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There has been a third assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. Police discovered a car bomb pre-placed near a site in Long Island where a Trump rally was scheduled to be held tomorrow. As the device was found well in advance of the rally, no one was harmed.
Where are you seeing this?
The ever-trustworthy Daily Mail says
This…raises its own set of questions, but isn’t exactly Operation Valkyrie.
I've been hearing these kind of jabs at the Daily Mail for years, but have they actually done something that would put them below CNN, NYT, MSNBC, CBC, etc.?
Almost all of their hard news comes directly from the newswires. They are no more or less reliable than any other paper that gets their news from the Associate Press et al, which is most of them, most of the time.
Their reputation comes from their populist-right editorials and trashy features like this. Right-wing politics plus celebrity gossip puts them in the firing line of the British PMC.
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It’s marketed as a tabloid. I’m not really clear on the history there, but it generally has more interest in celebrity scandals and sports.
That just means their stories are more low-brow, not that they're less trustworthy, no?
Unless it came with a faster turnaround time and a reputation for leaping before they look. I don’t have data to back that up, mind you. Wikipedia offers a list of premature communications; they are naturally hard to compare to other outlets.
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It’s noteworthy that most of the extremist attacks this election have been anti-Trump, while a section of the population still believes that the Republican Party is the “radical”, “extremist”, “violent” party. This is despite Republicans having twice the gun ownership, and being out of office. Judge a tree by its fruits. Who is producing the most violent radicals? This shows (once again) that media propaganda can exist completely outside the realm of facts — propaganda doesn’t need facts to undergird it, you can genuinely just manufacture and shill it.
‘Violent’ and ‘extremist’ now have meanings no more connected to their actual dictionary definitions than ‘misinformation’.
I still want to hear someone using the term "far-right" make a distinction between that and just "right."
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I mean the last guy voted for Trump in 2016, though turned against him pretty sharply. So I am not sure that really supports your thesis here as to who is producing what.
Routh? No.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/09/17/ryan-wesley-routh-not-registered-republican-fact-check/75254525007/
He is now, but in his book and tweets from 4 years ago he said he voted for Trump in 2016 and deeply regretted it afterwards.
He was lying for clout. No records exist of him voting in 2016. Plenty of records of him donating to Democrats exist.
Saying that Trump was your choice, is not likely to get you clout as a Democrat in the current era. He tweeted at Trump that he was his choice in 2016 but was disappointed with him. Even if we allow that we don't have a record of him voting, that doesn't mean he was lying about being a Trump supporter back then. After all he also said he supported Gabbard, Vivek, Halley and Sanders at various points. He doesn't tend to stick with one party it seems, but he does seem to like outsider candidates.
He clearly had shifted towards Democrat's at the very least (though he believed Covid was a bio attack by the Chinese, so he was somewhat heterodox for a Democrat), but his statements that he supported Trump are indeed weak evidence that he did. People can change their affiliations and Trump did pick up many places Obama had won prior. Statistically there will indeed be many people today who voted for Trump in 2016 who are now Democrats. And indeed many people who voted for Obama who then became Republicans.
He lied about voting for Trump, so why do we immediately start believing the next-weakest claim, that he supported Trump? I have a hundred million dollars. No you don't. Ok, but I have 99 million dollars. Ok yeah.
Meanwhile, what radicalizes a guy to try shooting Trump? It doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes on ten years of media calling Trump a threat to democracy, a traitor selling the country to Russia, a violent fascist thug who needs to be executed, take him out and beat him, put his severed bloody head on TV, talk about blowing up the White House -- what, I apologized, and Trump deserved it for all his violent rhetoric, I can't believe Republicans would try shooting him like this.
In that case, do you think that Trump and/or the conservative media ecosystem are responsible for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the El Paso walmart shooting or the Buffalo shooting in 2022?
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Sure, but none of this in anyway indicates he might not have been a Trump supporter at some point who became disillusioned. You are in fact describing how that could have happened. If we are believing all his stuff about Ukraine and disliking Trump now, the most likely explanation is that his previous statements are also true. He did think Trump was a good choice, and then whether by Trump's actions or by the media, or by a mixture of both, he came to despise him.
There is no reason for him to lie about Trump being his choice all the way back in 2020 publicly. It doesn't impact what he tried to do now, other than, if it is true that disaffected ex-Trump supporters or ex-Republicans are more likely to try to kill him, because converts and those who feel betrayed are more zealous in their new belief systems, it might slightly shift who needs to be watched more carefully.
If both Crooks and Routh were ex-Republicans or ex-Trump supporters who turned against him then that is important information when trying to keep Trump alive. It doesn't say anything about the morality of current Republicans or Trump supporters. I'm not trying to make a political point or to shift blame, rather than observing than if both attempted killers were currently Blue affiliated, but seemed to previously not be, then that is really important information if you are a Trump supporter or do not want him killed. 1) Because stopping that happening seems pretty important generally, and 2) Because it shifts the profile of likely further attackers.
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People keep saying this as if it's gospel, but it's based on a tweet where he was being critical of Trump. The format basically being "I thought you were different man but it turns out you were a fraud this whole time! I voted for you in 2016 because I didn't think you were a total complete fraud but it turns out you a fraud and always have been and people should vote for my lord and savior, Kamala Harris! Or he Republicans, you should support Nikki Haley!"
People lie. Especially delusional people on the internet when they're trying to push an agenda may lie about things like who they voted for 8 years ago.
Meanwhile he's been donating to Democrats since 2012, has Kamala stickers on his truck, and obviously champions Democrat causes.
It's an absurd level of cope to try and claim that the guy who has been donating to Democrats, litearlly volunterring in Ukraine, putting Democrat stickers on his car, and trying to murder Donald Trump is somehow mysteriously a Trump voter.
His self-published book also said he voted for Trump, and there isn't a lot of reason to disbelieve that. He clearly turned sharply away from Trump and did indeed donate to ActBlue etc. So i am not saying he is a Trump supporter now, but it appears he once was.
A person who feels betrayed by their own candidate or side can often become more vicious than a standard believer. Converts and dissidents are famously more zealous. See also Rick Wilson who also clearly hates Trump.
He didn't vote in 2016. He was lying.
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Wasn't the guy who shot Trump in the ear a registered Republican?
He had donated to ActBlue and attempted to kill the Republican incumbent. A Republican would not do this, but a Democrat would have a motive to vote in a Republican mid-term.
There are Republicans who hate Trump (see Rick Wilson for a start), so I don't think we can say a Republican never would.
Indeed quotes from his school mates also paint him as conservative:
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, former classmates remember 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as a mild-mannered right-winger. “He was definitely a conservative,” said Max R. Smith, one of his ex-classmates.
When remembering Crooks, a classmate described a debate in American history class. “The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”
So he registered as a Republican, his classmates say he was conservative, and he donated to a Blue PAC and presumably watched GunTube. At the very least he clearly wasn't a standard Democrat.
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He also gave money to a leftist political group. In any case, both would-be assassins pattern match for mental illness more than they do any coherent political viewpoint. Why should we care about what particular flavor of crazy they were?
The bigger issue for the second attempt is the media downplaying and even justifying it.
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In states with closed primaries (like Pennsylvania), there are plenty of reasons to register as a member of a party you don't really agree with completely to vote in the primary. As a voter in an open primary state, I tend to choose which primary to vote in to maximize the volume from my vote, not because I consider myself a member of a partisan group.
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Recently Trump's campaign published a massive list of calls to violence against him by Democratic operatives in government and media. There are clips of Democratic operatives on cable news saying someone needs to put a bullet into Donald Trump.
It's old now, but I wonder if anyone remembers the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I haven't watched it in probably 15-20 years, but a major plotline from it is that the intelligence services essentially meme an assassination attempt of a prominent politician into reality. They craft this narrative around the politicians inevitable assassination at the hands of an unstoppable and mysterious foe, The Laughing Man, and a "Stand Alone Complex" kicks in and rando's take up the call to be the Laughing Man. And all this serves as misdirection to the security forces trying to protect the politician, because they are on the lookout for a elite assassination scheme, and instead an army of tards attacks.
Anyways, what was I saying?
In the first season, it's a combination trying to meme the assassination of a corrupt police chief, lead primarily by a retired military corrupt politician ("General Secretary" in the dub, probably a mistranslation of cabinet secretary). ((It's also marginal as an example of a Stand-Alone Complex. The original hacker Laughing Man did exist, and the protagonists meet him; the lack of a true original comes from him discovered the underlying conspiracy of his time thanks to either an accident or someone airdropping a file on him, and because the violent actions the Laughing Man archetype developed after the original friendly kidnapping were a result of said cabinet secretary trying to play up the 'bad acts' and the Laughing Man logo getting used everywhere... as it did in real life.))
It's the second season where intelligence services other than Section 9 are involved; the Individual Eleven manifesto (which doesn't actually exist as a written text) is somewhere between an invasive meme and a straight-up brain-computer virus built to force those with certain traits into a murder-suicide plot targeting the Prime Minister, masterminded by a high-level incredibly annoying Central Intelligence Service bureaucrat.
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Just pointing out Rick Wilson is an anti-Trump Republican though, he is certainly not a Democrat, given his positions on anything except Trump. And the attempted shooter at the golf course had also voted for Trump before sharply turning away from him. How much of this is about dissident Republicans or supporters who feel very strongly about Trump?
This is not to minimise it, I really do not want Trump to be assassinated. But sometimes those who hate the most are those who feel betrayed by their own side/choice. Splits or schisms within religions or ideologies are often more vicious than between opposing ideologies. We expect the side we don't like to suck, but when its your own side it hits deeper. See Protestant vs Catholic, Night of Long Knives, Stalin vs Lenin/Trotsky etc. Both Wilson and Routh clearly hate Trump, but neither are examples of standard Democrats.
This sort of framing, while beneficial to the Rick Wilsons of the world, is likely untrue.
His political positions on most things except Trump aren't really compatible with Democrats. And he was part of the Republican party since the 80s. He is just a Republican who really hates Trump.
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This appears to be untrue.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-ryan-routh-actually-vote-144911519.html?guccounter=1
Right, his tweet was that his choice to support was Trump in 2016 not that he voted for him.
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I think it is a cultural thing. Almost all of the members of all the political tribes (myself certainly included) are at most armchair activists who mostly post on social media. The people who are willing to use gun violence to further their political aims are always a tiny minority, but the size of that minority differs very much dependent on the tribe.
In a bizzaro world where Trump dropped out of the race and Adolf Hitler became the replacement candidate, the blue tribe would certainly feel that Hitler needs shooting. But the average coastal city-dweller who puts their pronouns on twitter is certainly not going to snipe Hitler. On the other hand, if parts of the red tribe feel that Hitler needs shooting (which they would), a small fraction of these actually have the capabilities to carry out a serious assassination attempt.
So if say 10% of the blue tribe think that the US would be better off if someone killed Trump, and if 1% (Lizardman constant and all that) of the red tribe also thought that, I would expect most serious attempts to come from from the people at least vaguely associated with the red tribe.
This is not universal, but specific to the US. Gun culture, 2nd amendment (violently resisting tyrants) and all that are very much red tribe coded. In post-war Germany, the highest profile assassinations (such as the RAF killing an AG) were carried out by left wing terrorists, who picked up gun handling skills over a few years in the underground.
There is certainly the possibility that some fringe left people decided to get really good at long distance shooting in 2020 for the specific purpose of murdering anyone who would in their eyes turn America into a fascist dictatorship. But that is a very lonely path, you would have to tell all your blue tribe friends "I practice rifle shooting because it is fun" which would be received about as well as "my hobby is tuning my diesel engine so that it emits as much smoke as possible". From the state's point of view, keeping tabs on a few blue tribe activists who own long arms is much easier than figuring out who among the zillions of rifle-owning red tribe activists is actually likely to climb on some roof and shoot a candidate and who is only cosplaying with their tactical vests.
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At a certain level this is a distinction without a difference. Trump wasn't attacked by his enemies on the left, but by other enemies allied with the left who... Taking the Rick Wilson example. Rick hates Trump, endorses Democrats, takes money from Democrats, etc. etc. Maybe at some level he'll call himself a Republican, but at this point that sounds like marketing. If tomorrow Tulsi Gabbard called for Biden to be shot, we wouldn't say, "wow, the radical left at it again." But we all know where the lines are really drawn.
This is really one of the key points of American politics over the last 15 years: Conservatives feel that elected Republicans don't represent them. Conservatives would overwhelmingly not identify Rick Wilson as one of them. So it feels like bullshit to pin him (or other such) on us just because he continues to call himself a Republican for rhetorical purposes. If I rob a store in shoe polish does that prove black crime?
This is probably true, but being a Republican and being a Conservative are not the same thing. He presumably feels that his party is no longer what it once was, and I think he is correct. Whether it is better or worse depends on who is doing the judging, but he at least clearly feels Trump has hijacked the party.
I am not saying he is right to feel that way, or that the Republican party is not more representative of much of its electorate now (I think it is, or at least is cosplaying it while Trump is around, we'll see how things go after him), but rather his level of hate is driven by that feeling of betrayal, which looks to be much stronger than even the average Democrat. So strong he created an entire organization to try and stop Trump getting elected and is willing to work with people he also disagrees with just to do that.
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The “Hitler 2.0” argument proves way too much. Do Democrats hate fertilizer bombs so much they wouldn’t use them on Turbo Hitler? How about samurai swords?
No, people don’t assassinate Presidents because of a more general principle: it’s fucking stupid. It’s difficult, it’s suicide, and there’s so much better to do with their time. They go ride a bike or chat up girls instead. The exceptions are a long tail of nutjobs. Some tiny percent of them make the dumb fucking choice and try to impress Jodie Foster.
Which means the load-bearing part of your theory is the last line. Are the Democrats doing a better job corralling the crazies? Does the kind of illness that gravitates to radical leftism tend towards lower functionality than the radical right? I’m not sure. I just know you can’t use it to understand more mainstream motives.
I do think that the radical left tends to attract lower-functioning nut jobs than the radical right, for what it’s worth. We don’t hear about white supremacist compounds in Idaho disintegrating because no one did chores the way anti capitalist coffee shops do.
Yeah, but where's the right-wing equivalent of, e.g. the Symbionese Liberation Army, or black bloc?
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The spread between democrats and republicans in gun ownership is real, but it’s not that big- there’s plenty of democrat gun owners. And while AR-15 ownership probably skews way more right wing, a deer rifle would work just as well.
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I guess the implication here is that Trump will eventually get got by an elite hacker who can’t appear on cable news?
His name is 4chan.
Who is this “Four Chan”?
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Nassau County police are currently denying this.
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Is this like the Chinese balloon thing where it turns out low-sophistication incursions happen all the time and just never get detected or reported on until a big event draws everyone’s attention to the issue?
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