The Presidential election has now been reduced to two very powerful images. The current President Biden staring blankly into space at the Great Debate and the once and future President Trump with a bloody face, fist held high and Old Glory flying just behind him.
America has a collection of images that resonate down through the ages – Iwo Jima, Flag on the Moon, Plane hitting World Trade Center – to name just a few. The photo of Trump has just joined them. It is of a man who faced a moment of crisis and acted superbly and without fear – the behaviour we expect in a President, although rarely get these days. Biden’s sad image already is being consigned to the dustbin of history.
It should also be noted that, as well as Trump, two men were injured and one hero was killed. Corey Comperatore was shot in the head when he threw himself over his wife and daughters to protect them. He was just a regular guy, a volunteer fire chief in his small town, but a man capable of extraordinary heroism and love for his family.
Americans are wrestling right now with “How on Earth did we get to this point?” When faced with such a tragic and momentous event as a Presidential assassination, it is good to first check in with the experiences and judgement of experts. In this case, it would be folks who have also been shot in an assassination attempt and survived.
First up is Republican Representative Steve Scalise, who was shot (along with four others) on a baseball field in 2017 by a Democrat activist at a time when Democrat politicians were engaged in vitriolic attacks on Republicans after Trump had won the 2016 election.
“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” he tweeted hours after the Trump assassination attempt. “Clearly we’ve seen far Left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”
Then there was Robert Fico, Prime Minister of Slovakia, shot just this May and now on his feet again. He commented on Facebook:
The political opponents of Donald Trump try to shut him up and when that fails, they antagonise the public so much that some loser picks up a gun… And now we will witness speeches about the need for reconciliation, appeasement and forgiveness.
Scalise and Fico definitely have a point as their assassination attempts were both linked to gunmen with political motives responding to incitement from politicians and media. But so far Trump’s shooter has been revealed as just a local youth who borrowed his father’s gun and then picked up 50 rounds of ammunition from a gun store on his way to the Trump event. And we should always be a little cautious with the stochastic terrorism argument used extensively by the Left, i.e., the use of communication vehicles that can incite random folks to carry out terrorist acts in unpredictable ways. The argument has been used in the U.S. to dampen down free speech, as even the most innocent comments can be cited as stochastic, as well as being used only against folks to the right of Che Guevara.
But Scalise and Fico are right that Trump has been viciously attacked. Since 2015 the Democrat Party and the mainstream media have waged a virulent war against Trump – the worst attack on any politician in the country in modern times. Political demonisation – Russian conclusion, etc., morphed into impeachment (twice) then lawfare – or the manipulation of court systems against Trump with silly cases – and now assassination. All the while covering fire is provided by pundits, politicians and media that Trump is a fascist, indeed a reincarnation of Hitler. More thoughtful folks notice that Hitler started a world war and killed 12 million folks, including six million Jews, in concentration camps, while Trump in his Presidency started no wars and has killed zero of his country’s citizens.
Here are some more examples from X: “greatest threat to our democracy”, “genuine threat to this nation”, “literally a threat to everything America stands for”. So what, you might think, these are just unhinged loners frantically typing in a basement somewhere. But you would be wrong as these are from Biden’s social media account.
More definitive blame can be laid on the Secret Service agents responsible for security. They ignored two of their basic protocols for this situation. They did not “secure the perimeter” as the shooter got off six rounds from a roof only 130 yards away. And although Trump got the image of the decade, this should not have happened as he should have been manhandled off that stage and into a getaway van in two seconds. Instead, we saw secret service agents fiddling about for what seemed forever before Trump was away from danger. And why would you have three short women agents trying to cover a six foot guy and so leave his head exposed for further shots? You had one job…
Neither the Head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, nor her boss, Alejandro Mayorkas, Head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has resigned. Par for the course as the Biden Administration’s view is that everything it does is always a complete success. Mayorkas actually came out and stated this week he has “100%” confidence in Director Cheadle and her agency. One doubts the House committee hearings into the assassination attempt starting next week will share his opinion.
Also of concern is that the Biden Administration has doled out Secret Service protection to any candidate not named Biden in a manner similar to feeding gruel to Oliver Twist. Last year Robert Kennedy Jr. was not given this protection when running for the Democrat nomination, despite the fact his name alone (he is the son of assassinated Robert Kennedy) brings out the crazies. It was still denied when he announced a run as an independent candidate. The Trump campaign reportedly asked Homeland Security (DHS) several times for beefed-up security according to Representative Mike Waltz and was denied. DHS has denied this and said it had beefed-up Trump’s security instead, although footage of the assassination does not provide any visual evidence of that. It should be remembered in April this year nine Democrat congressmen went one better than the DHS’s frugal security approach for non-Bidens and sponsored a bill in the House to deny all “convicted felons” (a.k.a. Trump) Secret Service protection completely.
Both the Kennedy and Trump problems seem to have been resolved. RFK Jr. got secret service protection this week, while Trump appeared at the Republic National Convention on Monday surrounded by 10 big lads looking like extras from a Guy Ritchie movie. Remarkable what an assassination attempt will do.
The fallout from the assassination attempt will linger long in this country and it will reflect badly on Biden and his administration. In the short term, the investigations into atrocious failure of the Secret Service under Biden’s watch will horrify potential voters. In the long term, the Democrat establishment and associated media have enjoyed four years of trashing Trump to ensure he will not be elected again. The bills are now coming due.
Unless anything extraordinary happens, the debate pretty much doomed Biden’s race against Trump, while the assassination attempt has killed off all excitement on election night. The result may well be declared for Trump (assuming a “fair and legal and good election”) as soon as polls close, whether Biden or any other Democrat runs.
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