NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.
July 13, 2024: An attempt is made to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He is slightly wounded, and survives.
Having secured the Republican nomination for President for the 3rd straight election, and constantly needing the personal validation that comes from being wildly cheered at campaign rallies, Trump went to the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 35 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh, as Pennsylvania, particularly Pittsburgh and its suburbs, were key to his 2016 "victory" -- and key to his 2020 defeat.
Trump began his speech at 6:05 PM. At 6:11, shots were fired. He reached up and grabbed his right ear, stood still for a second, then ducked behind his podium, where he couldn't be seen. No blood had yet been seen on him.
His Secret Service detail rushed onto the stage. A few seconds later, they picked him up. There was blood on his right ear, and two streams of blood across the right side of his face. According to Trump, the agents "hit me so hard that my shoes fell off, and my shoes are tight." He asked the Secret Service agents to let him get his shoes.
In other words, his thought at that moment wasn't for the safety of others, or even his own pain from having been wounded. It was to get his shoes, so he could walk off the stage under his own power. That is not the thought of a man who has just been shot.
They also offered to put him on a stretcher, but he declined. As he was walked off stage, Trump told the Secret Service agents to wait, and then raised his fist, pumped it at the crowd, and mouthed the words, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" The crowd responded with cheers and chants of "USA! USA! USA!" This was not the action of a man who has just been shot.
As Trump was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital, it was discovered that 3 other people had been shot. One died: Corey Comperatore, 50, an engineer and former chief of the fire company in Buffalo Township. Two other male audience members were shot and critically injured. One was discharged from the hospital on July 24, the other on July 26.
The next day, the FBI identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about an hour's drive from the rally venue. They stated that he appeared to have acted alone, used a rifle that had been legally bought by his father in 2013 and sold to the son in October 2023, had no criminal record, and there had been "no indication of any mental health issues" regarding Crooks. It was also revealed that Crooks was... a registered member of the Republican Party.
That day, July 14, Trump was back at his main residence, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a Sunday, but he did not go to church to thank God for sparing his life. Nor did he visit the families of any of the other victims, to console them. Instead, he spent the day playing golf -- with no bandage on his ear.
The next day, July 15, he appeared in public with a bandage on his ear. The Republican National Convention began on July 16, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, and many delegates wore matching bandages on their ears in tribute to the man who "took a bullet for our country."
The following week, there was no more bandage on Trump's ear, and no scar on his ear, either. It's as if nothing had ever happened.
No bandage. Not even a scar.
The firefighter's uniform of Corey Comperatore was put on stage at the Republican Convention. But a photograph of his dead body was never shown to the public. Nor was his funeral. Nor were the body, nor the funeral, of Crooks. It's as if both of them just disappeared into the ether.
Immediately, speculation arose that the whole thing was staged, because Trump was desperate to get back into the Presidency, because he was desperate to avoid prison, and because he wanted the power back, to get revenge on all his enemies. It was all or nothing. What better way to win votes than through sympathy? What better way to gain sympathy than to survive an assassination attempt? It worked for Ronald Reagan. It also showed he was tougher than John F. Kennedy, who didn't survive his.
But would a member of the Republican Party really risk his own life to pretend to end Trump's? Would anybody really die for Donald Trump? I doubt it: A conservative's biggest drive, even more than for money and power, is self-preservation.
But would anyone "die" for Donald Trump? Yes. There could well be a private version of the Witness Protection Program, funded by pro-Trump billionaires, where people could go after such an event, and they would be given new identities, and placed where no one would think to look for them. After all, we never saw the dead bodies of either the shooter or the victims. For all we know, they could be alive and well, in such a program.
Meanwhile, when Trump was "hit," the side of him that got hit was turned away from us. We saw no blood when he went down, only when he was pulled back up. At which point, he acted like he was in no pain at all. No bullet caused that blood: Any bullet that would have hit him would have caused more damage. He literally walked off the stage. The evidence that the whole thing was faked is strong.
If the official story is true, then Crooks used the favorite gun of the gun lobby, the favorite gun of mass shooters: The AR-15. This is what a bullet from an AR-15 looks like:
That's .223 inches in diameter, roughly equivalent to one fired from a .22-caliber pistol, but, with rifling. The rifle gives it better accuracy, making it a better weapon from distance. You've heard what they say about the comic book superhero Superman: "Faster than a speeding bullet!" An AR-15 bullet travels at an average speed of 2,250 miles per hour. That's approximately 3 times the speed of sound: Mach 3.
If a bullet that size, at that speed, had hit Trump in the ear, it would have torn a hole in his head as badly as the 6.5 millimeter (.256 inch) bullet from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle did to JFK in 1963. Trump would have been dead for sure. To borrow Clint Eastwood's line from Dirty Harry, it would have blown his head clean off.
It has been suggested that the bullet actually hit a teleprompter, shattering it, and that Trump's ear was cut by a flying piece of that. Or, maybe while Trump was behind the podium, hidden from view, someone, perhaps himself, smeared the blood on him. Maybe, just maybe, the whole thing was staged.
Now, I'm not saying that this is what did happen. But it's Donald Trump: It could have happened, because it's exactly the kind of thing that he would do. This conspiracy theory may be wrong... but it's completely plausible, and it's not crazy.
Or even weird.
On September 15, 2024, at Trump International Golf Club West in West Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago residence, there was a 2nd apparent assassination attempt on Trump. It was also unsuccessful, with the would-be gunman not getting a shot off at him. It came days after he was embarrassed during a Presidential debate, both by Vice President Kamala Harris and himself. He needed to stop the mockery. Was this attempt staged (too)?
*
July 13, 2024 was a Saturday. These Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-1 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Luis Gil was the winning pitcher. Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Austin Wells hit home runs.
* The New York Mets beat the Colorado Rockies, 7-3 at Citi Field.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Kansas City Royals, 5-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Kutter Crawford pitched 7 innings of 3-hit shutout ball, and Zack Kelly completed a 5-hit shutout.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat a former Philadelphia team, the Oakland Athletics, 11-5 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
* The Cleveland Guardians beat the Tampa Bays, 4-2 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Miami Marlins, 10-6 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-9 at Comerica Park in Detroit. Gio Urshela hit a game-winning home run in the bottom of the 10th inning.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-2 at Guaranteed Rate Field (now Rate Field) in Chicago.
* The Washington Nationals beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-5 at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
* The St. Louis Cardinals sweep a doubleheader from their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 11-3 and 5-4 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
* The Texas Rangers beat their in-State rivals, the Houston Astros, 2-1 at Minute Maid Park (now Daikin Park) in Houston. Nathaniel Lowe singled Josh Smith home in the top of the 10th inning.
* The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 12-1 at Chase Field in Phoenix.
* The San Diego Padres beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-0 at Petco Park in San Diego. Dylan Cease allowed 1 hit and 3 walks, striking out 11, over 6 innings. Three relievers completed a 5-hit shutout.
* The Los Angeles Angels beat the Seattle Mariners, 2-1 at Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
* And the Minnesota Twins beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-2 at Oracle Park in San Francisco.
No comments:
Post a Comment