Donald Trump survived what appears to be another assassination attempt yesterday. It would have been the second attempt on his life within two months.
Trump was golfing at a course he owns in West Palm Beach, close to his home at Mar-a-Lago.
Scouring the course two holes ahead of Trump, an alert Secret Service agent apparently spotted the barrel of a rifle protruding from a chain-link fence behind some shrubbery. The agent who spotted the rifle evidently fired at the alleged gunman's position, causing him to flee the scene.
The alleged gunman was evidently armed with an SKS-style rifle, a Russian design. He also had ceramic body armor, suggesting he anticipated a shootout with police. Moreover, he had a GoPro camera, indicating that he wanted to capture his deed on camera.
The suspected assassin has been identified as a 58-year-old man named Ryan Wesley Routh. An alert citizen took a picture of Routh's vehicle and its license plate number as he fled the scene and forwarded it to the police. Based on that information, police apprehended Routh shortly afterward heading north on I-95 in Martin County, not far from West Palm Beach.
Routh appeared in court today to face federal charges. We’re not sure what motivated Routh’s alleged actions. We don't have much to go on at this point, so I don't want to speculate. But Routh may have been radicalized during COVID and the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
He's called climate fanatic Greta Thunberg the world's only true world leader, so that gives you some insight into his thinking.
Routh is also evidently a strident supporter of Ukraine.
He appears to have written a February 2023 book called Ukraine’s Unwinnable War. It details his life in Ukraine after Russia's invasion. Routh wanted to join Ukraine's international Legion, but he was declinedbecause he had no combat experience.
While in Ukraine, Routh tried to recruit soldiers for Ukraine's cause and boost the war effort, but these efforts ended in failure or were stopped by the authorities. He was basically a wannabe who was frustrated by his wasted attempts to help Ukraine.
He's also a hater of Israel who supports Palestine. Hopefully we get a clearer picture of Routh’s motivations for his alleged actions. There are a lot of rumors, but I don't want to address them at this point because I can't verify them.
Incidentally, Routh apparently has a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his pickup truck, so take that for what it's worth.
Of course, we still know very little about the assassination attempt on Trump on July 13, just two months ago, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
We do know that the conduct of the Secret Service was so grossly negligent that they were practically participants in the assassination attempt. The scale of incompetence almost defies belief. It's truly shocking that a gunman could get on top of a roof just 140 yards from Trump without being detected and neutralized beforehand.
There was no response to numerous witnesses who saw the shooter casing the area, using a rangefinder, flying a drone, carrying a ladder and practically carrying a sign saying, "I'm here to shoot Donald Trump."
Other bystanders saw the shooter on the roof with the rifle and frantically warned local police and Secret Service and still nothing was done. That's all bad enough. Now we learn the story gets worse.
The FBI was put in charge of the investigation, but they seem to be more involved in covering up the crime than solving it. It's almost like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
The roof where the shooter fired from and where he was killed was washed down by the FBI not long after the shooting. His body was quickly cremated so no proper forensic autopsy could be conducted. Why?
Was that roof examined for DNA or other physical evidence that could link the shooter to a co-conspirator before it was scrubbed? We just don't know and we may never know. But that's just one aspect of the shooting.
Did you know that the first shot at the shooter was not taken by the Secret Service counter-snipers but by a Butler Country SWAT officer who actually hit the shooter's rifle and may have stopped him from firing more rounds?
Did you know that most of the "Secret Service" bodyguards were not actually Secret Service but were detailees from the Department of Homeland Security who received only a few hours of training before being assigned to Trump's security detail? The story keeps getting worse.
Not only was the Secret Service a silent participant in the shooting by letting it happen, but the FBI now seems to be involved in a cover-up. We just get the constant refrain that it's an "ongoing investigation" and they therefore can't discuss it. How convenient.
If Obama or Harris were the subject of an assassination attempt, you could safely bet it would lead the news every day and the FBI would be providing regular updates.
Above all, the Biden-Harris administration wants to bury this story during the campaign because they know it makes Trump look like a hero, defiantly rising from the ground after being shot in the ear, shaking his fist in the air, yelling, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
They want voters to forget the entire incident, aided by the mainstream media that have no interest whatsoever in the story. They think we're too dumb to notice the complete lack of coverage.
You can also assume that they'll try to get you to forget all about yesterday's assassination attempt on Trump.
Turning briefly to the election itself, the polls in the battleground states are all within the margin of error. Harris is ahead in some, Trump in others but the race is extremely tight and it's far too soon to call a winner.
There's some good news for Trump coming from the fact that most of the polls have been rigged in favor of Harris (by oversampling Democrats relative to their percentages of likely voters).
Reverse-engineering this pro-Democrat skew suggests that Trump has a material lead across the board, but that's an inexact science and nothing that Trump can rely on.
Both sides will have to slug this out until Election Day, although even that's a tricky declaration since two-thirds of the voters will cast their votes before Election Day using mail-in votes gathered in "ballot harvesting" and then dumped into drop boxes with little or no accountability.
On a more rigorous basis, the distinguished scholar and commentator Victor Davis Hanson has written a 15-point playbook on how Harris can win. Hanson does not favor Harris, but he's too smart to take anything for granted.
Among the points in his playbook: Reinvent Harris as a fresh face. Ignore that fact that she's been vice president for almost four years and joined at the hip with Biden. Don't do any interviews or make any statements without a teleprompter.
Don't offer any specific policies just stick to platitudes and cliches.
Furthermore, call Trump a criminal, racist and threat to democracy. Talk about abortion, abortion, abortion. There's a lot more on the list and by all accounts Harris is sticking to the script that Hanson explains.
Basically, Harris is trying to fake her way through the entire campaign (Basement Strategy 2.0) and just trying to run out the clock.
That's how she just might win.
The Daily Reckoning