They Shot Trump

My dad didn’t look tough or act tough. When I was a kid, I never thought of my dad as “tough.”

When I was a kid.

Dad was the oldest boy in a family of seven kids whose mother died when he was ten. He fought in World War II and Korea. Then, he became a St. Louis cop.

Sometime during my Navy years, I realized my dad was tough. Tougher than an over-cooked chuck steak from a discount grocery store. I learned that he once cut off his own finger (by accident) and drove himself to the hospital to have it reattached.

When I first heard the news of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, I heard my dad’s voice saying: “They shot Trump.”

That’s how guys of his era reported events. Three-word sentences. Subject, verb, object. No modifiers. No more precision in the nouns than necessary.

They

Shot

Trump

If you’ve ever seen movies made in the 40s or 50s, you know what I’m talking about. The guys who visited the shores of Normandy or Iwo Jima had no room for modifiers. They had no room in their backpacks or foot lockers for fancy adjectives and adverbs. They packed nouns and verbs because that’s all you need to make a sentence.

They shot Trump.

In the pre-internet and pre-cellphone days, I often got news by walking into the room where my dad was sitting. “Nixon’s giving up,” came from Dad in 1974 when I walked into the living room. “They shot Reagan,” in 1981 when I came through the front door (but I already knew.)

If Dad were alive, I’d be walking into his house tomorrow after Mass at about 9:30 AM. He’d say, “They shot Trump.”

And he’d be right.

They shot Trump.

Who’s the “they?”

There’s two ways to answer that.

1. An Antifa guy whose last name is (supposedly) “Violets.”

2. The guy behind the guy who pulled the trigger.

Pick the answer that makes you feel good. Or the one that makes you feel bad. What do I care?

I have no interest in the Violets guy who’s as dead as a door nail, having had his brains splattered over a rooftop by Secret Service after squeezing off 8 to 10 rounds, killing one and injuring two, one critically. Anyone with half a brain (which half a brain more than Violets now now has) knows Violets was just a stooge. Let facts be submitted to a candid world.

1. Violets (or whatever his name is) gained access to the rooftop of the building closest to the stage where President Trump was to speak.

2. Violets managed to enter the building with a sniper rifle and ammo despite standard presidential security protocols and surveillance.

3. Violets positioned himself on the roof during Trump’s speech.

4. Multiple witnesses alerted police, state troopers, and Secret Service of Violets’s position and actions several minutes before he fire the first round.

5. Standard presidential security for an outdoor event includes satellite and drone surveillance before, during, and after the event—surveillance capable of facial recognition of individual attendees.

6. Standard presidential security for an outdoor event includes police or Secret Service details on the roofs of every building with a line of sight to the positions the president is expected to assume.

7. Trump was shot while at the podium—the primary expected position for this event.

8. The shooter had a perfect, unobstructed line of sight from his position to the podium less than 150 yards away.

9. After the shooting but before the shooter was confirmed dead, Secret Service exposed Trump to the audience for over a minute without attempting to conceal or protect his head or thorax.

10. The FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, and White House made no statement for over two hours after the failed assassination attempt.