If that counts as an attempt, I suspect there have been many more “assassination attempts” on various people, but we’ve never heard about them because they were thwarted and the Secret Service doesn’t want to publicize the methods they use to thwart them.
A role playing game? Lightning bolt?
Rocket-propelled grenade
Disagree, because they prosecute in a case like this, and the trial would get news coverage.
The stories I am seeing mostly use phrases like “apparent assassination attempt.” And it certainly is apparent to me. Making an issue over whether it was assassination attempt strikes me a something only a partisan political opponent would do. While is fully OK to be a partisan political opponent, when a candidate for office is the apparent target of an assassination plot, I think it best to throttle back the partisanship.
Assuming the truth of reports that the would be assassin never got to Trump’s line of sight, I applaud the Secret Service for getting this right. One thing I am seeing in the news, that I do not like, is calls for increasing the number of Secret Service staff, as if they did something improperly. More staff, or a different plan, would not have led to a better result.
I suspect the calls for more staff, etc., fall into the “We’ve got to do SOMETHING!” category.
Because he missed.
The media wants Trump to win, but Trump is self-destructing right now and that’s becoming less and less likely. Since he got a bump in the polls the last time he got shot at, they’re ginning up a stalker in the bushes into an “assassination attempt” to try to revive some of the old magic and get people to stop talking about his recent attempts to provoke a race war.
I’ll put forth a three-part test to determine if an assassination attempt counts.
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The person has to have an intent to kill the target. Being in the vicinity of the President with a gun doesn’t count unless you’re planning on shooting him.
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The person has to make some attempt towards carrying out the assassination. It doesn’t count if you never get past the planning stage. It also doesn’t count if your plan is something like “I’ll just sit on my front porch with my gun and if the president happens to drive by one day, I’ll shoot him.”
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The person has to have some chance of success. Being within shooting range of your target with a loaded gun counts. Being within shooting range of your target with a knife does not count.
I don’t think we can assume that all cases of attempts on candidates’ lives make the news. Or even that all cases of attempts on sitting Presidents and VPs make the news. There are likely to be many examples in which a would-be perpetrator has provided enough evidence of their intentions for prosecution, and are indeed prosecuted. But because they didn’t get to a stage of the attempt that provides video, the prosecutions don’t fit the news-business definition of “ratings-grabbers.”
And as Thudlow says, the Secret Service doesn’t necessarily want all their sources or methods or actions to be made public. Same for the FBI.
There’s some dispute about this. If Ryan Routh was actually lurking in those bushes for a full twelve hours, as some have said, then a fuller complement of agents could have walked the entire grounds on a foot-by-foot basis, and rousted him out long before Trump teed off.
How long before Trump showed up at the golf course was the SS notified he’d be going to the Golf course?
I don’t know, but I hope that will be revealed. If the goal is to scrutinize the Secret Service, that’s certainly a relevant question.
(No one would be surprised if Trump basically gave them NO notice–just declared he was going there and got in the limo.)
But to my point: if, hypothetically, the SS had three times the number of agents that they DID have, then those extra people could have been walking the course while Donald was schmoozing at the club house in advance of teeing off. It could have been done starting at the tee-off point and then progressing through the grounds—IF they’d had the personnel to do it.
Without getting too hung up on the word attempt, here is another person who…wanted…to assassinate Trump. Happened in July 2024 and he recently was charged with murder for hire and just pled not guilty.
ABC News: Suspect pleads not guilty in alleged murder-for-hire plot against Trump:
A Pakistani national with ties to Iran pleaded not guilty Monday to federal charges alleging he attempted to commit an act of terrorism and murder-for-hire as part of a scheme to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
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Merchant sought to hire hitmen who could carry out the assassination of Trump and others, the indictment alleged…After Merchant paid the $5,000 to the “hitmen,” the indictment quoted one of them saying, “Now we’re bonded,” to which Merchant allegedly responded, “Yes.” The undercover officer then stated, “Now we know we’re going forward. We’re doing this,” to which Merchant allegedly responded, “Yes, absolutely,” according to the indictment.
One thing I’m curious about lying in the bushes for 12 hours. Assuming it wasn’t really known that Trump would be going there that day, was the guy just spending his days lying on a golf course just in case?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Trump’s decision to play golf on Sunday morning wasn’t as spontaneous as it has been reported (or, perhaps as it seems). I mean, what else was he planing to do on a Sunday morning, go to church?
No, I suspect the only question about whether or not Trump was going to play golf on Sunday morning was exactly who he was to be playing with and exactly when he was going to start. So, no his playing golf wasn’t exactly a planned event, but it probably surprised nobody that he did.
I’m starting to think he may not be making rational decisions with his life.
I’d made a post in the MPSIMS thread about the incident, quoting a WaPo article, in which it was discussed that part of the Secret Service’s challenge in protecting Trump is his predictability: he tends to golf on Sunday afternoons, at whatever of the golf courses he owns is nearest to where he’s staying.
If one knew he was staying overnight at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, it would be a very good guess that he’d be golfing at that particular course of his the next day.
Edit: gift link to the WaPo article below
Oh but I like it!
Well, the golf game would probably go better than if he’d campaigned for the job he wants so badly.
Trump understands how golf works. When you lose, you just keep loudly whining that you won and eventually the other guys say “whatever” and then you’re the winner.
Trump just doesn’t understand why politics won’t work like that.