Too Close

We almost lost it all last night

Assassination Attempt Against President Trump

I was watching the Trump rally live. I was hoping that he might announce his VP pick or perhaps tease us with a hint or two, which he’s done at the last couple of rallies. He entered the venue as normal to his theme song, God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood. The crowd roared.

I noted that Trump really has his timing down on that walk to the podium. The song is about 3 minutes and 10 seconds long and he usually comes into view in the first couple of bars and takes those minutes to point at crowd members and pose for photographs and say hi to his beloved “front row Joes”, the people who follow his events and come to most, if not all of them. Think of them as super-MAGA deadheads following a tour. Trump always gives them a shout-out and sometimes meets them and talks to them.

It was hot, approaching 90 degrees in Butler PA, and the crowd had been there for hours watching speeches from other politicians, drinking a few beers, and playing country music and rock and roll. From what I saw, they seemed to be in great spirits. There were thousands of them.

As is often the case, the area around the event was also speckled with tailgate parties and MAGA get togethers by folks who couldn’t get in to the venue, or just preferred to avoid the main crowd and set up a tent on the side of the road, or in a yard or field to show their support and have fun.

If you’ve never been to a Trump rally, you really are missing out. I’ve been to one and watched many online. They are family events and a ton of fun. They aren’t dangerous or hateful or anything like that. If you’ve only seen a couple of pictures on CNN or read the New York Times description of them, you are getting the wrong impression. They are much more akin to an SEC football tailgate than a klan rally.

The thing the media and the elites get wrong about the people who go to Trump rallies is that they fail to recognize how much the people love Donald Trump, and how much Donald Trump loves them. Trump is their hero. He represents their hope for the future. They will never abandon him as long as he stays loyal to them… and he has. They are his legacy and he cares about that more than anything.

Trump’s stump speech is normally between an hour and an hour and a half. It’s half scripted and half off the cuff. He gives shout outs to the local and state politicians who are running for office, and talks a little trash about their opponents. He praises law enforcement and usually finds time to call Chris Christie fat.

Recently, he’s been hitting immigration after the prologue, where he spends about 15 or 20 minutes talking about the border crisis, crime, and what it’s doing to the country. He makes some jokes, which are usually quite funny, and shouts out his “front row Joes”. Sometimes he reads The Snake and the crowd recites the poem along with him.

In the most recent bunch of rallies, he has brought the event to a crescendo by playing stirring classical music in the background as he rails against policies that have hurt middle Americans, then closing with his plan to “Make America Great Again”. It’s incredibly effective and the crowd loves it.

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That’s what I thought I was in for yesterday as I turned the livestream on just before he took the stage. I cracked a beer and pulled out my notebook to scribble some thoughts for a new article or for the RNC Convention podcast.

He had been at the podium for around six and a half minutes and was talking about immigration when I heard “crack, pow, crack, pow, crack, pow”. The President reached for his head and ducked down as the Secret Service rushed him. There was no doubt in my mind what had happened. I immediately knew it was a sniper. I also knew he had been hit.

The crack that you can hear in the raw audio is a sonic boomlet that a rifle bullet makes as it passes over or in front of you. The pow is the report of the rifle, traveling at the speed of sound, slower than the bullet. This is a well known phenomenon and anyone who has been shot at from some distance with rifle fire knows the sound.

My heart sank. I thought, “oh my God… they really did it. They f*cking killed him.”

The crowd barely moved. Some people ducked for cover, but most didn’t. They just stood there, stunned. They looked as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. Maybe it was a mistake or a firecracker and the Secret Service would hoist him to his feet and the rally would continue. As the seconds passed by and it became obvious that other people in the crowd behind President Trump were wounded, you could see on the faces of the people that it was sinking in. Someone just shot their hero down, right in front of them.

Just as Mr. Trump hit the ground, a second barrage of gunfire can be heard, followed by a last single shot. I heard the same “crack, pow” that we now know were outgoing rounds, killing the would be sniper assassin.

After about a minute, the Secret Service began to attempt to get Mr. Trump on his feet. You can hear some of what is being said through the ‘hot’ microphones. The Secret Service said “shooter is down” several times and they began to try and raise the 78 year old man to his feet. Mr. Trump audibly said “just let me get my shoes” and then, as he regained his senses, he commanded “WAIT”.

With the Secret Service creating a human shield around him, he raised his clenched fist, exposed his now bloody head between them and said “fight, fight, fight”. The crowd erupted into chants of “USA! USA! USA!” and Mr. Trump was shuffled off the stage and to a waiting car.

It was an act of bravery and defiance. He showed the world that he was not dead and inspired his supporters. The photographs taken in that moment will outlive us all. They are iconic. White shirts, blue sky, and red blood as he raised his fist in defiance under the waving banner of our nation’s flag. I have never seen anything like it. Nobody has.

Analysis

It’s going to take some time, perhaps weeks, perhaps years to fully understand what happened at that rally.

• How is it possible that there was an unguarded rooftop only 160 yards from where President Trump was speaking?

• Did the shooter know the rooftop would be unguarded?

• Why were the spectators that saw him before the shooting ignored when they pointed him out to law enforcement?

• Why do we have short fat girls on the protection detail instead of giant mean men? It seems to me that it might be smart to revisit that policy.

• Who led the advance team and who is responsible for the protection plan?

I am not a conspiracy nut and my first thoughts don’t immediately assume that there’s something nefarious here, beyond what is obvious. That said, if the powers that be want to quell the conspiracy talk… they need to be very transparent about what mistakes were made and who made them.

They need to tell us how this was allowed to happen.

As of this moment, we know virtually nothing about the sniper. The FBI has named Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20 year old young man who lives in the immediate area. He was apparently shot dead by the Secret Service in the seconds after Trump went down.

We have no insight on his motives. He was apparently a registered Republican and donated to Biden and left wing causes… which could mean he was registered Republican to vote in GOP primaries… something left wing activists like to do. OR it could mean something else entirely… or nothing.

One thing is for sure… Crooks didn’t shoot Donald Trump in the head because he was a Trump fan.

He doesn’t seem to have much of an online presence, which is odd for someone his age. I haven’t seen any interviews yet with friends, coworkers, family, etc.. So it’s safe to assume that the full force of the government is working hard to keep people quiet. That’s fine if they are trying to prevent rumors from taking over, but they are going to need to give some information soon or people will start making up their own facts. If Twitter is any measure, they already are.

There’s going to be a lot of talk about the rhetoric from Democrats and the media about Donald Trump, and there should be. You simply can’t call someone an “existential threat to democracy” and a “nazi” and “Hitler” and assume nobody is going to act. The fact is that if you lived in Germany in the 1930’s and had the opportunity to kill Hitler and did it… you would have done a good thing. So if you make people believe that Trump is Hitler, you are inviting this kind of thing.

Does that make Jake Tapper and Joe Biden guilty of this crime? Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. It just means that the “threat to democracy” campaign theme from the Biden camp needs to go away. Donald Trump is not a threat to democracy. He’s not the one who is trying to lock up his political opponents. They are.

Trump didn’t give a speech in front of Independence Hall, bathed in blood red light, flanked by US Marines, calling half of America would-be terrorists led by a threat to democracy. Joe Biden did that.

For more than that brief analysis, some time is going to have to pass and more information is going to have to come out. Most of what is coming to my mind, I won’t say here.

Virgil’s thoughts

This was a very close call. If the bullet that grazed Donald Trump’s head had been a fraction of an inch to the left, we would have seen a pink mist and watched him collapse dead in front of us.

Had that happened, the reaction from people in this country is hard to comprehend. It might have ended us. I am not speaking hyperbolically. It could have permanently broken the bonds that hold us together.

Here’s the thing that the elites and the media just don’t understand. They can’t just take Trump away like he’s an edgy TV show or a politically incorrect comedian. They can’t cancel him like they did Rosanne. Donald Trump is not just an entertainment figure for millions of Americans. He is their hero. They love him. They will defend him. If they feel like their enemies took him away, they will react violently.

I am no Trump fan. He has many flaws… some of them impossible for a guy like me to simply ignore. But I still respect his greatness. He made billions in the real estate business in New York City, no small feat. He then became the star of the biggest show on television for 10 years straight. Then he ran for President and was laughed at by everyone… right up until he won.

You don’t do those things by being stupid or simply crazy. You do them because you are larger than life, and a force. You do them because you are a great man. While the history of Donald Trump is thankfully not yet written, it will be written, and he will be remembered as one of the largest figures in American history.

Thank God Donald Trump wasn’t killed or badly injured in this horrible assassination attempt. We were a hair’s breadth from disaster.

God bless the United States of America.

—Virgil