Best Not Miss

Trump Assassination Tango

The first and worst thing to say about the attempted assassination of Trump is that it is going to divert attention from the much more important and horrific mass slaughter of Palestinians that is taking place daily in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the constant Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria. Nothing that did happen, or could have happened, to Donald Trump or any American politician supporting that atrocity is worth an ounce of concern that should be going to the killed and amputated children of Gaza. In that context, it’s particularly sickening to witness the spectacle of politicians across the US political spectrum proclaiming the unacceptability of “political violence”—meaning violence against establishment politicians—while they vie to manage the country MLK correctly called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/1812573943632441830

https://x.com/ecomarxi/status/1812492537942139363

Nonetheless, I’ll succumb to discussing what is, however ultimately diversionary, an unavoidable event that’s symptomatic of the present, tense, American political paradigm and of the peculiar, fascinating history of such events in American history. It’s impossible to ignore, and kind of fun to discuss, presidential-level political assassination.

So what are we dealing with here? What we seem to know now is that shots were fired at Donald Trump—a volley of three evenly spaced shots followed by another volley of five more quickly spaced shots; Trump was injured, either directly by a bullet or indirectly by the glass of a shattered teleprompter that was hit by a bullet; a spectator was killed and two others critically wounded; a man, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was seen climbing onto a roof with a rifle by witnesses who pointed him out to police and Secret Service personnel, and was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper after shots were fired at Trump.

We know, from Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe, as interviewed by Pittsburgh CBS affiliate KDKA-TV, that an armed police officer “had both hands up on the roof to get up on the roof, never made it because the shooter had turned toward the officer, and—rightfully and smartfully—the officer let go.”

From another KDKA interview, we know that local witness Ben Maser “saw the person move from roof to roof…going from one building to another”—consistent with this picture of the two roofs connected by a small structure, conveniently laddered and ensconced behind a large tree:

We do not know how Thomas Crooks knew of this inviting lair 400 feet from Trump’s podium. Had he driven the 52 miles from Bethel Park before the rally to case it out? Had he been told about it? Or had he just wandered around the area with a long gun for some time before luckily stumbling on it?

We do not know whether anyone else was shooting or otherwise involved in the assassination attempt. We do not know whether and for how long a Secret Service sniper had Crooks in his sight before firing on him. And we do not know why Thomas Matthew Crooks wanted to shoot Donald Trump.

These are just the known unknowns. To say “a lot of questions remain unanswered” is the understatement of the year.

It's impossible in the American context not to consider the following possibilities:

1. This was an isolated, personal attack by Crooks—perhaps with accomplices, but independent of any larger organization—who wanted to kill Trump for some reason we either will or will not be able to determine, based on documents that either will or will not be found and released to the public. At any rate, an event of no great political significance in itself.

2. This was an assassination attempt by Crooks (with or without accomplices) acting on behalf of an organization independent of Trump or the USG/Deep State with a larger political agenda. If this is the case, that organization should be expected to make itself and its agenda known. There would be no point to such an action otherwise.

3. This was a false-flag attempt action by the Trump campaign to gin up enormous political support and to put to shame and to an end the Democratic party’s and its media allies’ incessant, extreme vilification of him. The cui bono principle certainly raises this possibility, since this event has achieved those objectives for Trump in a way that nothing else could have.

4. This was an assassination attempt by some deep state, intelligence agency faction that was able to manipulate Crooks and the Secret Service protection protocols to make the shooting possible. This would be consistent with what has undeniably been a constant campaign on the part of powerful elements of the political and national security elite to portray Donald Trump as an existential threat to democracy and the American polity, and to, at all costs, prevent him from becoming president again. Many people, myself included, have remarked that, if all other gambits to stop Trump fail—as the lawfare seems to be failing—assassination is in the logic of that position, and in the historical repertoire of such factions. As American as apple pie. Predictable and predicted. Per Republican Lincoln Project founder, Rick Wilson: “The donor class can’t just sit back on the sidelines and say, ‘Oh, well, don’t worry, this will all work itself out.’ They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump. And that’s a fact.”

As far as I'm concerned, all of those scenarios are possible in principle and in practice. I don't know now, and I don't know that we will ever know, which is true.

I would say that option 1 is an event of no great political significance, other than to encourage toning down the aggressive intensity of political discourse—which, in the U.S., is WWE-level trash-talking that ensures nothing will fundamentally change.

It is true that “dehumanizing” your political opponent as an enemy, a traitorous “dictator” from whom the country must be saved, will tend to encourage fanatical and violent activity by those who are prone to it. Donald Trump is not Hitler and Joe Biden is not Stalin, and those in the respective camps should cease proclaiming such nonsense. It is also true that the Democratic camp and the dominant media it controls have been unsurpassed on that score:

But pointed political attacks, using nasty figures of speech, are not going away, and neither Trump’s “bloodbath” nor Biden’s “put Trump in a bullseye”— anymore than Malcolm’s “by any means necessary” or “No justice. No peace.”—makes an individual pick up a gun and kill someone. You can’t control everyone you might “inspire.” It would be a mistake, and it will be the impetus, to use this situation to further suppress political speech on behalf of the status quo. It is particularly galling that the Biden campaign and the Democratic party are now going to blame pro-Palestinian protestors for the vitriol and violence that they incited. Biden, it seems, is now going to tone down attacks on Trump, and stress “unity,” by redirecting its unsurpassed apparatus of vilification toward those protestors, “draw[ing] on the president's history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the ‘disorder’ created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict.”

To be sure, there are situations where political opponents are existential enemies and polarized discourse and “disorder”—even to the point of “political violence”—are appropriate. The difference in the American context between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Democrat and Republican—the two right-wing imperialist and Zionist factions that will find unity in attacking Palestinians—is not one of them, and all the Democrats who have been screaming about Trump’s “fascism” know it. That’s why Maine Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden now denounces “hyperbolic threats about the stakes of this election. It should not be misleadingly portrayed as a struggle between democracy or authoritarianism, or a battle against fascists or socialists bent on destroying America. These are dangerous lies,” and AOC wishes Trump “a speedy recovery.”  In fact, the Democrats have “all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency." They know very well that, as with Biden, “nothing will fundamentally change.”

In other words, all of what you see in the videos above, all of what you saw for years in Dem-aligned media, any part of which worked itself into the mind of Thomas Mattew Crooks, is a crock of diversionary fear-mongering shit.

https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen/status/1812363857215488427.

Option 2 would be politically significant if it were publicly claimed. Since it hasn’t been by now, I doubt it will be, but we shall see.

Options 3 and 4 are the ones that, for good reason, engage the American imagination. Anyone who has lived through, or has more than superficial knowledge of, the history of political assassination in the U.S., would be foolishly naive not to suspect one of these explanations.

My first instinct was to consider that this was a Trump ploy, because it so obviously benefitted him. These extraordinary photos, I think, rule that out:

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Sorry, Trump haters, but If it really was a bullet that clipped Trump's ear¹ and/or if that really is a bullet (perhaps the same) whizzing by him, then Donald Trump is the luckiest motherfucker in the universe. In the history of the universe. And whoever was shooting at him was trying to kill him.

We can talk about how he was already winning and didn’t need to mount such a dramatic, inevitably suspect false flag. We can talk about a thousand things. But ending the discussion is the millimeter difference in the angle of his head that separates an ear cut from brains being blown out. Yes, it couldn’t have worked out better if he planned it, and no, he could not have planned it. This is not William Tell or David Blaine. Nobody (and certainly not Donald Trump) is going to risk his life with a gag like this.

Really, in the history of the universe. Atheist that I am, we're talking divine, satanic, or Doctor Who-type intervention here. If this event proves anything, it’s that we are living in crazy.

Also, it’s worth noting, an epic day for photography. That whizzing bullet photo is one of the most amazing live-action pictures in the history of photography, because Mills just happened to be shooting at 8,000 frames per second. And the bloody-face, fist-pumping under-the-flag photo will take its place among the iconic images that instantly sealed political fate, making Donald Trump the presumptive incoming president, in the eyes of the country and the world.

Could not have planned it better. Could not be more crazy.

That leaves us with option 4, an American classic.

This event has many of the hallmarks: A spate of protective-detail screw-ups, multiple gunshots and witnesses. An unknown, disaffected loner who took shots or was seen in a position near the shooting and was himself quickly gunned down or taken out of the picture, and officially identified as the lone gunman. No one can forget John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan. No one should forget that Oswald didn’t shoot anybody, that Sirhan shot but did not kill RFK, that Hinckley and Chapman were obsessed with Catcher in the Rye, and that the agencies who conducted those official investigations and will conduct this one, lied and destroyed and hid and continue to hide evidence about those assassinations. These are the same agencies that brought us Russiagate and Iraqi WMDs, and have proven themselves completely untrustworthy.

I have no idea what’s the truth behind Thomas Matthew Crooks, but I’m betting it’s option 1 or 4, and I have no reason yet to exclude either. It’s possible that he’s nothing more than a disaffected kid acting alone. It’s possible—one would be foolish to exclude—that he’s a Manchurian candidate, a “manipulated subject of” those forces that just “had to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.” If it was the latter, this was a masterful misdirection of the Sirhan kind: Look. You can see with your own eyes who shot him! (And if you don’t know that was a misdirection, that’s how masterful it was.)

I know that the rat’s nest of “known unknown” questions above, combined with the multitude of other questions that will inevitably come up (or remain “unknown unknowns”) and the justifiable suspicion of the investigative agencies, makes it very likely that many people will not believe whatever version the FBI/SS/DHS/etc. come up with.  

If it was on op, the big problem for the perpetrators is, per Ralph and Omar: “When you come at the king, you best not miss.” Not least because the king now controls the investigation.

For now, I’ll call it a toss-up between 1 and 4. Now if they find a dog-eared copy of Catcher in the Rye in Thomas Crooks’s bedroom….

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¹There was a report that Trump’s ear was injured by glass from a shattered teleprompter. I don’t think that’s the case, but even that means the bullet was heading right toward him.

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