Trump assassination attempt: 'Deliberate' security blunder?
Just hours after President Donald Trump was shot in the ear during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, prominent voices began suggesting the assassination attempt had inside assistance.
‘Incompetence or it was intentional’
“Extreme incompetence or it was deliberate. Either way, the [Secret Service] leadership must resign,” tweeted X CEO Elon Musk, who officially endorsed Trump shortly after the shooting.
Tim Kennedy, a UFC fighter and former US Special Forces operative, echoed Musk’s musings. Like many netizens, Kennedy questioned how the shooter was able to get so close to the presidential candidate.
“How did the shooter even get on the roof?” he asked. “I’ve been at several events for Trump and there is no way you can get anything going that close to him. I measured it on OnX 150.1 yards. This is complete negligence and incompetence or it was intentional.”
Eyewitness: We warned police
The comments came in the wake of reports that more than one rally attendee tried to warn authorities about the shooter, identified by the New York Post as Thomas Matthew Crooks.
“We noticed a guy . . . bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us,” Greg Smith told the BBC. “So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof. . . he had a rifle, we could clearly see him with a rifle.”
“We're pointing at him,” Smith continued. “The police are down there running around on the ground. We're like, ‘Hey, man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle!’ And the police were like, ‘Huh? What?’ You know, like they didn't know what was going on. We're like, ‘Hey, right here on the roof, we can see him from right here!’
"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."
More warnings to police
Another eyewitness told CBS News that he “noticed two officers that were looking for something or somebody” and warned them that he had spotted an individual on the roof of one of the buildings. He returned to his spot, where several other people had also noticed the shooter.
"I went and went back to tell the officer that if he came over there, he could see them, and when I turned my back is when the shots started,” he said.
Neither the FBI nor the Secret Service has released the name of the shooter.
Assassination warnings resurface
Also in the hours following the shooting, netizens have been sharing resurfaced clips of journalist Tucker Carlson predicting that ‘permanent Washington’ would try to assassinate Trump.
“They called him names. He won anyway,” Carlson told comedian Adam Corolla on The Adam Corolla Show. “They impeached him twice on ridiculous pretenses. They fabricated a lot about what happened on January 6th in order to impeach him again. It didn’t work. He came back, then they indicted him. It didn’t work. He became more popular. Then they indicted him three more times, and every single time his popularity rose. So, if you begin with criticism, then you go to protests, then you go to impeachment, and now you go to indictment, and none of them work, what’s next? I mean, graph it out, man.
“We are speeding towards assassination, obviously. No one will say that, but I don’t know how you can’t reach this conclusion,” he said. “They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have it,” he added.
‘Life-threatening DEI’: Diversity in the Secret Service
Other commentators, however, suggest the shooting was a security failure due to a focus on woke policies by Secret Service leadership. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, appointed by Joe Biden in September 2022, has expressed pride in hiring agents based on “diversity.” Cheatle told CBS News that her goal is to make the Secret Service workforce 30% female by 2030.
“I’m very conscious as I sit in this chair now of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce, and particularly women,” she said.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt, concerns are growing that Cheatle has been focusing more on hitting diversity quotas and less on training. Footage of Secret Service agents ushering Trump into an SUV after the shooting shows three female Secret Service agents appearing disorganized and flustered, with one agent trying unsuccessfully to holster her weapon.
“There's no way these agents are the best of the best,” commented Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon in a non-satirical post. “One of them can't even holster her own firearm. Seems like an example of life-threatening DEI.”
“This is a complete failure by the Secret Service,” added conservative commentator Gretchen Smith. “These women were DEI hires. It was unsettling to watch this footage. Look at the size difference. They cannot effectively protect the President. One of them could not holster her sidearm. Fire them and replace them with competent men.”
“The complete incompetence of the ladies of the Secret Service are on full display,” wrote journalist Ian Miles Cheong. “One of the agents can’t properly holster her sidearm while another fiddles around with her sunglasses trying to look cool for the crowd. Absolutely pathetic.”
