He experienced a similar phenomenon in considering the
events in Butler, PA on Saturday. He
doesn’t know what happened, but has some suspicions that what didn’t
happen was that Thomas Michael Crooks, acting alone, attempted to assassinate
ex-President Trump with an “AR-style weapon” from a rooftop 150 hundred yards
away. Were it not for the four other
casualties (including Crooks), Curmie would be ready to declare unequivocally
that it was all a hoax. As it is, he’s
at the “eyebrow raised in suspicion” phase.
That, Gentle Reader, is still a fair distance from “we’re hearing the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Not a few of Curmie’s theatre friends reacted immediately to
the news of what has been described as an assassination attempt, suggesting that it looked
staged (Curmie agrees). A number of folks experienced in military and security operations have
also expressed doubts. Curmie had a link
to a meme/quote from such a person, but it has vanished into the ether. Thanks, Facebook!
Curmie generally detests conspiracy theories, and he’s not
pushing one here, but before subscribing to the official version of events,
he’s got some questions that need answers.
1. 1. How did this kid who’s not military, CIA, or
anything like that, and who has no relevant training, get into position where
he could even get a shot in the general direction of someone with Secret
Service protection? Why would the
security detail leave such an obvious space accessible? And how did Crooks know it wouldn’t be
secured? Curmie is more than a little
skeptical about that whole “outside the security perimeter” business.
2. 2. Did the Secret Service intentionally allow this
to happen? Because they wanted Trump
dead? Because they knew it was a
ruse? Or are they just terrible at their
jobs?
3. 3. What was Crooks’s motive? He’s a registered Republican. Is he a Liz Cheney kind of Republican,
harboring a grudge against Trump? Does
the fact that he once gave $15 to a progressive get-out-the-vote cause mean
anything? Did he join the GOP just to disrupt
the primaries, as someone on the right has tried to claim? Was his motive political at all? He certainly wouldn’t be the first prospective
assassin to have an altogether apolitical reason for attempting the life of a
politician. Perhaps there’s a latter-day
Jodie Foster to impress out there somewhere.
4. 4. He’s got an “AR-style weapon.” Those things fire about 10 rounds per
second. If he really wanted to kill the
ex-President and (apparently) didn’t care about collateral damage, why did he
get off only 8 rounds? Wouldn’t he have
sprayed the stage? Instead, we hear a
series of pops (see about the 14 second mark here). If you’ve got a semi-automatic rifle and you’re
trying to shoot someone, why don’t you use the weapon the way it’s intended to
be used?
5. 5. It’s also a little hard to believe that the
Secret Service identified the source of the gunfire, took aim, and shot Crooks
dead in less than a second. Or, if the
Secret Service was indeed in position to respond that quickly, why didn’t they
either shoot Crooks before he fired or radio to their colleagues on the
stage to get Trump out of harm’s way? Or,
you know… both?
6. 6. When the shots are fired, Trump quickly grabs
his right ear. Yet the video of the
event appears to show no signs of blood on his hand when he brings it down
again a second or two later. One of
Curmie’s Dad’s friends paid his way through grad school by working as a
professional wrestling villain. One of
his schticks, bloodying his opponent while pretending to bite his ear, was
founded on the fact that cuts to the ear bleed a lot. A small piece of razor blade serves the
purpose admirably. Curmie is not
suggesting that’s what happened, but doesn’t rule out the possibility. If he trusted Trump even a little, this
thought would never even flicker across Curmie’s mind.
7. 7. Why do the rally-goers immediately behind Trump
show concern for their hero but little if any fear for their own safety? As it happens, they probably weren’t in the
line of fire, assuming Crooks was indeed a lone gunman, but they’d have no way
of knowing that. In theatre terms, Crooks
was offstage right,
and would be shooting past them (unless he was spraying the stage), but they’d
have had no reason to believe that the threat was over. The “shooter’s down” announcement doesn’t
come until nearly a full minute after the first shots are fired.
8. 8. Why was there an apparently reliable source who
claimed that Trump was hit by glass fragments from a teleprompter rather than a
bullet? Stated otherwise, what would be
gained, by literally anyone, if that report were to be believed? (By the way, the direction Trump was facing
as the shots were fired would make it impossible for him to be hit on the right
side in this manner.)
9. 9. Then, as Lieutenant Columbo in the meme at the
top of the page wants to know, why would Trump behave the way he did after
being shot (worried about his shoes?
really?), and why, as the military veteran mentioned above (the one
whose post was apparently censored by Facebook) wants to know, did the Secret
Service let him get away with this bravado at the risk of his safety? (Or was the incident all an illusion, with
bravado to match?)
1 10. Or
was this somehow a “hit” orchestrated by the Biden campaign, as wackadoodle
Congresscritter Mike Collins alleges without, of course, a whiff of evidence? Yes, it sounds stupid, but insert something
about stopped clocks here. But if it was a hit, why hire a 20-year-kid instead of, you know, a hitman? Maybe Crooks was the best they could find on Craig’s List?
There are, indeed, questions. Perhaps there are answers forthcoming: an
explanation of the lapses by the Secret Service, a rationale for Crooks’s
actions, a bullet fragment with Trump’s blood or tissue on it, etc. The alternative to what now passes for the
true story is terrifying indeed, as it would entail an elaborate plot in which
multiple Secret Service agents would have to be complicit rather than merely incompetent.
Yes, Trump is an accomplished conman a consummate
showman, and there’s no question that he’s an amoral narcissist and, shall we
say, not a devotee of truth-telling… but could even Donald Trump be willing to
sacrifice a couple of his followers for an opportunity to grandstand? That seems unlikely. Not, alas, impossible, but unlikely. Curmie does suspect, though, that Dolt45 might
be sufficiently wily to seize on an opportunity to showboat when one presents
itself and sufficiently stupid to do so even at the risk of self-endangerment. His hubris is about all he has going for him,
after all.
And there’s no question that the incident worked to Trump’s
political advantage. Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms argues to the contrary in a comment, noting that it knocked Biden’s lack of
acuity off the front pages. But the most
recent headlines were about what a totalitarian nightmare Project 2025 is, and
Trump emerges from the event having shown defiance and what could be
interpreted as courage. In the minds of
idiots—and the MAGA minions (as opposed to those who will hold their nose and vote
for him as the lesser of two evils… as Curmie will do in the other direction)
all fit in this category—he, unlike those dozens of schoolkids who’ve been
killed by assholes with an assault rifle, was protected by the grace of God
Himself. The more the campaign is about literally
anything other than policy, the better for Trump.
It may be true; indeed it probably is true, that the Conventional Wisdom is generally if not completely accurate. But watching the video of the incident was rather like sitting through a particularly poorly directed episode of “Covert Affairs,” except instead of attractive actors like Piper Perabo and Christopher Gorham we’re stuck looking at a morbidly obese geriatric demagogue. The entire nation must have been very naughty indeed in a previous life.
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