After the near-miss assassination attempt on Trump this month, our fearless leaders in Congress held a televised hearing to grill the Director of the Secret Service, the Director of the FBI and others to find out “how this happened and how we can prevent it in the future”. Politicians, podcasters, pundits, reporters and conspiracy theorists from both parties jumped on the bandwagon to provide their uniformed opinions on security protocols and the secret service.
Like most of these armchair quarterbacks, I too have no expertise or experience with personal security or the Secret Service. And like them, I’m still going to share my opinion in this post. Unlike them, I fully admit to my own ignorance.
As for the assassination attempt, it seems like the failures stemmed from a lack of good communication and coordination of efforts between multiple agencies who participated in the event’s security. These included the Secret Service, the PA State Police and the local Butler Police and perhaps others. There appear to have been breakdowns in the expectations, responsibilities, realtime communication and confirmation of various security actions that resulted in letting an amateur would be assassin take multiple shots at Trump before being killed by a sniper. I suspect there were mistakes made by individuals.
That’s my assessment.
I’m not going to offer an opinion on the skill of the various agencies, personnel, leaders or planning because … WTF do I know about that?
That didn’t stop Congress from pressuring the Director of the Secret Service to resign. Which she did. I’m sure there was some scrambling to install an interim Director who has taken over for now.
Does anyone think this makes Trump, Biden and others under Secret Service protection safer? How could it?
Aside from the obvious ploy of using this hearing and incident for political grandstanding and clickbait, I got the impression that some of these politicians are genuinely scared.
That is understandable.
If you can’t ensure the former President who has a solid chance of being elected again safe, how can you keep Congresspeople safe? Or other candidates? Or other former Presidents?
I would guess that many of these people have received death threats – some credible and some ridiculous. We all know about various politically motivated violent incidents from the Pizza Gate shootings to Pelosi’s husband being attacked to the congressional baseball game shooting to Jan 6 mob attacks on the Capital.
And let’s face it, gun control is a joke. Anyone who is determine to get one can. In at least half of our states, they can legally own, carry and use them almost without limitation.
Here’s my take.
You cannot keep anyone 100% safe. Pointing fingers and looking for someone to blame doesn’t do it. Having non experts analyze the minute details surely won’t do it. Firing the Director of the Secret Service won’t do it. Blaming DEI hires won’t do it. You will get as much security from doing stuff like this as you would as throwing salt over your shoulder or praying.
Human beings are prone to making mistakes. Good protocols and systems can minimize them, but nothing is foolproof.
In the end, nobody can keep you safe.
Think about the security theater of the TSA, the Patriot act, the US domestic program, Homeland Security, the military, the threat of nuclear annihilation, or even, Covid.
In the end, there is no such thing as safe from everything.
Sleep tight.
