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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   32266 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Trump on his assassination attempt:

"They briefed me and I'm satisfied with it," Trump said. "They should have had someone in the building, that was a mistake, they should have had communications with the local police—they weren't tied in—and they should have been tied in. So there were mistakes made. And that shouldn't have happened."

"But I was satisfied in terms of the bigger plot, the larger plot," he continued, "I have great confidence in these people. They're very talented and very capable—they had a bad day, I think they'll admit that." "This is a very dangerous job being president,"

Trump’s claims of stolen election have led to much recriminations that he is no mere crook or liar, but damaging to democracy. His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte. This rejection by the principal actor/TV star sends a clear signal where the truth lies in this matter, whether you agree with Trump’s politics or not. Test is over, results are in, you can calibrate. If you bought the assassination conspiracy, consider that your brain may have been fried by the culture war.

Just today I took note of this article in n case people are still on the conspiracy train: WaPo: The lingering mystery of the Trump shooting: Why did this young man do it?

After Trump took office again in January, his new picks to lead the FBI — Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — asked to be briefed on the investigative steps that had been taken before they arrived, they said in a televised interview. They personally visited the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, to view the evidence, including laboratory and ballistics evidence, and examined Crooks’s rifle.

Bongino, who in August had complained on his podcast that he didn’t entirely trust the FBI’s claim that Crooks had no political ideology, had a professional reason to be obsessive as he poked and prodded his briefers with questions.

He had served as a Secret Service agent for 12 years, including on threat investigations and on the protective details for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bongino had a deep knowledge of the Secret Service’s landmark Exceptional Case Study Project, which documented striking similarities among people who had tried to kill presidents and prominent political figures.

In studying and interviewing 83 people known to have attempted or plotted such an assassination from 1949 to 1996, the research found they were overwhelmingly White males who were relatively well educated. They were also deeply isolated, often friendless and suffering from a mental health disorder. Often, after a personal crisis or break, they began to fixate on assassinating a high-profile figure as a route to fame or affirmation.

After reviewing the evidence, Bongino firmly agreed with the conclusion of his FBI predecessors. Crooks was just “a lost soul” akin to the many would-be assassins interviewed for the Exceptional Case Study Project, he told colleagues. There was “no there there” to the conspiracy theories about an inside job or Iran.

In a Fox News interview on May 18, Maria Bartiromo asked Patel and Bongino why the public had almost no information about what led to the shooting in Butler as well as an apparent attempted assassination of Trump on a golf course in Florida. Bongino stressed that there was no “big explosive” evidence tying Crooks to an international conspiracy or any larger plot.

“I’m not going to tell people what they want to hear. I’m going to tell you the truth. And whether you like it or not is up to you,” Bongino told Bartiromo. “The there you are looking for is not there. … It’s not there. If it was there, we would have told you.”

Basically you have a total expert, Trump supporter, and skeptic get full access and found nothing. Can’t ask for much more than that. Shockingly, the article claims that a lot of people were working on it:

It consumed FBI agents and analysts from half of the bureau’s field offices, nearly every headquarters division and some international offices.

Trump is not a reliable source of truthful information. He can tell us what he believes or wants us to believe, that's it. It's like Procopius, interesting and relevant but not necessarily reliable. From that very article:

Trump was asked when people can expect to see the benefits promised in the One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed earlier this month, when the House voted 218 to 214 to pass the bill after Vice President JD Vance broke a tie with his vote.

"They're already seeing them," Trump said. "Because of that bill, we're having investment in this country that nobody's ever seen."

"We're up to close to £15 trillion," he said. "Other administrations—they wouldn't do that in four years."

15 Trillion? Really? Or with Epstein, Trump says 'oh no there's nothing to see here, he killed himself somehow (we just lost the footage), now have some footage of a corridor somewhere and stop talking about it.'

Ever since the assassination attempt happened, I've felt that the most likely explanation is the lone wolf theory. The reason is, I figure that if it was a conspiracy by shady powerful groups, they would have made sure to find a gunman who wouldn't miss from that range. That said, I don't know much about guns, so this might be poor thinking on my part. Not sure.

He didn't miss the shot though - Trump moved his head by happenstance at the exact same microsecond that the trigger was pulled, which I doubt even a veteran marksman can account for. But the shot itself very much did not miss its target - hence the blood on his face and all that.

It is not poor thinking on your part. The AR15 is a perfectly good weapon for head-sized targets at ~150 yards, but IIRC the optic he used was an unmagnified red-dot, rather than something with magnification and a precise reticle.

If it were glowies, I would expect it to be better thought out and to serve multiple purposes and add much more value for the risk they're taking. Maybe attacking him with a Russian/Iranian drone which would have a higher success rate I expect and also instigate further conflict with these "deep state" favorite enemies.

Missing that shot was definitely happenstance, I wouldn't read too much into it. But if some competent planning group tried that wouldn't they have a backup plan?

Yeah acting like a false flag is going to aim to clip Trump on the ear instead of either 'deliberately missing' or 'intending to actually kill him' is pretty galaxy brain.

Why'd you assume 'competent groups' ?

Competence is rare. It's going to be even rarer when you have to have clandestine groups doing insane things. You need to have loyal, competent people willing to do crazy things that could get them killed or imprisoned for life.

Maybe attacking him with a Russian/Iranian drone

Where would they get an Iranian drone? And Russian drones, right now, are stuff anyone can 3d print and assemble from parts from China.

The problem is that a backup plan means multiple shooters which successful or not is a giant red flag for a conspiracy. Also there was a second attempted shooter just a few weeks later that also almost succeeded.

For anyone else wondering, this is not about a new assassination attempt. This is about last year's, which was one year ago today (where his ear got clipped).

I'm curious what you think the counterfactual world looks like, where Trump comes out instead and claims "There were malicious people at work, and it was all orchestrated by [specific actors]."

What would happen next?

And if you're going off the assumption that Trump is being truthful and fully transparent, then why'd you bring up the election issues?

Are YOU saying that his claims of the election being stolen are credible, since you're here saying that he's honest about such serious matters?

His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte.

Neat.

Now do the people who don't think Trump was shot at all.

So long as we're addressing conspiracy theories.

The counterfactual would look like Trump introducing his own praetorian guard. But he's Marius, not Sulla. He's not gonna do that. He's gonna say 'the secret service is great- the best. They had a bad day'.

It’s not necessarily smart to do that even if you have evidence of internal plots, because the same usual external plots / random crazies also still exist and people outside the secret service have much less experience identifying or defending against them.

Trump is not necessarily going to do the smart thing.

If memory serves, Marius went off the rocker in his old age, and was rather tyrannical, if not quite as bad as Sulla.

Yes. History rhymes. Which of his associates will March on Rome?

Are YOU saying that his claims of the election being stolen are credible, since you're here saying that he's honest about such serious matters?

Well Bondi hasn't investigated those yet.

/s

The overall problem is that Trump is not a reliable narrator. For this assassination attempt, he came out looking very good, by a centimeter or two. (Can you imagine what would have happened if like the side of his face was blown off, but he survived?)

That led to competing conspiracy theories:

  • BlueAnon types thinking it was staged.
  • QAnon types thinking it was a plot or at least allowed to happen by the Deep State, to actually kill him.

Since Trump came out against the theory favored by (some of) his supporters, that takes all the steam out of it. No reason to expect he would lie on this.

For elections, Trump says basically every one he's in is rigged. If he loses, it's rigged against him. If he wins, it's rigged against him (or they tried to, apparently, in 2024, per his Epstein tweet).

If he loses, it's rigged against him. If he wins, it's rigged against him

If you're considering the possibility of rigged elections at all, there's nothing inherently goofy about this. "Rigged" doesn't mean "they can fake absolutely any outcome they want"--if they could fake X percent of votes and he wins by more than X percent, it might be rigged against him and he could win anyway.

This is one of those "worst arguments in the world" where "rigged" can now apparently mean "any level whatsoever of voter fraud" instead of what it's commonly expected to mean--major, material effects on or at least attempted changes to an election outcome.

You're just sanewashing Trump's unjustifiable statements for which no actual evidence has ever backed all the myriad theories (and there are accounts where he does admit he actually lost in 2020, by the way.)

Major material effects can still be insufficient to change the outcome.

Sure, and that's why I specified "attempt" in there, but there ought to be evidence of it.

Not mere allegational delusions.

No reason to expect he would lie on this.

SOME reason to think he might, because if he straight up named conspirators, then now he's got to prosecute it and most likely try to have them executed.

There are scenarios where that is less than ideal, and the preferred method is letting them know he knows but otherwise dismissing it.

Oh sure, it's definitely not something that could be totally ruled out.

The 180 is hilarious to witness after all that build up.

To me, the “he faked it” argument doesn’t really pass the laugh test. No one sane is going to hatch a plan in which a guy climbs a roof and shoots a real bullet at his head. No sharpshooter is going to attempt that shot especially outdoors where wind and glares can be a factor. It’s not a reasonable theory because the shot probably 99% of the time ends with the target hit rather than grazed.

The SS wanting a failure I could be convinced of. The reports by rally attendees over at least an hour that went completely unchecked is a pretty big failure. As in any sane person trying to protect a famous person would have at least checked it out sometime between the rally goers reporting the unknown guy on the roof and the actual shooting. I’m completely at a loss for an explanation that isn’t either “these guys are incompetent” or “they set him up.”

I said at the time and look to have been validated, that people have this idea of the USSS as a super competent organization. But at the end of the day they are still an organization, and are thus not immune to the common failure modes of organizations. As I understand the facts that we have, the communication failures (separate radio networks for the main detail and local support), the “good enough” problem (they had someone in the building, just not covering the roof), and “someone else’s problem” (bad or incomplete assignments during the planning phase) are absolutely classic organizational problems that crop up just as easily and pervasively in the USSS as they do in a large for-profit corporation. If anything, there’s less will to shake things up like a CEO might.

I assure you there were serious theories about fake blood capsules. I saw this from both Right and Left people.

Nevermind the real bullets that killed real people.

I mean again, you’re still stuck with having a guy point a real gun at a person’s head with a real bullet in it and really pulling the trigger. It’s a thing you can’t just gloss over. If Trump decided to fake it, he’s either stupid or crazy because if even the slightest thing goes wrong. He moves tge wrong way suddenly, the wind changes, the sun pops out from behind a cloud, tge scope is a few millimeters off, the shooter gets nervous, or he for some reason has to rush tge shot, there’s no way to be sure that this very real bullet fired from a very real gun doesn’t end up in Trump’s very real brain. We know it was a real bullet fired because it hit people in the crowd behind him. And all of this assumes it’s not at 19 year old dietary aide and community college graduate using a rifle he shoots paper targets at in a gun club once a week. A professional sniper wouldn’t dare try it, an amateur would undoubtedly kill his client trying something like this even at close range, let alone off the top of a building several hundred yards away. If you had a top sniper at gun range distance try to graze the ear of a baliastics gel head that’s randomly moving without hitting the rest of the head, I’d be shocked if anyone could do it even 1/20 times.

Oh I completely agree. The theory was something like: "The sniper was shooting around Trump, not at Trump, and Trump had a blood capsule to burst on his ear." People had to die to really sell it.

Nothing here makes sense in terms of risk/reward. And there's objective evidence to disprove it.

And yet.

I'm honestly surprised the shooter was just good enough to narrowly miss a headshot, but then couldn't even get a body shot for his follow ups. He got off at least three controlled shots before Trump ducked down.

(But we do have a number of people on this very forum that apply roughly the same level of credulity to Ghislaine Maxwell having a longstanding poweruser Reddit account, clearly authored by a Malaysian man, for actually not even a coherent motive. People want to believe.)

I'm honestly surprised the shooter was just good enough to narrowly miss a headshot, but then couldn't even get a body shot for his follow ups. He got off at least three controlled shots before Trump ducked down.

Or he was such a poor shot that he was aiming at the body, jerked as he pulled the trigger, and the shot just barely missed the head. Thus the lack of body shot follow ups: he was that bad of a shot.

That is a good point.

Also his scope may not have been zeroed very well.

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