PURE LUCK SAVED TRUMP’S LIFE: In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s attempt on the life of Donald Trump, television commentators were praising the quick response of the Secret Service. Agents shielded the former president with their bodies, while snipers “neutralized” the shooter within seconds with a kill shot to the head.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” Trump posted on his Truth social account. “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” A remarkable New York Times photo appeared to capture the path of the bullet as it passed Trump’s head, which, by sheer luck, happened just as Trump turned ever so slightly, resulting in the bullet grazing him instead of likely killing him.
But as the events of the day unfolded, it became clear that a manifest failure of security allowed an assassin to come within an inch of taking the former, and possibly future, president’s life.
“You don’t have to be a security expert to see the failures here,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) said on CNN. “The fact that the perimeter was not secure, really, is just astounding, I think, to anyone who looks at it. And the fact that he was able to get off shots where he had already been identified, his position had been identified, just really confusing and astounding.”
The shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican and member of a local gun club, was able to move from roof to roof along a row of industrial buildings belonging to AGR International Inc. until he had a concealed perch, with a clear line of sight roughly 150 meters from where Trump was on stage.
It’s a distance at which “U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle,” the Associated Press noted. “The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M-16.” Despite the rooftop providing the perfect sniper’s position, the location was left unsecured by the Secret Service, local law enforcement, or even any private security.
Read more at Washingtonexaminer.com
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