by Ron Unz, The Unz Review:
Over the last couple of days the news cycle has been overwhelmingly dominated by a sniper’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a large campaign rally in western Pennsylvania, with the presidential candidate fortunate enough to escape with only a minor wound to his ear.
The photo of the former president holding his arm high even while streaks of blood covered his face has become an iconic global image somewhat recalling the historic scene of six U.S. marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima, and fully solidified his front-runner status. Within a day or two, billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman endorsed Trump as did industrialist Elon Musk, one of the world’s wealthiest men, who promised to contribute a mammoth $45 million per month to a pro-Trump political committee.
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Meanwhile, the ongoing efforts of various influential Democrats to pressure President Joseph Biden into dropping out of the race on grounds of mental incapacity completely vanished from the news, swamped by the dramatic account of Trump’s narrow escape from death. With the media no longer focusing on Biden’s problems, the chances that the DNC might be able to replace him with a stronger candidate may have been lost, further increasing Trump’s odds of regaining the White House this November.
I’ve only casually followed the story of this attempted assassination without spending much time investigating the details of the incident or the considerable number of conflicting theories floating around on the Internet. But various people have asked me for my opinion, so I might as well provide it, though my views should not be accorded any more weight than they deserve.
According to the media accounts, a young 20-year-old gunman named Thomas Matthew Crooks was somehow able to enter the vicinity of the Trump rally armed with an AR-15 rifle. He set himself up on the rooftop of a nearby building and fired several shots, one of which wounded Trump in the ear while another killed a bystander in the crowd, after which he himself was shot dead by counter-sniper fire from security personnel.
Obviously allowing an armed gunman such an opportunity to potentially kill a leading presidential candidate required extremely serious lapses in security by the Secret Service and this has provoked widespread suspicions that some sort of plot had been responsible. There have also been claims circulating on social media that bystanders noticed the gunman and alerted authorities, but instead of ordering the sniper shot or at least securing the candidate and taking him to safety, the local security personnel waited until intended assassin fired his potentially fatal shots before taking any action.
At the very least this is obviously a huge black-eye for our Secret Service and the other police agencies that were on the scene supposedly protecting Trump.
Given the extremely strong emotions that Trump arouses in both his supporters and his opponents, it’s hardly surprising that this very strange and suspicious official story quickly inspired numerous conspiratorial narratives, which have widely circulated among both Trump-backers and Trump-haters.
For more than eight years, most American elites have expressed a burning hatred of Trump, doing everything they could to frustrate his presidency, ensure his defeat in 2020, and prevent him from regaining the White House in 2024. Soon after a mob of outraged Trumpists stormed the DC Capitol on January 7, 2020, I published an article pointing to the overwhelming evidence that the American media and our Internet giants, backed by dishonest former intelligence officers, had combined to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump:
- American Pravda: Our Disputed Election
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 14, 2021 • 2,000 Words
Last year I discussed the extraordinary efforts of our biased media outlets to hide the massive corruption scandal engulfing Joseph Biden and his family, both prior to the 2020 vote and now leading up to the 2024 election.
- American Pravda: The Limits of Media Corruption
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • May 22, 2023 • 3,400 Words
More recently as Trump’s efforts to regain the presidency moved forward, his bitter Democratic enemies launched a serious of outrageous political prosecutions hoping that felony convictions and possible imprisonment would destroy Trump’s popularity with voters, but instead his polling numbers continued to rise, and his Republican renomination became assured.
- American Pravda: Donald Trump, Eugene Debs, and AMLO
The American Political System as Laughingstock or Trainwreck
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 7, 2023 • 4,900 Words
This sequence of events eventually led Tucker Carlson to publicly speculate that Trump’s political enemies would finally conclude that orchestrating his assassination was their best chance of preventing his triumphant return to the White House.
So now with Trump leading in the polls and the desperate Democrats fearful that Biden would be no match for him in November, a sniper was allowed surprisingly easy access to the candidate at a rally, and if the trajectory of the bullet he fired had been an inch or two different, Trump could easily have been killed. Only the most oblivious would fail to be highly suspicious under such circumstances.
Did Trump’s bitter enemies conspire to have him killed by an assassin’s bullet, as had happened more than half-century ago to President John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Robert? While that is certainly possible, unless much stronger evidence appears, I remain extremely skeptical.
Assassinating a former president who is leading in the current polls is a very serious undertaking, and Trump’s lucky survival has drastically strengthened the support he enjoys both from the voters and from the billionaire donor class, while his security has obviously been massively increased. I think it quite unlikely that any future sniper will have as easy a time gaining access to him at a rally or anywhere else. As Emerson said, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
