This article was originally published by Micahel Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog. 

The more we learn about the attempt to kill Donald Trump, the more questions we have.  Over the past couple of days, I have been digging very deeply into what just happened.  To be honest, what I have discovered is extremely alarming.  At this point, there is a growing consensus that either the Secret Service was grossly incompetent or some sort of very insidious plan was being carried out.  I am going to share facts that have been documented, and I will allow my readers to come to their own conclusions.

First of all, we have learned that a very large ladder was propped up against the AGR building.  I find it difficult to believe that the Secret Service could have missed someone climbing up this ladder onto a roof that had a direct line of sight to the platform…

Chillingly some images show a ladder, hidden by dense shrubbery, propped against the side of the AGR building, leading directly to the rooftop across which witnesses later told law enforcement they saw Crooks scramble.

The images of the strategically placed ladder have emerged as Secret Service admit they did not sweep the building where the shooter took his position, but instead entrusted that role to local law enforcement officers.

Secondly, ordinary people in the crowd were pointing to the shooter on the roof well in advance, and apparently one police officer even went up there to investigate…

Supporters in the crowd allegedly alerted police to the man, crawling onto a nearby building with a rifle in hand, and were ignored.

And perhaps most shocking of all, one report claims a local police officer confronted the shooter on the roof before climbing down – seconds before Trump was hit.

The moment that it was discovered that there was a man with a gun, Trump should have been whisked off the stage.

Why that didn’t happen is a total mystery.

And why didn’t the police officer who confronted the shooter on the roof take action?

Instead, he reportedly went back down the ladder when the shooter pointed his rifle at him…

Not long before shots rang out, rally-goers noticed a man climbing to the top of a roof of a nearby building and warned local law enforcement, according to two law enforcement officials.

One officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer.

The officer retreated down the ladder and Crooks quickly took a shot toward former President Donald Trump, just 130 yards away.

I realize that this police officer was not a member of the Secret Service, but this is still extremely shameful behavior.

I am sure that this police officer will regret not taking action for the rest of his life.

If you are in that position, you have to take the bullet.  That is your job.

Of course, it should have been impossible for a shooter to be on that roof in the first place because Secret Service personnel should have already been stationed there.  This is something that former FBI agent Bobby Chacon has commented on…

Bobby Chacon, a former FBI agent, shared his confusion that the rooftop had not been secured considering how close it was to the stage.

He told The Sun: “I am very surprised that the rooftop used by the gunman was not secured and locked down.

“The rooftop was the closest high ground point with direct line of sight to the stage on which Trump was speaking. I think there was an error in planning and it would not have taken much resources or manpower to secure that rooftop.”

According to the Secret Service, securing that particular rooftop was the responsibility of the local police…

The Secret Service blamed local police for failing to secure the rooftop from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, insisting it was outside the perimeter the federal agency was tasked with protecting.

Instead, securing and patrolling the factory grounds of AGR International Inc. — located about 130 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking Saturday — was the responsibility of local Pennsylvania police, Secret Service representative Anthony Gugliemi said, according to the New York Times.

That is a bunch of garbage.

Any elevated position that has a direct line of sight to the political figure under their care should be the responsibility of the Secret Service.

Anyone that would suggest otherwise should be fired.

We have also learned something else that is quite alarming.

According to CNN, a forensic analysis that has been conducted “suggests that as many as three weapons were fired”…

Forensic analysis suggests that as many as three weapons were fired at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The FBI said Sunday that the shooter acted alone.

The first three shots were consistent with alleged weapon A, the next five were consistent with alleged weapon B, and the final “acoustic impulse” was emitted by a possible weapon C, per audio analysis by Catalin Grigoras, director of the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado in Denver, and Cole Whitecotton, Senior Professional Research Associate at the same institution.

It appears that the first three shots were fired by the shooter.

So who fired the subsequent shots?

Were they all fired by the Secret Service?

Hopefully, we will get some solid answers.

For more questions that we do not have the answers to yet, please see an article that I posted yesterday entitled “10 Burning Questions That Every American Should Be Asking About The Trump Shooting”.

For the remainder of this article, I want to examine why it took the Secret Service so long to protect Trump.

When President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, the Secret Service agents around him responded instantly.  Here is video footage of those fateful moments…

 

 

That is how things are supposed to be handled if you have competent people running the show.

Now compare the footage of Reagan being shot to footage of Trump being shot…

 

 

The first thing that jumps out at you is that Secret Service agents are much too far away from Trump.

From this point forward, that should be corrected.

Agents should be able to get their hands on Trump in the blink of an eye if something happens.

Once Trump is hit, it still takes them several seconds before they get to him.

If it had been a competent shooter with a proper weapon, Trump could have been hit a dozen times by then.

In such a scenario, Trump wouldn’t have had a chance of surviving.

Did the Secret Service agents closest to him hesitate?

I don’t know.

But I certainly never want to see them guarding Trump again.

Of course, the shooter never should have been able to get any shots off.

As Clayton Morris has documented, snipers had the shooter in their sights for 42 seconds before the first bullet was fired at Trump…

 

 

If a man on a roof is pointing a rifle at Trump, you have got to take the shot.

Period.

But according to White House correspondent Susan Crabtree, the Secret Service has orders not to engage until the first shot is fired…

The blowback against the Secret Service started within the hour of the assassination attempt and continued even after Trump and other credited the agency with saving Trump’s life by quickly killing a shooter crawling across a nearby rooftop.

But a source within the Secret Service community tells RealClearPolitics that the agency rules of engagement in this situation are to wait until the president is fired upon to return fire.

I don’t know who came up with these rules of engagement, but they are idiotic.

Thankfully, the sniper that ultimately took out the shooter had very good aim…

The Secret Service protocol requires that a counter sniper aware of a potential shooter to radio directly to intelligence division team to respond and investigate. In this case, the investigation may have been cut short by the shooter firing his weapon, so the counter sniper then fired as quickly as possible in return.

The source praised the counter sniper who acquired the target and responded within three seconds, calling their performance “incredible.”

“The counter snipers are highly trained and extremely accurate,” he said.

If Trump would not have moved his head at the last moment, he would not be with us today.

Shockingly, many on the left are very upset that the shooter missed.  In fact, a member of Jack Black’s band was asked to make a birthday wish and he responded by saying “don’t miss Trump next time”…

Black is seen presenting his Tenacious D band member Kyle Gass with a birthday cake during their performance at the ICC Sydney Theatre in footage shared with Yahoo News.

“Make a wish,” he urges, with Gass then seen blowing out the candles and says in a hushed tone, “Don’t miss Trump next time” — causing the crowd to erupt. While some are heard laughing and clapping, others are less impressed.

I cannot understand how people can think like that.

But the truth is that we are now more divided as a nation than we have ever been in my entire lifetime.

For years, Democrats have been directly comparing Trump to a certain German dictator, and now the unthinkable has happened.

In the end, everything that has happened probably makes it quite likely that Trump will win the upcoming election.  One “senior House Democrat,” told Axios that lawmakers in his party have pretty much concluded that a second Trump presidency is now unavoidable…

But the second senior House Democrat offered one reason for why it might: “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

We shall see what happens.

There is still a long way to go until November, and a lot can still happen.

In fact, while I was writing this article there was another twist.  Trump has officially announced that J.D. Vance will be his running mate…

After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country. J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….

Let us hope that Trump and Vance take great care during the difficult months that are ahead of us because we have now entered a period of great chaos for our nation and for the entire world.

Now that people have seen how easy it is to get a shot at Trump, it is probably inevitable that there will be more attempts.

Hopefully the next time there is a threat the Secret Service will not be slow to respond.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.