NPR reports this morning that the shooter is not cooperating with investigators, so I presume he is not discussing anything about motives or opportunity, or intended target(s) for that matter. If he didn’t post about it anywhere, or write a diary or anything like that, we might never know.
I doubt it was staged. However, I do note that it got Trump out of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, while allowing him to claim that he was going to show up.
Huh. GIS Application Engineer here. I guess we types sometimes get too… focused on the desired result and not look at any of the intermediate issues.
I donno. I’ve always, always worked on the intermediate issues (you have a database to design, a GUI to design, you have hardware issues). No, a miracle will not happen. “Cool idea, how do we get there?” was what I said. Not “OK. Do it.”
It did, but I have a hard time thinking that would matter when his daily screeds and numerous other appearances on camera haven’t seemed to.
If it got to the point where he didn’t want to be there anymore, they would absolutely have made up an excuse after the fact for why he had to leave.
edit: I guess what I’m saying (though not specifically to you) is, why go to the effort of staging an assassination attempt, when you can just do whatever you want, lie about it afterwards, and nothing of substance will have changed. Call it the lazy man’s defense.
Surely he must have a “manifesto.” Doesn’t everyone? 
Now that you mention it, I just had a pop-up from the AP saying that (according to the president) they’ve found writings from the gunman stating that administration officials should be targeted. Oh, and he’s also “anti-Christian.”
And with the press secretary literally saying “shots will be fired” shortly before the event.
I’m not saying it’s staged, but it would be very easy for someone to (correctly or incorrectly) come to that conclusion.
An article discussing this:
But then I saw this on Reddit…I’m on the fence. It sure seems unusual. Is Trump’s incompetence extending into the Secret Service and making them incompetent too?
First of all, I am skeptical that attendees are cavity searched. Second, there were metal detectors here. That is as far as this guy got.
Key Question: How did armed man get so close to Trump WHCD event?
The kind of thinking in the Politico headline above confuses me.
The answer to the Key Question is obvious. The distance was determined by the location of the security screen point.
As to whether this point was “so close,” it wasn’t a bad point. It rather was at a good point.
Suppose that they had put the the security checkpoint at the entrance to the hotel. That would be less close. But there then would be whole bunch of hotel guests, past the checkpoint, who already have guns. There also would be sharp knives beyond the checkpoint, such as in kitchens.
Last night was a Secret Service success. Period.
I think it is safe to say that is hyperbole meant to indicate that security is usually very tight.
It remains that Trump somehow manages to get shot at more than any other president ever. As noted, Obama had no shortage of people who expressed their desire to kill him. How did Obama manage to avoid being shot at? Are liberal nutjobs just better at assassination attempts than conservative nutjobs who want to assassinate the president?
There is a strong whiff of “wag the dog” in all this. Again…I do not know. But these continuous “near miss” assassination attempts seem unlikely unless the SS is incompetent (and I do not for a second think they are incompetent).
It’s like saying “How did an attempted airplane hijacker make it to the security checkpoint at the airport with weapons and being on the no fly list?” Because the security checkpoint is where they do those checks…
Perhaps his spending cuts actually hurt necessary government programs?
In what universe does the Secret Service allow armed civilians inside, or outside for that matter, the secure perimeter?
What was the security perimeter here?
Apparently inside the venue but outside the room where the dinner was being held.
There was only one near miss wasn’t there? This was someone charging the security at the perimeter. The guy at Mar-a-Lago was just hanging out in a bush hoping for a shot. Was there another attempt?
Isn’t “outside the secure perimeter” literally the rest of the universe? How does the Secret Service eliminate all armed civilians there?
Or do I misunderstand you?
Immediately outside.
All the time? There’s no way to prevent people from having weapons outside the perimeter. To do that, you’d need another perimeter - and this guy would have been charging that one instead.