Samuel's Blog

Why was that roof not secured?

July 16th, 2024 at 02:02am

It is one of the many questions I have about the attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump over the weekend. Why was that roof not secured?

Back in 2003, then-president George W. Bush visited Canberra. One of the places he visited was the Australian War Memorial. My high school is across the road from the Australian War Memorial and the roof of the building is probably a little bit further away from where President Bush went than the distance the shooter was from Donald Trump. And yet, arrangements were made for school to end early that day, at lunch time if my memory is accurate, with extra buses put on to get the students out and with staff expected to be off the premises shortly thereafter. This was so that Secret Service had time to fully sweep and secure the buildings and put snipers on the roof.

This was all done in a foreign country with a building which wasn’t really even an obvious security threat given fairly poor visibility from the school to the bits of the war memorial which the president was going to visit. And yet on home soil, a barn with direct line of sight was missed. It just doesn’t add up.

A lone police officer is reported to have climbed a ladder to investigate a report of a man on the roof, but retreated when a rifle was pointed at him. Why? What would make a police officer tasked with securing a political campaign event think it is in any way appropriate to back off from an unknown person who is armed with clear line of sight to the candidate?

There are some aspects of the news coverage which made me wonder if the news media was expecting some sort of big event. For example, Fox News was covering the rally live, which is not something Fox News normally does these days. Some smaller channels such as Newsmax normally do cover Trump rallies live, but Fox stopped doing that a long time ago. Here in Australia, Sky News just happened to have their chief news anchor on the air filling in as host of a show which he doesn’t normally host (he used to host it but that role was given to someone else this year). The major Australian commercial networks had their big name anchors taking over from the perfectly-capable weekend breakfast show hosts pretty quickly and ABC even had the host of their American-focused news and analysis program ready to co-host coverage. On a Sunday. The chances of all of that happening without coordination just don’t seem plausible.

I’m not saying the media knew there would be a shooting. But I am left wondering if someone knew this was planned and tipped off some parts of the media that there would be a major story breaking and they should have their top people ready to go. The very strange poor security adds to my questions about this.

Assuming this was more than just a lone nutter, I’m not singling out any particular group as being responsible as I can think of many reasons why people from all over the political spectrum might have wanted to do this. There are people who would have wanted the shooting to be successful and people who have wanted an unsuccessful shooting to occur. I have no reason to believe or dispel the notion that any of these things are possible.

What I will say is that I’m glad the shooting was not successful. I believe the US is in a low-grade civil war and has been for many years, and the world doesn’t need it escalating to a full-blown conflict, which is exactly what would have happened if the shooting had been successful.

I should also note that I am a trump supporter. The history of my posts here will show that he was not my first choice in the Republican pack in 2016 but he won me over and I thought his presidency, on balance, was a good thing, not perfect by any means but good, especially the work he did to return the US justice system to following the constitution by appointing judges who believe the constitution should be interpreted from an originalist perspective.

But regardless of what plays out politically from here on, I certainly hope we don’t see scenes like the one on the weekend again any time soon. Alas, if my fears about what went on to make this possible are in any way correct, I can’t imagine this being the last attempt.

I hope to be wrong.

Samuel

Entry Filed under: General News,Samuel's Editorials

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