Two weeks ago, former President Donald Trump was nearly killed by an assassin's bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania. Former fire chief Corey Comperatore was killed in the crossfire, and two more men, James Copenhaver and David Dutch, were injured.
It was one of the biggest stories of 2024 (perhaps the biggest), and it gets even more frightening as more information is uncovered. The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, managed to get 150 yards from Trump, with a clear line of sight, while apparently evading detection from the Secret Service and local law enforcement even as witnesses were pointing him out.
He had a rangefinder and had scouted the area with a drone beforehand. He was spotted but not stopped or fired on sooner, and the rally was allowed to continue as normal.
Oddly, if you look it up on Google, there is no autofill result for the shooting. If you type in "Trump assassination attempt" or "assassination attempt on Trump," you see no results before hitting search.
This…is…insane.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 28, 2024
@Google is engaged in active election interference.
They are gas-lighting the American people & trying to erase the attempted assassination of Trump. pic.twitter.com/g2h8DzkDON
People on X have already been discussing it at length, and I did it myself just to see if they were right.
Sure enough, nothing came up other than links I had visited before.
An X Community Note claims that "Google disables auto complete on sensitive topics and developing situations to prevent the spread of misinformation. Topics such as immigration, abortion, Trump's assassination, and transgender issues," but Google's policy on autocomplete does not back that up.
Right as this story was breaking, a local SWAT officer present at the Butler rally, Jason Woods, confirmed via ABC News that the Secret Service did not communicate with them until after Crooks had already fired.
There was supposed to be a face-to-face meeting as well, but that apparently did not happen either.
WOAH.
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) July 28, 2024
The local SWAT team from Butler, PA claims they had NO COMMS with Secret Service prior to the shooting.
They were supposed to meet them upon arrival and it never happened.
Something smells rotten.
pic.twitter.com/TGTsiaBVtY
Last week, as part of my day job, I wrote about how Representative Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) visited Butler to assess the site as a former firefighter and SWAT officer. He noted that the Secret Service and local law enforcement are not on the same radio frequency, which is "normal because you cannot have everybody on the same channel."
That part at least makes sense since too much chatter can prevent clear communication, but the apparent lack of communication between the Secret Service and Butler police just raises more disturbing questions.
I am not endorsing the theory that the assassination attempt of Trump was an inside job, but as I said last week when writing about former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle's hearing with House Oversight, the way federal authorities are acting makes the theory look more and more plausible.
It is a theory that is disturbing to entertain but one that we, unfortunately, cannot discard, considering how our government has been acting for a very long time.
I do not expect that we'll ever get the full truth about what happened on July 13.
