stevenpiziks | To Stage or Not To Stage

Was the press dinner attack staged?

Honestly, I'm on the fence. So much suspicious stuff here. The Secret Service let several seconds go by before they snatched Trump away, as if they knew he wasn't really in danger. Trump was so calm afterward (when is Trump ever calm after a major conflict?) and tossing out sales pitches for his ballroom. Karoline Leavit's husband told a reporter that she needed to stay safe at the dinner moments before the shots rang out. (An odd thing to say to a table-mate.) The President, Vice-President, and upper Cabinet members were ALL present, but the usual practice is to keep them separated so a bomb attack or mass shooter doesn't wipe them all out at once. Kash Patel, who's supposed to be running the FBI, sat calmly in the audience after the shooting. Why wasn't he flying out of there with his phone pressed to his ear, talking to his own agency?

On the "it wasn't faked" hand, how do you find a patsy to play the gunman? Who would be willing to sacrifice their life for some baboon PR? Well, there probably are a few people out there, but there's also this—what if the gunman was captured alive (as he was)? Now the hired patsy is going to be grilled extensively by the Secret Service and FBI before going to prison for long, long time. What's stopping the patsy from confessing? What if he gets tired of sitting in a prison cell and spills the beans? That seems an awfully big risk.

So I guess I'm leaning toward it not being faked, and the suspicious stuff with the Secret Service and the FBI is chalked up to the loss of experienced personnel due to the baboon's constant firings.

Here's the thing: the reason we are even talking about a conspiracy here is because the baboon and his followers have lied so much and so often, we are all on high alert for yet more lies. Our default setting is mistrust. It will be a long time before we can trust again.