Six months ago I said to a well-known public figure that the US intelligence agencies had destroyed Trump’s first Presidency and that, in a second chance, he would have to uproot their entire leadership or simply let them continue to run the country and concentrate on making money for himself.
My contact replied that they had recently been told by Tucker Carlson that Trump was very aware of the danger that the intelligence services would have him assassinated. Trump was therefore likely to go for the second option. The last sentence was the musing of my contact, not of Tucker Carlson.
I am not suggesting that the intelligence services were behind the assassination attempt this weekend. I have no idea. I am however wondering what thoughts are currently flitting through Trump’s head about his near-death experience.
I was incidentally trying to calculate what fraction of a degree the rifle was mis-aimed by, to miss his brain by one inch at a range of 120 yards. My maths were not up to it, but it is a margin of the tiniest tremor of the hand on the trigger.
I think it is almost certain that Trump has wondered whether the security lapse were not, at the least, caused in part by a lack of zeal and enthusiasm on the part of those state actors co-ordinating his security.
That is no criticism of Trump’s immediate bodyguards, who acted admirably. It is also fair to note that Trump’s own defiance was courageous. He could not have known if other shooters were around, nor how seriously he had himself been hit already.
That personal bearing has almost certainly increased his election chances. Even more so is the fact that, by some strange political alchemy with little relationship to logic, it appears to be accepted wisdom that this incident makes it much more difficult for Democrats to make Joe Biden stand down.
In his address from the White House, Biden did not mistake Trump for Frank Sinatra or forget why he was there. It is thus touted as restoring his position. It was however a typical Biden performance, snide and partisan, particularly in restating his 6 January narrative as though that were a serious threat to democracy and not a stupid, isolated riot.
That democracy in the United States is meaningless is plain from the choice offered to the electorate between two incredibly flawed individuals. It is a scenario you could not make up.
If you were to put Donald Trump and Joe Biden into an entirely random yoga class in Oklahoma, neither Trump nor Biden would be the person in that yoga class best suited to be President of the United States.
There is however one sense in which democracy in the United States is more alive than in the United Kingdom. Here the Establishment got the operative they wanted in Keir Starmer elected, but had no argument with the Tories other than over competence.
In the United States the Establishment is worried that Trump’s isolationist tendencies and lack of enthusiasm for starting wars, may damage the never-ending gravy train of the military industrial complex.
In particular Trump sees both China and Russia as potential trading partners with whom money can be made to mutual benefit. He does not see them primarily as a military threat.
Trump is in short not on board for the whole propaganda narrative that requires designated enemies to fuel massive defence spending, and justify the continuous series of invasions of other countries.
This is not ideological opposition to war on Trump’s part. It is simply that, like China, he realises that trade, finance, investment and soft power are ultimately much more lucrative than the classic western imperialist model of armed conquest.
Trump’s problem is that the powerful vested interests who make money from the western imperialist model include the intelligence services. That is why they ruthlessly undermined his first Presidency.
We saw the utter empty nonsense that was the “Russiagate” hoax, on which I have written extensively, but the simple fact remains there has never been any evidence whatsoever of Russian involvement in leaking the DNC, Clinton or Podesta emails.
We saw the hounding from office of Trump’s National Security Officer General Michael Flynn for conversations with the Russian Ambassador which, when finally released in full, turned out to be entirely proper. We saw the jailing of Roger Stone for lying to the FBI, which the mainstream media disgracefully failed to reveal was for claiming to have links with Wikileaks that he did not in fact have.
We had the famously putrid Guardian front page claiming Manafort/Assange meetings that never happened.
Then to cap it all we had the CIA co-ordinated monstering as fake of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations two weeks before the 2020 election.
That this laptop – which all concerned knew was genuine – was proclaimed false was perhaps the most significant example of fake news in the history of the world. That lying narrative was coordinated between security services, and mainstream media all over the western world and undoubtedly affected the election result.
Even more significantly, both Facebook and Twitter cooperated to suppress Hunter Biden laptop stories and to boost the narrative that the laptop was fake. There was therefore the perfect alliance – security services, state and corporate media, alternative media corporate gatekeepers – working together to promote a lie and ensure Biden’s election.
It says something about the world in which we live that the most important and successful fake news in history was set up precisely by those who claim to be the arbiters of fake news.
Which brings me back to the start of this article. What does Donald Trump do about it if he gets back in to power?
I think Trump is quite right to fear that were he to negotiate a reasonable settlement of the Ukraine war, rather than continue the multi trillion dollar bonanza of weapons, death and high energy prices it now is, then he might be assassinated by his own security services.
For Trump to really run the United States would require an unprecedented cleanout of the Clintonite leadership throughout the security establishment, going much deeper than a normal change of administration. I think Trump always did understand that but found it impractical to “drain the swamp”.
With the ailing Biden, it is obvious to everybody he is not actually in charge of anything. I predict that, if we get a Trump administration, Trump will not actually be in charge either but will settle for an easy life while allowing the Establishment to continue to run the country.
When Peter Cook founded the Establishment Club, nobody scoffed at him and said “what a silly conspiracy theorist, there is no such thing as the Establishment”. I prefer to use that word rather than Deep State. But it is the same thing.
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That is a good recap of the US Establishment’s and intelligence agencies’ treatment of Trump since he become a political force. After Gaza, I doubt there are many who still believe these people have red lines.
My God. How can you have heard all the evidence you must surely – surely?! – have heard about January 6th and still believe that it was merely a “stupid, isolated riot”?!
Your insights are absolutely essential into the corrupt and mendacious behaviour of entities like Sturgeon and her inner circle, the Crown Office, Home Office, CIA etc. But, unfortunately, sometimes, Mr. Murray, you really do write things that fly so far in the face of observable and empirical reality, that it really does start to undermine your credibility. Just like with your comments about the Trump being subject to “lawfare”, when in reality it is one of the biggest Mob bosses facing justice for only a few of his numerous crimes.
I also don’t see the Trump supporters’ protest on January 6th as stupid or unimportant.
People who doubt that the Biden election was democratic came to demand a review of the results. This is a very serious request from the society, a direct exercise in democracy, questioning the legitimacy of the elected government.
People died. For me, the murder of Ashley Babbit, a military veteran whose patriotism is beyond doubt, is deeply symbolic.
Also, within six months, 4 police officers involved in those events committed suicide.
I don’t want to build theories about what they saw or could tell about those events, but it seems to me that this is somehow strange.
Do you know what the American Constitution says about raising militias?
No, I do not. Please, educate me.
That one may do so if it is for the purpose of **protecting** the American Constitution.
One to which Trump refuses to swear allegiance.
Well, my approach may seem strange, nevertheless.
I sincerely believe that the interests of the people come first, and then the legislative implementation of it. That is, the normal process proceeds in this order; first the request of society and after that the elected representatives enshrine this social request in the form of law.
As conditions change, society may have new requests; accordingly, the law must be changed.
To me, a situation where people go with their public request to legislators, and get killed is unacceptable. On January 6, people did not raise an armed rebellion, but came unarmed to their “legislators.” This should have turned into negotiations and perhaps some action. Instead, the authorities suppressed the protest by force. This looks like usurpation to me.
Tatyana, with all due respect, are you sure you watched the same January 6th the rest of the World did…?
I ask because if you did then you couldn’t have seriously written what utter drivel you just did, unless you were acting in bad faith.
Doesn’t that depend on which Militia takes up arms?
A revolutionary or Communist Militia to save the US? Not sure the so called ‘ Deep State ‘ would back that at all.
Or a Trump one?
They also have National Guard (the Gendarmes in France are just that to defend the Republic). No-one votes for that as far as I know.
Of course the US has a Supreme Court to argue about The Constitution. So – it’s not that solid if it needs constant interpretation.
Julian Assange might have an argument there.
The precise meaning of the second amendment is still debated today, Wiki has some info on it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution, if you want to rely on that. But other interpretations exist. Each state did not ratify precisely the same wording when they ratified it, and this leaves the matter in doubt. Changing the US constitution is notoriously difficult as any change has to be ratified by each state, which is why such actions occur infrequently. This amendment is not necessarily about keeping the government under control by force, but about the rights of citizens to protect their state by being armed and “well regulated” whatever that means. Fact check websites seem to claim to have the meaning made clear, but these favour interpretations not in accord with the utterances of the supreme court. What seems certain to me is that it is not about obliging the government to account for its actions but giving power to “well regulated” local militia to defend themselves against an oppressive force. I suppose like the Wagner group in a way…
Nota Tory Fanboy
It would really help if you could point out what precisely in my position raises your doubt. Then I could explain why I came up to such conclusions.
Actually, I ask you to keep the discussion in constructive way. Because your question as it is now, puts me in a weird position – how on Earth can I know what you mean by ‘the rest of the world’?
Pete, please let me disagree. I wouldn’t compare the people who went to storm the Capitol on January 6th to Wagner group. The latter are military formation, with tanks and helicopters, sponsored by government as Putin himself said. That makes them different from ordinary angry civilians.
Tatyana, you claimed that they came to the Capitol “unarmed”. That is such a patent denial of reality it would be laughable if the subject weren’t so serious.
I admit that perhaps Wagner’s military march influenced my perception, so that I cannot characterize the events at the Capitol as anything other than civil unrest.
I saw the use of gas, I saw bats used against police officers, I saw slashed car tires and a note saying “Pelossi is Satan,” I also saw a crowd pushing out doors and windows with their bodies.
I’ve also seen freaks and subcultures using this as an extra occasion to make themselves known, pose for selfies and promote themselves on social media, but they’re still civilians.
If you claim that in reality armed people stormed the Capitol, then please back up your words.
Tatyana, to give merely two examples that would have been very easy for you to find with a cursory web search:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/indiana-man-pleads-guilty-carrying-gun-and-assaulting-law-enforcement-officers-jan-6
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/maryland-man-sentenced-assaulting-law-enforcement-officers-and-carrying-firearm-during
But there are many more reports of insurrectionists carrying guns and ammunition, as well as planning the assault in advance by detailing the internal layout of the Capitol (with the assistance of some Republican members of Congress), the “Oath Keepers” amongst others setting up caches of weapons and ammunition in readiness for resupply, Trump telling them to go there in the first place, complicit in the chants to assassinate various members of Congress including that his own Vice President Mike Pence be hanged, Trump sitting on his hands for hours refusing to order any intervention or call off the insurrectionists…
The DC Chief Medical Examiner declared that Brian Sicknick died of a stroke the next day and registered it as “natural causes” (because it was a stroke) but also declared that “all that transpired played a role in his condition”. One of the four officers who committed suicide after injuries sustained during the attempted insurrection was determined to have died in the line of duty, even though it was nine days after the event.
Nota Tory Fanboy, thanks, I didn’t know.
It is unacceptable to come with a weapon to protests. Attacking the police is unacceptable. Calling for murder is unacceptable.
Something like that happened in Kiev in 2014 (I dismiss the Western approving reaction, for a moment, because it still is unacceptable for me).
If Trump ordered this, then he is a complete idiot.
Tatyana, it does lead me to wonder how it is that three years later you weren’t aware of any of these facts? (I don’t necessarily mean as detailed as what the CME declared about Sicknick’s death…although you were apparently sufficiently interested as to pay attention to the suicides of four officers so maybe it’s not unreasonable to expect you to have also come across that detail)
Do you only get your American “news” coverage from Fox “News” and Mr. Murray?
It’s not a question of “if” Trump told them to go to the Capitol. He **did** tell them. The words came out of his mouth, recorded and broadcast live for the whole World to hear.
He, Bannon and Giuliani, along with others, planned it in advance. You would know this by now if you had listened to the January 6th Committee hearings, any respectable news network, Midas Touch Network/Legal AF/Justice Matters…
This is an important but tricky subject.
I have walked back on sharing the usual interpretation of the events in Europe and the “liberal” US after I first had ignored the entire event (the first impression somehow turns out often correct). After studying e.g. naked capitalism´s long entries on the Trump trials.
Even Chris Hedges warned of too harsh a sentencing of those 6thers.
Matt Taibbi suggested that the riot was nothing of a serious coup attempt. If one really had intended a “coup” there would have been totally different means at hand.
One thing I still don´t agree with is the Georgia ruling on Trump´s phone call pressuring the Governor to find more votes.
And to question the result in itself is a problem.
But as the US goes latter was 1st Amendment protected.
p.s. What is way more important is the role and power of SCOTUS. But nobody talks about that.
Oh people certainly are talking about the power of SCOTUS, especially when it is spiked with criminally corrupt* judges appointed by Trump.
*see Clarence Thomas’ undeclared benefits and the required quid pro quo’s he’s enacted, for example
Those people are, amongst others, Midas Touch Network and Justice Matters, which are comprised of experts in their fields with actually relevant experience and insights, who go over the minutiae of these cases. They are rather better informed on – and give significantly better, more detailed explanations of – these issues than Mr. Murray does. Mr. Murray’s insight into his own cases and that of Salmond are invaluable but he has clearly still not (perhaps unsurprisingly, given everything going on in his life) made the effort to better inform himself to the degree that he was informed on his and Salmond’s cases.
thx for the info!
I am generally aware of discussions that must be taking place on expert level. I was rather referring to the big public stage where as far as I can see there is no significant movement to reform the court. I mean it´s sick if judges are quoting decisions on how people should live their lives from the 1850s. Not to mention the complete lack of control and limit of tenure.
For decades now SCOTUS has mostly hurt civil society after an array of progressive votes in the 1960s and 70s.
This is simply medieval.
You’re welcome. Another good source for analysis is Legal AF.
Of course, another case with which Mr. Murray is intimately acquainted and has provided essential insight is that of Assange.
Agreed.
Nota Tory Fanboy,
“Oh people certainly are talking about the power of SCOTUS, especially when it is spiked with criminally corrupt* judges appointed by Trump.
*see Clarence Thomas’ undeclared benefits and the required quid pro quo’s he’s enacted, for example”
Thomas was appointed by G.H.W. Bush, not Trump.
From Wikipedia:
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991.
I stand corrected – however he’s still absolutely doing Trump’s bidding and is patently corrupt, purchased.
Very convenient timing, also, Cannon’s throwing out of the classified documents case whilst completely inventing myths about appointment of Special Counsel.
Craig is right about “January 6th”; it was just a silly riot. None of the rioters carried firearms. The only person who died by violence was one of the rioters, a young woman named Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer. A slightly-built, completely unarmed woman, she was no threat to anyone.
Respected American newspapers, including the New York TImes, published a lot of lies about the riot – for example, that a member of the security forces had been beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Biden repeated some of the lies. The newspapers eventually printed retractions, but far fewer people read the retractions than had seen the original sensational lies. There are still people who believe that the rioters killed some police – they didn’t. For riot, it was unusually peaceful.
Of course rioting is a bad thing to do, but the Establishment media have blown this out of all proportion.
Again, it is patently untrue to say that none of the insurrectionists went with firearms and would have taken you very little time to verify.
For merely two examples, see the justice.gov articles on Christopher Alberts and Mark Andrew Mazza.
I think it is very odd that Trump is not standing inside of some type of bulletproof glas construction when he is talking publicly like that. There are way too many guns around and too many people that so easily, obviously, could target him with ease.
Who will benefit now from this as for the election? Well Trump will sure get some additional votes from this event but I also believe that Biden right now milk this event to the maximum, trying to gain some votes by acting conciliatory. The event wiil also deflect from Biden’s terrible string of gaffes and about him being cognitively fit or not for another term.
Also perhaps the agressive, divisve atmosphere between Biden and Trump during the debate will be reduced, something I believe Biden will benefit from since that is Trump’s schtick.
Not to glorify Trump, he is a buffoon but he also seems to have a side where his heart is on the right place, his intention to create more peaceful relations between nuclear powers is obviously a “good thing, not a bad thing” as he often phrase it. Forgotten is Trump’s positive effort to bring North/South Korea together, that was a big achivement but almost already fogotten, and when Biden was elected and changed Trump’s policies the relations went down again.
However if Trump is elected, he really need to drain the swamp in US foreign policy/intelligence department once and for all if he want to get things done because these shady rulers are the real arbiters that will only block his efforts and make him more radlicalized on Russia, China etc.
It would be great if he, as the alleged America-first prez., also would start sucking up to AIPAC and other Israel-firsters-foreign-influence groups.
Well said, Craig. It seems a very long time until the US election takes place. A lot could happen before then, and ensuing instability might still rock the boat excessively. Our leaders in the UK and Europe need to keep cool heads and sound judgement, while our spooks and diplomats hold the line.
The people who would most want Trump dead (and Robert Fico) are Ukrainians because any replacement candidate would probably toe the Pentagon line.
Perhaps the shooter could have been catfished online by a ukrainian gang and then blackmailed or shamed.
Anyway it appears the motives will remain a mystery
Indeed, the ever convenient dead lone gunman.
If you are going to arrange an assassination it helps if you have a lone nut who is then shot dead do the act or to have a lone nut appearing scapegoat to blame.
I certainly would not rule out deep state/establishment involvement.
There are two theories about the injury to Trump’s ear – that a bullet grazed his ear, and that a bullet hit a teleprompter and his ear was actually cut from flying glass from the screen. Maps of the area show that the shooter wasn’t in front of Trump but almost 90 degrees to the right side of Trump. This favors the flying glass theory, since if a bullet had hit Trump’s ear, it would have continued on through Trump’s head unless Trump’s head had been turned 90 degrees to the right, and the videos of the speech seem to show that he wasn’t doing that. See link to the maps (hopefully it works, if not it’s easy enough to find the maps in a search.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevwngjrwzno
The “flying glasss” theory suggests that the shooter’s aim wasn’t particularly accurate, which supports the “lone gunman” explanation. Of course, it is far more sensational to claim that the bullet missed killing Trump by a few inches. Presumably the doctors who treated Trump can tell the difference between a glass cut and a bullet graze.
This isn’t the first time someone tried to shoot Trump. In 2016 some 20 year old from the UK tried to grab a gun from a police officer in Las Vegas at a trump rally, saying that he wanted to shoot Trump.
The link worked! The maps also show where the spectators were hit, and this shows a line of fire directly across the stage, 90 degrees from one side.
Looking at the photo of Trump with his bloodied ear, you can see that he wouldn’t have to turn his head very far for the bullet to nick his ear and miss his head as his ears tend to stick out. 45 degrees not 90 would be enough and he wasn’t exactly standing still.
There are photos of both teleprompters – intact after the shooting. So that wipes the flying glass theory.
https://x.com/LieutenantRusty/status/1812281947319918692
And here is a tweeted video showing how the head turn protected Trump.
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1812589303698260374
And here is an excellent THREAD from Brian Berletic, who is an excellent analyst.
https://x.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1812372868971560960
Actually Trump turned his head to the right just as the bullet arrived – the videos show this. That accidental movement probably saved his life. The bullet came from his right as you said, and had he not turned, would have gone through his head, killing him instantly.
A good aerial image of the scene here: https://www.nytimes.com/a/2024/07/13/us/trump-rally-shooting-maps-photos.html
There is no Trump assassination scenario that benefits the Democrats. A martyred Trump would have raised his status to sainthood, and MAGA would be unstoppable. A near-miss is even better for the Republicans, making Trump seem invincible.
I wish it weren’t the case, but it’s difficult to envision anything but a decisive Republican electoral victory.
A new Trump administration won’t do the world any favors, unless of course it leads to the total collapse of the nation.
Someone calculated it as 0.07°. I would have thought even less. Trump knows he’s alive by mere chance, and that will focus his mind, as you suggest, but I hope it will focus it the other way. This wasn’t a warning. If he can actually do something about the deep state, he would, as someone said on X, have earned his place on Mt Rushmore.
I make it 0.013 degrees, John – similar to what James has calculated below. Nevertheless, a reasonable shot should be able to hit a static target the size of Trump’s head at 120 yards with iron sights – though apparently, the shooter wasn’t good enough to get on his (BlackRock ad featured) high school’s shooting team.
Are you sure the bullet would have been powerful enough to kill him if it hit the side of his head? As you know, the skull is very thick there, thick enough to stop a 22 bullet at point blank range.
The bullet calbre is only one of the factors in the killing power of a gun, the other is the bullet velocity. The AR-15 has a very high muzzle velocity. If you google for AR-15 you’ll find articles explaining why one .223 bullet from an AR-15 is enough to blow your head apart.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. A bullet from a .223 Remington round to the side of the head from 120 yards would have almost certainly killed Trump since, as Townsman mentions, they are quite powerful (1700-1800 joules). I never claimed that .22 short rounds (typically 100 joules) are incapable of penetrating a human skull at point blank range: obviously, one penetrated Willie McRae’s – though his would have been weakened through age, alcoholism, and probably a poor diet lacking in calcium & vitamin D. What I said was that a professional assassin couldn’t guarantee killing a person with a single shot to the head from a .22 short, which is why they don’t use them. In fact, you can’t absolutely guarantee killing someone with a headshot from the considerably more powerful 9mm Parabellum (around 500 joules), though it’s much more likely. There have been people who have been shot in the head at point blank with 9 mil rounds that have gone on to exit, but survived and made reasonable recoveries – e.g. former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
“I predict that, if we get a Trump administration, Trump will not actually be in charge either but will settle for an easy life while allowing the Establishment to continue to run the country.”
Possibly, maybe even probably, but it is also possible that he will be so enraged by this event that he will do the opposite. He will have four years to plan his revenge, if that is what it is – the security certainly seems to have been lax at best.
Whilst the zest for life maintains, for many, as one gets older the fear of death subsides.
That’s true Peter and not only fear of death but also fear of the powerful!
“I was incidentally trying to calculate what fraction of a degree the rifle was mis-aimed by, to miss his brain by one inch at a range of 120 yards.”
It’s about 1/75th of a degree, or roughly 47.8 arcseconds
1 inch = 0.0254 metres, 120 yards = 109.7279998 metres
sin x = 0.0254 / 109.7279998
x = sin^-1(0.0254/109.7279998) = 0.013262912 degrees
A comment somewhere on X suggested that Trump was saved by a 7mph crosswind that by the time it hit him would have blown the bullet about 2” off course – which sounds plausible enough, but then I’m not a gun nut, so what do I know?
I would also highlight the role of the European Union in maintaining all those oppressive methods that Mr. Murray described in the article. Elon Musk recently said that the European Commission approached him with a secret proposal to give access to data and introduce censorship in exchange for the abolition of fines
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1811783320839008381
The EU promoted the ardent Estonian Russophobe Kallas to some high place. In the Netherlands, a man from the secret services unexpectedly became prime minister; he was not elected by the people, but appointed by the ruling parties!
I see all these disparate events as pieces of a puzzle adding up to one picture – a militaristic empire is fighting for total control over all of us.
Europe has ceased to be a space of free people. Voters don’t decide. Instead of freedoms, mandatory criteria appeared – support for war and unquestioning submission to Washington. These are relevant signs of a European today, just as you could not take a position in the USSR without joining the Communist Party, or just as you cannot walk down the street of Saudi Arabia without a niqab and an accompanying man.
There is an empire we usually call it the US Empire but it is much bigger than the US. All the anglophone nations are provinces as also are all European nations in NATO. We really need a better name for it.
I suggest:-
The Angloeuro North American Empire;
The Empire of Neoliberalism;
The Kleptoplutocratic and Oligarchic Empire of The West.
This empire is on the way down in roughly the same state of decay as the Soviet Union was in the mid eighties and is about to be eclipsed by the alliance of BRICS, China and Russia and wants to start a war with the latter two while it believes it can still win. I believe it is already too late its military equipment is outdated and its effectiveness to cost ratio too low and recent advances in hypersonic missiles and drones (especially hypersonic drones) make all its naval surface assets vulnerable.
If it succeeds in starting the war said war will go nuclear since the Empire will use nukes as soon as it realizes it is not winning. Everyone looses but on the bright size it will allow us all to die quickly of radiation sickness and nuclear winter rather than waiting for climate change to do the job.
I’d prefer to stick with “Empire of Lies” succinct and to the point.
Carlyle
I like the The Angloeuro North American Empire.
I’d make a slight correction, if you don’t mind. How do you like The Angloeuro North American League?
The same meaning, but makes much more prominent abbreviation 🙂
Damn, beat me to it!
“In the United States the Establishment is worried that Trump’s isolationist tendencies and lack of enthusiasm for starting wars, may damage the never-ending gravy train of the military industrial complex.
In particular Trump sees both China and Russia as potential trading partners with whom money can be made to mutual benefit. He does not see them primarily as a military threat.
Trump is in short not on board for the whole propaganda narrative that requires designated enemies to fuel massive defence spending, and justify the continuous series of invasions of other countries.”
And yet the disastrous Ukraine war for US weaponry and the abandonment of the Med by US aircraft carriers because of … … Yemen, suggests that the swiftest route to end the MIC gravy train would be actual war. For many years now the MIC has supplied weapons to shout and threaten with, not for fighting wars.
‘”the Establishment”. I prefer to use that word rather than Deep State. But it is the same thing.’
Exactly.
Also, what security detail in their right mind piles on top of their principal and then immediately lets them stick their head back up above the parapet?!
It’s not “courageous”; it’s unbelievably stupid.
Unless it was staged.
The Maths involved is school trigonometry. The way to simplify it is to work in radians, not degrees. For very small angles (like the one through which the gun might have rotated) the ratio of the movement of the target to the distance is approximately the angle itself (measured in radians). Now 120 yards are 120×36 = 4320 inches, so for a movement of 1 inch, the ratio and hence also the angle is (1/4320) radians. One radian is about 57.3 degrees (strictly 360 divided by twice pi), so the angle is about (1/75) degrees. But one degree consists of 60 minutes or 3600 seconds of arc, so that makes the angle 60/75 minutes, or 0.8 minutes, or 48 seconds of arc. I understand that in daylight a rifle scope can resolve much smaller angles than this in theory, so the real issues is stability, including tremor. I’ll leave that to experts in guns.
The rest of the post looks like conspiracy theories, so I’ll leave that altogether!
Not quite, M.J. You’re assuming that the arc length is 1 inch, but it isn’t! You want 1 inch away from Trump’s head, along the perpendicular, NOT along the arc, so what you *actually* calculated was the tangent of the angle of a right-angled triangle, which also happens to be the correct answer.
Or does it? Trump has a skull – surprise, surprise! – so the bullet passed more than an inch away from his brain. The distance could actually be quite large given Trump’s minuscule intelligence – the shooter might have missed by several inches!
1. You have to remember that for small angles (in radians), the angle itself (proportional to the arc length) and its sine (proportional to the length of the tangent) are approximately equal. I did use the word ‘approximately’. That is why the correctness of my answer is not a coincidence.
2. The distance between the skull and the brain internally is less than 1mm while the thickness of the skull is about a quarter of an inch. Depending on where the bullet pierced the ear, it is by no means impossible that it was within an inch of his brain, e.g. if it pierced the ear flap nearer the skull. One inch was the figure that Craig gave.
The skull comment was so I could make that joke. 😉 I’m no mathematician, so no worries!
It will soon be 50 years since President Nixon was ousted in a CIA-Pentagon coup. Nixon was very lucky in that the CIA had originally planned to assassinate him.
His replacement was autopsy-falsifier Gerald Ford.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=bill+o%27reilly+interviews+frank+sturgis&mid=9DEFA293EE02B012E1C79DEFA293EE02B012E1C7&FORM=VIRE
An interesting take from Bob MoRiarty, someone with a very long public track record of being more right than wrong.
If there is any truth to the Jonathan Willis angle he is leaning towards the idea that the SS stepped down when it mattered most.
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/moriarty/moriarty071524.html
According to a mate with quite some experience of such matters, the best a marksman could guarantee at that distance would be to get the shot within a clenched fist- sized area of what they’re aiming for. He also said “even a cross wind would have some adjustment for your aim” and “elevation would also be an issue for zeroing”.
I imagine Biden would have made a much more stable target, without any of Trump’s bobbing and weaving around as he worked the crowd.
On the subject of Civil War, the recent film was excellent, a work of fiction or perhaps a prediction? Time will tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(film)
Hollywood seems to like signalling what’s coming a few months to a year in advance of events…
Forgive my destructive comment, but Hollywood is a bunch of idiots, egomaniacs, fascists, oligarchs who want more more more for themselves. They know very little about the country and the planet. And those who do have no power to tell those stories.
I haven´t watched Garland this time. I was weary after the trailer. Didn´t convince me. If conventional film folks approach real-life politics territory the result in Hollywood mostly turns out nonsense. Of course you have seen it. I haven´t. So this remains a momentary odd rant of mine. (I will catch up on the film some time this year though.)
Something that pissed me off was “The Comey Rule” based on his memoirs which was just the ongoing propaganda, anti-Trump bullshit and stood for everything you have to believe in officially if you work in the industry. Naturally in private people are smarter, even in California. What was so angering about “The Comey Rule” was the work put into it. It was well made and a really missed opportunity to tell people something they might not yet know. But then that would have meant not to adapt Comey´s book in the first place.
As the entertainment industry is concerned it is disturbing that you most likely will not find a single meaningful product that might deviate from the mainstream “liberal” view of the state of the nation. There is nothing out there that would dare challenge. Considering the power of films/series in shaping public views on history (e.g. Churchill!) this is a real problem.
It was meant to look as though some lone nut gunman had a grudge against the Orange One, and he somehow managed to climb up that building and snipe across at the Orange One without being detected by the security services.
I recall when Regan was POTUS he wanted to reform the CIA, headed up by Bush senior at the time, Reagan found himself in the middle of an assassination attempt, needless to say it didn’t take a rocket scientist to join the dots on that one.
I had to laugh at Genocide Joe Biden’s comment today in which he said “Politics Shouldn’t be a Killing Field.
The (US) has killed, usurped and regime changed countless politicians around the globe to further (US) interests.
The (US) made over 600 attempts to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, some with the help of the English security services.
I suspect that the CIA was behind the attempted assassination of Reagan. Vice President George H.W. Bush, former CIA director, would then have succeeded him.
John Hinckley Jr had a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in his hotel room. A few months earlier, Mark Chapman was found reading it just after John Lennon was assassinated.
So you’re saying that the conspiracy was to miss Trump rather than kill him? What would be the point of that?
To enhance his election campaign by having him “survive an assassination attempt”. However, it seems that, if it was staged, the gunman was cutting it really fine. It seems unlikely that he was good enough, or indeed his gun was good enough to put bullets that close to Trump and be sure of not hitting him.
If Trump’s wise, he’ll pick a running mate who shares his foreign policy views. Were I in his position, I’d pick someone like Vivek Ramaswamy – he’d be a loyal, high-energy campaigning running mate, who can both excite supporters and challenge the very hostile media. Vivek is someone who’s clearly sceptical of the ‘Deep State’ too. There was talk of Nikki Haley being asked; quite frankly, she would be an idiotic pick – incentivizing those who tried to remove Trump from office last time. For it’s no great secret, that the Democrats’ leadership would’ve been fine with Mike Pence assuming the presidency in 2016-20 had the ‘Russiagate’ nonsense succeeded in its aim. Picking Haley would be akin to picking Pompeo or Bolton as a potential VP. The best way of disincentivizing any ‘Deep State’ plots, is by having a VP they view as potentially worse than Trump, waiting in the wings to take over.
As for the military industrial complex, yes, they’re seriously influential; but wars also generate massive ‘capital flight’ to safer western markets and these sums dwarf defence company profiteering.
Shout out to Nikki who thought she was getting shoehorned in this week at the RNC convention.
Announcing his pick today, according to reports.
“The best way of disincentivizing any ‘Deep State’ plots, is by having a VP they view as potentially worse than Trump, waiting in the wings to take over.”
========
Is the Hillybilly Elegist that man?
Interesting, was he an actor? and we all know the power BlackRock has.
“The man identified as the shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump has been spotted in a now-pulled BlackRockadvert.
In the advert filmed at Bethel Park School, Thomas Matthew Crooks can be seen in the middle of an economics class, watching the whiteboard.
The clip was a promotional tool to show how BlackRock can help those thinking about retirement.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/trump-shooter-thomas-matthew-crooks-spotted-in-now-pulled-blackrock-advert/ar-BB1q0nut?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=9a3acaff17764655a5b59bff33ce9503&ei=65
The CIA can’t get into his phone cos it’s locked.
Craig yet again confirms his utter ignorance of American politics. The fact that American intelligence agencies may hate Trump does not make the man any less dangerous. Let’s talk about a policy, not laptops. What does Trump intend to do, to free himself from institutional constraints — including the rule of law? Has Craig actually looked at Project 2025? Is that a program he would care to live under? And taking counsel from Tucker Carlson? The kindest explanation is that that Craig, far from being malicious, is shockingly uninformed in proportion to his freely and endlessly offered opinions.
One would also note, merely in passing, that the word “courageous”, as applied to Trump, who views himself as the world’s preeminent victim, is hilarious.
Yeah, Biden is a hack. Who would have guessed, had Craig not pointed it out? And yet this preposterous expectation that governments will fulfill humanistic ideals, according to Craig, is rather shocking at this late date. The conversation has to take place elsewhere — unless, like Craig, you’re happy to remain on the margins forever, complaining, and commiserating with the likes of Donald Trump who you yourself won’t have to endure.
“Yeah, Biden is a hack. Who would have guessed, had Craig not pointed it out?”
Nobody who consumes western media would have, especially readers of its quality press. Biden’s horrible career has been entirely glossed and his senile gaffes were attributed until 5 minutes ago to “a stutter he has had since childhood..”
He explains how he thinks Americans face a miserable choice between lesser evils, quote:
‘That democracy in the United States is meaningless is plain from the choice offered to the electorate between two incredibly flawed individuals. It is a scenario you could not make up. ‘
From a British perspective, for me and I’m sure others here, it’s a question of, ‘who is the least damaging: which of the two is least likely to trigger WW3?
Call that selfish if you will, but for most Europeans the issue of whether there is continued war, or peace, is pretty important. The fact Biden is a better defender of late-term abortions in the US; or promoting LGBTQIA2S+, isn’t all that relevant to us here.
And that very statement
“That democracy in the United States is meaningless is plain from the choice offered to the electorate between two incredibly flawed individuals. It is a scenario you could not make up”
is a measure just how ignorant and foolish he is. What modern state fulfills his ideals?
Of course you can’t; “make it up”, because you don’t have to. Every election in every powerful nation state presents “incredibly flawed individuals”. Who else seeks power or is even in a position to?
This all or nothing approach, from parties in the peanut gallery, the guy who can’t keep hold of his own laptops, would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so pathetic and dangerous.
And how about you? Describing Biden as ” better defender of late-term abortions in the US; or promoting LGBTQIA2S+” is straight out of Trump’s playback. You know nothing about Biden’s domestic policies which, like it or not, are far better than any other Democratic president’s, in years.
But of course you’re not satisfied. You want to dispense with power relations and elect Craig Murray for president. “Fantasy” would be the wrong word, because “fantasy” suggests an ideal. And there’s no joy in ignorance.
“Of course you can’t; “make it up”, because you don’t have to. Every election in every powerful nation state presents “incredibly flawed individuals”. Who else seeks power or is even in a position to?”
Which means that in none of those state is democracy meaningful, not that Craig is talking bollocks. Craig is perfectly capable of talking bollocks, but in this case he is not. That honour falls to you.
“The fact that American intelligence agencies may hate Trump does not make the man any less dangerous.”
Dangerous to whom?
Thank you, a grim picture but I think a realistic one.
If Trump had not turned his head at that moment everything would now be different.
The danger is that the Establishment/s in US/UK are under the illusion that the system cannot break, so they are not deterred from making things steadily worse.
Good article Craig! Seems the secret service guys had their guns trained on the gunman for minutes because their boss wouldn’t allow them to shoot even though everyone in the crowd were pointing at the gunman. Biden says: “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America.” but it doesn’t matter that hundreds more people were killed or injured in Gaza. Nor does it matter to the MSM – can’t read anything other than the attempted assassination. Someone interviewed on CBC this morning was insisting that the rotten, corrupt, dysfunctional US system was a democracy. Thank heavens for social media.
The only good news I’ve seen is that Yellen is getting worried about the fate of the US dollar – hee hee hee!
Perhaps even more hypocritical, Zelensky condemned the murder attempt by saying on Twitter/X:
“I am appalled to learn about the shooting of former U.S. President Donald Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania.
Such violence has no justification and no place anywhere in the world. Never should violence prevail.”
That is on the same day (or day prior), the intelligence boss of Ukraine admitted they had tried to kill Putin numerous of times:
“Budanov, who had been placed on Moscow’s terrorist and extremist list, revealed Kiev’s efforts to kill Putin in an interview with Ukrainian news outlet NV published earlier in the day. His service, the successor to the soviet KGB, has made several attempts to assassinate the Russian president, he claimed, without providing any further information”
https://swentr.site/russia/600974-ukraine-putin-assassination-threats/
But Putin won’t take out Zelensky. Earlier this was because he was a head of state but he isn’t any more. Suspect Zelensky is just a mouthpiece. Those trying to assassinate Pres. Putin are probably cia, mi 6s and 7s – the usual lot. And the Russians know it. The Russians aren’t great chess players for nothing!
There is no worse political violence than genocide. Every person who has been praising Biden’s words knows that.
There is a suggestion that Trump’s ear injury may have been caused by glass shards from a shattered teleprompter rather than a bullet
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/not-so-fast-donald-trump-was-hit-by-glass-from-shattered-teleprompter-not-a-bullet-according-to-sources/ar-BB1pVVKz
Apparently both teleprompters can be seen to be intact after the shooting, which does rather knock that one on the head.
1. The shot was not mis-aimed. AR-15 rounds have a velocity of between 2500-3500 ft/sec, depending upon load and grain. If the range was c.130 yards, that equates to c.390 feet. Therefore, a shot taken from that range would reach Trump’s head within between 0.156 and 0.111 seconds. If you watch the video, he turns his head to his right just as the gunman takes his first shot, moving the point of impact from the centre of his head to his right ear. Another round (caught on a still photograph) passes close enough to his head to have also killed him had he not flinched and moved slightly down and to his left after being hit on the ear. The gunman was at the very least competent.
2. Although most of CounterPunch’s content is intellectually vacuous, woke liberal bullshit, the odd worthwhile article slips through (the journalistic equivalent of “psychological leakage”/Freudian slips), viz.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/12/removing-a-u-s-president-without-an-election/ and
https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/wall-streets-failed-1934-coup/.
Paul Ryder in his article is correct in stating that there were contextual differences between Watergate and Russiagate, but wrong in concluding that they made any substantive difference: if a president falls out with any major sector of State power, s/he is “toast”, just as, on a smaller scale, the leader of a political party who doesn’t follow the “party line” is (Corbyn). What he does not reference, however, is that the “dirt” on Trump had to be manufactured, whereas as that on Nixon was real: Trump could not be bought (because he was already a millionaire/billionaire) and had no skeletons in the cupboard, so it was necessary to create some – Russiagate. It is in this sense, together with all the other facets cited by CM and others, that Russiagate was far more serious than Watergate.
Trump now knows exactly how much the State apparatuses hate and will work to undermine him: the intelligence and police services lied to him, the army lied to him, General Milley (in actions that amount to treason) ordered that Trump’s orders were not to be obeyed (https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/09/report-gen-milley-held-top-secret-meeting-to-block-trumps-access-to-nukes-told-staff-to-disobey-all-but-his-orders/) and contacted the Chinese military behind his back (https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-defends-gen-milleys-calls-to-chinese-counterpart-2021-9?op=1). If Trump can control his narcissism and avarice, keep his mind on the job and survive the further assassination attempts that will now inevitably follow, his (probable) second term will be “interesting”.
The answer is: 0.000166 radian.
Not a lot given your measurements. (which in large part are a lot more generous than the reality)
Most others here who’ve given answers got 0.000232 radians
If the ‘deep state’ or the intelligence agencies were involved in the shooting, which seems likely given the suspicious circumstances, it was most probably only a warning. Even if they were so inclined, it would surely have been too blatant to blow Trump’s head off in public – a former President known around the world, after all – when many people have long suspected that’s what they did to JFK. Plus, imagine the outpouring of anger and emotion on behalf of Trump who would become a national hero – quite contrary to the narrative we have been fed. Whatever the truth, the assassination of a democratic politician is a terrible act, which changes history in unpredictable ways, so I was very glad to hear that Trump was safe.
Blowing off the head of the President (or next President) in broad daylight is exactly the point. It is an unignorable assertion of power, a reminder of where power lies.
Bit of a risky ‘warning’, deliberately shooting someone in the ear from over 100 metres away.
President Trump. Coming soon to a regime near you.
” you still have to deal with the Secret Service failure, which is inexplicable. This is on par with Israel leaving the border open on October 7th. He climbs up on the roof, inside of the rally, people are filming him as he sets up a mount and they wait for him to shoot and then immediately shoot him.” Andrew Anglin.
Unfortunately, we live in interesting times …
Forgive me Craig, but so much of this episode simply does not add up. Trump may indeed have heard a whizzing noise but any of your readers who have been under fire – and I am, sadly, one of those – knows that bullets do not whizz, they crack. And who in heaven’s name didn’t clear that rooftop so close to Trump’s position? I am by no means a slack-mouthed conspiracy theorist but so much of this smells like a badly cooked herring.
Well, here’s the sound of a 223 bullet being fired past the camera from 300 yards away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SMFEpRs4q8
You’re forgiven, though.
1. As a civilian shooter who has spent many hours over the years taking turns in the butts, I can assure readers that bullets can “whizz” as well as make a variety of other sounds including “cracks”, bullets hitting the ground producing “thuds”, semi-hard surfaces “smacks” and metal a variety of “clangs” and, less commonly, the ubiquitous film sound-effect.
2. There is already plenty of evidence to suggest that this assassination attempt was only made possible due to a combination of (probable) cowardice on the part of a local police officer (who, after being made aware that a shooter was on the roof, climbed a ladder, stuck his head over the top, had the shooter’s rifle pointed at him and retreated back down the ladder without attempting to confront him) and the nearer of the sniper teams behind Trump having their view of the gunman’s position obstructed by trees. If you watch the video of this team taken by an audience member, you can see them react to the first shot with surprise – it is the second team that react and shoot the gunman. This explains why it appears that the first team just “let” the gunman take his shots.
Here’s a related article:
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/07/13/apparent-gunshots-fired-at-trump-rally/
The ‘crack’ is a miniature sonic boom. Military grade bullets have a muzzle velocity well in excess of the speed of sound but as soon as they leave the gun they begin to slow down and the crack disappears as the bullet’s speed drops below Mach 1. I would be surprised if a 5.56mm NATO round had slowed that much over a distance of 120 yards though but with the current price of ammunition he may have been using some cheap ‘knock off’ stuff.
I am an enthusiastic supporter and eagerly await your publications. However, in light of judge Cannon’s dismissal of the secret documents trial, wouldn’t it be prudent to doubt absolutely everything to come from Trump from now on? Especially considering that it will be impossible to perform an unbiased forensic study of the supposed assassination attempt. Has it occurred to anyone that such a lucky shot is indeed out of the realm of probability and leads one to think that Trump had some fake blood on his ear, and it was all a 9-11 style setup.
The man whom the gunman killed certainly did not have fake blood – much is about Trump’s lucky escape but he was not so lucky and no life is of more value than another’s.
100 metres is a kid’s shot. Snipers normally hit the target at 1–2 kilometres (record sniper hit was at 3.8Km). If a professional sniper decided to take Trump out, it’d be done spot-on from a mile away and nobody would ever know the shooter.
If it were secret services, we’d hear about Trump having a fatal stroke, heart attack, falling out of a window, drowning in a pool, or dying in a high-speed car crash. Or touching a door handle. Not about a local schoolboy shooting and missing I think.
If you want “plausible deniability”, you don’t use a professional sniper: too hard to dress up as a “lone wolf”.