In a chaotic scene filled with many instant impressions, two particularly stood out during the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday.
First was the shock that the gunman, an obscure 20-year-old from outside Pittsburgh, was able to get within shooting distance of the former and perhaps future president.
The other was how Trump, despite his injury and the panic that ensued at the scene, had the presence of mind to realize that this was a very good photo opportunity, and slowed the efforts of the Secret Service to get him off the stage so that he could do a few fist pumps and mouth the words “fight, fight, fight” — creating blood-streaked images that dramatically capture the defiance that has made him especially appealing to his supporters.
Both of those aspects at the shooting scene in Butler, Pennsylvania, sparked instant conspiracy theories on the right and on the left.
Republican conspiracy mongers took to social media to float the theory that the Secret Service, at the direction of the Biden administration, intentionally was lax in its security so as to make Trump vulnerable to being assassinated.
Not to be outdone, Democratic conspiracy mongers accused Trump of staging the whole thing, so as to grab the attention back from Biden — who has been the center of the news since his disastrous debate performance last month — and to win over the sympathy vote, enough perhaps to tip an election that’s again expected to be quite close.
As with most conspiracy theories, one has to suspend reason and logic to swallow them.
Trump has a history of being erratic, and he’s definitely a showman, but no one in his right mind would ever trust an experienced sniper — much less a relatively novice shooter — to be so precise from about 150 yards away to nick the ear of a human target and miss the brain. To suggest Trump might do so for publicity is outlandish.
Nearly as preposterous is the notion that Biden would try to get Trump killed, and that the Secret Service would cooperate in such a criminal endeavor.
That doesn’t mean that the Secret Service — and perhaps local law enforcement — didn’t goof. Clearly someone failed in securing the perimeter around the grandstand where Trump would be speaking. No one with a high-powered rifle should have been able to get within 1,000 yards of the former president, much less 150. Military sharpshooters are trained to hit human targets at the distance from which Saturday’s shooter was positioned.
The FBI is conducting an investigation into what happened, and an independent review has also been ordered by Biden. Congress is launching inquiries of its own.
Every detail is going to be analyzed, and the cause of the security failure will come out. More than likely, there was a communication breakdown between the federal and local authorities.
That’s not as titillating as a good ole conspiracy theory, but the truth rarely is.
