Trump Assassination Attempt

Published in The National, July 15th, 2024.

Trump was shot in the ear by a rooftop sniper at a rally in Butler, PA last evening. One person was killed and another two were seriously injured.

A bystander saw a man with a gun climbing the roof and tried to warn the secret service and police who ignored him.  

"I'm thinking to myself 'Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage'... the next thing you know, five shots ring out."

On April 19, Congressional democrats tried to strip Trump of his secret service protection, unprecedented for a former President and presumptive presidential nominee. Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, introduced the Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act (HR 8081).

According to a source, Trump’s security detail has been asking for more protection from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that handles the Secret Service, but was rebuffed. The DHS has also repeatedly denied secret service protection for independent presidential candidate, Robert F Kennedy, Jr., whose father and uncle were both assassinated.

Then we have this. President Biden also told donors on a private call on July 8th that it was “time to put Trump in a bullseye,” a dogwhistle if there ever was one.

At Biden’s hastily organised press conference last evening at 8.30 pm (half an hour past his bedtime), he refused to say that this was an assassination attempt on the former president. His words: “I have an opinion but I don’t have any facts.” Really? A rooftop sniper shoots at someone’s head and this isn’t an assassination attempt?

The FBI has now confirmed that this was an assassination attempt, although the Secret Service in its statement last evening demurred:

If you’re not troubled by this, you should be. On May 15th, Robert Fico, the Slovakian Prime Minister, was shot multiple times but miraculously survived. He is against Ukraine’s NATO membership and says he was targeted because he opposes European and UK policy which is to stoke the Ukraine conflict by sending more weapons. Just a few months ago, former UK PM Sunak said he wanted to put the UK defence industry on a ‘war-footing’. Sir Keir is set to continue that policy.

All empires die. The American military empire is in its death throes which makes it highly dangerous. It will deploy every trick in the book to retain its hegemony. If the world can survive the coming tumult, there’s hope we can construct a more stable multi-nodal world, where no one power is in a position to dominate, terrorise and subjugate other nations.