigning.
On Tuesday, the Secret Service requested Trump forgo any more outdoor campaign rallies right after Republicans wrapped up one of the most successful conventions to propel the party into the fall election.
“The Secret Service did not return an email from The Federalist requesting comment,” Federalist Senior Election Correspondent Matt Kittle reported. “So it’s not clear whether the agency has made the same requests of Vice President Kamala Harris.”
An agency otherwise committed to Trump’s protection might not have placed a partisan handicap on federally protected persons. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., even tried to strip the Republican presidential candidate of Secret Service protection earlier this year, and Democrats are considering the Mississippi lawmaker for a seat on a bipartisan commission to investigate the failed assassination attempt.
Even if Trump’s assassination attempt wasn’t a government plot to kill an ex-president, it’s obvious to Americans that the Secret Service was yet another hostile agency prone to the corrupt impulses of far-left ideologues in the capital who grandstand on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. If the Secret Service had been weaponized to block Trump’s triumphant return to the Oval Office, the events might look very similar to those of the last two weeks.
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