The Automatic Earth

Salvador Dali Swans reflecting elephants 1937

I keep wondering: Did the shooter know beforehand that the rooftop would be unprotected? It normally would not be. Then why climb all the way up there?

PLEASE STOP with the FAKE virtue signaling. Below is a video of EIGHT YEARS of calls for violence by Democrats and Democrat influencers. How DARE YOU feign sympathy and condemnation! Biden LITERALLY SAID: "It's time to put Trump in the bullseye!" -VJpic.twitter.com/gRXCjgtovV

— RealVinnieJames (@RealVinnieJames) July 14, 2024

Here is JOE BIDEN himself JULY 8th (Politico) saying,
“IT’S TIME TO PUT DONALD TRUMP IN A BULLSEYE!”#BIDENRESIGN pic.twitter.com/UsLYaMnFYp

— Rob Schneider (@RobSchneider) July 14, 2024

Loomer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812416983201112373

Bongino
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812485847737840058

Larry

Johnny Depp wondered “when was the last time an actor assassinated a president?..”

• ‘Eliminate Him’: A Look At The Violent Rhetoric Against Donald Trump (RT)

While the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has been roundly condemned by his political opponents, liberal politicians and pundits have – implicitly and explicitly – called for his death before. Trump narrowly avoided death at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when an assassin’s bullet apparently clipped his ear as it whizzed past his head. The shooter – named by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – killed one spectator at the rally and wounded two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service agents. US President Joe Biden decried the attempt on Trump’s life, declaring that “there’s no place for this kind of violence in America.” Ever since Trump won the 2016 election, however, he has faced a steady stream of threats from members of Biden’s party and their allies in the media.

Hollywood celebrities reacted with outrage to Trump’s shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. 80s pop icon Madonna spoke of wanting to “blow up the White House;” actor and activist Peter Fonda called for the president’s youngest son, Barron, to be “put in a cage with pedophiles;” and comedienne Kathy Griffin grabbed headlines when she posed for a photoshoot holding a mockup of Trump’s bloodied and severed head. Addressing the audience at Britain’s Glastonbury Festival in 2018, Johnny Depp wondered “when was the last time an actor assassinated a president?,” adding “maybe it’s time.” This reference to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was echoed by Broadway star Carole Cook several months later, when she asked a photographer “where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?”

Take him out
Speaking to MSNBC after Trump formally announced his presidential campaign last year, Representative Dan Goldman declared that his fellow New Yorker cannot be allowed to “see public office again.” “He is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be, he has to be eliminated,” Goldman proclaimed.

While Goldman later apologized for his choice of words, he is not the only Democrat lawmaker to apparently threaten Trump’s life. Michigan State Representative Cynthia Johnson was stripped of her committee assignments in 2020 when she warned Trump and his “trumpers” to “walk lightly,” or else her “soldiers” would “make them pay.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used similar rhetoric last week when she declared that the upcoming presidential election “is not a normal election,” and that Trump “must be stopped. He cannot be president.” Two weeks before the shooting, BBC reporter David Aaronovitch wrote on X that if he were President “Biden, I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.” On Sunday morning, Aaronovitch said that he had deleted the tweet, claiming that his words were “clearly satirical.”

A threat to democracy
Biden’s response to Saturday’s shooting was one of unequivocal condemnation. The US president, who will face off against Trump in this November’s election, said that he was “praying for” his political opponent, and that “we must unite as one nation to condemn” political violence. In a post on social media less than a month earlier, however, Biden’s team described Trump as “a genuine threat to this nation.” “He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for,” they posted on the president’s social media accounts. While Biden has never explicitly wished physical harm on his opponent, at least one would-be assassin has used similar words to justify his plans to kill Trump. 77-year-old Thomas Welnicki was arrested for phoning US Capitol Police in 2020 threatening to “take down” then-President Trump. His lawyer later told prosecutors in New York that Welnicki was distraught at “the threats to our democracy posed by former President Trump.”

Stripped of protection
Had Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson got his way, Trump would have had no Secret Service protection at Saturday’s rally. Earlier this year, Thompson proposed legislation that would strip this protection from former presidents convicted of felonies, as Trump was in May. The act was explicitly tailored to target Trump, Thompson’s office said, explaining that the former president’s criminal charges “have created a new exigency that Congress must address.” Immediately following Saturday’s shooting, one of Thompson’s staffers wrote on Facebook that the shooter should “get some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time.” She deleted the post – which Mississippi Republicans called “despicable” – shortly afterwards.

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Yes.

• Was Trump ‘Put in a Bullseye’? (Sp.)

“The constant comparisons of [former] President Trump to Hitler and the repeated calls over the last several years for stabbing, killing, poisoning, decapitating or shooting [former] President Trump serve as dog whistles to provoke and incite violence and very well may have fueled this assassination attempt,” GOP House Representative Paul Gosar told Sputnik. “We do know that in a widely reported call to hundreds of donors last week, Joe Biden boasted, ‘I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump… it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye’,” Gosar recalled. “Let me be perfectly clear: there is absolutely no place for this sort of incendiary rhetoric and calls for violence in politics today and everyone must condemn it,” the congressman stressed.

Gosar also pointed out that congressional Democrats, led by liberal Representative Bennie Thompson, even introduced legislation that would have stripped Trump of the Secret Service protection afforded to him by his status as a former president. The multiple reports about Trump’s security detail “asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks” but getting “rebuffed time and again by Biden’s DHS [Department of Homeland Security],” if true, hint at “criminal” disregard for Trump’s safety, he warned.

Meanwhile, former military intelligence and CIA Operations Officer Philip Giraldi argued that the less-than-stellar performance of US Secret Service agents during the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was somewhat of a surprise. “For more than twenty years I have observed the work of the Secret Service on protection details close up in embassies and during visits of congressmen and other senior officials, which has been excellent,” Giraldi explains. “So this time I am surprised that they did not have a rooftop 200 meters away from the speaker’s stand with a clear shot at it covered with someone stationed on it to close it off.” According to him, failure to do so was “either negligence in planning or in execution and someone will likely have to answer some hard questions regarding what was not done.”

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“The FBI hates Trump and has been trying to destroy Trump and his supporters for the past 8 years..”

• Did We Just Witness the FBI’s Attempt on Trump’s Life? (Paul Craig Roberts)

A number of independent security experts have noted egregious failures in the Secret Service’s protection of Trump’s venue. Perhaps most notable was the failure to include the nearby buildings in the security zone. Three possible explanations have been offered: incompetence, intent, and insufficient assigned resources. Incompetence is a possibility. In all federal agencies including the military, ability and merit have been set aside in order to make race- and gender- based appointments. Intentionally leaving voids in the security arrangements is a possibility given the ruling elite’s and the Democrats hostility toward and hate for Donald Trump. The CIA director called Trump a “traitor to America.” The FBI hates Trump and has been trying to destroy Trump and his supporters for the past 8 years. The Secret Service was complicit in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, an indication that the Secret Service could be again roped into such a plot.

The various calls for Trump’s assassination from Democrats and presstitutes such as CNN and their portrayal of Trump as a dictator could have succeeded in presenting Trump’s assassination as a good thing. Security experts point out that the FBI and CIA have long had the ability to lead an unthinking or unstable person into criminal action. If the attempted assassination actually is the result of a plot, it indicates that the ruling elite do not expect the Democrats to win the presidential election. Otherwise, why take the risk of assassination? It is an acknowledged fact that the anti-Trump Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has repeatedly refused requests from the Trump campaign for more security against possible incidents encouraged by the amount of hatred generated against Trump by the Democrats and presstitutes. It is also clear that Mayorkas is aligned with the immigrant-invaders against Trump and Trump’s supporters who want protection for America’s border.

Possibly there are other reasons Mayorkas might be out of sympathy with Trump and his supporters. Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached by the House of Representatives for his refusal to protect the borders of the United States from illegal entry. He was protected from his impeachment by Senate Democrats. Possibly Alejandro’s history and that of his parents as underdogs fleeing oppression aligns him with immigrant-invaders against Trump. From Wikipedia: ( Alejandro Mayorkas was born in Cuba. His father is a Cuban Jew of Sephardi (from the former Ottoman Empire, present-day Turkey and Greece) and Ashkenazi (from Poland) background. . . His mother, Anita Gabor, was a Romanian Jew.

From its inception the Biden regime has redefined America as a multicultural, multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi- sexual preference Tower of Babel in which the values and opinions of traditional citizens count for no more, if not less, than the values and opinions of the latest illegal to cross the border. Entire Democrat cities and states present themselves at sanctuaries for immigrant-invaders and supply them with housing, food, medical and educational services and pre-paid debit cards for cash. Democrat taxpayers in these blue zones actually have more empathy for immigrant-invaders than they have for traditional Americans. What this means is the destruction of the country’s unity. Without unity there is no common interest, which means that power will rest on force. Given this dynamic, political assassination can become commonplace. In a very real sense, America is ceasing to exist. Perhaps that is what our elite fixated on the “Great Reset” want.

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“..we know all too well how unhinged people can find justification in the incendiary rhetoric of our politics..”

• The Trump Shooting is Not Nearly as Surprising as it Should Be (Turley)

The assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump left a nation stunned. But the most shocking aspect was that it was not nearly as surprising as it should have been. For months, politicians, the press and pundits have escalated reckless rhetoric in this campaign on both sides. That includes claims that Trump was set to kill democracy, unleash “death squads” and make homosexuals and reporters “disappear.” President Biden has stoked this rage rhetoric. In 2022, Biden held his controversial speech before Independence Hall where he denounced Trump supporters as enemies of the people. Biden recently referenced the speech and has embraced the claims that this could be our last democratic election. I discuss this rage rhetoric in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” We are living through an age of rage. It is not our first, but it may be the most dangerous such period in our history.

Some of us have been objecting for years that this rage rhetoric is a dangerous political pitch for the nation. While most people reject the hyperbolic claims, others take it as true. They believe that homosexuals are going to be “disappeared” as claimed on ABC’s “The View” or that the Trump “death squads” are now green lighted by a conservative Supreme Court, as claimed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Rage is addictive and contagious. It is also liberating. It allows people a sense of license to take actions that would ordinarily be viewed as repulsive. As soon as Trump was elected, unhinged rage became the norm as with Kathy Griffin featuring herself holding the bloody severed head of Trump. Just recently, another celebrity, actress Lea DeLaria, begged Biden to “blow [Trump] up” after the recent presidential immunity decision. DeLaria explained that “this is a **** war. This is a war now, and we are fighting for our **** country. And these a**holes are going to take it away. They’re going to take it away.”

For months, people have heard politicians and press call Trump “Hitler” and the GOP a Nazi movement. Some compared stopping Trump to stopping Hitler in 1933. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) declared Trump “is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated.” He later apologized. Others say that Trump “will destroy the world” unless he is stopped. I do not believe that the politicians or pundits engaging in what my book calls “rage rhetoric” want actual violence. But they have knowingly created conditions for extremist views and, yes, extremist actions. The media has been quick to denounce reckless rhetoric from the right while largely ignoring the same language on the left. That included threats against conservative Supreme Court justices before the assassination plot against Brett Kavanaugh.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to the steps of the Supreme Court and called out Kavanaugh by name: “I want to tell you, (Justice Neil) Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Again, I do not believe that Schumer wanted Nicholas Roske to go to the home of Justice Kavanaugh to kill him. However, these politicians also know that some citizens will hear this rhetoric as a justification for violent conduct. Thus, when the president is claiming that the election may end democracy in the nation, it can be heard as much as a license as a warning, particularly when he adds “we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”We still do not know about the shooter in this assassination attempt. However, we know all too well how unhinged people can find justification in the incendiary rhetoric of our politics. This moment did not occur in a vacuum; it occurred in a time when our leaders long abandoned reason for rage. We have come full circle to where we began as a Republic. In the 1800 election, Federalists and Jeffersonians engaged in similar rage rhetoric.

Federalists told citizens that, if Jefferson were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.” Jeffersonians warned that, if Adams were reelected, “chains, dungeons, transportation, and perhaps the gibbet” awaited citizens and they “would instantaneously be put to death.” Both sides stoked the anger and fears of the public, and violence was seen across the nation. In our current age of rage, politicians have sought to use the same anger and fear to rally support at any cost. This is the cost.

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“We can talk about Trump’s obsession with his image or how he lies about golf scores and bullshitted his way to the top. But how can you argue the man isn’t a success?”

• Fearless (QTR)

A couple of hours before the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump, I was sitting in a bar having a laugh with some new friends I had just met from Texas. Our discussion was centered around how divided the country has become and why we all felt another four years of President Biden would be an unmitigated disaster. In the spirit of honest discourse among new friends, we began to rattle off the things we liked and didn’t like about Trump, as well. We conceded to each other that Trump was vain and a narcissist, obsessed with his own image, but we also agreed his policy stances would be far better for the country than those of the Democratic party. And the self-obsessed narcissism criticism you, and everybody else, should know by now: it’s been lobbed at Trump for so many decades now he probably takes it as a compliment.

Look, I’m a realist. I understand that it’s easy to look at Trump’s personal life and career prior to being President and conclude he’s always prioritized the money and the image over substance. From Trump Airlines to Trump Steaks to Trump University to Trump’s namesake casinos in Atlantic City, combined with allegations of not paying vendors that worked for him on projects and fabricating positive press about himself in the media, I don’t fault people for taking that view of the man. We could sit here and analyze what drives Trump to engage in these patterns of behavior, which would probably take forever since it would require him to undergo a trillion hours of therapy to uncover his deepest trauma, or we could zoom out, take a 30,000-foot view and simply take note: for one reason or another, the f*cking guy is driven. And it’s this incessant, relentless, fearless drive and desire to win — no matter what is fueling it — that has allowed Trump to shake off his past business failures and eventually land on The Apprentice, which became a resounding success. It’s the same drive that empowered Trump to campaign obsessively in 2016 and then defy all odds to win the presidency.

People first joked that Trump was running in 2016 as a PR stunt. Maybe he was. But at the end of they day, he manifested himself into the White House. And, to boot, he did a decent job: he ran the country effectively, slashed regulations, cut taxes, kept us out of war, and kept the economy booming. Regardless of why he wanted to become president, once he was put in that position, he did a decent job of “getting shit done” and won the respect of many world leaders who otherwise wouldn’t have taken him, or the United States under a President Hillary Clinton, seriously. As I was saying to my new friends last night, his style is brash and he is cutthroat as a businessman. He’s the personification of the Wall Street shark who, in business, gets a reputation for screwing the little guy. But if you’re not his counterparty and he’s negotiating on your behalf (or your country’s behalf) isn’t that exactly what you want? Someone who will fight tooth and nail, to the death to win, and who refuses to be intimidated? If Trump is striking a deal that’ll benefit the country, does it matter to you that it’s his ego driving his bold nature?

Putting aside what drives him, the fact is simply that nobody needs to tell him to get out of bed in the morning. While campaigning, he often makes multiple stops in a day, and while he was president, he went to war with the press for hours at a time nearly every single day. Those are positive character traits for a President no matter what is fueling it. It’s consistency, perseverance, reliability. Trump is the gun Boris the Blade sells Tommy in Snatch: “Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn’t work you can always hit him with it.” And last night, after surviving an assassination attempt, President Trump didn’t hurriedly rush off the stage. Even after he was surrounded by multiple Secret Service agents, and it became evident that his life was in danger, he chose to stand on the stage and raise a fist in the air to show the world that the engine that drives him to push forward still hadn’t shut down.

I said to another friend last night that Trump is such a PR genius that it’s probably just muscle memory for him to seize momentous occasions as photo opportunities. Anybody that has watched him publicly knows a lot of times he’ll “pose” in the middle of saying certain sentences or during certain meetings because he knows a photograph of that image will capture the brand that he wants to sell to the world. Think about this. When we watch the UFC, do we care about what’s going on in the personal lives of the fighters outside the octagon? Do we spend time bemoaning how some fighters, like Nate Diaz, for example, are simply just “built different” and love to fight for the hell of fighting? No, we sit back and watch them take personal pain and obsession and turn it into remarkable careers. Then, we celebrate them.

At this point in Trump’s life, he has gone far past being a caricature of himself and has simply believed and manifested himself into being a success by being “built different”. You can call it ego and narcissism if you’d like, and it probably is, but, as is the case with most all of us, Trump‘s personality disorders are the gasoline that he uses to fuel his engine. So we can talk about Stormy Daniels, or we can talk about taking on irresponsible amounts of debt to fund the Taj Mahal. We can talk about Trump’s obsession with his image or how he lies about golf scores and bullshitted his way to the top. But how can you argue the man isn’t a success? He was President of the United States and one of the most well-known individuals on the face of the earth. How can you say that he’s a terrible family man when his children routinely show up to support him and he has been a provider for them his entire life?

How can you say he’s not courageous to stand down a litany of extremely damaging, false allegations throughout his entire tenure as President? And putting aside his motivation, how can you not say that choosing to stand on stage after being shot instead of ducking, hiding and scurrying away isn’t courageous? At the end of the day, I don’t care what drives him. Trump is a guy that perseveres. And if you view the country like I do right now, as a scattered, disorganized free-for-all, badly losing its grip on both law and order and its moral compass, a little drive, direction, perseverance and courageousness could go a long way for us.

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“..The idea of Crooks being able to get that close with an elevated position on the stage is unthinkable..”

• Massive Secret Service Failure Led To Shooting Of Donald Trump? (ZH)

When looking at the circumstances in favor of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the identified alleged suspect in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, PA, it’s hard to see how the guy failed. Almost every Secret Service security protocol seems to have been ignored, allowing Crooks easy access to a perfect shooting position and plenty of time to acquire a bead on Trump’s podium. The rooftop used by Crooks was a mere 140 yards away from the event with a clear line of sight to the right of Trump. Those familiar with precision shooting know that any shot within 300 yards is considered easy for a moderately trained rifleman. With the right caliber an expert can hit a torso sized target consistently at 1000 yards or more. At 140 yards any amateur should be able to hit a pie plate-sized target with little difficulty, even without a magnified optic.

The Secret Service is supposed to secure all obvious “sniper perches” well before the arrival of a protectee – Meaning, nearby rooftops and buildings are supposed to have a security presence in place along with drone surveillance. In the case of Butler, PA, this was apparently not done. SS snipers were only present on the building right behind the venue stage. The lack of a security presence at the building across the field made it possible for the would-be assassin to brazenly jaunt to the location and climb to the rooftop with his rifle in broad daylight. The SS traditionally uses concentric “circles of security” going out hundreds if not thousands of yards when preparing a location for protection.

The idea of Crooks being able to get that close with an elevated position on the stage is unthinkable. Another fail was the lack of sight obstructions put in place near the stage. The Secret Service is supposed to erect barriers to block the line of sight from potential shooting locations. Again, this was not done. Finally, there’s the dismal lack of response time. Witnesses outside the event report that they saw Thomas Crooks climbing to the building rooftop with his rifle at least three minutes before he started shooting. They claim they tried to warn police and Secret Service agents to no avail. “How could you have somebody on the rooftop?” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise – a victim of political violence, after the shooting. “There are reports that people watched him climb up the roof and even alerted authorities, and we’re going to be looking into that.”

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Saturday night demanded immediate answers from the Secret Service as to how it failed to prevent the assassination attempt. “I have already contacted the Secret Service for a briefing and am also calling on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear for a hearing,” Comer said on X. “The Oversight Committee will send a formal invitation soon. There are many questions and Americans demand answers.”

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“Most suspicious was that in the case of Trump, the Secret Service did not respond to reports of a shooter crawling with a gun on the roof nearby as eyewitnesses have reported..”

• US Secret Service Suspiciously Slow in Protecting Trump – Psyop Veteran (Sp.)

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump may lead to further clashes between the Dems and the GOP, ex-US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik, raising suspicions about the Secret Service’s conduct. Former President Donald Trump was injured in a shooting at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 just days before accepting the Republican nomination. “The Secret Service were remarkably — if not suspiciously — slow in their protecting of the [former] President [Trump], similar to how they were slow in protecting President John F Kennedy when he was shot in Texas,” former US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik. “Most suspicious was that in the case of Trump, the Secret Service did not respond to reports of a shooter crawling with a gun on the roof nearby as eyewitnesses have reported,” the pundit continued.

Trump’s political rival President Joe Biden and other major political leaders have condemned the violence, while US media of all stripes warned against incitement and hatred amid what CNN dubbed “a wild and unpredictable election year.” According to Bennett, the incident will “make Donald Trump a kind of superhero, a man of steel”. The former psychological warfare specialist suggested the images of Trump with a raised fist, bleeding and uttering: “fight, fight” have had a powerful effect on the American public.”Trump resembled the classic statue in Washington DC of US Marines, raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in World War II,” the expert remarked. “There was even an American flag directly over his head as well.”

The shooting appears to have deepened the rift within the already polarized US society. “In the process of this assassination attempt the shooter has unified, inspired and emboldened the Republican conservative, moderate patriot voting bloc in America to stand with Trump and to villainize and demonize all those politicians and media and other groups that dislike him or vilify him,” the expert noted. US pundits on the left and right have warned that the rally shooting could trigger further political violence with Democrats and Republicans pointing fingers at each other.

While former Barack Obama official Samantha Vinograd hinted at possible “retaliatory” attacks by right-wingers against the Biden campaign, conservative pundit Ryan Saavedra wrote on X that the Democrats and their allied media are trying to depict the conservatives as “the real dangerous threat.” The Washington Examiner alleged that Trump’s death would have triggered a months-long “civil war” in the US, while the Washington Post warned the nation is not out of the woods. A flurry of theories ranging from Trump staging the shooting to Biden ordering a hit on his political rival has popped up following the incident. “What is the result of this shooting?” Bennett continued. “There will obviously be a Republican political victory… or a convenient ‘civil war’ triggered as the Trump side and the Democrats side clash.”

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“Donald Trump’s life was saved by a miracle rather than by his security.”

• How Secret Service Failed Trump (Sp.)

The US Secret Service has come under intense scrutiny for failing to prevent the attempted killing of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Former President and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was injured at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. The suspected gunman has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old Bethel Park resident. “I don’t believe that he [Crooks] was a professional sniper, because for a professional sniper, 100 or 110 meters [the distance from the roof where the shot was taken to Trump] is not a [large] distance,” Sergei Goncharov, president of the Association of Veterans of the Alpha Anti-Terror Unit and member of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) advisory council, told Sputnik. “He hit Trump’s ear and is now confirmed to have killed two people. That is, at least, it seems to me that this criminal was not a professional, and he acted precisely from his own considerations, which will probably now be sorted out and discussed all over the world,” the veteran suggested.

Trump was about 135 meters from the rooftop where the culprit was found dead, NBC News found, based on an analysis of Google Earth images. The shooter reportedly used an AR-15 rifle which is mostly used in competitions and for hunting. According to open sources, the effective range of a standard AR-15 is up to 600 yards (548 m) whereas novices could demonstrate good performances and hit targets at a distance of 200 yards (182 m). A professional sniper armed with a high-precision long-range rifle typically operates at ranges between 600 and 1,200 meters. The Secret Service’s conduct has been questioned by US law enforcement and intelligence experts amid reports that an eyewitness frantically drew the attention of the police to a person crawling onto a rooftop with a rifle during the rally. Speaking to the BBC, the witness described what appeared to be indifference and a lax attitude to a potential threat both from the police and Secret Service as he and his friends were “pointing” at the alleged shooter for “two or three minutes.”

It appears that the people responsible for Trump’s safety dropped the ball, Alexey Filatov, retired lieutenant colonel of the Russian Federal Security Service and veteran counterterrorism specialist, told Sputnik, explaining that the former president’s security was provided by three groups: his bodyguards, local police and the Secret Service. According to the expert, it seems that there was no proper communication between the groups, Filatov pointed out, adding that law enforcement and security personnel for some reason also failed to secure all nearby rooftops in the vicinity.”It would be safe to say that the security performed extremely poorly,” the counterterrorism specialist said. “You could say that this terrorist act or, shall we say, assassination attempt, was successful. Donald Trump’s life was saved by a miracle rather than by his security.” He also expressed skepticism over the idea of some sort of conspiracy behind the Secret Service’s lapses, explaining that even elite US security agencies are staffed with “ordinary people”:

“There are some rather primitive people at certain positions there, who could have been negligent about their duties, not reacting after receiving a signal or not even reporting it,” Filatov remarked, adding that he used to communicate with US security services. The overarching responsibility for the attempted assassination lies with the Democratic Party leadership and the Biden administration, according to Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics and deputy director of research at the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. “The Democratic establishment… has been convincing American society over the last year and a half, at least, that Donald Trump’s return to power would mean an end to American democracy and transformation of the United States into a fascist dictatorship, and that Donald Trump constitutes the major threat to the United States at large,” Suslov told Sputnik.

“Many Trump opponents have become radicalized, more radicalized. And the [possible] result is violence and the attempted assassination,” the pundit continued. “This is dangerous because it will have long-term consequences for the United States. So this radicalization, in general, will not fade away. It might result in violence after elections in the United States, no matter how they turn out.” Suslov believes that the Secret Service’s failure to protect the Republican frontrunner stems from the US establishment’s hostility towards Trump, whose election odds are continuing to rise. He doesn’t rule out that the special services’ negligence to the emerging threat was deliberate.

“The deep state, the intelligence community, and the special services in the United States are, of course, not interested in Trump’s presidential victory,” he said. “They consider a second Trump administration… as a threat to themselves. And since Biden is definitely losing, and since the Democratic Party is disorganized, and there is an internal struggle and chaos within the Democratic camp… Trump’s electoral chances are very, very high and continue to grow.” After the assassination attempt, Trump’s electoral chances are likely to skyrocket whereas Biden’s chances will decrease even more because more Americans will think that the former president is the victim of Team Biden’s political persecution, Suslov concluded.

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“..the macabre sight of “Joe Biden” struggling to come off as “presidential,” or alive.”

• “Joe Biden” Offers Hope For All Americans With Stage 4 Incredulity (Miller)

Having long kept all its eyes wide shut to “our” president’s spectacular debility – despite his triple-pratfalls, stunned expression, physical and verbal wanderings, frequent “inappropriate touching” and (pardon me for writing this) loud public farts – “our free press” is now suddenly fixated on the fact that he’s too old to stand for re-election, as if (a) this hasn’t long been obvious to anyone not crazed by Trump Derangement Syndrome, and as if (b) “Biden” was elected in the first place. Of course, the reason for this sudden, total shift from deference to contempt was that (literally) unspeakable “debate” two weeks ago (with “Biden” barely capable of speech, while Trump was barely capable of shutting up) and the swift grim verdict by the audience. That face-off between rank senility and aging juvenility was, to put it mildly, no barrel of laughs, in part because there was no audience in the room, no doubt so that no MAGA-heads would be there to pump Trump up even more, reminding everybody of his greater popularity.

That eerie absence of the usual two rival mobs—an unnatural quiet reminiscent of Biden/Harris’s locked-down inauguration—deprived us of the evening’s only possible guffaws, as it (maybe) would have been a hoot to listen to the anxious hush of all those Democrats, hand-picked for their partisan intensity (as if some able bio-engineer had cloned Joe Scarborough for the occasion), faced with the impossibility of mustering anything but gloom at the macabre sight of “Joe Biden” struggling to come off as “presidential,” or alive. In this dismal moment there was actually some cause for hope, and not just for Trump and his true believers; but before we get to that, and in preparation for it, let’s hark back to the forgotten struggles of his less-disabled, yet far more popular predecessor, Ronald Reagan—who, though capable of often rallying grandly, tough old trouper that he was, showed signs of his Alzheimer’s from the start. (Mark Lloyd, employed by CNN in 1980, told me at the time that he was shocked not just by Reagan’s addled state at the Gipper’s first encounter with the press, but, no less, by his colleagues’ blithe indifference to it.)

In August of 1984, some three months prior to Election Day, Reagan, grinning vacantly, with Nancy at his side, went blank before a scrum of journalists when asked a question about arms control. “We’re doing everything we can,” his helpmate quietly prompted him, enabling him to say, not too convincingly, “We’re doing everything we can.” Having turned a blind eye to his illness at the start of his long run, the press now underplayed it: “Nancy Reagan says she did not prompt President Reagan’s recent response to a question on arms control but was simply talking softly to herself,” UPI reported a day later (the New York Times running only that terse item), and that was the end of it for the moment.

The issue then blew up big-time after Reagan’s first debate with Walter Mondale, when the usually-hale-seeming Chief Executive, though still looking agedly boyish at 73 (eight years younger than “Joe Biden” is today), rambled, stumbled, looking lost, thereby giving rise to the “age issue,” as the ever-helpful media delicately termed it. Great actor that he was, he finally put that roadblock behind him at the next debate, when he turned the tables on his uppity young rival (a mere lad of 56) by stoutly quipping that he “would not make an issue of his opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Whoever crafted that bon mot, it brought down the house, ensuring Reagan/Bush’s landslide re-election victory in November.

Thus Reagan jigged away from his unnerving likeness to such ancient, highly perishable Soviet heads of state as Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernenko, and that was that, his Alzheimer’s staying largely out of sight until Nancy managed his sad post-presidency. Unluckily for “Joe Biden” and his true believers, Ronald Reagan’s was the last major presidential ailment that “our free press” was eager not to magnify, after having totally blacked out FDR’s polio and JFK’s Addison’s disease (along with his astounding sex life, as people never tire of pointing out). Especially now that he performed so poorly opposite the snidely jabbering Trump, and on top of all the falls upstairs and weird remarks (“God save the queen, man!”) and—here I go again—loud farts that have defined “his” presidency (along with his flagrant non-election), “our free press” has been piling on with a zest unprecedented in the history of the US president-and-media.

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“Biden is the embodiment of the living dead..”

• NATO, Like Biden, Is A Senile Danger To World Peace (SCF)

How fitting that a doddering, senile American president should officiate at the NATO summit this week. At 81 years old, Joe Biden is older than the transatlantic military alliance founded 75 years ago in 1949. The 75th-anniversary gathering in Washington DC was meant to extol the NATO bloc as a guarantor of security and peace. However, all the cloying, ridiculous hype and fanfare amplified by the Western corporate media could not hide the fact that the American-led military organization has emerged as the biggest threat to world peace. The disconnect with reality was scathingly summed up by our columnist Martin Jay who surveyed the “lies, double-think and duplicity” spouted by Biden and other leaders of the 32-nation bloc. Declaring NATO to be a champion of democracy, human rights and international law is an abomination. The organization has evolved as an instrument of U.S. hegemonic imperialist violence ever since its inception.

It was never about purported defense, but rather as a seemingly plausible arm of Western warmongering against the Soviet Union and the rest of the planet to serve Western capitalist global domination. The Cold War was always a propaganda construct to give the blatant warmongering a pretense of noble purpose.To be sure, the docile Western news media, academia and think-tanks wrap up the absurd deception into a plausible narrative. That illustrates the power of propaganda. But the chasm with brutal reality has made the narrative untenable and prone to outright denigration. After more than three decades since the end of the Soviet Union and the supposed end of the Cold War, the U.S.-led NATO bloc has expanded both in member nations and also in flagrant belligerence. The so-called Cold War never ended. That’s because the need and accompanying pretexts for Western imperialist violence and lawless aggression were always present.

And so at the redundant age of 75 years of aggression, the NATO alliance is expressing more unhinged belligerence than ever before towards Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and any other nation that is deemed to stand in the way of U.S.-led global domination. This week NATO issued a joint statement that reads like a shocking manifesto of war-making laced with Orwellian bombastic language of self-virtue. American professor of international law Francis Boyle described the real agenda of NATO’s declaration as “preparing for war against Russia in the immediate future”. Another of our columnists Ron Ridenour said the NATO document was nothing but a “maniacal scream for world war”. This was in the same week that the United States announced plans to deploy cruise missiles to Germany capable of striking Moscow and other Russian cities.

[..]NATO leaders and their servile media cheerleaders cannot honestly articulate the underlying locomotive for war. To do so would leave the organization open to worldwide condemnation as heinous and criminal. The criminal warmongering must be dressed under a veil of do-good and nobility, which requires the telling of the most outrageous, even farcical lies, such as “defending democracy in Ukraine from Russian aggression”. The delusional disconnect to present such a contemptible charade could only be performed by Western political leaders who are nearly brain-dead. When the visibly failing Joe Biden addressed the NATO summit, he was more delusional and foul-mouthed than ever. Introducing the NATO-sponsored Ukrainian puppet Vladimir Zelensky, Biden misspoke with cognitive lapse, declaring: “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin”. A senile American president, leading a senile U.S. imperialist power and its NATO military enforcer. Biden is the embodiment of the living dead, both as a person and as the entire Western system he represents.

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“..the Republican National Convention is set to start Monday in Wisconsin, where Trump will likely be greeted to a hero’s welcome by throngs of adoring supporters..”

• Trump Shooting Complicates Matters for Struggling Biden Campaign (Miles)

President Biden’s reelection campaign is reconsidering the tone of its messaging after yesterday’s incident. Two weeks after his shaky performance during a televised debate raised serious questions about his age and mental acuity, yesterday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump has complicated President Joe Biden’s plans to relaunch his campaign taking a harder line against his Republican opponent. Reporting from CNN described his campaign’s efforts to “calibrate” its political messaging amid the “delicate national moment.” “The big issue is how to campaign against him or attack him,” said one Democratic Party strategist. “Can we even do that this week?” Complicating matters further, the Republican National Convention is set to start Monday in Wisconsin, where Trump will likely be greeted to a hero’s welcome by throngs of adoring supporters.

Advisors have reportedly been formulating Democratic messaging in response to the event for “some time.” Those talking points and attack lines are now under reconsideration as renewed focus is brought to the level of political polarization in the United States. “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” posted former President Barack Obama on the X social media platform Saturday. “Although we don’t yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump wasn’t seriously hurt, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics. Michelle and I are wishing him a quick recovery.” Biden made similar comments in the hours after the attack. “We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this,” the president said after attending a mass service in his home state of Delaware. Biden returned to the White House shortly after and reportedly plans to make an address from the Oval Office Sunday evening.

The president also rejected claims online suggesting the Secret Service had denied Trump additional protection, claiming the former president had ‘“already received a heightened level of security.” The federal agency has faced criticism over its perceived shortcomings amid the first attack on the life of a presidential candidate in the United States in several decades. The incident has brought renewed attention to political divisions in the country during an election year like no other. Biden has cast the former president as a unique threat to US democracy, a framing that has drawn criticism from some observers after yesterday’s shooting. Trump and several of his advisors have faced indictment on charges they conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election over allegations of a “fake electors” plot to certify the former president’s victory in several states won by Biden.

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Nasty senility.

• Biden Snaps In Meeting Called To Reassure House Dems (ZH)

Embattled President Biden opened up a meeting with a group of Democratic US representatives by challenging them to ask him “hard questions” about his candidacy and his fitness to serve — only to jump down the throat of a member who sought reassurance about the 81-year-old’s ability to serve as a strong commander-in-chief. His loss of temper and ill-preparedness for the meeting reportedly did nothing to bolster his audience’s confidence. That audience for the Saturday video conference call was the New Democrat Coalition, a group comprising some 100 centrist Democrats. While the group’s chairwoman, New Hampshire Rep. Anne McLane Kuster, politely characterized the conversation as “candid, respectful and productive,” members speaking to reporters anonymously were far less charitable about Biden’s performance. “That was a complete disaster. We saw the same Joe Biden from the debate,” one of the House reps on the roughly 30-minute, late-afternoon call told Axios.

Another said the call was “awful,” while a third said “members were not holding back.” Another source who was on the call told The Hill it was “tense.” That tension hit a crescendo when Colorado Rep. Jason Crow told Biden that, from a national security perspective, voters were uneasy about Biden being “at the helm when they go to sleep at night.” “Biden ripped him…the exchange was hard to watch,” The Hill’s source said. According to three sources who spoke to Politico, Biden raised his voice and said, “I don’t want to hear that crap!” before forcefully touting his foreign policy record, citing — as he incessantly does now — his role in expanding NATO, an undertaking that does nothing to increase US security. “He started shouting at Jason Crow for no reason,” a member said. Undaunted by Biden’s rebuke, Crow — a former Army Ranger — told Biden his accomplishments weren’t persuading voters who have doubts about his ability to serve another term.

The Hill’s source said members were “really dismayed” by overall Biden’s performance, saying he seemed unprepared to handle the questions that everyone is asking about him since his disastrous June 27 debate performance. As he is prone to do, Biden was said to have given rambling answers — offering just another confirmation of his declining mental strength. One lawmaker summed it up with this blistering report card: “He had no answer to questions about his electability. He seemed oblivious to the polling that shows him losing swing states. He didn’t want to hear it … He didn’t try to reassure anyone. He took no responsibility.” Multiple reps were queued up to ask questions, but Biden said he had to leave to attend mass near his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home. Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley was said to be “visibly not happy that he was not going to be able to ask a question.”

Earlier in the day, Biden had a much longer and more harmonious call with progressive Democrats, who’ve emerged as his staunchest defenders. In a Saturday op-ed at the New York Times, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called on Democrats to stop “bickering and nit-picking,” calling Biden “the most effective president in the modern history of our country and…the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”

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“In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Musk wrote, “Dangerous times ahead,” adding that “two people (separate occasions) have already tried to kill me in the past 8 months.”

• Musk Claims Two Attempts On His Life Were Foiled (RT)

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has opened up about two alleged assassination attempts against him that have occurred over the past several months. The US-based billionaire made the comment on Saturday, hours after Republican hopeful Donald Trump was shot and wounded during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Several shots were fired as the former president delivered a speech to a campaign rally, with one of them grazing Trump’s right ear. While the politician was whisked off stage by Secret Service agents, it emerged that the shooting had resulted in the death of one of the attendees and that two more were seriously injured. Authorities later reported that the 20-year-old suspected shooter, who had reportedly fired from a nearby rooftop, was shot and killed. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Musk wrote, “Dangerous times ahead,” adding that “two people (separate occasions) have already tried to kill me in the past 8 months.”

The tech entrepreneur revealed that “they were arrested with guns about 20 mins drive from Tesla HQ in Texas.” He made the statement in response to an X user asking the outspoken tycoon to “please triple your protection,” arguing that “if they can come for Trump they will also come for you.” Commenting on Saturday’s assassination attempt on the GOP frontrunner in a separate post on X, Musk wrote: “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.” The billionaire has repeatedly criticized the current Democratic administration, claiming back in May 2022 that the political force had “become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.” Commenting on President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance during the debate against Donald Trump in late June, Musk suggested earlier this month that the US “obviously [hasn’t had a president] for a while lmao.”

In late May, the entrepreneur denounced the guilty verdict delivered to Trump by a Manhattan jury on 34 charges of “falsifying business records.” “If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter – motivated by politics, rather than justice – then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” the tech tycoon wrote on X at the time. Around the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources, that the Republican frontrunner and the Tesla CEO had forged close ties in recent months, and were in secret talks over the possibility of nominating Musk as a White House adviser should Trump come out on top in the November election.

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“He is in stress mode 24 hours a day, seven days a week – it’s a never-ending marathon..”

• Zelensky ‘Increasingly Paranoid’ – Reuters (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky is becoming more and more concerned for his life as the conflict between Moscow and Kiev continues, Reuters has reported, in a profile about the Ukrainian politician on Saturday. Zelensky “has grown increasingly paranoid about suspected Russian attempts to assassinate him and destabilize Ukraine’s leadership,” a senior European official told the agency. “And rightly so,” he added. Reuters said that it had spoken with eight current and former Ukrainian and foreign officials, as well as with “several friends and colleagues from [Zelensky’s] past.” According to the agency, “they paint a portrait of a leader who has become tougher and more decisive, less tolerant of mistakes and even prone to paranoia, as he copes with round-the-clock stress and fatigue.”

Zelensky is “a world away” from the TV comedian he used to be before being elected in 2019, Reuters reported. His presidential term officially expired in May and the politician refused to hold a new election, citing the martial law imposed in the country due to the conflict. He has repeatedly claimed that Moscow had attempted to kill him, without providing any details or evidence. In May, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that two colonels tasked with protecting high-ranking officials were detained on suspicion of being recruited by Moscow to assassinate Zelensky. Russian authorities deny accusations of attempting to get rid of Zelensky. “We have no such plans,” Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, said earlier this year. Throughout the conflict, Zelensky has become intolerant of alleged incompetence among his officials and advisers, an unnamed member of his team told Reuters. “If he sees people are not prepared or are contradicting each other, he will say ‘get out of here. I don’t have time for this’,” the source said.

Zelensky is also relentless when it comes to pressuring his foreign backers for aid, according to a senior European official. “He repeats 15 times what he needs, that we need to do more or face the consequences, and he doesn’t let it go,” the official stressed. Ukraine’s former defense minister Aleksey Reznikov, who was sacked last year amid corruption accusations against him, said that Zelensky operates in “a sleep-deprived regime.” The Ukrainian politician’s life consists of “consultations at night and addresses to parliaments, senates… regardless of the time,” he explained. According to Reznikov, Zelensky has a “grab bag” with a change of clothes and a toothbrush because he often doesn’t know where he would be spending the night. “He is in stress mode 24 hours a day, seven days a week – it’s a never-ending marathon,” he added.

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“The need to feed the propaganda machine appears to have played an even more central role in the regime’s decisions..”

• Is It Still Possible To Avoid A Civil War In Ukraine? (SCF)

Undoubtedly, one of the main concerns of the Kiev Junta today is how to maintain control over the armed population. At the beginning of the special military operation, the regime distributed heavy weapons and explosives to civilian citizens with the alleged objective of fostering the conditions necessary to create “popular resistance”. Fear and propaganda mixed in the early stages of the conflict and led Ukrainian officials to commit one of the biggest strategic mistakes ever made by a state in the history of warfare. At the time, the discourse behind the distribution of weapons was simple: the Russians were arriving in the capital, having already reached positions in the suburbs of Kiev. There was no time to move troops from all regions of Ukraine to the capital, so it was necessary to deliver weapons to the people and establish a guerrilla war against the Russians, in case the Ukrainian Army’s positions in Kiev quickly collapsed.

However, the Ukrainian calculation was disastrous. The regime’s officials actually believed their own propaganda and began to act as if the Ukrainian capital was indeed under “threat.” Clearly, Russia would not enter Ukraine with around 150,000 troops if it aimed to capture Kiev. The most experienced Ukrainian military officers knew that it was all just a distraction and that as soon as the regime moved troops to the capital, Moscow would retreat from Kiev to the Donbass – where there really was Russian interest.

However, in a decision-making context during war, it is not just the opinion of the military that is taken into account. The need to feed the propaganda machine appears to have played an even more central role in the regime’s decisions, as from the beginning it seemed clear that the only Ukrainian advantage in this conflict was the ability to mobilize opinions and minds around the world – through of the two great weapons of the Western allies: mass media and anti-Russian censorship. So, instead of bringing troops to Kiev immediately, the regime opted for the most propagandistically interesting choice: distributing weapons to civilians and showing scenes in the media that corroborated “popular support” in the fight against the “Russian invasion”.

The deployment of Ukrainian troops in the capital happened too late. As soon as the Ukrainians arrived, Russian soldiers left Kiev and went to Donbass, advancing freely in a terrain with few enemy positions – a scenario that only changed when Kiev was finally able to reorganize and remove the troops that had been lately sent to Kiev. Western propaganda had its first victory: in the global media, Ukraine won the so-called “Battle for Kiev” through “popular resistance” and the Russians “failed to capture” the capital. In the real world, Russia gained time and ground in the first weeks of the conflict, advanced in Donbass and, in parallel, the Ukrainians made the serious mistake of delivering weapons to civilians who would very soon begin to cause problems in the regime’s military plans.

The romanticization of war did not last long. Not even strong propaganda efforts were enough to disguise the harsh reality of the conflict. The losses of the Kiev regime became massive in a short time, with successive total mobilization measures trying to repair the losses of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Ukrainian families began to get indignant as soon as they realized that the “victory” promised by the media would not come at all – just as their relatives would never return from the front, at least not with all their body parts.

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King
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812270254384390307

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