Trump’s Nick and Republican Rage
Sorry, wrong number
Donald Trump’s near miss was a dud for his devotees as the perpetrator didn’t fit their preferred bill.
Worse yet, FBI director Chris Wray suggests it wasn’t even from a bullet but rather a bit of shrapnel.
The gods can be cruel.
Would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was white, Republican and used an AR-15 assault rifle, robbing Trump followers of their righteous outrage at the near felling of Jesus Christ, Jr.
The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the president, failed miserably giving republicans an ample target for their rage.
It’s not the usual style of republicans to care much, if at all, about shootings of any type. Mass shootings, including school shootings, are blithely dismissed with a call for “thoughts and prayers.” This is especially inconvenient when said shooting is in a church.
But the long knives are out as the incident also affords an opportunity to attack the Biden administration.
The chief witness at the House Homeland Security Committee hearing was Colonel Christopher Paris of the Pennsylvania State Police who wasn’t even at the rally and was delivering second-hand, hearsay testimony.
But second-hand was more than good enough as the fault seems to lie with the unified command post where neither unification nor command seems to have been the order of the day.
Paris testified,
the local police took a photo of Mr. Crooks and sent it to a state police trooper stationed in a command center with Secret Service agents. He said the agents told the trooper to send the photo to another number, which apparently belonged to someone in the Secret Service. (NYT)
Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
With a credible threat more than in the offing, the incident commander allowed the show to go on.
Accountability is key but we’ll see what firing Kimberly A. Cheatle, director of the Secret Service, will do about about the root cause.
To the republicans great glee they got to dump a female department head so all was not lost.
