Secret Service Has Some 'Splainin to Do
Zero legitimate explanation for how a man with a rifle got onto a roof only 120 meters away from Trump with a clear line of sight.
As I have observed in previous columns, our era in the United States is frequently beset with incidents characterized by a catastrophic loss of competence. Decades of procedural knowledge seem to vanish from one day to the next, leaving sensible people wondering how it could possibly happen.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump this evening at the the Butler Farm Show Grounds is a perfect example of this bizarre phenomenon. The shooter climbed onto the roof—purportedly with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle —120 meters from Trump on the stage. From this vantage point, he had a clear line of sight for a shot that would have been easy for even a middling marksman. The following aerial photograph shows the shooter’s position relative to Trumps.
As anyone who understands the rudiments of security knows, the FIRST thing you do is secure all rooftops within sniper range. Note in the following video that a counter sniper (with the word POLICE embroidered on the back of his vest) on the roof behind Trump is scoping the would-be assassin’s position.
He appears to see the would-be assassin and start to engage (while flinching) right before the would-be assassin’s shots can be heard. Clearly the counter snipers knew that the rooftop presented a high risk position or they wouldn’t have been scoping it.
Why wasn’t this building—AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm show ground—secured before Trump began speaking? It seems to me that this building would be the first thing a security detail would secure. The green pin on the roof to the east of Trump’s position marks where the counter snipers are posted. Again, why didn’t they just secure the building onto which the shooter climbed? This makes no sense.
The gunman apparently fired right as Trump looked to the right, towards the gunman. The grazing shot to Trump’s right ear was just a centimeter to the left (from the gunman’s POV) of a fatal head shot. I emphasize that the gunman was positioned at very close range. In the following video, I hit a small condiment package at 75 yards on the second shot with the same kind of rifle with open sights.
Note what appears to be a vapor trail behind the bullet.
The Nato 5.56 cartridge fires the bullet at a velocity of 3,250 feet per second — almost three times the speed of sound (1,125 feet per second). A bullet moving at this speed induces air pressure changes around the bullet that produce a contrail similar to those that form on the low pressure side of aircraft wings.
What could possibly explain the catastrophic failure to secure the perimeter around the stage? It’s hard for me to imagine a legitimate explanation for such a lapse of such elementary security procedures.
I disagree with a small part of your reporting. The SS snipers appear to see the gunman and only shoot him AFTER the shooter fires first. Between the testimony of the witness who attempted to notify police and security that there was a shooter on the roof for a few minutes, and the actual shooting with video of the snipers, it looks to me like the snipers were waiting for Trump to be taken out before shooting the shooter. There's other video (pretty poor) where people are yelling "He's got a gun!" and you hear a chamber being racked close by (possibly security in the crowd), before the shots are heard shooting at Trump.
This smells like a setup gone wrong. Thank God!
The secret service is one of the most patriotic services in the country. They're trained to take a bullet for the president whether the agree with his politics or not. But it only takes one bad apple. In fact bystanders were pointing out the sniper to secret service and police minutes before shots were fired. So the SS does have some explaining to do.