The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy in the GOP's Head
You want director Oliver Stone? You got him: he's directing the Republican Party.
The news that yet another would-be assassin stalked former President Donald Trump is very much reminiscent of the two unsuccessful President Gerald Ford attempts in September, 1975. Both assassination attempts were in California, one in Sacramento and one in San Francisco.
Fun fact: Squeaky Fromme, the Manson Girl and the first wannabe to make a try (no bullet fired because a Secret Service agent got the skin between his thumb and index finger in between the firing pin of her .45) , was previously married to a prominent Stockton Record sports columnist. I have acquaintances who were acquainted with him. I don’t know if he’s still alive, but I can imagine how horrible that would be to have Squeaky as your ex.
Now Fromme roams around, very free, as did Sara Jane Moore until she died recently, the nutcase who fired two shots at Ford. So does Arthur Bremer, who shot and crippled Gov. George Wallace.
However, these tries were low-marquee events compared to the Kennedy and King assassinations.
In the three aforementioned assassination attempts, there wasn’t a whisper of politicization. Well, no, that’s not true. President Richard Nixon wanted to manipulate Bremer and his motivations, but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.
After the near-death experience Trump had on July 13, he pledged to become thoughtful and introspective about it, as well he should have. That lasted a New York minute, and he immediately reverted to non-introspective form.
The fascinating thing about the latest attempt by Ryan Routh, an older (58) kook as opposed to the vast majority of youthful political assassins—successful or not, is that he floated around the golf course at Mar-A-Lago for 12 hours, based on his cell phone pings.
But even more fascincating is what Trump and his allies have done is attempt to politicize these obviously amateur tries.
Even the creepy former FLOTUS Melanija Knavs said a few days ago that she felt there was “more to” these assassination attempts. Got a book coming out, you know. Plus, she didn’t want to issue a statement calling for the January 6th rioters to cool it.
Does that count as some sort of conspiracy? Just sayin’.
In my opinion, she’s just as narcissistic and nutty as her husband, and why wouldn’t she be? No normal person could possibly be married to Trump unless she had a complementary psychosis. I can’t believe that I’m writing this about a former First Lady, a usually lionized national figure, but there it is.
Now JD Vance has gotten onto the We-Just-Don’t-Know-Coincidence-or -Conspiracy crazy train.
“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months,” Vance said. “And two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.”
Buddy, save it for someone who won’t laugh in your fat, fuzzy face.
Yes, that’s tough rhetoric. You deserve it.
This assassination assertion is reprehensible on the face of it, to begin with. But Vance takes it a step further.
“I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out. Somebody’s gonna get hurt by it, and it’s gonna destroy this country.”
I guess Vance forgot that he called his running mate a potential Hitler.
Hey, Corporal JD Vance, USMC, guess who shot JFK?
A fellow Marine. Just sayin’. Maybe you were in on it, JD Marine?
Now, do we blame the Marines for the Kennedy assassination? No, we do not. Why?
Because it’s flatly ridiculous.
For his part, Trump says that this rhetoric “is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country.” Oh, and during the debate Trump said, “I probably took a bullet to the head..because they said I was a threat to democracy.”
He is. That not violent political rhetoric. That’s a fact.
It’s rather difficult to tell what compels political assassins to act, but I can assure Vance that the rhetoric coming from the open sewer of Trump’s mouth has gassed up the entire country for years. He’s more that happy to call Vice President Harris a communist and Marxist, which is perhaps the most ridiculous campaign charge in American history.
Anyone who owns Bay Area real estate is a stone-cold capitalist.
Here’s a list of the kind of Heated Rhetoric Trump and Vance complain about, off the top of my head, and I’m not even looking anything up:
Vermin. Threatening Hillary with a “Second Amendment solution”. Bloodbaths. Very Fine People. Scum. Low IQ. Cruz’s father as Oswald accomplice. Mike Pence deserves to be killed. Gen. Milley is a traitor and deserves execution. January 6. Ashli Babbit was murdered. Blah blah blah.
(Insert your incitement to violence here).
There are many, many more examples of this type of rhetoric.
As the 50 days to the election winds down, God forbid that we see any more assassination attempts toward Trump or anyone else. Murder isn’t a good political solution. Ask Hitler, Stalin, and all the other despot butchers who went to their own deaths because they were dreadful assassins themselves.
Let’s go back to Lee Harvey Oswald, briefly. The notion that Oswald (or Sirhan, for that matter) was some sort of CIA agent or Manchurian Candidate is completely insane, period. No one from any government agency would recruit these clowns.
Nor would anyone, government or otherwise, recruit Ryan Routh or Thomas Crooks, the late shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, for any assassination plot.
Now, in fairness, let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a moment, since we’re here.
I’m seeing a lot of insinuations on social media about these attempts posted by equally delusional people of the left.
“How could his ear heal that fast?”
“Don’t tell me that the Secret Service couldn’t tell a potential assassin was floating around Mar-A-Lago for 12 hours”
“He must have had advance notice”.
Addressing these is crazy in and of itself, but here we are.
The Secret Service is understaffed.
It was badly understaffed on November 22, 1963. In fact, I think there were 16 agents in the motorcade. Maybe a few back at Air Force One.
That’s not a lot of people.
Most of them were running on three hours of sleep. The fact is, you could have had 500 agents on the street in Dallas, and it’s likely Oswald might not have been discovered. Oswald even had an FBI agent named James Hosty watching him, off and on.
He kept his job.
After the Dallas disaster, all the Secret Service agents kept their jobs. The Director of the Secret Service kept his job. In fact, the Director of the Secret Service on July 13, Kimberley Cheadle, was the first SS head to resign because of a security failure.
The Secret Service is not the U.S. Army. It doesn’t have tens of thousands of people to look in every bush, every window, every car, ever manhole. It’s impossible. Sadly, in a zero-fail environment, there are lot of potential opportunities for a fail every day a protectee is out in the open.
A golf course is open. Very open. Fields are open.
Today, I even saw an editorial cartoonist “colleague” draw targets on Trump’s back. The guy is a longtime idiot, for the record. But still. This is crazy, even for a cartoonist.
From Trump on down, please: stop saying this silly, baseless tripe. Biden and Harris had nothing to do with any of this. No one made any calls. No one pulled any strings.
If anyone is responsible for lighting up American rhetoric, you don’t need a Zapruder film to see shadows on the grassy knoll.
He’s right there in the street, screaming and waving his arms.
He’s wearing a red cap and a red tie.
Just sayin’.
Thanks for a trip down memory lane. How nice for Vance that he is so young that he has no real trauma to get triggered as he yammers about "fault" for the actions of people in need of mental health care.