The failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, one of the worst security fiascoes in American history, reflects a core truth that fuels the MAGA movement and makes the case for reelecting its leader to the Oval Office: Our leading institutions are so corrupted and incompetent that the purported experts who run them cannot or will not execute their most basic functions.
When it comes to the Secret Service, its singular duty is to protect the life and limb of the subjects to whom it is detailed. On July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, it failed that mission in a spectacular fashion.
Unfathomably, the critical organ of the most powerful and sophisticated security apparatus in the history of mankind allowed a would-be assassin, whom we are told had little tactical capability and was operating alone, to assume an unobstructed and otherwise insecure position a stone’s throw from the former president and fire at him, piercing his ear with a bullet.
Well in advance of the tragic incident, the shooter’s parents called law enforcement fearful he was missing. One wonders why they were distressed over the grown man’s whereabouts. Around three hours before the shooting, reports suggest that authorities identified that the shooter possessed a rangefinder. An hour before the shooting, the Secret Service began tracking the shooter as a “person of interest.”
Counter-snipers at one point saw the shooter scanning for them to identify their position, with the Secret Service briefing lawmakers that the shooter was spotted with a rangefinder
