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We're in a black swan sprint. Attempted assassination of the previous President, the incumbent President announcing (or "announcing") he's not running for a second term and now a growing din that he's dead or all but. My grandmother experienced a cluster of transient ischemic attacks. She was sharp, in her mid-80s and about to make a long drive to Texas for her annual checkup, to the next day being unable to ever drive again and maybe ever think again. Her body lived a few more years, it's a bad way to go.
I started with no conclusion about the attempt on Trump's life but for transparency's sake I am the type to assume it was a hit. I think neutrally reported evidence now shows it was a hit.
Cheatle testified the USSS was alerted between 2 and 5 times to Crooks
CNN on forensic analysis showing reports from 3 weapons; and I don't know this guy, I'm not endorsing any of his analysis or quoting it here, but at around 18:40 is a clip where 3 distinct reports can be heard.
CBS news on the USSS saying their counter-snipers fired a single shot.
I can't find anything from the other law enforcement at the event saying one or more of their guys discharged their firearms, I think we'd know by now if one of the cops took shots.
Cheatle declined to answer if Crooks acted alone.
Cheatle testified the USSS has no recordings of radio comms from the event. Recording everything could be a policy that only applies to the details protecting the sitting President, but given everything else we know I take the adverse inference.
I think the adverse inference is justified because of the chasmic hole of "third gun." A third person was firing a weapon at that event, we don't know who they are (or were), we don't know where they were when they took those shots, and most importantly, we don't know why we don't know. If they were killed in whatever building, that's a corpse that got disappeared in the middle of a crime scene where somebody tried to kill a former President. If they got away, they got away. That doesn't happen without help. Conclusively: at least one person at that rally charged with protecting Trump tried or helped someone try to kill him. The necessary next question is how high does it go?
After shootings there's confusion about details like this all the time, including from official sources, it's very weak evidence of anything.
If there was an organized effort involving multiple assassins, let alone any sort of infiltration of the Secret Service, how is Trump alive? It's not that hard to kill people, Crooks came incredibly close, but we're to believe that another assassin who unlike Crooks apparently wasn't immediately shot couldn't manage it? This incident should if anything illustrate that no competent organized force is trying to kill him, because if they did he would be dead. The main thing that protects U.S. presidents and candidates isn't the Secret Service, it's that politicians in democracies are replaceable so neither foreign adversaries nor political opponents have sufficiently strong incentive to risk it.
We can see the counter-snipers behind the stage on Trump's left take a few shots, but it's my understanding that it was the counter-snipers to the right of the stage that took the kill shot. I think the team on the left had their view partially obscured by a tree near the edge of the AGR building.
So, without indulging in conspiracies, the three different shot reports are easily accounted for: Crooks, and two counter-snipers.
If the counter-snipers to the left were local police and not SS, that would explain the discrepancy of the "single-shot" description coming from the SS.
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