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There's this fascinating genre of Tweet/Post/Comment/Blog that I've seen among certain kinds of Rightists in the last month that goes something like "Why aren't we talking more about the Trump Assassination attempt? That was a really big deal guys!" But they don't seem to have anything to say about it to spark a discussion.
There's some Monday morning quarterbacking stuff with the Secret Service, but it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere interesting. The stochastic terrorism stuff never got any traction, with everything we know about the shooter making it feel like a reach, and there's not much appetite on the Right for "let's all cool down a little." It's not clear to me what advantage he's getting out of going in the little hamster aquarium they have him in now, I don't feel like he's any more likely to get shot tomorrow than he was yesterday.
I'm always kind of confused by this confusion about why the story died down, what else was there to talk about?
Anything to say?
!!!!
Ad data purchased by Heritage shows a person regularly visiting Crooks home was also regularly going to a restaurant next door to FBI in DC.
Whistleblowers from SS say they were told not to ask for more people because none would be given.
SS who killed Crooks were the second shooters at Crooks. First shot by local cops hit Crooks's rifle.
The SS sniper team did not take local police radios set for them for the event..
Plenty of oddities!
What does the first shot hitting the gun mean?
The current Official Story of the shooting is that:
That is, a rando on the ground managed faster and more accurate counter-sniper operations, possibly even disabling the shooter, than the actual federal counter-sniper team.
... Why do we expect significantly higher performance from federal than local sharpshooters? I would think that's a skill that caps fairly quickly.
Sharpshooting is a pretty serious skill, both in terms of developing and maintaining direct shooting ability, and also in terms of developing a broader set of situational awareness, learning to see things rather than patterns, and developing stamina.
More generally, counter-snipers are set up in what they've selected as an ideal position, generally shooting from prone position, and often are working with spotter assistance. The Butler SWAT individual had to sprint from a location with obscured view due to foliage, get a sight picture, and was almost certainly firing from a standing position (albeit possibly with support/cover).
It's 100 yards, which isn't some amazing world-defying feat, but it's one that I would normally expect a counter-sniper team to excel at in ways that most police officers (and most SWAT) don't really prioritize. ((Though obv this guy may well have been an outlier.))
It just seems that expecting talent to out within the context of one shot is poor evidence. I wouldn't expect it to stabilize until we've repeated the exercise at least five times, for the expected talent difference between class b and class a to be at all apparent.
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..that SS absolutely fumbled it and even looks somewhat suspect because as the primary security on the they site failed to engage a guy in civilian clothing pointing a rifle at their subject ?
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How long did the Uvalde shooting story last in the news? How long did Sandy Hook Elementary stay in the spotlight? Both cases involved controversy, to put it mildly. The incompetence of Uvalde PD rivals even the Secret Service's vaunted inability to pour water from a boot with instructions on the heel.
The 'stochastic terrorism' stuff is always a reach -- it's never a commentary on the perpetrator, but on the rhetoric of your outgroup. The Pulse nightclub shooting was blamed on homophobia until it became clear that it was a terrorist attack. Media bias means that the people in charge of news (90% leftists) likes to make a story about their outgroup, no matter how implausible the tie-in, but has no appetite for doing the same to stories about their ingroup. How long did it take after the Trump assassination attempt for Biden to double down on calling Trump a danger to democracy?
Let's say the roles were reversed -- let's imagine a world where today Kamala Harris dodges a literal bullet by half an inch on live TV, and the shooter turned out to have the internet posting history of Thomas Matthew Crooks. 1) How quickly would the attack be blamed on right-wing extremism, and how persistently would that blame 'stick' once more facts were in? 2) How long would the story remain on the 'front page' of media outlets? 3) How long would the story and its many many permutations (e.g., gun control, Secret Service incompetence) last in the news cycle? 4) How long would the story survive in the public consciousness, off of the front page but still in regular media references (e.g., whenever Trump says anything that could be interpreted as a call for violence?)
The answer feels almost self-evident. The only real question would be, by what margin would Kamala Harris win in November?
Yet somehow there's never a shortage of 'something else to talk about' in those other cases.
There's no appetite on the part of the victim(s) in this case to make the story about gun control. And the Dems lacked the guts to push it. No other angle really sticks.
Without gun control, we wouldn't talk much about school shootings either.
I have to put my cards on the table: I bought two ARs that Monday on fear of a fresh gun control push. More fool me, I guess.
If Kamala were shot at by a normie Dem they/them of color, the story would disappear almost before the shell casing landed; which would be the equivalent.
TINSTAPP
There Is No Such Thing As A Presidential Prospect
So many anointed ones have flamed out, from Aaron Burr to Adlai Stevenson to Mario Cuomo to Jon Huntsman to HRC. More than four years out, it just doesn't matter. There are fifty maybe presidents for every president.
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The story would be picked up by every major news organization and not dropped for years, much how they responded when Gabbie Giffords was shot, but not when Steve Scalise was shot.
Giffords’ shooting was a huge deal. I don’t think it can be understated how pivotal that event changed American politics. In my opinion, Giffords was being prepared for a long career in the U.S. Senate, perhaps even to become President someday. The shooting changed the trajectory of the U.S. forever. The media was right to cover it so much, because the shooting effectively robbed the U.S. of a future President. In another timeline we might be debating a Trump vs. Giffords election right now.
I say this as someone who lived somewhat close by to the ‘Congress on Your Corner’ event where the shooting happened. It was 2011. Giffords had served in the House of Representatives for the prior four years, and in Arizona state politics for the prior decade. She started in politics at the age of 30, and was 40 years old at the time of the shooting. A Jew, she is related to celebrity stardom (Gwyneth Paltrow) and married a corn-fed, non-Jew military guy, the current junior Senator, Mark Kelly, a man with no political aspirations himself before the shooting happened in 2011. Giffords went to the correct private liberal arts colleges, was a Fulbright Scholar, ran her family’s business, and spearheaded economic development initiatives in Hispanic, rural Arizona. Check, check, check. This was a woman with ambition for higher office. She had never spoken at the DNC but she was young. She, too, could have her 2004 Obama moment. Until a schizophrenic loser tragically came out of the woodwork.
How many ‘Congress on Your Corner’ mass public campaign events do politicians hold nowadays? Basically none, I think. If you’re not an incumbent you still have to hold outreach events, but they happen in private establishments, often with guest lists and operational security to control access. Or you just cut the populist facade and hold dinners that charge $50,000 per plate to attend. The Giffords shooting also sparked the resurgence of the gun control movement. The shooting was the beginning move toward a greater political polarization, since the media blamed Sarah Palin and her ham-fisted Internet ad about putting elected Democrats ‘in the crosshairs’ for unseating them at re-election.
Were the shooting not to happen in 2011, or if Giffords’ career hadn’t effectively ended that day, I have no doubt that she would have been Senator instead of Mark Kelly. They wanted her, not her husband. But she’s part of the same Orwellian Inner Party apparatus, that’s why she got a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022 as well as a speaking slot at the DNC this year in 2024, long after she’s become irrelevant. The DNC apparatus wanted her to become Senator, maybe even President. But it wasn’t meant to be.
It might have robbed the US of multiple future presidents.
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Steve Scaline was the No. 2 House Republican, got shot with half a dozen other Republicans outside, and the media shrugged. Rand Paul got attacked by his neighbor not long after his presidential run, and he got laughed at by the media. Trump almost got his head blown off and the media is not even curioud about the investigation, after several news orgs have put a ban on the iconic photo of Trump pumping his fist. Meanwhile, I remember coverage of Giffords being so overwhelming that Sarah Palin was blamed for the shooting because she had a campaign ad that showed crosshairs.
I can't speak to Giffords' potential. I had never heard of her before the shooting. Maybe she was poised for great things. But there are hundreds of national politicians actively jockeying to become national names, and dozens at any moment who are close to actual power. I can't say with confidence that Giffords would have achieved special renown if not for the shooting. (I don't think it's meaningful that she got a Medal of Honor -- any sitting Congressman who gets shot and lives probably rightfully deserves one.)
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Nah. I've never heard a peep from the Mainstream about the trans whatever that shot up that Xtian school. Giffords shooting launched a whole political career, but it's primarily been about, once again, gun control.
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