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September 16, 2024 - 12:15pm
Donald Trump was yesterday the target of an assassination attempt while playing golf at his West Palm Beach club in Florida. The attempt comes eight weeks after the former president was shot in the ear in Butler, Pennsylvania.
This sequence of events doesn’t just “raise questions”: it challenges some of the foundational assumptions of American political life. During this latest attempt, a Secret Service agent who advanced ahead of Trump on the course spotted a rifle barrel sticking out from foliage against a chain-link fence. Agents “immediately engaged” — though it’s unclear what that means — and the suspect, thought to be 58-year-old Ryan Routh, fled before eventually being caught by police on a Florida highway. The distance between the would-be assassin and Trump is estimated at around 300 metres.
It’s difficult to overstate how extraordinary it is to have two assassination attempts against a former president and presidential candidate coming within weeks of each other, both marked by staggering lapses. That in the wake of the first attempt a shooter was able to get this close to Trump is in itself bewildering. What’s more, far from treating this as deserving of the most intense investigation, the media seems more focused on bending events to meet its most urgent ideological and political prerogative: preventing Trump from being re-elected.
Take for example the live updates posted by the New York Times yesterday, with one headline stating that the second assassination attempt “raises new questions about the Secret Service’s ability to protect candidates”. That’s an incredibly strange conclusion to reach when no other candidate has been subject to an assassination attempt. Rather than raising questions about the Secret Service’s ability to “protect candidates”, the aborted shooting raises questions about the agency’s ability — and willingness — to protect Donald Trump.
If this were a systemic issue with the United States Secret Service, then why would Trump be the only candidate subject to not just one but two attempts? If the reason for the failures were that the Secret Service is hobbled by DEI, or bloated, or under-resourced or any one of the other explanations that have been suggested, then why would we only see a single candidate targeted?
In this case, it very much is for lack of trying that we have little new information about the assassination attempt in Butler, and the American press has largely moved on from the story. We have seen virtually no journalistic task forces — the type that were assembled by virtually every newsroom to pursue mostly false allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia — and no searing investigations into the Secret Service. The media, not wanting to paint Trump as a victim or a near-martyr, has found new things to talk about.
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SubscribeMSNBC already blamed Trump himself for not turning down his rhetoric after the Republican Convention.
You say “why Trump?”. Surely that is very obvious. He’s the only candidate in US history who is a convicted felon and rapist who has promised to be a dictator. But you know that, and it doesn’t seem to bother you.
A misdemeanor charge trumped up to a felony, rape charges dismissed, and no promise of dictatorship and was not a dictator his last term, but you know that and it doesn’t seem to bother you. “Are you planning on being a dictator this term?” Asks jokingly. “Well, only on day one, hahahah.” And YOU take that seriously because you are part of a cult. I just want the wars to stop, the economy to improve, out of control illegal immigration to stop and your cult to be shaken back to reality.
And there you go, the overheated conversation stirring up extreme elements in society.
He’s not a convicted rapist and he didn’t promise to be a dictator. He’s one of two people running for the Presidency. You bother me.
Your ignorance, deliberate or congenital, is what make your comment so despicable. I hope you face fabricated charges like Trump has, and have your tights violated as flagrantly.
He’s also not a drug addicted, alcoholic, sexual predator, with strong family links to the Mafia, and who was credibly linked to the death of a Hollywood actress who he was involved with. Who was quite willing to take the world into a nuclear global war.
That one was a Democrat saint.
You deserve to be sued for libel as “the sexual abuse case involving E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump was a civil lawsuit. The jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996, but not for rape specifically. The verdict was for battery, a civil tort, based on the preponderance of evidence provided by Carroll.”
So not rape and not a conviction.
And the payment case was a clear political case as acknowledged by many Democrats and news organisations. If that is the worst the Dems can find about him then he must actually be remarkably ‘clean’.
Without any serious attempt to answer these questions, there is a risk that public sentiment, already stirred in a cauldron of cynicism and mistrust online, will drift towards conspiracy theory.
A risk??? Dude, that ship has already sailed. You must know that.
Oh yeah it sailed. Every day it is a wonder that the collective main stream media – directed by the left – is actually considered “news” when it is nothing more than tabloid trash. They are so scared of Trump they will do anything to prevent him from getting back into the White House. This won’t be the last attempt – you can bet.
Conspiracy theory? Nah, that will never happen….
There has now been as many attempts on Trump’s life as attempts to interview Kamala.
I know which scares which person most.
Kamala became the anointed candidate in an obvious palace coup only a week after the first murder attempt. The democrats only amped up their rhetoric since then. The clumsy cover-ups are media enabled. The freedom fighters are the ones calling this crap out and supporting Trump.
Another fact that is missing in any coverage of the assassination attempts on Trump. If it had been anyone else, the MSM would be outrageously posturing about Gun Control; that this would never have happend if there were no weapons in the hands of the public. Where is the DEMONcRAT outrage over semi-automatic rifles? Where is the condemnation of the gun industry? I guess they believe it is “OK” if it takes out the opposition – disgustingly obvious the intent of the liberal left; by any means.
Maybe the Republican candidates should be arguing for more gun controls, seeing as the violence is mostly aimed at their man at present?
That they don’t tells you something about their commitment to the Constitution and the rights protected within it. Meanwhile Democrats are happily undermining both the First and the Second Amendments.
What logical person would praise a style of government where it is so easy to Cheat ?
Are Amerikans really as dumb as they appear ?
I can’t help wondering what would be so bad about a Trump presidency.
I mean, things haven’t got better since Biden took over. In fact, things are worse in many ways.
And Harris has proved herself ineffective as VP so what makes people think she’ll be effective as President?
“In another story yesterday, the New York Times seemed to assign blame to Trump. The story, titled ‘Trump’s golfing has been a security challenge for the Secret Service.'”
It’s a good thing no other American president spent much time on the golf course. Or jogging. Or walking on the beach. Or sailing. (Sarcasm, in case you missed it.)
The New York Times in its eye-rolling, raving, spittle-spewing rage at Donald Trump has made itself a laughingstock.
Far more than a laughingstock. More like a co-conspirator.
I was a faithful reader until they spiked the story about Clinton and Lewinsky for a good six months, when even they had to acknowledge it, since everyone else had. That was back in ‘98. Corporate media is government-directed propaganda. Anyone who still trusts it is a fool.
You would have expected, in more normal times, that the newspapers would write about a Presidential candidate being shot (slightly) to dominate the news for weeks. But they didn’t.
The second assassination attempt (foiled nearly too late) will also magically lose traction in the main stream media in a very short time.
It’s almost as if the news was being managed…
And why has the media not reported that the Butler shooter’s body was immediately sent by the Secret Service for cremation?
The media did report that the shooter Thomas Crooks’s body was autopsied and then released to his family who had it cremated. There’s no significance to that fact. Both the FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police had agreed with the coroner’s office that keeping the body would be of no benefit. He was killed by a gunshot wound to the head. No doubt about that — it was already bloody obvious from photos made public.
Don’t you go ruining this comment section with your facts and logic!
The NY Times has been a laughingstock for some years now. For a couple or three of decades before that, it had been a sadness to those who remember what it once was.
The shooter was in position for 12 hours. A sweep by a drone with an infrared camera could have detected him easily. Doesn’t the US Secret Service own an infrared drone? If not, can they borrow one from Ukraine? This is another huge mess by the at best incompetent USSS.
The left often talks about hate speech. They have been engaged in hate speech against Trump and his MAGA supporters since 2016. By their own rules, they’re responsible for both assassination attempts. However, Democrats who identify as journalists feel that they never have to say they’re sorry.
Democrats are the ones who want control, not Republicans. Wayne La Pierre, the former head of the NRA, said in response to the Sandy Hook mass shooting where 20 six -year-olds were blown to pieces with a military grade gun, that it was “The price we pay for freedom.” Wayne is a Republican.
“Hi, is that Ukraine? It’s the US here. Can we borrow a drone? Sure, what do you want it for? To protect Trump. Um, all our drones are busy right now….”
I heard a rumour that the training for the agents protecting Trump at Butler was an online seminar.
Please don’t take this Comment the wrong way, but here in NYC most everyone I know expresses the same thought: “We can’t just let Trump get elected again!”
I’m hopeful that it’s just hyperbole, born of simple distaste. They are, after all, my friends and family. But there doesn’t seem to be a limit, a red line they wouldn’t cross, implied by their rhetoric. I’m honestly not sure that they wouldn’t cheer for a more competent assassin.
Exactly. Eight years of dog whistling and blatant calls for violence against Trump and his,supporters have had a dangerously corrosive effect.
Why? What did they think was so bad about his term as President? Do they think things have been better since?
Think of how Big Brother dealt with inconvenient things like facts. Think of Andrew Cuomo’s pathetic blame shifting in his recent perjured testimony.
I ask. Never get a coherent answer. They just hate the man.
I can’t speak for NYC, but I’m sure that if Trump did meet his end due to an assassin’s bullet, there would be a huge number of people who would lose no sleep at all, and a significant number who would pop a champagne cork.
I’m impressed with your personal knowledge of people all across the world, because I’m pretty sure you’re not much of a reader.
So MAGA now appears to mean ‘Missed AGain, Assholes!’
Maybe the Secret Service just hate working with him and don’t want to do their jobs properly when he’s around.
From what I understand, the officers working the detail genuinely like him and he likes them as well.
“why would Trump be the only candidate subject to not just one but two attempts?” Because, for a lot of people but not UnHerd and its readers, Trump is the only one to sow fear and hatred in the US, not to talk about his contempt of the institutions, particularly justice.
And, after all, he wasn’t shot at : a member of his detailed secret service platoon made his job perfectly and discoverd the would be assassin.
Hmmmm….the contempt is from the democrats and their minions using lawfare, censorship, violence and racism to impose their will. The contempt is from the open conspiracy to steal the election. The contempt is from a corrupt media blaming the intended victim.
And the reason that people who can’t stand the VP or Biden haven’t taken up a gun is that it would be useless as these individuals are so obviously cardboard fronts for power.
What the h*ll are you talking about?
By that logic it therefore obviously the reason JFK was assassinated to stop the drug addled, sex addict from starting a fully nuclear WW3 and save democracy.
Once may be a “staggering lapse,” and that’s questionable. Twice is intent. The USSS is not the Keystone Kops. This type thing does not happen by accident. The question is no longer can Trump win. It’s will he be allowed to win and to take office.
My bet is they have this thing 90% sown up with mail-in ballots and voting machines. In addition, there is a lax attitude, a sort of indifference, to his survival. More than a proactive desire to kill him.
Don’t be too sure of the Secret Service’s competence. They haven’t even been able to reliably keep intruders out of the White House for at least the past three Administrations. That includes at least one armed intruder who made it inside the building, and another that fired shots at the White House from inside the grounds.
Serious stuff. The public are largely hypnotised. I dont know what will wake them up at this point.
We have all the answers. The post-war American Empire is a military dictatorship run from the US State Department and spanning all of the West since 1945, as George Keenan’s writings and speeches from 1947 onwards make clear.
Democracy is the enemy for the American Empire and its British and EU colonies, which is why they have acted in concert to overthrow the Brexit vote of 2016 and the Trump vote of 2016, as well as denying Trump victory in the 2020 vote by covering up the Hunter Biden laptop revelations about “the Big Guy” (Joe Biden) and his involvement in Hunter’s multimillion dollar deal with the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.
Now the American Empire dictatorship has decided to KILL Donald Trump BEFORE he wins the 2024 presidential vote. As happens with most dictatorships, the American one has messed up with its assassination attempt twice already. The American Empire dictatorship only has to be lucky once, however, and Trump has to be lucky every time.
I expect Trump will not be lucky a third time. Coming soon.
No thumbs up, but, sadly, I agree at least with the murder part.
If the American Empire is that determined yiu would think they would use a professional rather than two weird amateurs….
I’d suggest that assassination attempts against an election candidate are a bigger “threat to democracy” than anything Trump himself could do.
Getting pretty annoyed at the obvious, organized corruption.
The conspiracies have been proven. They are not theoretical or even hypothetical. The media is the public arm of the state and merely does what it’s told.
Trump became THE enemy of the state when he won in 2016. Of course the state wants him dead.
The MSM want two things: for Trump to be murdered and for them to not have to report it.
Of course they are not asking the right questions. Because they don’t want to arrive at the answers to the right questions: that the military-industrial- intelligence complex want their candidate Kamala Harris to win and that they are prepared to do whatever it takes for her to win.
If that is indeed true, you’d think they’d hire a professional, and give him a decent rifle.
I am still supporting the candidate who didn’t invade America.
These questions asked by a known conservative would all be labeled conspiracy theory. And dismissed. There’s your answer.
Risk of conspiracy…seriously? USA is a terrorist government and committed to killing those committed to the truth. Trump/Vance/Kennedy/Gabbard and 80 million Americans want to know the truth, and they are fed up with the US War Machine: try to stop the US based War Economy and you will be terminated. Period.
People have guns. They need a plump target.
Not that this will dampen the conspiracy minded, but there are actual, logistical differences in the Secret Service protection afforded to the current president and VP (due to their role as commander in chief and place in the line of succession, respectively) compared to former presidents and nominees, even a person has both of those statuses. That’s not to say that the protection can’t and shouldn’t be increased now that there has been a second attempt, but when the Secret Service has a finite pool of agents and by law has different degrees of protection to provide based on status of the protectees, it’s not outrageous to understand why protection around an entire golf course will be different based on whether the guy golfing has the nuclear football next to him or not.
Obama plays a lot of golf. I sincerely hope his security is more effective.
Why would anyone want to shoot Obama?
Why would anyone want to shoot Trump?
Pathetic imbecile.
Good article. Two opposition factions are involved. The Leftist Progressive Cultural Marxist Democrats and the unelected out-of-control “deep state” which includes many career bureaucrats, the mainstream media, and predatory Capitalists. The opposition intends to force an unpopular agenda to maintain the status quo despite what “We the People” want. President Trump has been identified as a threat, not to democracy, but to the opposite, the unelected, anti-America, anti-democracy cabal.
How about banning assault firearms six months before and after an election?
Why focus on “assault firearms”? Anyone with any knowledge of the matter knows that a specialist sniper rifle would be far better for an “assassination at range” than an “assault firearm”.
Another question the forces for inclusion and non-division are guaranteed not to ask themselves is the extent to which their inflammatory attacks on Trump have succeeded in turning him into a Marvel Comics-style super-villain caricature that all right-thinking people would want to see killed, for the good of humanity.
To the extent that Trump has been turned into a Marvel Comics-style super-villain, he has largely done it to himself.
You really are quite a killing machine.
I was wondering how long it would be before the “blame the victim” card was played. Would you be one of those people opening up the bubbly if Bad Orange Man gets murdered?
Predictable, ignorant, desoucable: Martin gets a hat trick.
Isn’t there an angle that Trumps hateful rhetoric and dehumanisation of certain members of society is pushing people to madness ?
Two attempts to kill Donald Trump now, both by a half-crazy man acting alone. Read the reader comments section of the New York Times and you can feel the seething hatred that motivates people like this. The invective against Donald Trump is stunning in its content and volume. And these are readers of the most powerful paper in the US.
I admit, there’s lots not to like about Donald Trump. But this has gotten troubling. He can be crude and a buffoon. But he’s no threat to democracy and his four years as president show that his election would be more a boon than a disaster. Time for his enemies to tone it down.
Investigative reports for major newspapers take a long time—six months, 10 months and sometimes over a year. That’s why you haven’t seen one in the NYT. Nothing mysterious going on.
The first attempt was obviously a bungle by the Secret Service, but in the second, things happened as the should, namely that the Secret Service neutralised the threat. No doubt the second shooter’s motivations will become clear in time, but the first shooter is dead, we may never know his motivations (which may not be political).
things happened as the should
That’s one way to spin it. But the shooter was able to position himself on the perimeter of the golf course, on the public side, and wait for Trump to show up. Is that how it should have happened?
Trump is not a sitting President, and thus doesn’t get “blanket” Secret Service coverage. The protection Trump got on the second occasion was probably commensurate with his status as a candidate and former President.
He is running for the Presidency. After one assassination attempt it seems to me he’s entitled to all the protection necessary for him to do that. In the last election he received over 18 million votes, the most ever for an incumbent president. That suggests huge support by the people. His protection is necessary. The protection may have been commensurate in your eyes but it was not good enough, for the second time.
Just how do you come up with what is commensurate protection for someone who has had two assassination attempts on his life? This is not just the attempt on the life of Trump, who we know you have no respect for, it’s an attempt the end the hopes of his supporters. They’re entitled to effective protection purely on that basis.
The Republican Party is broken and divided. Many blame Trump. Perhaps a Republican effort at assassination?