Just the fact that Trump said he was hit by a bullet leads me to believe it's not true.
Bake 'em away toys! Case closed!
What'd you say, chief?
Do what the kid says
I had people shit all over me for saying that his injuries were more consistent with the glass shards, saying I am a nutty as the conspiracy theorist people.
I was deployed, my buddies got shot and hit, that’s not what a bullet grazing wound looks like. Fracture mechanics is also a very messy simulation, and when you introduce that much kinetic energy into a rupture situation like glass the stuff flies everywhere.
And here we are.
FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during a marathon testimony on Wednesday that investigators still do not know if former President Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel during his attempted assassination.
But making this distinction doesn’t guarantee clicks, so let’s keep the headline from being too clear about it.
I think the FBI is saying they know where each round ends up and it's not in a trajectory that could have injured Trump. But they can't just say that to the Republican Congressman asking the question.
It's a distinction without a difference. "Trump wasn't injured by a bullet, he was injured by shrapnel from the bullet" doesn't let the FBI or the SS off the hook for missing this kid before he started shooting.
Yeah it's a stupidly thin hair to split, to the point where it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the bullet hit him or the shrapnel caused by the bullet hit him. The fact is there was a guy with a rifle within pissing distance. The government really fucked up.
Not that I'm either surprised nor disappointed by that fact. I personally suspect that the secret service treats the Trump detail as the dump assignment for all of the shittiest, bottom 1% of their security personnel.
Idk a lot of law enforcement is pro trump, they might have wanted the detail.
Yeah, and the ones that did are probably the bottom of the barrel.
Trump responded with a post on Truth Social while the hearing was still taking place, calling for Wray to resign—but not for anything he said about the assassination attempt. Instead, Trump lambasted the FBI director for claiming that he found his interactions with President Biden “uneventful and unremarkable.”
He’s such a batshit narcissist. And rapist. And a fraud. And a crook, a pathological liar, vain to the point of gruesome, and many other qualities that explain how he’s running the entire republiQan party.
He wants to be treated like royalty. Like a Tsar. Like Putin.
Dementia Don the racist rapist with 34 felonies that can't complete a coherent sentence. He's too old to lead our great country, he needs to drop out. He can't even remember his own lies anymore, he's out of it. It's sad and embarrassing.
Yeah. It was in 2016 too!
The distinction here is hardly relevant.
It is relevant to history. You can either tell the Trump story that a bullet hit his ear, or you can say that he caught shrapnel.
The only way that would be relevant would be if there was a determination that the shooter was trying to do some kind of ad hoc false flag thing, as opposed to writing his own name into history. Everything we know at this point indicates that the latter is true, and the former is not.
Whether Trump's injury was the result of a fired projectile or a piece of shrapnel, the injury was caused by an assassination attempt.
Whether Trump’s injury was the result of a fired projectile or a piece of shrapnel, the injury was caused by an assassination attempt.
We all know what really happened.
A trick he learned back in his WWE guest star days.
(This is meant as a joke, please do not be upset. I mean no disrespect to WWE fans.)
You know, it's funny because the moment I saw the picture where you could see a little blood, I thought to myself "did anyone make sure he didn't have a ketchup packet in his pockets?"
And sure enough, I'm never original...
I thought I was the only one whose first thought was that W wasn't surprised on 9/11 when I saw the clip of him being informed. Turns out a LOT of people had that thought. 😂
Not a ketchup packet, a razorblade
Reddit 2.0.... make fun of Biden.. BANNED for LIFE! Make fun of Trump... LOL, He's SO STUPID!!!!
Oh look, another conservative to never shut up on social media about how they can't say anything on social media, while somehow managing to be the biggest asshole in the room everywhere they go.
You weren't missed by anyone before showing up here, just FYI.
God forbid Lemmy have more than one opinion right?
My opinion is that I don't need your opinion.
I like presidential candidates that don't have 34 felony convictions. I also prefer them to not be convicted rapists. And if they could not sell our nuclear secrets to Russia and China, that'd be swell too.
F U C K D O N A L D T R U M P
If you REALLY think Trump is a felony and rapist..I have news for you about American politics...
Yes I would like to see your list of presidents and presidential candidates with felony convictions. Thanks!
Reddit 2.0… make fun of Biden… BANNED for LIFE!
By the way, did you know the modlog is public at Lemmy? So when you say things like I was just expressing my opinion and they banned me for being conservative, people can look that up.
What does that mean? I'm talking about how easily people can express their hatred towards Republicans/Trump on sites like Lemmy and Reddit... but, they are NOT allowed to express those same feelings towards Biden and Democrats..
You seem to be doing OK.
Actually Biden is okay to make fun of, it’s Harris who you get banned for life now.
Try to keep up.
Says an account that does nothing but post crap about both.
You guys remind me of my oldest brother who continually claims that my house growing up had a rule that "once you're 18 you're out" but moved out of my parents' house at 23 years old.
I am your brother and I'm about to move back in.
Take my upvote...
The truth is still the truth, even if there is no material difference in the implications.
That's true.
It's also relevant because one of Trump's current campaign statements is that he "took a bullet for America" which may be another lie.
It would certainly neuter that (over)statement, but I honestly wouldn't go as far as to call that one a "lie" without some indication that he knew that it wasn't a bullet he was hit by. I don't think that even a reasonable person wouldn't come to the conclusion that "Shots were fired, at me, now my ear is bleeding all over my face" as "I was hit by a bullet."
I disagree.
The sheer number of lies he tells, what difference is one more? Especially an inconsequential one?
We’re all fairly sure it wasn’t the bullet, but glass, or shrapnel or whatever, but that buries the lede.
The point here is whether it was an assassination attempt or a false flag attempt (personally I think assassination) and that trumps own hateful rhetoric has created such a ridiculous scenario where this shit happens.
Because it's always important to point out the hypocrisy of his fake patriotic bullshit. Every lie should be pointed out, to everyone who will listen.
But then you lose the bigger point that his rhetoric and horse shit has lead us here.
You’re too zoomed in.
except if the shooter was just shooting into the crowd and hit like a railing or something then it wasn't an "assassination attempt" it was a mass shooting.
Frankly, it could be a mass-shooting anyway, simply one that had a high-profile figure as one of the targets. Apparently he had explosives in his car and some sort of remote detonation mechanism, so it was clearly about more than just Trump alone.
so it was clearly about more than just Trump alone.
Not necessarily. To my knowledge, we don't know where any explosives would have been planted. He was seen wandering around the rally area a few hours before the rally. It's possible at one point he thought he could plant some explosives near Trump's podium or something so he gets taken out in the blast, and maybe abandoned that plan when he walked around and realized it wasn't viable.
IMO, there's nothing indicating he had any intents other than taking out Trump by any means available to him. Anyone else was probably either collateral damage in his mind, or "deserved it" for being Trump supporters in the first place. He may have decided that trying to snipe him from that rooftop was his most viable option, but it looks like he woke up that morning with at least two separate plans on how to go about it.
Fair. None of that speculation is inherently any better than the mass shooting speculation though, there's similarly zero indication he had anything personal against Trump. He even had potential dem targets in his search history. There's no sound evidence for anything so far, that I've heard at any rate.
Though I do think it's a little far-fetched that what appears to be an intelligent engineering student is going to think sneaking over and planting explosives is going to be a viable plan. That's a little video gamey.
It's a lot video-gamey. Let's be realistic.....the United States Secret Service just got owned by a 20 year old kid camping in one of the windows from Nuketown. The kid looks like he got beat up for his lunch money last week. Whatever plans were gong through his head, the plan he ultimately settled on involved him climbing to the one rooftop that the Secret Service somehow missed and was somehow able to not get caught until he fired off half a dozen or so shots. Everything he did that we know of so far looks like something a newbie would do the first time they played COD.
We'll of course never really know his true motives. Remember that despite all the speculation over political motives, Ronald Reagan's would-be-assassin did it because he was trying to impress a teenage Jodie Foster. For all we know, this kid could have woke up that morning and believed that Trump was Gargamel and it was his responsibility to kill him in order to save Smurf Village. Why he suddenly wanted Trump dead remains a mystery especially since he was supposedly a long-time Trump supporter, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe that his target was anything other than Trump himself, and maybe anyone who was just unlucky enough to be in the way.
Again, there is also no evidence he specifically wanted Trump dead and was not simply committing a blaze-of-glory act of terrorism for some misguided chance at fame. Having no evidence does not mean we default to one preferred interpretation.
Regarding the rooftop, from all indications he carefully scouted his method. The drone, the rangefinder, the ladder, etc. The building was local police's responsibility, as well, they actually even had a cop inside that very building. Regardless though, it certainly was embarrassing for the SS anyway, hence the director resigning.
Again, there is also no evidence he specifically wanted Trump dead and was not simply committing a blaze-of-glory act of terrorism for some misguided chance at fame. Having no evidence does not mean we default to one preferred interpretation.
No, but you at least go where what evidence you do have leads you. The kid fired off half a dozen shots, at least one of which came within an inch of killing him. If his plan were a mass shooting, bullets would have been sprayed everywhere. If his plan were to go for some blaze-of-glory shot at fame (or the most convoluted suicide-by-cop of all time) but didn't want to kill Trump, he could have just shot well above everybody's heads.
When you get that close with that many shots, it's more reasonable to assume that Trump was the target and he missed than it would be to assume that Trump wasn't the target because he missed.
Regarding the rooftop, from all indications he carefully scouted his method. The drone, the rangefinder, the ladder, etc. The building was local police’s responsibility, as well, they actually even had a cop inside that very building.
Right. Which is why I think we both can agree the whole situation is video-gamey. The kid came up with an elaborate plan that was 100% reliant on the United States Secret Service somehow forgetting to cover that specific rooftop, and him being able to get all that equipment over there without a single bit of interference. If that isn't the stealth mission of virtually every first person shooter in the past 30 years, I don't know what is.
Regardless though, it certainly was embarrassing for the SS anyway, hence the director resigning.
Oh absolutely. A lone 20 year old kid essentially playing out the plot of Call of Duty made the entire Secret Service look like a laughing stock live and in real time. There should have been a lot more than that director resigning.
Successfully shooting Trump would garner more fame than any of the other things you described. He unquestionably wanted to shoot Trump, I think. After Trump dropped down and got piled on by the SS, though, he seems to have begun shooting other people.
Trump stuck his head up once or twice after the Secret Service piled on. It's possible he was still trying to get Trump, but I will concede that it's also very likely he started firing randomly or at others to cause chaos and cover a potential escape.
I'll give them credit for piling on him though. They are very lucky that he didn't decide to just start shooting into the pile.
Not really. I'll give you a "for instance". Few people know this story.
In this case, although in danger, Trump was being shot at by someone who couldn't shoot.
The grenade landed 18.6 metres (61 ft) from the podium
Bush was thrown at by someone who couldn't throw
Got WAY closer than 60ft though.
I remember watching that and losing my shit.
Of course at the time, it was because I was a teenager and "haha president almost got hit by a shoe"
Now it's funny for different reasons, but still.
You know where "close" counts?
Horseshoes, hand grenades, and The Secret nuclear weapons.
Welease The Secwet Weapon!!!!
* Wewease
It's been a while since I saw that movie, lol
Cheers 👊😎
2 first downs is not exactly close.
The grenade failed to detonate. Although original reports indicated that the grenade was not live, it was later revealed that it was. After Arutyunian pulled the pin and threw the grenade, it hit a girl, cushioning its impact. The red handkerchief remained wrapped around the grenade, and it prevented the striker lever from releasing.
No mention of it being "a training grenade [which] could not fire." Source?
original reports indicated that the grenade was not live
??
In case you missed the rest of that very sentence:
... it was later revealed that it was [live].
ad hoc false flag
Dont be in such a rush to rule this out lol. Ad hoc false flag should be Trump's middle names
He's always been a real ad war hoc
I think there's essentially no limit to what the shooter's motives could be. What was the Las Vegas shooter's motive? What was the motive at Columbine? There's a million possibilities. Narcissism, delusions, non-specific rage.
Sure, there's one conclusion that seems simplest, which is that he shot at Trump but missed. And if he grazed Trump's ear, that's almost certainly true. But what if it comes out that the FBI finds that the closest shot was over 10 feet away from Trump? If that happens, I think we'd be fools to continue to assume it was an assassination attempt.
The smartest thing anyone could say at this point is "I don't know".
That's still not very relevant. Either way he was shot at and his ear was hit. Whether or not it was a whole bullet, part of a bullet after the bullet hit something, or something that the bullet busted off that hit his ear is of minimal importance.
If it was shrapnel then it dispels the idea that if he'd turned his head just a few inches it would've been death.
And it makes the whole divine intervention thing seem less likely, but they are already reaching so hard anyways I'm sure they will just reach a bit further... it's a cult after all.
Lol yeah THAT'S what makes 'divine intervention less likely'
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle, too.
I am confused. Are you trying to say that your grandma gets ridden a lot?
Only by necrophiliacs now.
I have to admit, in all seriousness, that Fred Gwynne and my own father look very similar.
That man will forever live in my memory saying "What is a yoot?".
If my grandma had wheels she'd be a skank with wheels.
That fuckin chef on that good morning TV show. That clip is so funny
Or a car-hop at Sonic.
I mean, sure? But we are getting pretty far into "what if" territory that can never be known and doesn't really matter. If he was hit by a bullet, or shrapnel from a bullet doesn't change the fact he was injured by a shooter.
The only interesting thing about it might be that it once again points out the hypocrisy of the right.
They mocked John Kerry as undeserving of his purple hearts, and wore fake bandaids because he was hit with shrapnel.
... it once again points out the hypocrisy of the right.
We could climb that pile into orbit.
Space elevator might be out of reach but the space mountain is real.
It's an integral part of NASA's plan to return to the moon.
Yeah, this feels like a good headline more than useful information.
Clickbait?!? From The Daily Beast?!? Impossible!!!
I think what you're trying to say is that "either way he still survived an assassination attempt", which I agree with, but the details still matter.
It’s relevant to the folks who believe in divine intervention, isn’t it?
The folks who believe in divine intervention don't care about what actually happens in reality in any case, so no, it's not relevant to them, either.
I would think that the difference between it being a bullet vs a piece of glass would be the difference between divine intervention or not to many of them.
If logic worked on religious people, then there wouldn't be religious people. They will just say the bullet WOULD'VE killed him, but god stopped it and only hurt him with glass. God can't be proven or disproven, so those that want to see divine intervention always will.
God can't be proven or disproven
Oh look, a non-falsifiable statement.
If you're someone who's going to claim divine intervention, it's to reinforce your own beliefs, and message to the people who hear you that you hold those beliefs. Glass vs. bullet isn't going to matter.
People who believe in fantasy and fairytales aren’t going to be swayed by the nuance of fact.
Do you have evidence for that?
It’s called the republican party
It's relevant in that Trump is probably dishonest again.
The situation is shocking enough if he was hit by glass in an assassination attempt, but they couldn't resist lying and saying the bullet hit his ear.
He was struck by...a smooth criminal.
Donny are you OK?
Are you OK Donnie?
Wanna be a baller, shot caller
Twenty-inch blades
on the Impala
A Secret service agent there said it was a piece of glass that sliced his ear which made a lot more sense with how it looks, and is in line with Trump's retelling of the story at the RNC, (he heard a buzz go by) but it doesn't really change anything from either side. Trump would have said Jesus personally blocked the bullet no matter what and getting hit by glass rather than a bullet doesn't make it much less traumatic of an event to imagine for those of us with empathy.
If it was a bullet, he should be missing part of his ear. It would probably look like Holyfield's ear post Tyson fight.
Ah good to see someone looked into it. It just struck me as odd to describe the bullet as a buzz. That's only true for a supersonic rifle round in my experience if it's unstable or tumbling, so if it was a ricochet or fragment from whatever else it hit. His descriptions of things aren't exactly reliable anyways though.
FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during a marathon testimony on Wednesday that investigators still do not know if former President Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel during his attempted assassination.
There's no way a bullet "grazes" an ear and it's not obvious... He'd be legitimately missing cartilage, he was seen golfing days later without even a bandaid on it
I don't think at any point any source has said he was shot.
Just that he was shot at, and came up with a bleeding ear.
Not saying he cut it himself, just that it probably got scratched at some point.
Due to Trump's age and, well, just everything about him, he's most likely on blood thinners. Which would make even a tiny scratch bleed like a motherfucker. It makes you bleed fast and takes forever to clot. A normal nick that barely bleeds normally would look like a murder scene
Add in the adrenaline and it's really going to pump out.
The most logical explanation is (and always has been) a SS agent accidentally scratched his ear while he kept trying to stand up.
The most logical explanation is (and always has been) a SS agent accidentally scratched his ear while he kept trying to stand up.
There’s blood on his hand right after he touches his ear, before he even ducks down
Beyond physical injury, Trump's description of the event -- along with Wray saying the FBI is unsure -- really makes me lean toward it not being a direct wound.
Trump said he heard bullets "whizzing" by. A supersonic bullet directly next to your ear isn't going to make a whizzing sound like on TV; there's going to be a loud, distinct crack from the sonic boom as it passes by.
I fully believe Trump would be leaning into that hard if that's what he'd heard. "It was like thunder next to my head. The loudest thunder. The greatest thunder you've ever heard. HUEG thunder." It's exactly the kind of thing he loves to play up.
The sonic boom of a bullet is the second half of the sound we call “a gunshot”.
When you hear a gunshot, you heard a sonic boom.
I mean, the biggest reason is if he had an actual wound he'd be shoving it into every camera within a golf cart ride of him.
It would be all over the place. The only reason trump would cover it up, is if there was nothing there.
Who was he attempting to assassinate?
One conspiracy is that he was paid off to shoot up the rally and Trump would cut his ear WWE style to garner sympathy.
Edit: I do not believe in this theory btw
One conspiracy is that he was paid off to shoot up the rally and Trump would cut his ear WWE style to garner sympathy.
Emphasis: conspiracy theory.
Or that he hit his ear when the Secret Service tackled him.
Yeah, what if this whole thing was actually to kill Corey Comperatore.
The take-away here seems to be not that Herr Furher is stealing valor, rather, that he was standing adjacent to it.
Best photo of the ear we have right now, far as I can find:
::: spoiler Expand for bloody ear photo
:::
::: spoiler Bloody ear photo with lines drawn on it
:::
::: spoiler Photo of the same ear taken sometime on or before Jan 8 2019.
:::
Armchair analysis: Maybe it sorta looks like some of the helix (both tubercle and crus sides) flesh is missing from a graze?
I don't know what I believe, but it doesn't matter. I just want the facts.
For some reason I remember initial reports saying glass struck him.
It wouldn't honestly surprise me. This is where we're at.
I thought people had concluded that it was a glass shard from the teleprompter that the bullet hit. Is that debunked?
Afaik, it has neither been debunked nor confirmed.
It could have been a bee sting.
Amber Heard intensifies
Some of the footage shown on TV had something whizzing by in a still picture of the scene. This could be anything of course bullet or shrapnel or the thing I saw was simply fake.
I bet any amount of money that he cut himself while he was down on the ground
He has blood on him before he even ducks down you dense wet cabbage.
Whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear is 100% irrelevant. He was the target of an assasination attempt. A piece of shrapnel could easily have taken him out just as much as the bullet itself. Whether he lived or died was far more determined by the position his head happened to be at that moment vs. whatever object actually struck him.
Maybe they knew about the kid. Then they swapped the munitions with fake ones. Next they told felon Trump to duck if he heard a noise, and to slam a ketchup packet on top his ear?
It's plausible.
And the guy who died, his chest just spontaneously developed a hole containing lead and copper?
Okay we need another theory.
Whom vs who of ballistics dissembling. If it was a chunk of teleprompter that nicked him the bullet must have been only slightly off.
Just the fact that Trump said he was hit by a bullet leads me to believe it's not true.
Bake 'em away toys! Case closed!
What'd you say, chief?
Do what the kid says
I had people shit all over me for saying that his injuries were more consistent with the glass shards, saying I am a nutty as the conspiracy theorist people.
I was deployed, my buddies got shot and hit, that’s not what a bullet grazing wound looks like. Fracture mechanics is also a very messy simulation, and when you introduce that much kinetic energy into a rupture situation like glass the stuff flies everywhere.
And here we are.
But making this distinction doesn’t guarantee clicks, so let’s keep the headline from being too clear about it.
I think the FBI is saying they know where each round ends up and it's not in a trajectory that could have injured Trump. But they can't just say that to the Republican Congressman asking the question.
It's a distinction without a difference. "Trump wasn't injured by a bullet, he was injured by shrapnel from the bullet" doesn't let the FBI or the SS off the hook for missing this kid before he started shooting.
Yeah it's a stupidly thin hair to split, to the point where it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the bullet hit him or the shrapnel caused by the bullet hit him. The fact is there was a guy with a rifle within pissing distance. The government really fucked up.
Not that I'm either surprised nor disappointed by that fact. I personally suspect that the secret service treats the Trump detail as the dump assignment for all of the shittiest, bottom 1% of their security personnel.
Idk a lot of law enforcement is pro trump, they might have wanted the detail.
Yeah, and the ones that did are probably the bottom of the barrel.
He’s such a batshit narcissist. And rapist. And a fraud. And a crook, a pathological liar, vain to the point of gruesome, and many other qualities that explain how he’s running the entire republiQan party.
He wants to be treated like royalty. Like a Tsar. Like Putin.
Dementia Don the racist rapist with 34 felonies that can't complete a coherent sentence. He's too old to lead our great country, he needs to drop out. He can't even remember his own lies anymore, he's out of it. It's sad and embarrassing.
Yeah. It was in 2016 too!
The distinction here is hardly relevant.
It is relevant to history. You can either tell the Trump story that a bullet hit his ear, or you can say that he caught shrapnel.
The only way that would be relevant would be if there was a determination that the shooter was trying to do some kind of ad hoc false flag thing, as opposed to writing his own name into history. Everything we know at this point indicates that the latter is true, and the former is not.
Whether Trump's injury was the result of a fired projectile or a piece of shrapnel, the injury was caused by an assassination attempt.
We all know what really happened.
A trick he learned back in his WWE guest star days.
(This is meant as a joke, please do not be upset. I mean no disrespect to WWE fans.)
You know, it's funny because the moment I saw the picture where you could see a little blood, I thought to myself "did anyone make sure he didn't have a ketchup packet in his pockets?"
And sure enough, I'm never original...
I thought I was the only one whose first thought was that W wasn't surprised on 9/11 when I saw the clip of him being informed. Turns out a LOT of people had that thought. 😂
Not a ketchup packet, a razorblade
Reddit 2.0.... make fun of Biden.. BANNED for LIFE! Make fun of Trump... LOL, He's SO STUPID!!!!
Oh look, another conservative to never shut up on social media about how they can't say anything on social media, while somehow managing to be the biggest asshole in the room everywhere they go.
You weren't missed by anyone before showing up here, just FYI.
God forbid Lemmy have more than one opinion right?
My opinion is that I don't need your opinion.
I like presidential candidates that don't have 34 felony convictions. I also prefer them to not be convicted rapists. And if they could not sell our nuclear secrets to Russia and China, that'd be swell too.
F U C K D O N A L D T R U M P
If you REALLY think Trump is a felony and rapist..I have news for you about American politics...
Yes I would like to see your list of presidents and presidential candidates with felony convictions. Thanks!
By the way, did you know the modlog is public at Lemmy? So when you say things like I was just expressing my opinion and they banned me for being conservative, people can look that up.
https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=2167993
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=1385421
What does that mean? I'm talking about how easily people can express their hatred towards Republicans/Trump on sites like Lemmy and Reddit... but, they are NOT allowed to express those same feelings towards Biden and Democrats..
You seem to be doing OK.
Actually Biden is okay to make fun of, it’s Harris who you get banned for life now.
Try to keep up.
Says an account that does nothing but post crap about both.
You guys remind me of my oldest brother who continually claims that my house growing up had a rule that "once you're 18 you're out" but moved out of my parents' house at 23 years old.
I am your brother and I'm about to move back in.
Take my upvote...
The truth is still the truth, even if there is no material difference in the implications.
That's true.
It's also relevant because one of Trump's current campaign statements is that he "took a bullet for America" which may be another lie.
It would certainly neuter that (over)statement, but I honestly wouldn't go as far as to call that one a "lie" without some indication that he knew that it wasn't a bullet he was hit by. I don't think that even a reasonable person wouldn't come to the conclusion that "Shots were fired, at me, now my ear is bleeding all over my face" as "I was hit by a bullet."
I disagree.
The sheer number of lies he tells, what difference is one more? Especially an inconsequential one?
We’re all fairly sure it wasn’t the bullet, but glass, or shrapnel or whatever, but that buries the lede.
The point here is whether it was an assassination attempt or a false flag attempt (personally I think assassination) and that trumps own hateful rhetoric has created such a ridiculous scenario where this shit happens.
Because it's always important to point out the hypocrisy of his fake patriotic bullshit. Every lie should be pointed out, to everyone who will listen.
But then you lose the bigger point that his rhetoric and horse shit has lead us here.
You’re too zoomed in.
except if the shooter was just shooting into the crowd and hit like a railing or something then it wasn't an "assassination attempt" it was a mass shooting.
Frankly, it could be a mass-shooting anyway, simply one that had a high-profile figure as one of the targets. Apparently he had explosives in his car and some sort of remote detonation mechanism, so it was clearly about more than just Trump alone.
Not necessarily. To my knowledge, we don't know where any explosives would have been planted. He was seen wandering around the rally area a few hours before the rally. It's possible at one point he thought he could plant some explosives near Trump's podium or something so he gets taken out in the blast, and maybe abandoned that plan when he walked around and realized it wasn't viable.
IMO, there's nothing indicating he had any intents other than taking out Trump by any means available to him. Anyone else was probably either collateral damage in his mind, or "deserved it" for being Trump supporters in the first place. He may have decided that trying to snipe him from that rooftop was his most viable option, but it looks like he woke up that morning with at least two separate plans on how to go about it.
Fair. None of that speculation is inherently any better than the mass shooting speculation though, there's similarly zero indication he had anything personal against Trump. He even had potential dem targets in his search history. There's no sound evidence for anything so far, that I've heard at any rate.
Though I do think it's a little far-fetched that what appears to be an intelligent engineering student is going to think sneaking over and planting explosives is going to be a viable plan. That's a little video gamey.
It's a lot video-gamey. Let's be realistic.....the United States Secret Service just got owned by a 20 year old kid camping in one of the windows from Nuketown. The kid looks like he got beat up for his lunch money last week. Whatever plans were gong through his head, the plan he ultimately settled on involved him climbing to the one rooftop that the Secret Service somehow missed and was somehow able to not get caught until he fired off half a dozen or so shots. Everything he did that we know of so far looks like something a newbie would do the first time they played COD.
We'll of course never really know his true motives. Remember that despite all the speculation over political motives, Ronald Reagan's would-be-assassin did it because he was trying to impress a teenage Jodie Foster. For all we know, this kid could have woke up that morning and believed that Trump was Gargamel and it was his responsibility to kill him in order to save Smurf Village. Why he suddenly wanted Trump dead remains a mystery especially since he was supposedly a long-time Trump supporter, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe that his target was anything other than Trump himself, and maybe anyone who was just unlucky enough to be in the way.
Again, there is also no evidence he specifically wanted Trump dead and was not simply committing a blaze-of-glory act of terrorism for some misguided chance at fame. Having no evidence does not mean we default to one preferred interpretation.
Regarding the rooftop, from all indications he carefully scouted his method. The drone, the rangefinder, the ladder, etc. The building was local police's responsibility, as well, they actually even had a cop inside that very building. Regardless though, it certainly was embarrassing for the SS anyway, hence the director resigning.
No, but you at least go where what evidence you do have leads you. The kid fired off half a dozen shots, at least one of which came within an inch of killing him. If his plan were a mass shooting, bullets would have been sprayed everywhere. If his plan were to go for some blaze-of-glory shot at fame (or the most convoluted suicide-by-cop of all time) but didn't want to kill Trump, he could have just shot well above everybody's heads.
When you get that close with that many shots, it's more reasonable to assume that Trump was the target and he missed than it would be to assume that Trump wasn't the target because he missed.
Right. Which is why I think we both can agree the whole situation is video-gamey. The kid came up with an elaborate plan that was 100% reliant on the United States Secret Service somehow forgetting to cover that specific rooftop, and him being able to get all that equipment over there without a single bit of interference. If that isn't the stealth mission of virtually every first person shooter in the past 30 years, I don't know what is.
Oh absolutely. A lone 20 year old kid essentially playing out the plot of Call of Duty made the entire Secret Service look like a laughing stock live and in real time. There should have been a lot more than that director resigning.
Successfully shooting Trump would garner more fame than any of the other things you described. He unquestionably wanted to shoot Trump, I think. After Trump dropped down and got piled on by the SS, though, he seems to have begun shooting other people.
Trump stuck his head up once or twice after the Secret Service piled on. It's possible he was still trying to get Trump, but I will concede that it's also very likely he started firing randomly or at others to cause chaos and cover a potential escape.
I'll give them credit for piling on him though. They are very lucky that he didn't decide to just start shooting into the pile.
Not really. I'll give you a "for instance". Few people know this story.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Arutyunian.
In this case, although in danger, Trump was being shot at by someone who couldn't shoot.
Bush was thrown at by someone who couldn't throw
Got WAY closer than 60ft though.
I remember watching that and losing my shit.
Of course at the time, it was because I was a teenager and "haha president almost got hit by a shoe"
Now it's funny for different reasons, but still.
You know where "close" counts?
Horseshoes, hand grenades, and
The Secretnuclear weapons.Welease The Secwet Weapon!!!!
* Wewease
It's been a while since I saw that movie, lol
Cheers 👊😎
2 first downs is not exactly close.
No mention of it being "a training grenade [which] could not fire." Source?
??
In case you missed the rest of that very sentence:
Dont be in such a rush to rule this out lol. Ad hoc false flag should be Trump's middle names
He's always been a real ad war hoc
I think there's essentially no limit to what the shooter's motives could be. What was the Las Vegas shooter's motive? What was the motive at Columbine? There's a million possibilities. Narcissism, delusions, non-specific rage.
Sure, there's one conclusion that seems simplest, which is that he shot at Trump but missed. And if he grazed Trump's ear, that's almost certainly true. But what if it comes out that the FBI finds that the closest shot was over 10 feet away from Trump? If that happens, I think we'd be fools to continue to assume it was an assassination attempt.
The smartest thing anyone could say at this point is "I don't know".
That's still not very relevant. Either way he was shot at and his ear was hit. Whether or not it was a whole bullet, part of a bullet after the bullet hit something, or something that the bullet busted off that hit his ear is of minimal importance.
If it was shrapnel then it dispels the idea that if he'd turned his head just a few inches it would've been death.
And it makes the whole divine intervention thing seem less likely, but they are already reaching so hard anyways I'm sure they will just reach a bit further... it's a cult after all.
Lol yeah THAT'S what makes 'divine intervention less likely'
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle, too.
I am confused. Are you trying to say that your grandma gets ridden a lot?
Only by necrophiliacs now.
I have to admit, in all seriousness, that Fred Gwynne and my own father look very similar.
That man will forever live in my memory saying "What is a yoot?".
If my grandma had wheels she'd be a skank with wheels.
That fuckin chef on that good morning TV show. That clip is so funny
Or a car-hop at Sonic.
I mean, sure? But we are getting pretty far into "what if" territory that can never be known and doesn't really matter. If he was hit by a bullet, or shrapnel from a bullet doesn't change the fact he was injured by a shooter.
The only interesting thing about it might be that it once again points out the hypocrisy of the right.
They mocked John Kerry as undeserving of his purple hearts, and wore fake bandaids because he was hit with shrapnel.
We could climb that pile into orbit.
Space elevator might be out of reach but the space mountain is real.
It's an integral part of NASA's plan to return to the moon.
Yeah, this feels like a good headline more than useful information.
Clickbait?!? From The Daily Beast?!? Impossible!!!
I think what you're trying to say is that "either way he still survived an assassination attempt", which I agree with, but the details still matter.
It’s relevant to the folks who believe in divine intervention, isn’t it?
The folks who believe in divine intervention don't care about what actually happens in reality in any case, so no, it's not relevant to them, either.
I would think that the difference between it being a bullet vs a piece of glass would be the difference between divine intervention or not to many of them.
If logic worked on religious people, then there wouldn't be religious people. They will just say the bullet WOULD'VE killed him, but god stopped it and only hurt him with glass. God can't be proven or disproven, so those that want to see divine intervention always will.
Oh look, a non-falsifiable statement.
If you're someone who's going to claim divine intervention, it's to reinforce your own beliefs, and message to the people who hear you that you hold those beliefs. Glass vs. bullet isn't going to matter.
People who believe in fantasy and fairytales aren’t going to be swayed by the nuance of fact.
Do you have evidence for that?
It’s called the republican party
It's relevant in that Trump is probably dishonest again.
The situation is shocking enough if he was hit by glass in an assassination attempt, but they couldn't resist lying and saying the bullet hit his ear.
He was struck by...a smooth criminal.
Donny are you OK?
Are you OK Donnie?
Wanna be a baller, shot caller Twenty-inch blades on the Impala
A Secret service agent there said it was a piece of glass that sliced his ear which made a lot more sense with how it looks, and is in line with Trump's retelling of the story at the RNC, (he heard a buzz go by) but it doesn't really change anything from either side. Trump would have said Jesus personally blocked the bullet no matter what and getting hit by glass rather than a bullet doesn't make it much less traumatic of an event to imagine for those of us with empathy.
If it was a bullet, he should be missing part of his ear. It would probably look like Holyfield's ear post Tyson fight.
Glass from what?
Teleprompter
This has been debunked by snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/glass-from-teleprompter/
Ah good to see someone looked into it. It just struck me as odd to describe the bullet as a buzz. That's only true for a supersonic rifle round in my experience if it's unstable or tumbling, so if it was a ricochet or fragment from whatever else it hit. His descriptions of things aren't exactly reliable anyways though.
There's no way a bullet "grazes" an ear and it's not obvious... He'd be legitimately missing cartilage, he was seen golfing days later without even a bandaid on it
I don't think at any point any source has said he was shot.
Just that he was shot at, and came up with a bleeding ear.
Not saying he cut it himself, just that it probably got scratched at some point.
Due to Trump's age and, well, just everything about him, he's most likely on blood thinners. Which would make even a tiny scratch bleed like a motherfucker. It makes you bleed fast and takes forever to clot. A normal nick that barely bleeds normally would look like a murder scene
Add in the adrenaline and it's really going to pump out.
The most logical explanation is (and always has been) a SS agent accidentally scratched his ear while he kept trying to stand up.
There’s blood on his hand right after he touches his ear, before he even ducks down
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1e2q931/the_photograph_sequence_of_the_bullet_that_hit/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/photo-path-trump-assassination.html
Beyond physical injury, Trump's description of the event -- along with Wray saying the FBI is unsure -- really makes me lean toward it not being a direct wound.
Trump said he heard bullets "whizzing" by. A supersonic bullet directly next to your ear isn't going to make a whizzing sound like on TV; there's going to be a loud, distinct crack from the sonic boom as it passes by.
I fully believe Trump would be leaning into that hard if that's what he'd heard. "It was like thunder next to my head. The loudest thunder. The greatest thunder you've ever heard. HUEG thunder." It's exactly the kind of thing he loves to play up.
The sonic boom of a bullet is the second half of the sound we call “a gunshot”.
When you hear a gunshot, you heard a sonic boom.
I mean, the biggest reason is if he had an actual wound he'd be shoving it into every camera within a golf cart ride of him.
It would be all over the place. The only reason trump would cover it up, is if there was nothing there.
Who was he attempting to assassinate?
One conspiracy is that he was paid off to shoot up the rally and Trump would cut his ear WWE style to garner sympathy.
Edit: I do not believe in this theory btw
Emphasis: conspiracy theory.
Or that he hit his ear when the Secret Service tackled him.
Yeah, what if this whole thing was actually to kill Corey Comperatore.
The take-away here seems to be not that Herr Furher is stealing valor, rather, that he was standing adjacent to it.
Best photo of the ear we have right now, far as I can find:
::: spoiler Expand for bloody ear photo
:::
::: spoiler Bloody ear photo with lines drawn on it
:::
::: spoiler Photo of the same ear taken sometime on or before Jan 8 2019.
:::
Armchair analysis: Maybe it sorta looks like some of the helix (both tubercle and crus sides) flesh is missing from a graze?
I don't know what I believe, but it doesn't matter. I just want the facts.
For some reason I remember initial reports saying glass struck him.
It wouldn't honestly surprise me. This is where we're at.
I thought people had concluded that it was a glass shard from the teleprompter that the bullet hit. Is that debunked?
Afaik, it has neither been debunked nor confirmed.
It could have been a bee sting.
Amber Heard intensifies
Some of the footage shown on TV had something whizzing by in a still picture of the scene. This could be anything of course bullet or shrapnel or the thing I saw was simply fake.
I bet any amount of money that he cut himself while he was down on the ground
He has blood on him before he even ducks down you dense wet cabbage.
Whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear is 100% irrelevant. He was the target of an assasination attempt. A piece of shrapnel could easily have taken him out just as much as the bullet itself. Whether he lived or died was far more determined by the position his head happened to be at that moment vs. whatever object actually struck him.
Maybe they knew about the kid. Then they swapped the munitions with fake ones. Next they told felon Trump to duck if he heard a noise, and to slam a ketchup packet on top his ear?
It's plausible.
And the guy who died, his chest just spontaneously developed a hole containing lead and copper?
Okay we need another theory.
Whom vs who of ballistics dissembling. If it was a chunk of teleprompter that nicked him the bullet must have been only slightly off.