This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Trump does way more outdoors events, and events in general, than the average President-tier politician. Having to protect Trump, who both constantly does outdoor rallies and has fewer resources assigned to him than an actual President would, yet is also is one of the most hated US politicians of all time, is probably just really tough for the Secret Service. I can't think of any Presidential candidate or President other than Trump in recent memory who keeps traveling around the country constantly giving outdoor speeches. I think it's plausible that the Secret Service is just out of their depth, they are set up to guard an Obama or Biden type who mostly stays in DC or gives speeches at indoors venues, but they are not set up to effectively guard a Trump.
To add on, funding levels which directly reflect in staffing availability are usually determined far in advance. As we saw with the Capitol police being chronically short-staffed and low-morale even before Jan 6th, these things happen in the federal bureaucracy at least somewhat often.
Why I call the extensive use of local cops at events "outsourcing". It seems to work and save money quite often, and works until it suddenly doesn't, and the bigwigs act all surprised "oh we never could have foreseen this". Seen it way too often.
More options
Context Copy link
"I love being a firefighter. The pay is good, the guys are a great team, I really like the support I get from the community. But man, do I hate fires. Every time there's one I feel like quitting, you know?"
Protecting the VIP is literally their job description. It's not like Trump's traveling around Iran or gatecrashing Black Bloc parties. An outdoor speech is something the SS must have a goddamn checklist for.
"Agent Black, you secure building A." Agent Black pulls out a checklist and goes down the list: call the owner, establish the list of people who have access to the building, which ones have to access it on the day of the speech, call them and get their pictures, identify doors which provide access to the windows facing the scene and the rooftop, identify how many ingress points have to be secured, call local police to get more warm bodies, give them their own checklists. On the day of the event do a roll-call, search the premises, seal the doors of the searched rooms and check the seals every X minutes, redo the roll call via radio every Y minutes, identify each person that approaches the building and cross-reference them against the list, turn away those who aren't on the list, escort those who are...
Someone obviously thought they could get away with some corner cutting. Or worse, "presenting a positive image". No, you have to be an asshole. If someone tells you they work there and they forgot their iPad in their locker and they are not on the list of people that have access to the building, they get to ride in the back of a cruiser until you find out why they are not on the list. If they are on the list, but not on the list of people that have to be there today, you tell them to stay the fuck away until the VIP leaves. If they get nervous, they get to ride in the back of a cruiser too, and you go check the lockers just in case their iPad is shaped more like an AR-15.
The Secret Service probably does do this. But the Secret Service was not "in charge" of the building. At least allegedly. And you know that Officer Black is not going to be as diligent. We all know how often a lot of cops sit in their comfy air-conditioned cop car on their laptop... not to be a dick, but it happens. So yes, corner cutting, 1000%. The conversation is about how much and how bad and how foreseeable those cut corners were. We're getting a clearer picture but we haven't seen the report yet, if they've even put it together yet.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This isn't a "just" thing, though. The Secret Service isn't a force of nature or some incomprehensible artifact we found somewhere that we have no control over, either in its competence or its application. If the Secret Service is out of their depth effectively guarding Trump, either the responsibility should have been delegated to an organization that isn't out of their depth, or the Secret Service should have transformed itself into an organization that wouldn't be out of their depth. If they didn't recognize that they were out of their depth, then some decision-maker was incompetent by not doing the due diligence of figuring out if they're actually capable of performing the role they are supposed to perform. If they were not provided the funding and resources to accomplish this, then the mismanagement is by the people who control the funding.
Well put. Agree totally. I'm optimistic we'll get a sense for what level this ends up on in the next few leaks, if we continue to get leaks at the same rate. With enough info I think you can usually tell who is spending their time on CYA
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That still doesn't explain why the prime spot for taking a shot at Trump was left entirely, completely open.
why cops spotted a person of interest almost an hour before, spotted him with a rangefinder 30 mins before, photographed him, let him use a ladder to climb a building and take off shots. He wasn't questioned or tossed out or watched closely, they just let him proceed to the best and about only place from which a not-great shot could kill Trump.
To be clear, the article says they did attempt to find him, question him, and watch him after both of the first two incidents, they didn't ignore it. At least as far as we can tell, not totally.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They have unlimited funding and a license to do whatever they want like close down all the roads, jam cell phones, etc.
Tough tiddies Trump is difficult to guard. Figure it out.
Their funding is, ah, not unlimited.
They get around $3B a year, which is about the same as the military if New Zealand.
JUST for presidential/former president protection their budget is about a billion and a half dollars.
Yes that’s not literally unlimited, but it is functionally unlimited, and is also more than they even asked for, which would seem to suggest that it may be literally unlimited as well.
That should be more than adequate to keep a kid from crawling up on top of a roof 130 yards from Trump and shooting at him.
https://rollcall.com/2024/07/14/amid-tense-election-secret-service-working-with-already-boosted-budget/
They also handle anti-counterfeiting operations (in fact that was their original purpose) but I'm not sure how much of the budget goes to that.
Edit: Just checked and the "Protective Operations" budget is about $1 billion
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/U.S.%20Secret%20Service_Remediated.pdf
So for all practical intents and purposes, given the small number of people the USSS has to protect (all current and former presidents, the VP, parts of their families, current candidates polling over x%, did I miss any?) there's no excuse for them to be spread so thin. Incompetence and administrative bloat are the only reasonable sounding explanations (other than more conspiratorial angles) I can think of at the moment.
Edit 2: So the Secret Service's budget for protective services is roughly the same as the entire military budget of Latvia, a NATO member with a population of about 2 million doing a massive military build up in response to Russia invading Ukraine.
I don't think the problem is (mostly) money, it's that the job is ass/boring and morale is bad. Which I think is party uncontrollable, but still points to a major leadership failure I think. It looks like (ironically) House Republicans gave them more money in 2021 than they asked for, they made a plan to hire more people, and then... just didn't. At least from what I just now read.
This survey report is pretty damning. USSS ranked 413 out of 459 sub-agencies in satisfaction. To be fair, they've been near the bad end for a long time -- 2016 they were rated the absolute worst of any, bottoming out at a 33.8% "engagement and satisfaction" score, though despite their poor ranking that improved to 57.7% as of last year despite their poor relative placement. They were last in the top half of subagencies in 2005 (first year of data), 2007, and 2011 only. So I don't think the USSS problems are recent, but they clearly are severe. Pay also was bottom quartile at 57.7% satisfaction, so one does indeed wonder where the money went after all.
Worth also noting that this most recent score broke down supervisors (80.1%, still ranked 361 only) vs senior leadership (satisfaction only 49.6%, ranked 406). Literally everything in the bottom 25%, then, but the leadership score still stands out.
I think this data supports the idea that leadership is horrible and should be replaced at the very least.
More options
Context Copy link
Man, it’s good to be on top.
Or more accurately—to the be the one doing the protecting, rather than the one being protected.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Obama Biden, and even Romney and Clinton and Dubya, all also strike me as more cooperative, rule following, obedient types. They do what the nice men with guns tell them to do. Trump is notoriously the opposite.
"we've got something suspicious we should pull Trump from the stage"
"Nah he'll never listen"
On Jan 6 when Trump wanted to go to the Capitol after he wrapped his speech, the Secret Service refused to drive him there. Trump ended up not going to the Capitol, even though he could have just walked, as many of the people who watched his speech did.
Had the Secret Service been more willing to accomodate Trump we might have never had rioters breaking into the Capitol.
I wonder if his experience then influenced his instincts to defy the Secret Service so that he could pause and raise a fist for the crowd.
What occurred to me is that despite all the handwringing regarding a violent right-wing backlash to the event, I believe his fist-pump display actually curbed such an impulse in that very moment.
Imagine if Trump had been immediately dragged off the stage, and how ambiguous that image would have been. Is he dead? Is he alive? Is he wounded badly and will bleed out soon? Maybe physically impaired? What the fuck just happened? Is something going to be 'off' if and when he shows up again?
Trump gave 'proof of life' with that act. It wasn't enough to have him merely standing, or to provide a follow-up "I'm fine!" tweet that people may not trust. He snapped back into his usual shape and reassured everybody thay he was OK. And so it ends with cheers and jubilation instead of the wailing and gnashing of teeth. A lot could have happened in those few minutes, and the energy ultimately got redirected to Trump himself.
Anybody bitching about his fist-pump while also shaking in their boots about political violence can't see two feet in front of themselves.
I can't see how anyone wouldn't love that fist pump. It is badass and awesome and defiant in a good way. I can understand people not liking chants of "fight, fight" at the convention, but personally I don't mind it given context.
I saw a lot of comments ranging from the boring "ugh, Trump needlessly showboating again" to "He's making the SS' jobs difficult" and finally to "that he was even allowed to do that means this was staged".
Ignoring the third one since you would have to be insane to keep up that line today, I'll have to admit that they may not even be wrong on the first two. In the fog of it, Trump was exposing himself to further danger for the sake of a visual display. And he was indeed holding up his protection while they did their thing. But in the end, it was absolutely worth it and the correct move to make.
The image is awesome, and I think most Dems are honest enough to admit that. They're just reluctant to give it any credit.
In fact, him doing this in the heat of the moment amid gunfire is largely the reason why it was the correct move. It was a display of masculine bravado. Perfect contrast, not only to the sitting president, but to pretty much every other politician. The resulting photographs alone are invigorating. Trump is effectively an avatar of masculinity in a culture which largely degradates it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Exactly what I was thinking of.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Man, from the depths of my memories of Supreme Court cases comes Wood vs. Moss, where Bush the Younger made a last-minute change in his plans, up and deciding to have dinner somewhere that wasn't on the schedule. They were going to eat on the outdoor patio, to boot. The only problem was that protest areas had already been approved for two groups (one of supporters, one of opponents), and the SS thought that the opponents' location was too close for them to be able to secure it. Rather than be all, "Sorry, Mr. President; you can't eat here tonight," they decided to move the protesters. This led to a lawsuit which claimed that the real, hidden, motivation for moving the opposing group was to discriminate against their viewpoint in favor of the supporters.
I imagine the SS has to deal with stuff like this all the time. They probably have to be carefully selective about when they actually choose to tell the President, "No." Most of the time, they probably just scramble and try to hold on. Of course, heat of the moment, credible threats, etc. all end up smashed together in a horrible, subjective scale for what type of action you take. They probably have to be pretty careful in trying to manage the relationship, too, where, similar to what you're saying, different VIPs may have different preferences/risk tolerances. They don't want to piss off the President by saying no too often, but if you end up with a dead President, you don't want to be left only being able to say, "Yeah, but this guy always got pissed when we said no or took some conservative action, so we just got into a habit of accepting more risk for him." It'll never play well, especially if anyone is looking to blame you for not being cautious enough in the aftermath of a tragedy.
Of course, no one on TheMotte is going to have any insight whatsoever on what Trump's relationship to the SS actually looks like, similar to how there was all the haranguing in his first term about how he was engaging in the PDB. Some folks wanted to skewer him, and others were saying that they worked toward productive, engaging meetings, and others yet were sure that the bureaucracy was intentionally being intransigent and sabotaging the relationship. Only the tiniest percentage of people actually know, and they're generally not talking unless they are doing so to promote some agenda or another.
I mean, relationships with the USSS usually come out to some extent in books, biographies, and memoirs, though still not completely.
I did a quick search of 2015 to 2023 just with google, this claims most of the USSS were pro-Trump and even pro-J6 in some cases, and anti-Biden. Apparently there's a lot of talk that the USSS strongly disliked Hillary specifically. Per rumors, Vanessa Trump even got into a relationship with one officer. Overall I think there's good reason to be skeptical of claims that the USSS deliberately didn't protect Trump, that doesn't seem to match with their actual alignment as far as we know.
But the leadership of course is another matter, not always the same as rank and file. One critical question right now is who exactly was the highest level person who signed off on the plan that lacked USSS on that roof.
Can confirm this specifically. This was from Bill's tenure but I had a friend of a friend connection to her Secret Service detail, they fucking hated her. At the time it was emphasized to me "we are so professional and yet I'm willing to bitch about this woman to you, that's how bad it is." Granted I'm not sure how to assess the professionalism given recent events, and this was like 25 years ago.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then you drag him off the stage.
The only thing which might have galvanized his base more than an attempted assassination!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link