Trump assassination attempt
Uncharted territory and the risk of civil war
Incident: On Saturday, 13 July, a lone gunman on a rooftop 450 feet away fired several shots at former President Donald Trump, six minutes into Trump’s speech, during a rally in Pennsylvania. Trump was hit in the right ear, but was otherwise fine. The shooter was quickly killed by Secret Service snipers, as shown in this footage. He was identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year old white man. Trump survived because he turned his head when the bullet went off - leading the gunman to miss. Otherwise, he would have very likely been killed by a bullet to the head on live television.
Security failures
At least one eyewitness told BBC News that he and others had seen the shooter climb to a nearby rooftop, alerted the Secret Service and the police immediately, and that the shooting happened minutes later. Another eyewitness has independently confirmed that statement, saying that he saw the shooter move between buildings until he reached the roof, and stated that he also informed the authorities.
It is, to put it mildly, highly unusual that Secret Service snipers and personnel would not notice that a man was climbing a nearby rooftop - one of a miniscule number of rooftops, and the best one from which to fire at the stage, as the image below shows. The event was held in an open field, with just a few structures nearby.
The Secret Service’s failure is more concerning given that the crowd had alerted them to a gunman’s presence as the latter was climbing and setting up. Presumably, the Secret Service is there to ensure that aspiring assassins cannot set up firing positions, not merely to react to shootings. Their mission is preventative, not reactive. And presumably, they have, or should have, drones over the event, including over rooftops from which shootings may happen.
Even the FBI, speaking at a press conference which the Secret Service did not participate in, found the failures of the Secret Service surprising. This is going to convince the right that it was a conspiracy by the administrative state to kill Trump. An equally plausible explanation is that there is a broad crisis of competence in the West, in which leaders, including the head of the Secret Service, are more focused on diversity, equality and inclusion than on adhering to their institutions’ actual mandates.
Suspects
There are three perspectives being thrown around.
The first is that this was a foreign actor who wants to prevent Trump from reaching the presidency. It is unclear which foreign actor would want that. On foreign policy questions, Trump is either more dovish than Biden, or there is no real difference between them. Besides, we cannot think of any foreign powers would risk starting a war with the US over assassinating Trump. We do not give this view any credence.
The second possibility is that this was a lone gunman. This is the theory that has been implicitly adopted by the media. This is also our view.
The view from Trump supporters starts with viewing the shooter as a lone actor, but blames the Democratic Party and their allies in the media for the demonisation of Trump and his supporters. It extends to a direct conspiracy by US intelligence agencies, or to this being a deliberate failure by the intelligence agencies intended to permit an assassination to happen - that is, the shooter thought of himself as a lone gunman, but was in fact permitted to carry out the attack. In this view, the intelligence agencies, and the military industrial complex, want to make sure that the US continues the war in Ukraine and provides direct support to Israel against Iran. This view is important not because it is factual - it is nothing more than speculation, at this stage - but because it informs the thinking of the Trump camp.
Implications
Trump’s agenda includes replacing thousands of civil servants with loyalists who would implement his mandate, avoiding the mistake of his first term, which saw the bureaucracy thwart him at every term. This is understandable: the neutrality of the civil service - throughout the West - is a myth. The civil service, like most institutions in the West, leans heavily towards the left, is progressive, is pro-immigration, and supports an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy tied to its country’s commercial interests, but distinct from the daily concerns of the public. Those who want to create change must start by changing the bureaucracy that serves them. Personnel is policy.
With an assassination attempt that he believes may have been permitted by the security agencies, or their incompetence, Trump’s dedication to weakening entrenched interests in the civil service is going to increase significantly. We can expect Trump to be more mistrustful in his second term, and to insist on hiring only loyalists. We can also expect more chaos in the first few months of a Trump presidency, as every action he takes is challenged by the courts. Trump surviving an assassination attempt is going to change him, first, in that it may convince him that he is invincible, second, in that it will give him an even greater sense of purpose, and third, in that it will make Trump’s hires far more committed to their boss’ agenda, making Trump more effective.
Moreover, Trump supporters are already blaming the media for its allegedly unfair characterisation of Trump for the assassination attempt. This is just the beginning. Trump supporters will look at how the media covered up Joe Biden’s evident mental decline, how they cheered calls to have Trump removed from office under the 25th Amendment, and how they are supporting court cases against Trump that are mostly without merit. They will connect this to the assassination attempt and conclude that their government and media is at war with them, already a common view, and that Trump is their only option. The zeal of the MAGA movement will intensify dramatically. At a time when the Democrats are busy debating whether Biden should be removed and the extent of his mental incapacitation. The net result of the assassination attempt, therefore, will be the hardening of the Trump camp’s position at a time when the Biden camp is imploding.