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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.
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Exactly what I was thinking of.
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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.
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Then you drag him off the stage.
The only thing which might have galvanized his base more than an attempted assassination!
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