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Those who cannot remember the past, George Santayana warned in 1905, are condemned to repeat it. One has to wonder if nine weeks qualifies as “the past” in the context of two assassination attempts on former president Donald Trump. Even while the US Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security remained reluctant to fully disclose their failures on July 13, another attempt on Trump has everyone wondering what went wrong this time.
We have a clearer picture of the near-past now, thanks to a whistleblower report compiled by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). The report covers some details already known to the public, but reveals other points of failure not yet in the public discussion. For instance, one enduring question has been how the Secret Service could have left a rooftop less than 150 yards away from the stage unsecured in Butler, PA.
The answer? According to Hawley’s sources, it was too hot for the Secret Service agents and other law-enforcement personnel:
On July 13, law enforcement personnel abandoned the rooftop of American Glass Research Building 6—the roof from which Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate the former president—because of hot weather.
You have to be ****** kidding me. It doesn’t take Von Clausewitz to understand that all high-ground positions have to be secured in order to protect a former president on a stage less than 150 yards away. The impression until now was that the failure to secure the roof was more of an oversight; now we hear that the decision was deliberate.
And was it too hot for the shooter? Apparently not.
The quality of decision-making didn’t improve in the rest of the report:
• The Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division, which performs threat assessments of event sites, did not perform a typical evaluation of the Butler site and was not present on the day of the rally.
• Secret Service personnel declined multiple offers from a local law enforcement partner to deploy drone technology, despite the fact that the would-be assassin used a drone to survey the rally site mere hours before the attempted assassination.
