A spray of bullets may have only grazed Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday night, but they killed one rally attendee and critically wounded two others.

They have also torn through the 2024 presidential campaign, damaging the social and cultural fabric of the nation. The illusion of security and safety in American politics – built over decades - has

  • elbucho@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I hate that this is the new narrative, like violence against political opponents is a new thing in this country. Obama survived MULTIPLE assassination attempts. Bill Clinton and George Bush both survived multiple assassination attempts. Sectarian violence has been a thing in this country since its inception. The fact that the secret service failed to do their due diligence at policing the buildings surrounding Trump’s latest rallies doesn’t somehow mean that sectarian violence has reached some momentous peak. It simply means that people didn’t do their jobs properly. Maybe because, like, why would they? I know that if I was a secret service agent assigned to the duty of watching after Trump, I wouldn’t be particularly committed to the task. Maybe they felt the same way.

    Edit: Here’s the NY Times image of the vicinity surrounding the Trump rally. Why the fuck wasn’t that place watched by the Secret Service? Any competent agency looking to protect someone would have 100% had agents watching that building.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      I literally can’t bring myself to respond to anything else you’ve said here because I clicked the Wikipedia link for assassination attempts on Obama, and learned that there was a plot to kill him with a Death Ray, and the leader of the group had actually constructed a partially working x-ray beam generator theoretically capable of delivering lethal doses of radiation over long distances.

      • elbucho@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yeah; the FBI were doing undercover operations with them for 15 months before arresting them. I don’t know any more details of the case than the wikipedia article highlights, but surely you’d have enough evidence to arrest people trying to build a death ray at some point prior to 15 months. Maybe our gov’t just thought that their innovation was useful and figured they’d wait and see where they went with it.

    • rothaine@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Did the secret service allow this? In the TMZ video of the return fire, it looks like the sniper on the roof was already aiming at the shooter well before he shot. And only after he shot did the sniper take him out.

      Maybe coincidence…but seeing this level of incompetence from the secret service makes this whole thing seem very very fishy.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Did anyone even scatter when the gunfire went off? Thats a lot of shots. From the clips I’ve seen they stare.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I feel like there’s a difference between stopping and assassination plot and stopping an assassination attempt.