49 Comments

Mark, allow me to share my insights on the religious back story on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gnS8d_gJ

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Great analysis in "connecting the dots." Entirely plausible - motive, means, and manufactured opportunity all there. In fact it seems like the most likely possibility. It should have worked but it didn't.

I would like to know who was responsible for inviting Nimarata to speak at the Republican Convention. Now we are seeing them proceed as best they can given the circumstances. Still pushing to get Biden out. It's still a long time to November.

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It’s interesting the number of security failures that had to be instituted to pull off the lone gunman meme, which goes to show how unlikely it is.

The typical multiple redundant sniper operation would have been too obvious.

Everything was in place, time, stationary target, super easy shot, range finder, flat as a tack caliber, multiple shots and it still didn’t work.

Newsweek headline shows how hard they are pushing the lone gunman narrative, “Thomas Matthew Crooks Matches Mold of Presidential Killers, Would-Be Assassins: Experts.”

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It is starting to feel like the end of the Soviet Union, when the lies couldn't hold up any longer. People now, broadly, have no trouble considering in public that this may be more than incompetence. And if you look at not just the number but the caliber of people (and cases being made). I think that the jig is nearly up. They took their shot, and by the grace of God, they missed.

And also notably like the collapse of the Soviet Union; I believe that it will remain peaceful.

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Even if it turns out to have been sheer incompetence, the upcoming FBI/DHS investigation will be so badly handled that people will automatically assume that it was a hit job. I hope you are right about the collapse being peaceful.

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Just in the last hour Dr Naomi Wolf posted a tightly reasoned evaluation of the event. Her experience working in the political world and her husband's experience in providing security is top notch. They pinpoint who was most likely behind this. The only question remaining is how did they get the young man to participate?

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It's amazing that after 4 days we still know so little about this kid.

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It is too shakey a situation that everything can depend on one guy, Trump and a greenhorn flipflopper backup VP . Should be 10 hard men ( forget all the silly girls, nobody really believes they are strong enough and they are so damned annoying, anyway ,except maybe MTG) with determination.

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I have a bet among my friends that contrary to his earlier statement on why he didn’t release the JFK file, to prevent “identifiable harm to the nation” he has a change of heart. Bet he still has a copy along with the Crossfire Hurricane file.

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Jul 17·edited Jul 17

I'm undecided about whether this was a DS set up or just the enormous incompetence we've come to expect from the Dems and their Woke ideology. Let's see what other info comes out. BTW, I've always been interested in the JFK assassination (for what it's worth, I believe it was Oswald acting alone) and have actually forced myself to read the Warren Report. I found this statement in his recommendations concerning the Secret Service's less than stellar performance on that November day and it sent rather a "deja vu" chill through me. Make of it what you will: "The procedures relied upon by the Secret Service for detecting the presence of an assassin located in a building along a motorcade route were inadequate. At the time of the trip to Dallas, the Secret Service as a matter of practice did not investigate, or cause to be checked, any building located along the motorcade route to be taken by the President. The responsibility for observing windows in these buildings during the motorcade was divided between local police personnel stationed on the streets to regulate crowds and Secret Service agents riding in the motorcade. Based on its investigation the Commission has concluded that these arrangements during the trip to Dallas were clearly not sufficient."

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Sends chills

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When I learned about Oswald's movements in the year or two preceding JFK I could no longer buy the story.

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Ya, right now reading "JFK and the Unspeakable." CIA had the means, motive & opportunity. Also, I used to think Oliver Stone's "JFK" was nutjob BS.

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Netanyahu will almost certainly play up the Iran threat and try and gaslight Americans into believing that we are just as vulnerable to Iranian attack as plucky little Israel is. That's the only card he has left to play. It's exactly like Zelensky's "Today Keev, tomorrow Paris/London/Washington" shtick.

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Jul 17·edited Jul 17

From today's (July 17) Coffee and Covid.

"On his way to the rally, Mr. Crooks stopped by The Home Depot and bought a five-foot ladder. The twenty-year-old carried the ladder, his father’s AR-15, a target rangefinder, an explosive detonator, and a heavy box of ammunition over a mile from the parking lot, through security, and into the restricted area. He strolled around the premises in broad daylight, using his rangefinder to calculate the distance to where Trump spoke. Police observed him for between 30 and sixty minutes. Then Crooks used his newly purchased five-foot ladder to haul his gear around fifteen feet up onto the roof of the building where he would shoot the President. Acting alone."

If what Jeff wrote is accurate, how in the world did this happen? This would be way beyond incompetence. It suggests Deep State involvement.

Thank God that today we have cellphones that record. We have a video record of all those people telling us that they contacted and or alerted the 'authorities' to point them to the shooter on the roof.

Speaking of the slope of the roof, what a ridiculous assertion that the pitch was too steep to accommodate putting a man on the roof. The head of the Secret Service should be prosecuted if Trump gets in office.

All federal employees take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

“I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.””

How do these evil men sleep at night?

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"The head of the Secret Service should be prosecuted if Trump gets in office". It's a very dispiriting but entirely possible likelihood that this useless person will actually retain her job till Jan 2025. In a sane world, she would have offered her resignation or been sacked on the spot.

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I watched her interview. She had an extremely dry mouth. In Brit parlance - she's sh**ting herself. She'll likely be the key to unlocking at least part of the truth - she'll fall apart at the first hint of a tough interview.

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I really feel that she should have been arrested on suspicion of gross incompetence (or better still something unspecified, just because) within hours. That would have prevented her conferring with deeper, darker figures - but too late now.

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she should be in custody right now

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As a fellow Brit, Amanda, I'd upgrade your expression to "sh*tting bricks"! :)

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I think that slang comes from the Americans actually.

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Lol! Yep.

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I read right after the attempt, from someone smarter than me (Mark, here? Or maybe Scott Adams?): watch what happens next -- if it's incompetence, there will be firings and resignations. If it's a coverup, they'll dig in.

"I Have 100% Confidence": Sec. Mayorkas

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Not so sure about that, Dan. If people in this admin were sacked for incompetence, there wouldn't be anyone left. That's not how it rolls with the Dems. Look at buffoons like Buttplug or Mayorkas. Both complete failures in their jobs, and yet still firmly in situ. I suspect that Cheatle will act like Gay at Harvard and try to ride out the storm before being chiseled out of her seat by public pressure. On the subject of incompetence, I read over at the Federalist Papers that switching the SS from Treasury control to that of Homeland Security caused a lot of upheaval and instability. The FP's owner, Sean Davis, meanwhile, is fully convinced that the hit was a deliberate act on the part of the Deep State:

https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/16/bidens-team-deliberately-kneecapped-trumps-security-to-allow-an-assassination-attempt/

https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/17/mission-fail-perspective-on-the-trump-assassination-attempt-from-a-former-secret-service-agent/

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She lacks the morals to do the right thing. These people only understand one thing. Being on the receiving end of power, in the form of punishment.

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Luongo also loves Trump's economic plan - even tolerates the tariffs as temporarily necessary in an imperfect world

First nice thing he's said about Trump-enomics that I've ever heard.

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😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

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Luongo reports that short positions on DJT doubled from the beginning of July.

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Volume and shorts spiked immediately BEFORE the assassination attempt. Wish I had the link - might have been Zerohedge.

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Some details:

https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/a-huge-financial-bet-against-donald?publication_id=441185&post_id=146737090&isFreemail=true&r=rjj5o&triedRedirect=true

I don't know that this accounts for all of it but it was an abnormally large bet by a single company.

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author

Thanks. As you'll see, I read someone else's h/t before yours. Appreciated.

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No problem!

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I concur. I believe that what happened to Trump on Saturday was a catastrophic failure of the security because it was just lackadaisical. You had a 20 year old kid, probably manipulated by all of the rhetoric going on and decided to take a chance and see if he could assassinate Trump. He failed. If it had been a conspiracy, then there would’ve been a second shooter and he would not have missed.

Thursday night is the speech of a lifetime for Donald Trump , instead of partisanship, he has to go on the stage and promote unity and extend the olive branch whether it’s taken or not. As a political junkie, who is watched more politics than most, I went back and thought about another time in history, where we had such a device of nation.

That period of time was 1968 , we had the Vietnam war, we had unrest, crime, protest, violence, and most of all we had to live through two assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F Kennedy.

So this morning I went back and watched the 1968 Republican convention acceptance speech of Richard Nixon. I remembered elements of that speech and now watching it again I see how relevant that speech would be too today. It’s available on YouTube and people should watch it. That is the speech Donald Trump hast to give tomorrow night. If he can pull that off, the Democrats will have no chance of ever recovering at all.

https://youtu.be/Km1Ylrjog74?si=u2i8vu0Gd4yqshqd

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And look what they did to Nixon...

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At 140 yards a second shooter a) wasn’t necessary, and b) would mess up the lone wolf narrative.

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author

b) Good point. Too great a chance that a second shooter would be spotted--after all, the one shooter was observed over quite a period of time. The lone wolf narrative is a key part of American political mythology. We don't have conspiracies here. Second guy blows it all.

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If he was 'just a kid' then it's hard to argue with you - with so many details and questionable actions pointing to intent, why would you put the gun in the hands of a kid? Powerful argument.

But then, they have scrubbed his ID; a 20-yr-old literally has no social media footprint. Incredibly unlikely - like the lady who accused Kavanaugh. There's a very small number of individuals and agencies who can make your digital prints disappear...

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And the kid has a bit part in a BlackRock commercial. You couldn’t write this better as fiction. They are absolutely desperate to avoid the coming changes. Maybe just maybe Trump can MAGA... I was skeptical but jeez this feels like destiny.

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author

How unlikely is that? I mean, small world and all ...

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author

Thanks, I think you're right and I'm betting that Trump agrees, too.

Re the security, I would argue that it wasn't "lackadaisical" so much as the product of non-professionals doing it by the seat of their pants. The detail was made up of locals and subs who were not pros at this kind of work.

Re a second shooter. Going by the JFK scenario I'd have to agree, but you go with what you have to work with. Obviously I can't insist on this. My argument would be that this venue would have been chosen as the one that could be most easily set up for this kind of job. Trying to pull it off in a major city, like Dallas! would have been far more difficult. The report is that the Jill appearance in Pittsburgh was hastily arranged, so it was used to draw off Trump's professional regular detail. Time was of the essence--Trump had to be "eliminated"--that's the word Dem operatives have openly used--before the nomination and Veep announcement. Cf. Dan in AZ's comment.

Of course, YMMV applies.

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Robert Barnes last night tied together a lot of factors, including the Iran angle, in an "alternative" analysis. Barnes really believes this was a deep state JFK-RFK-MLK-X-Wallace-Nixon take out plot. Crooks is an Oswald-type patsy. We now know there were govt snipers in the same building (concealed and non-elevated, does that make sense?). Plotters would NOT trust the kill shot to a kid who couldn't make the HS rifle club. Does the flat trajectory angle in the now-famous photo showing the bullet wake match the rooftop-podium elevation? As it happened, the non-SS police sniper (not in on it) killed the kid too soon (note, was not given a preemptive green light and claims to have been ordered to wait on his shot). So, no followup shots on Trump. There are already photos of the FBI hosing off the rooftop crime scene (ie, scrubbing). Iran would be implicated as the IC is already doing. If target went down, then plotters would have caused site chaos through explosives (recall there were allegedly detonators on Crooks' body). The main play was to knock off Trump before the VP announcement/nomination, install Haley in a rah-rah moment to rally all-in support for a retaliatory war on Iran. The entire succession process was in place, but all went out of whack because of the head turn. And, true to form, the planners had no Plan B in case of failure.

Trump understands it all, that's why he rushed VP announcement, choosing the neocons' most reviled option, and rushed his own nomination to cement the ticket. Barnes also claims that RFKJ phone call video was deliberately leaked by Trump. Biden asking Trump "Why did I move my head?" which is indeed an interesting question from a certain point of view.

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Haley spoke at the RNC last night. I was surprised to see her there.

Would she have an inkling she would have been the presumptive nominee?

There seems to be a growing sense that many in the media and political lairs fully expected to reporting a different ending to the story Saturday evening.

CNN was evidently at the Rally. They never cover Trump rallies?

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Who asked/allowed her to speak? Maybe it was part of the deal for turning over her delegates. But still not a good deal, if so.

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author

It all fits in with what I'm trying to articulate. I would note that the kid being killed would definitely have been part of the plan--that's what patsies are for. They're disposable. A plot like this--relying on bringing in outsiders at the last moment, as happened--would necessarily mean that the snipers would not be inside the circle of knowledge. Once the shooting actually started they were no longer legally bound by instructions from the command center.

I like your last paragraph re Trump's quick response.

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It's beyond my comprehension that an event like this can sit on a razor's edge between gross incompetence and a set-up. When it's all over, do you think that the FBI will come up with a better investigative conclusion than Mandalay Bay?

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Nope. For the next 20 years, Wray and his successors will say, "We can't comment on this still ongoing investigation"

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Grimly ironic, it was Zhou’s border anarchy depicted on a chart that saved Trump’s life.

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