The since-resigned Secret Service director conceded before House lawmakers Monday that this month’s shooting of former President Donald Trump was the worst agency security failure since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
“On July 13th, we failed,” Kimberly Cheatle said.
But was the assassination attempt a failure because Trump survived? Or was it a failure because he was shot in the first place? It’s easy to blow off a government attempt to kill the former and potential future president as an episode of conspiratorial paranoia, but not so much when one is reminded of the extent to which Trump has remained the Washington regime’s Public Enemy No. 1 since 2015.
Trump’s bloodied fist-pump wasn’t just an expression of patriotic defiance in the face of a near-assassin’s bullet. The former president’s display of physical courage was much larger than that. The dramatic images of Trump’s heroism in the moment reflected the triumph of an ex-commander-in-chief who’s conquered not one but two impeachments, serially fabricated financial scandals, and 91 state and federal charges in a weaponized legal system run by ideological opponents who smear him as Adolf Hitler. An entire decade of character assassinations culminated in a bullet blowing through the right ear of a leader who emerged from the latest assault as a lionized icon of American perseverance and determination just months from an election.
The FBI and the Department of Justice failed to take Trump down through the Russia hoax. Then the intelligence state failed to
