WASHINGTON —  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's interview with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finally got underway on Musk's social media platform X on Monday evening, following…

It all adds up.

Saxophone solos and dense storytelling. The post Epic poetry: The Bruce Springsteen song Julien Baker said has “everything you need” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Here’s something very peculiar, and perhaps telling, which you almost certainly have had zero exposure to: all of the major national polls went dark last week. Mark Mitchell, the CEO of Rasmussen Reports, has been squawking about this for a few days now on Xwitter… There were 6 non-Rasmussen General Election polls on RCP the week of the JD Vance pick. Only ONE this week. Weird. pic.twitter.com/djg4VlMZ7N — Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports (@Mark_R_Mitchell) August 10, 2024 It turns out that Mitchell is correct. Here’s a screenshot from RealClearPolitics taken at noon central time on Monday, and as you can see, there were no polls other than Rasmussen’s released containing data from later than Sunday, August 4. That’s weird, isn’t it? Kamala Harris picks Tim Walz as her running mate and no major polling organization goes into the field to poll the effect of the choice? Mitchell was a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room Saturday and he discussed the peculiarity of this phenomenon… Adding to the complexity, Mitchell noted to WarRoom host Royce White, that despite Harris’s poor track record on critical issues such as border control and overall favorability, the media continues to push a positive narrative. “Kamala Harris has never pulled better than Joe Biden,” he stated. “Her record is abysmal, with 49% of voters saying she has done a poor job on the borders, and only 19% believing she’s better than recent vice presidents.” This stark contrast between her actual performance and media portrayal raises questions about the motivations behind such reporting. Mitchell’s concern about the integrity of polling data is further evidenced by the lack of recent national numbers from major polling firms, he told White. “We’re the only ones putting out fresh national data this week,” he said. “Others have outdated numbers from early August or earlier. The absence of current data from major pollsters indicates a potential effort to suppress unfavorable findings about Harris.” Looking ahead, Mitchell advised scrutiny of future polls to uncover any biases or methodological flaws. “Watch for oversampled Democrats or shifts in how data is weighted,” he suggested. “The industry is carrying water for Harris, and it’s crucial for voters to understand the real dynamics of this race.” Mitchell’s remarks expose what he sees as a concerted effort by the media to distort the reality of Kamala Harris’s candidacy and Donald Trump’s standing. Mitchell also cut a video on this topic… One assumes that the Harris campaign is doing internal polling. That obviously hasn’t leaked. In fact, the only time at which Democrat internal polling has made it into public view this year was amid the push to remove Joe Biden as the nominee. And now that Harris has been anointed the Democrats’ presidential candidate, paired with a governor of arguably the most loony-left state in the union, a man who clearly lied about serving in combat, oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID fraud, fiddled as his largest city burned following the death of a career criminal suffering from a fentanyl overdose while in police custody, has very suspicious long-standing ties to the Chinese Communist Party and has aggressively embraced all the worst aggressions of the radical LGBTQ and transgenderist movements, all the major polling organizations save for Rasmussen have gone dark — or at least went dark for more than a week (it’s possible that by the time you read this some new national polling will have finally been released). One of two things has happened. Either these organizations have stopped polling, or they’ve chosen not to release the results of surveys they did perform. That was a question Rasmussen Reports asked on Xwitter Monday. Most followers think it’s the latter. Halfway through the day and still only one new GE 2024 poll since 8/4. Do you think they’re holding the data? Or did they not poll? — Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) August 12, 2024 It’s fairly obvious they’re right, of course. A hole in polling like this isn’t common. For example, here’s a screenshot from RCP’s polling archive from four years ago… …and here’s a screenshot from the same time period eight years ago… So no, this is not some seasonal thing. It isn’t normal for all of the big polling organizations to go dark on the presidential race at the same time. It’s decidedly abnormal for this to happen. And given the clear use of Photoshop and AI imagery to show augmented crowd photography and in so doing present the Harris campaign as generating surging throngs of devoted fans, plus other interesting fake-it-till-you-make-it tricks, the polling hole is conspicuous. Rasmussen, by the way, has Trump ahead of Harris 49-44 in its latest numbers. Yes, yes, you say, but there are polls of swing states! I’ve seen ’em! That might be true. But people pay even less attention to the methodology of state polling than they do of national polling. Take for example the New York Times/Siena poll of swing states last week which was weighted in a quite ridiculous way. As Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio pointed out… Given all this, you might not find it very surprising that so much of America has been led to believe in a Trump slump over the course of the last week. At the same time the drip-drip-drip catastrophe of Tim Walz’ public vetting shocked the country and Kamala Harris once again dodged interviews, town halls, debates, press conferences and even policy statements on her own campaign website. You’re being deliberately demoralized and gaslit as a Trump voter, on such a scale that you’ve never seen before. And it’s worth wondering: what will people who will go to lengths like these to achieve political power do when they have that power? The prospective answers to that question ought to scare you stiff. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: Is Trump Suffering From the Assassin’s Veto? Behold, Tampon Tim The post What Happened to All the Polling? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Longtime “conservative” columnist David French has held forth at that routinely far right publication The New York Times. Oops. Sorry. French holds forth there at The Times but as the universe knows, The Times hasn’t been conservative since before Adam and Eve walked the earth eating apples. Recently, French penned this headline for The Times. To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting for Harris Shocking. Not. The New York Times “conservative” columnist David French is a graduate of National Review and doubles elsewhere, has decidedly abandoned matters conservative. This time around he says things like this, which deserve a response: Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. As someone who actually served in the Reagan White House as a White House political director, I don’t recall Mr. French’s presence when the Reagan staff was doing battle for our ideological commander in chief. And surely someone as smart as French is understands exactly what he’s doing — even if he pretends it isn’t so. He protests that he’s “going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism.” Really? As someone who, with Reagan colleagues, did serious political battle to get constitutional conservatives confirmed to the Supreme Court, and who has listened personally to President Trump discussing his commitment to continuing to do the same in a second term that he did in his first, I distinctly recall the appointments of Supreme Court Judges with names like Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch.  He was particularly proud of his conservative appointments to the lower federal courts. Again that sentence directly from French: But I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism. Hello? There is zero question that if Harris were to win this election and she had the opportunity to appoint Supreme Court Justices, she would appoint radical jurists. And what about federal judges on the lower courts? Without question her appointees would be solidly far left — just like Harris herself. Ergo, without question, French is out there saying in essence that he wants a retiring conservative judge to be replaced by a far left liberal. Got it. Message received. Perhaps even more telling is that the “conservative” French has bought hook, line, and sinker into the idea that a corrupt left-wing government, Justice Department, and various local Democrat governments has in fact not done what it so plainly has done: weaponize federal, state, and local governments to get President Biden’s — and now Vice President Harris’s — main political opponent: Donald Trump. There is nothing remotely “conservative” about this massive, decidedly corrupt use of government. But French signs on — and by voting for Harris is clearly stating he is signing on for more. When he focuses on the issue of voter fraud, French quite tellingly is silent about the extensive record of voter fraud right here in my own state of Pennsylvania. Voter fraud which has been long documented — say again documented — right here in this space. As here (READ MORE: The ‘Washington Post’ Attacks Pennsylvania Election Audit). Without the slightest sense of irony, French says: Political violence and threats of violence have no place in the American democratic process. Yet threats and intimidation follow the MAGA movement like night follows day. Hello? Barely a month ago Trump himself narrowly escaped assassination, with a Trump rally-goer being shot to death and two others wounded. Not only no mention of this, but zero mention of the far-left BLM riots that went on for six months in over 500 American cities. Was there a riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th? Yes. Not mentioned by French that it was caused by a relative handful — just over a thousand — protestors out of tens of thousands of peaceful protestors who followed President Trump’s instructions to “peacefully and patriotically” protest. The sad reality is that time after time, long before Trump was on the scene, protests in Washington, D.C. have been of a similar nature — overwhelmingly peaceful with sometimes a handful committing violence.  Pick an issue — anti-Vietnam War protests in 1971 (40,000 participants in Washington, 12,000 arrested), or later anti-Iraq War protests, Occupy Wall Street protests and so on and so on. Needless to say, Donald Trump was nowhere in sight. Then there was this from French: In many ways, the most concretely conservative action I can take in this election is to vote for the candidate who will stand against Vladimir Putin. Say what? The object of an American president when dealing with a decidedly American foe is to make sure there is no war. It is, as both Trump and Reagan believed, “peace through strength.” Yet there is French voting proudly for the Vice President who, with her President, sent such a flagrant signal of weakness to America’s enemies that one, Russia’s Putin, chose to invade Ukraine. Putin did not invade Ukraine on Trump’s watch — but on the Biden-Harris watch. And French wants the decidedly non-conservative more of that weakness. Then there is this: Trump would abandon our allies and risk our most precious alliances. Um, no. When it comes to our NATO allies, Trump simply wants them to pay their share of the freight. So too did President Dwight Eisenhower, history records. Neither were anti-NATO. In sum, David French is the current version of all those Establishment Republicans who warned against the supposed disaster of nominating Ronald Reagan.  As I warned of those anti-Reagan RINO’s back in 2015: Yes, Trump Can Win — The American Spectator | USA News and Politics| USA News and Politics Among the jewels from all those hysterical about the rise of Reagan in those days: New York’s Republican Senator Jacob Javits: Reagan’s positions are “so extreme that they would alter our country’s very economic and social structure and our place in the world to such a degree as to make our country’s place at home and abroad, as we know it, a thing of the past. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller dismissed Reagan as “a minority of a minority” who “has been taking some extreme positions. Illinois Republican Senator Charles Percy said Reagan’s candidacy was “foolhardy” and would lead to a “crushing defeat” for the Republican Party. “It could signal the beginning of the end of our party as an effective force in American political life.” Former President Gerald Ford: “I hear more and more often that we don’t want, can’t afford to have a replay of 1964.” If the Republican Party nominates Ronald Reagan “it would be an impossible situation” because Reagan “is perceived as a most conservative Republican. A very conservative Republican can’t win in a national election.” Asked if that meant Ford thought Reagan can’t win, Ford replied to the New York Times: “That’s right.” The Times story went on to observe that Ford thought “Mr. Reagan would be a sure-loser in November” and that Reagan held “extreme and too-simple views.” And so it went as Reagan was on the march. In other words? David French is signing on to voting for one of the most far-left presidential candidates since Democrats nominated the similarly far-left South Dakota Senator George McGovern in 1972. He is signing on for a far left Supreme Court, a far left federal judiciary, a far left economic and foreign policy. God bless America, French, as with his fellow voting Americans, has the freedom to vote the way he wants. But under no circumstances is his choice remotely close to to  saving “Conservatism From Itself.” On the contrary. On the contrary. And surely someone as smart as French understands exactly what he’s doing — even if he pretends it isn’t so. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Trump, Reagan, and God’s Divine Plan Tell VP Harris, VPs Lose Presidential Elections The post David French: A Fallen Conserative’s Fairytale appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman … Thomas Paine, ‘The American Crisis’ Tim Walz personifies the Summer Soldier. For twenty-four years of peace, he collected a fat supplemental National Guard paycheck in addition to his teacher’s salary. He used his service to garner the support of voters for his budding political career. All this came to a screeching halt when it became clear that he might actually have to fight for his country. Many believe that the brotherhood represents a solid, conservative bloc; nothing could further from the truth. When a credible rumor surfaced that his unit might be deployed to Iraq, Walz had a decision to make. He could deploy or run for Congress, and sunshine patriot that he is, Walz chose self-interest over duty and loyalty to troops he had trained. He put in for retirement before stop-loss could halt retirements and discharges. Not surprisingly, many of his former comrades were furious; they felt betrayed. Some died in the subsequent deployment. To make matters worse, he gave an interview for a bio in which he alluded to the belief that he did not want to see weapons he had carried in war used at home. By implying that he had served in war, he added stolen valor to his resume. In the brotherhood of war there are several classifications. On top, are the combat soldiers; they are the ones who day-after-day leave the confines of the forward operating base (FOB) to confront the enemy. Next, come the support troops who man the FOBs, the combat troops often refer to them as “Fobitts.” This is unfair. Most were ordered there and did their jobs. They represent about eighty percent of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. (READ MORE from Gary Anderson: The Secret Service Needs a Red Team) The third category are those who were willing to go but were never called. Until his retirement, Walz fell into this category. During Operation Enduring Freedom (the Afghan War), his unit was sent to Italy to backfill a unit deployed to the theater. The categories that fall outside of the brotherhood include (1) those who actively avoid combat by legally using the system and (2) those who used all other means to avoid being deployed. I have a second cousin who falls into that category. He avoided deployment by feigning mental illness. When called down on that, he admitted to cowardice. He was discharged as unfit. He has been ostracized by the family ever since. Lowest of the low is the Legion of Stolen Valor; those who did not go, but who claim they did either by wearing awards they do not rate or by alluding to combat experience that they do not have. These are the politicians who get “Swift Boated.” That is already happening to Walz, and justifiably so. (READ MORE: Harris Can Avoid Reporters But Not Economics) Walz defenders claim that the Democrats have already put that charge to rest. Notable among them is Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. They are wrong. The drip, drip, drip has just begun. For those who don’t think that stolen valor can undermine a campaign, I have two words … John Kerry. This is particularly true in this election. Many believe that the brotherhood represents a solid, conservative bloc; nothing could further from the truth. Many of my fellow veterans are swing voters. Some are Democrats. They may be a small percentage of the electorate, but there are more of them than the trans voters so cherished by the Democrats. Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel. He served as a UN Observer in Lebanon and as a the Military Advisor to the US Liaison Office to the UN mission in Somalia. He also served as a State Department field advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan. The post Tim Walz, Unreformed Summer Soldier appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

While China must remain viewed as a potential strategic adversary, we must recognize the serious Iranian threat to our national security.  The United States is badly distracted by serious matters — and self-absorbed in campaign histrionics. We are confronted with protracted regional wars in Gaza and Ukraine. There has been an attempted assassination of former president Trump, as well as the arrest of a Pakistani with alleged links to Iran whom the FBI believes was to target Trump, among others. There are still some moderate elements in Iran, including for example the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Our national attention is on the daily barrage of campaign disparagements, parrying, and verbal onslaughts; representations subjected to a phalanx of fact checkers; obsession with seven so-called battleground states; a presidential candidate cleverly concealed behind a teleprompter; the anxious expectation of inflation indexes and unemployment data; gyrations of the Dow Jones and S&P indices, and NASDAQ. America is not focused — and our enemies know it. From now until the January inauguration, we enter a particularly dangerous period in which U.S. assets and interests are at risk.  And since it is an election year with a lame duck president and vice president without foreign policy experience, and since it is not even clear who is running the United States, we should expect to be further tormented by the axis of bad actors — Iran in particular. Feckless Iranian Policy Our Iran foreign policy has been feckless for years.  A naïve Obama Administration was desperate to consummate an agreement to discourage or retard Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon — later abandoned by the Trump Administration. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known simply as the Iran nuclear agreement, was unwisely unlinked to Iranian adventurism in the Middle East. Yet the Biden Administration, acting like a supplicant, tried unsuccessfully to restore the agreement. And amazingly, in March the Biden Administration unfroze $10 billion of Iranian blocked funds. Funded by oil export revenues, over the years Iran has successfully built up formidable proxies in the region, although it is not clear how much control Iran always has over them. Hamas has up to an estimated 12,000 militants remaining; Hezbollah which claims to have 100,000 fighters (with independent estimates much less) and up to 200,000 rockets and missiles, according to Washington-based CSIS; an estimated 40 Iran-backed groups or militias, including but not limited to Iraq and Syria; and the Houthi rebels of Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula estimated by British sources at 20,000. (Not surprisingly, Al Jazeera quotes Houthi sources of over 200,000). Houthi attacks on commercial and Western naval vessels have reduced traffic through the Red Sea by over 50 percent, and conducted more than 190 attacks, affecting 65 countries and 29 shipping companies, according to USNI News in June. In short, the Middle East is on fire, “a-bobbin’ like a basket full o’ snakes,” in the words of Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling who wrote on India. (READ MORE from Frank Schell: Xi Jinping: When Will I Be Loved?) In the meantime, Iran marches relentlessly toward uranium enrichment sufficient for a nuclear weapon — the length of time to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium (“breakout time’) is now said to be 1-2 weeks by Secretary Antony Blinken, although more time is needed for assembly of a device. The world has already seen the effects of nuclear blackmail by President Vladimir Putin of Russia that have restrained the response of NATO and the U.S. since his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, so imagine the potential bullying of moderate Middle East countries and the West. America does not need another war in the Islamic world, after its disastrous experience of nearly 20 years in Afghanistan, and the ISIS Sunni backlash after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. Best Iranian Policy Options What should we do about this? First and foremost, the U.S. should enforce the sanctions on Iran imposed by the Trump Administration. As recently reported by the Wall Street Journal, between 2018 and 2020, those sanctions cut oil exports from 2.5 million barrels per day to 70,000, preventing Iran from realizing $50 billion in oil proceeds. Further, in 2019 then-President Hassan Rouhani stated that U.S. sanctions had cost Iran $200 billion, reducing Iranian military outlays by 28 percent — to the detriment of Iran’s surrogates in the Middle East. Indeed, sanctions have a downside: They can impoverish a country and give China and Russia an entrée, as we have seen, and the price of gas at the pump will go up. Second, Iran should be put on notice that any Iranian vessels that assist the Houthis in targeting missiles and drones against U.S. naval assets and international commercial ships will be sunk. This action was recommended to President Biden in March by Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Third, the power of the president of the United States should be brought to bear to address the Iranian people. President Obama has admitted that he erred in not supporting the Iranian pro-democracy uprising in 2009 known as the Green Movement — his objective was said to be a nuclear agreement, not regime change. Direct messaging the Iranian people would say that the United States supports them in their aspiration for democracy, that Iran’s isolation and status as a rogue nation will end, and that as a carrot, the U.S. will assist in the development of Iran’s energy industry if they oust the current fundamentalist regime and replace it with fair elections and democracy. (READ MORE: Starbucks Does It Again With Oleato) There are still some moderate elements in Iran, including for example the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Further, the Iranian regime is not monolithic like North Korea, and there are competing elements.  Moreover, the young and women of Iran want to modernize the country. Both U.S. presidential candidates should set forth a vision of their foreign policy toward Iran.  However, it is hard to believe that the current or a future Democratic Administration, which has appeased Iran for years, would have the resolve to embrace the Iranian people for purposes of regime change. But Iran must be defanged — the world needs a second Iranian Revolution. Frank Schell is a business strategy consultant and former senior vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago. He was a Lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago and is a contributor of opinion pieces to various journals. The post Defang Iran and Support Iranian Good Guys appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Simply defined, meritocracy is an economic and political system where people achieve their position based upon merit. Merit is ascertained by a record of formal credentials and/or past performance which demonstrates such traits as intelligence, work ethic, ambition, creativity, vision, and accomplishment are demonstrated. It is a system that elevates achievement independent of race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Equal outcome does not strengthen the weak, it weakens the strong. The twentieth century was characterized by a slow but inexorable process of establishing merit as the key factor in status and social mobility, energized in particular by a powerful postwar civil rights revolution. One can credit meritocracy with being behind America’s economic and innovative preeminence in the world. Having established equality under the law, America has continued to make progress toward creating equal opportunity for all, though the goal is illusive and likely never fully achievable even if laudable. Remember, equal opportunity does not create equal outcomes or equal results, nor should we seek those things. Karl Marx advocated for a Socialist Utopia where everyone was of equal stature, position, and where everyone received roughly equal compensation. Marx is long dead and his Socialist Utopias have only ever had the worst kinds of inequality and have always given way to dictatorship and oppression wherever it has been tried. It is easy to see why. People have different capabilities and some achieve excellence in various life pursuits while others do not. It is impossible to make everyone excellent at every endeavor. So to make everyone “equal,” the most talented people would have to be prevented from achieving excellence. This would require a powerful and tyrannical government imposing its will on a population. Venezuela is the latest glaring example of this system. However, never in our history has meritocracy been more threatened than in the upcoming election. The issue has once again come to the forefront in the person of VP Harris who has gone on record saying that equal opportunity and equality under the law is not enough, and the government’s goal should be equal outcomes (i.e. “equity”). On her Twitter/X feed, Harris provides narration for a short cartoon in which she explains that she is for “equity,” not “equality.” “Equitable treatment,” Harris intones, “means that we all end up at the same place.” Elsewhere she has told audiences that “if the goal is truly about equality, then it has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place.” Since we just watched the Olympics let me use that as a metaphor for Harris’ position. In the hundred meter sprint the runners all begin at the same starting line. However, they don’t cross the finish line at the same time, as the medal goes to the runner based on merit. It is impossible for the government to cause the slower runner to speed up so equality of outcome would require the faster runner to slow down. And on it goes. Equality of outcome would require the smarter student to learn less, the corporate CEO to work at menial labor in his warehouse, the NFL quarterback work as a water boy. Just look around your own life and see how equality of outcome would change your world. Eliminate meritocracy and you will never see another Apple or Microsoft or Space X. Give everyone an A in school and no one will study. At the end of a golf tournament divide the purse equally among all the players and watch the quality of play diminish. Give every actor an Academy Award and every football team a Lombardi Trophy? I could fill pages with examples of legislating equal outcome diminishing quality and achievement but I’m sure you’ve gotten the point. Equal outcome does not strengthen the weak, it weakens the strong. Since the 2020 “racial reckoning,” the corporate world has realized that hiring and promotion based on anything other than merit is a loser and many corps appear to be abandoning DEI in droves. I am not going to go on about Harris’ far left history or write about her cosponsoring legislation with Bernie Sanders to create single-payer government run healthcare, her support of defunding the police, her raising money for George Floyd rioters, her abysmal record on the southern border, or her providing free legal services, healthcare, cell phones, etc. to illegal immigrants. Some readers may agree with these positions and I don’t want to distract attention from the single most pressing problem with a Kamala Harris presidency. Hopefully, we can all agree that the consequences of government intervention to assure equal outcomes and the elimination of meritocracy is political, cultural, and economic suicide. READ MORE from George Liebmann: Trump Can Win: 2024 Isn’t 2020 READ MORE: Harris Can Avoid Reporters But Not Economics The post Will Merit Survive the 2024 Election appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“Thinking about the Unthinkable” is the title of a once famous 1962 book by Herman Kahn imagining scenarios for an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Perhaps it helped to prevent a nuclear war from occurring. “Thinking the unthinkable” has become a trope. A Google search for the phrase will turn up dozens of books in various fields. Sometimes contemplating something so repulsive is necessary because the unthinkable does happen. We are not well-positioned to prevent the unthinkable from happening, or recurring, if we are unwilling to even imagine it. That was the premise for Herman Kahn’s book. Is it really “unthinkable” that someone in power might try to kill his or her political opponents? It is time to think the unthinkable about the assassination attempt on the life of presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Everyone knows it failed by less than an inch. What we do not know, and perhaps may never know, is how it was allowed to happen. What We Know Now of the Assassination Attempt The latest is that a local cop warned the Secret Service days before the shooting that they should station someone on that fateful roof that was within easy shooting range of where the former President and leading presidential candidate was going to speak. Plus the people supposedly guarding the former president saw a suspicious guy with a range finder near the roof. That’s the last straw for me. It is time to start thinking about the possibility that the shooter did not act alone and that someone somewhere wanted that roof to be left unprotected for some reason. Yes, I served in government and I do know that the feds probably think the local cops are fools and would ignore their advice about how to do their job. That is certainly a possibility. And it also certainly is possible that the shooter acted alone and was enabled by gross bureaucratic incompetence. That happens. But there are also more sinister possibilities that should be thoroughly investigated, and I am dubious that even a “bipartisan” congressional investigation will get to the bottom of it. The next administration should appoint a distinguished special prosecutor to investigate whether crimes were committed, and if so, by whom. If the Russia hoax needed a special prosecutor, these events certainly do. There are just too many alleged “coincidences” here to continue to ignore the alternative possibilities. These events are beginning to remind me of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged “suicide.” Remember him. He’s the guy who set up lots of powerful men with underage girls and supposedly took his own life while in a New York jail under a suicide watch. His cell mate was moved to a different cell and the two guards who were supposed to be watching him allegedly fell asleep, and the security cameras just happened not to be working. “Nothing to see here,” we were told. Similarly, we are supposed be reassured by the FBI telling us that they found no evidence that the shooter did not act alone and for unknown reasons. But “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” And, oh yes, there is that little matter of those encrypted messages on the shooter’s cell phone that the FBI claims it cannot decipher. Lest I get canceled for peddling a “conspiracy theory,” I am not saying there was a conspiracy to assassinate Trump. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, “It may have happened, it may not have happened. But it could have happened.” I will confess that before it happened, I predicted that it would happen, telling several friends that the powers that be would never allow Trump to take office again and so if it looked like he was going to win re-election, he would be assassinated. Someone tried once; someone else could try again. Is it really “unthinkable” that someone in power might try to kill his or her political opponents? Assassinations of political opponents have happened throughout history. For example, many people, including President Biden, believe Putin was behind the mysterious explosion that killed Prigozhin. Machiavelli even recommends assassination as a tactic in his book The Prince, writing that a despot should invite his rivals to a peace conference, hide his henchmen behind curtains so they can spring out and kill his opponents. Do I think someone in the White House ordered the assassination? No, that’s the stuff of James Bond movies. But all it takes are magazine covers portraying Trump as Hitler, plus inflammatory statements by prominent politicians, including President Biden, that Trump will be a “dictator”; that there will be a “bloodbath” if Trump is not elected; and that “it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” That plus an unguarded rooftop is all it takes for a volunteer to take a shot at him. An Assassination Could Happen Here Think that nothing like that could possibly happen here? Think again. At least twenty assassination attempts on U.S. presidents or presidential candidates have occurred in American history. As Justice Gorsuch recently noted, it was unprecedented that one presidential administration might try to put a previous president in jail — until it happened. In her dissent from the recent presidential immunity case, left-leaning Justice Sotomayor, writing for herself and the two other justices appointed by Democrats, envisioned that a future president might indeed order the assassination of a political opponent: When [the President] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. To be clear, I am not claiming that President Biden or his inner circle was behind the assassination attempt, nor that Justice Sotomayor’s inflammatory statement is an accurate summary of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. But to date the “explanations” by the Secret Service and the FBI smell like a cover-up. They may well just be covering up bureaucratic incompetence. But it is time to investigate the unthinkable that something more sinister may have been behind leaving that roof within easy shooting range unguarded. Otherwise, even innocent events, such as the recent “mechanical problem” on Trump’s plane will result in speculation by the public that someone in power is trying to kill him. READ MORE from E. Donald Elliott: Are the American People Smart Enough to See Through the Political Theater? Fixing the Most Dangerous Branch The post Don’t Dismiss the Trump Assassination Attempt appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.