By Mike Huckabee
September 27, 2024
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Here are perhaps “THE” two key excerpts from the just-released interim Senate Report on Secret Service Planning and Security Failures in Butler, Pennsylvania, investigating the shooting and near-assassination of President Trump:
First, a couple of lines of testimony, with the answer from a Secret Service counter-sniper (CS) touching on the main question we’ve had since July 13...
Q: “Did the thought even cross your mind that you should inform someone to keep the protectee from going on stage?”
A: “The thought did not cross my mind.”
Then --- have you picked yourself up off the floor yet? --- there was this paragraph…
“Three minutes before shots were fired, a local law enforcement officer sent out a radio alert that there was an individual on the AGR roof. This information was passed to the USSS [U.S. Secret Service] Security Room approximately two minutes before [the shooter] fired. Approximately 22 seconds before [he] fired, a local officer sent out a radio alert that the individual on the AGR roof was armed, but that was not relayed to key USSS personnel.”
“That was not relayed to key USSS personnel.” Note that the last part of that last sentence is phrased in passive voice: “That was not relayed” sounds very similar to “Mistakes were made.” All right, WHO didn’t relay it? Who was supposed to? Did they even try? There would’ve been time to rush President Trump off the stage before bullets started flying, but apparently that just didn’t occur to the right people.
Trump’s protection in Butler was a disorganized mess. The radios weren’t working; the drone was inoperable. Here’s the full 91-page report…
The report’s conclusion is scathing, saying, “The Committee finds that USSS failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources for the July 13, 2024 Butler rally were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day.” Inexcusable.
Isn’t this the sort of thing that’s supposed to get people fired? This problem needs what Kamala might (this week) call a “holistic” approach; by that we mean firing a “whole” lotta people. Instead, the Biden-Harris Secret Service appears poised to get a hefty funding increase, when it’s a management problem they have. The DHS, which oversees them, is awash in money.
https://rollcall.com/2024/09/25/senate-probe-finds-secret-service-failures-at-trump-rally-shooting/
Contributing to the communication problem, as former NYPD inspector Paul Mauro explained Wednesday night to FOX NEWS’ Trace Gallagher, was that there were two separate command posts that day, “which kind of obviates the point of a command post.” One post was for the feds and the Pennsylvania State Police, while the other was for the locals assets, “which were significant,” he said. Apparently, most of the information that should’ve been acted on was coming to the locals and went no farther.
Imagine you’re Trump, already having experienced two serious attempts on your life, and you see from this report just how inadequate your protection has been for many months. Anyone, even someone as stalwart as Trump, would have to be deeply affected by these experiences, but after being briefed Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Iran’s very real and specific threat against his life, he took a tough stand with that country’s leadership: “No threat will shake me, no enemy will intimidate me, and I have...never been more determined than I am today...If I were the President, then I would inform the threatening country...that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.”
And they know he’d mean it. That’s why they want to take him out now, before he can regain power.
https://www.thedupreereport.com/2024/09/trump-vows-strong-retaliation-against-foreign-threats/
The Secret Service --- and, ultimately, Alejandro Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security --- should be ashamed. (That’s assuming this failure hasn’t been a deliberate case of “malignant neglect” or something worse.) They’ve known about the Iranian threat for many months. As Sen. Lindsay Graham said on FOX NEWS, “I came away from that briefing beyond unnerved at the efforts of the Iranian government to kill former Trump officials and to assassinate President Trump. No, the Biden-Harris administration is not doing enough...”
It should be noted that the Secret Service is currently protecting the Iranian delegation --- including the president of Iran, who is under heavy security --- as they attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Tulsi Gabbard, who to our delight has just been announced as co-chair of Trump’s transition team, spoke about the threat from Iran, and from the left here at home, with Sean Hannity. Don’t miss...
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6362421589112
As for implied threats, there are plenty of those right here at home, even from our current leaders. President-in-name-only Joe Biden offered a spontaneous one in his appearance this week on THE VIEW, responding to Whoopi Goldberg’s comparison of Trump to an annoying insect (which was bad enough) by wordlessly slamming his hand down on the table, as if to smash the bug. The VIEW audience, predictably, responded with great mirth and applause. It was treated as a bit of delicious fun by the hosts --- and by Biden himself. Never mind that Trump has twice been the target of real assassins in just the past few months.
Among leftists, this seems to be the prevailing attitude: Trump is an existential threat to “our democracy,” and this is true because we’ve said so thousands and thousands of times. How dare he still exist? Squash him like a bug or shoot him from the bushes, and you’ll be cheerfully hailed as a hero.
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1838972756194668708
Democrat Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting representative for the at-large district of the Virgin Islands, apparently went off her meds and delivered a jaw-dropping rant Wednesday against her conservative colleagues at a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, where she is ranking member. In it, she called President Trump a “would-be Fuhrer.” Among other things, she said the purpose of the committee was “to lay the groundwork for a dictatorial government led by Donald Trump.” She called him “the twice-impeached convicted felon” and “would-be dictator.”
Plaskett did spread her insults around, to others such as Elon Musk, whom she called a far-right conspiracy theorist. She has previously said independent journalist Matt Taibbi (of the Twitter Files) should be jailed for perjury.
But she went even farther during an interview on (where else?) MSNBC last year, where she said of Trump that he “needs to be shot,” though she quickly corrected that to “stopped.” Freudian slip?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2024/09/25/stacey-plaskett-rant-n2645254
And in a Tuesday interview on MSNBC --- it’s almost always MSNBC, isn’t it? --- Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, also a Kamala campaign surrogate, said, “Let’s extinguish [Trump] for good.”
As Matt Margolis at PJ MEDIA says, “The problem with rhetoric like this is that Democrats are normalizing political violence and are effectively morally justifying it.” We would add that perhaps it’s being done to prime the “useful idiots” to act out like toddlers with torches if/when Trump wins the election in less than a month and a half.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has received numerous whistleblower complaints relating to the Butler assassination attempt and sent Director Ron Rowe multiple letters requesting information. So far, according to Hawley, Rowe has declined to “substantively” address any of the allegations. And Hawley says that on Wednesday, Rowe even called him to dispute a whistleblower allegation but wouldn’t put it in writing.
Hawley told him that the “stonewalling must stop” and reminded him that whistleblowers are “protected under federal law.” This lack of transparency is a terrible look for Rowe.
In a 22-page report released 10 days ago, Hawley’s committee released its own report on the failure of the Secret Service in Butler. Details at AMERICAN GREATNESS…
As Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson told FOX NEWS’ Jesse Watters Wednesday might, most of what they’ve learned about that day has come not from the “completely opaque” Secret Service or FBI but from local law enforcement. Sen. Johnson recited a list of missing pieces that, to their frustration, have not yet been supplied to them. But he also reported something new: that one of the counter-snipers posted on another roof testified that he and his partner heard a bullet whiz past them. Trees were blocking their view of the gunman, so they don’t know: had he shot at them?
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6362468438112
We’ll leave this sad topic on a refreshingly positive note, with the news that a judge has been assigned to the golf course shooter’s attempted assassination case and it’s...Florida U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon! This is the judge who refused to let “Special Counsel” Jack Smith steamroll her in Trump’s so-called “classified documents” case. (We put quotation marks around his purported title because he was chosen solely by Merrick Garland without ever receiving Senate confirmation.) She tossed the case out; he’s appealing that.
RELATED READING/WATCHING: For when you have time, here’s more from that House Weaponization Subcommittee meeting, including powerful testimony from former FBI Staff Operations Specialist-turned-whistleblower Marcus Allen, who speaks of how his religious faith sustained him while the government was persecuting him and others who had stepped forward.
Other witnesses at the hearing include Inspector General Michael Horowitz, former assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner, and Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, whose name you might recall for providing legal representation to government whistleblowers. Well worth your time.
COMING TOMORROW: a major update on the January 6 pipe bomb story. Kamala might not be able to keep this on the down-low much longer as the story explodes like...well, a pipe bomb.
RELATED HISTORY LESSON: In 1993, Kuwaiti authorities foiled an Iraqi assassination plot against visiting former Republican President George Bush. In retaliation for a foreign nation daring to try to assassinate a former US President (even one of the opposing party), then-President Bill Clinton ordered 23 Tomahawk missiles to be fired on Iraq’s intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, destroying the building.
Today, the Biden-Harris Administration responds to Iran-backed assassination plots against their Republican predecessor by doubling down on the rhetoric encouraging attacks on him while coddling Iran. It’s not your father’s Democratic Party anymore.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/clinton-punishes-iraq-for-plot-to-kill-bush
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