The investigation into the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 is far from complete.

At this writing, the FBI is interviewing witnesses and collecting video at its website. Unclear is whether would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks — who hit Trump in the ear, murdered firefighter Corey Comperatore, and wounded two others — acted alone. That is far from certain, given the remarkable coincidental security lapses that offered him a clear shot at the former president from less than 200 yards.

But supposing that Crooks was a lone gunman — i.e., that a conspiracy of insiders did not set up Trump to be assassinated — only one conclusion is possible: The GOP presidential candidate was nearly assassinated by a 20-year-old kid thanks to a combination of bureaucratic incompetence fortified by diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Secret Service, and years of Democrat and leftist vilification of Donald Trump as a Hitler, a dictator, and an “existential threat to democracy.” And much of that vitriol included violent language, such as the words “bullet,” “bullseye,” and “take him out.”

What followed the attempt was worse: Social media exploded with leftists who were sad or furious that Crooks didn’t kill Trump. 

Maybe Trump isn’t the threat to “democracy,” such as it is in 2024. Maybe the real threat is the people who wanted — and want — him dead.

Secret Service Saw Crooks Long Before Shooting

Crooks fired at Trump from a rooftop some 150 yards away. Trump grabbed his ear, then Secret Service agents tackled him and rushed him off the stage. A Secret Service countersniper killed Crooks with a headshot. Pandemonium ensued at the 50,000-attendee rally. Comperatore’s family went home without a husband and father.

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation about the assassination attempt came from CNN a few days later. Secret Service agents had Crooks on their radar three hours before the assassination attempt.

At about 3:00 p.m., he was at a security gate to enter the rally. “He first aroused suspicion when he passed through the magnetometers carrying a rangefinder, which looks similar to a small pair of binoculars and is used by hunters and target shooters to measure distances when setting up a long-range shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation,” CNN reported.

As well, the network reported, though the Secret Service lost track of him, countersnipers had him in their sights before he opened fire:

Around the same time witnesses alerted police that Crooks was crawling on the roof of the American Glass Research building, one of the four counter-sniper teams observed Crooks looking at their position through the rangefinder, according to the senior law enforcement official.

“They were looking at him while he was looking at them,” the official said.

Crooks gained access to the rooftop by climbing on top of the building’s air conditioning system and hoisting himself up, according to a senior federal law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

CNN also reported that Crooks’ father had reported him missing and told agents he had gone to a shooting range.

That lapse in security was followed by another. The building from which Crooks fired was a staging area for police. Not surprisingly, local cops spotted Crooks almost 30 minutes before he shot Trump and the others, Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate WPXI reported. One cop photographed Crooks and called the sighting in.

The station further reported:

According to multiple sources, a law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture prior to 5:45 p.m. Our sources tell us an officer checked the grounds for Crooks at that point, but did not see him where the first picture was taken.

Twenty-six minutes later, the station reported, Crooks opened fire.

CBS News elaborated with more details that show Crooks should have been stopped, and not just because rallygoers frantically told law enforcement he was on the roof, as myriad videos show.

“A local law enforcement officer with direct knowledge of the incident told CBS News three snipers — local tactical teams, deployed to assist the U.S. Secret Service — were stationed inside the building the shooter used in his attack,” the network reported:

The operations plan had them stationed inside the building looking out windows toward the rally. 

One of the local snipers inside spotted the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, outside and looking up at the roof, observing the building and disappearing, according to the officer. Crooks came back, sat down and looked at his phone. At that point, one of the snipers took a picture of him. Crooks took out a rangefinder and the sniper radioed to the command post. Crooks disappeared again and then came back a third time with a backpack. The snipers called in with information that he had a backpack and said he was walking toward the back of the building.

Officers believe that Crooks might have used an air conditioning unit to get on top of the roof. By the time other officers came for backup, he had climbed on top of the building and was positioned above and behind the snipers inside the building, the officer said.

Two other officers who heard the sniper’s call tried to get onto the roof. State police started rushing to the scene, but by that time, a Secret Service sniper stationed in a building behind the former president had already killed Crooks, firing off one round, according to multiple law enforcement officials.

Before those reports were published, The Associated Press revealed that a cop saw Crooks on the roof but retreated when Crooks aimed at him. Crooks then opened fire and Secret Service countersnipers killed him.

Contradicting CBS and citing an unnamed Secret Service source, NBC reported that “the local SWAT team was not in the building that Crooks climbed, and instead was in another building in the same business complex.” 

Local Cops Handled Perimeter Security

Another mistake was the agency’s giving the job of perimeter security to local cops.

The Secret Service works with local police on presidential visits, but in this case, that clearly wasn’t wise, The Washington Post reported:

It is standard practice for the Secret Service to ask local police to secure the outer perimeter of public events involving the president and senior officials, and the agency frequently seeks to augment its teams for candidates’ events.

But some experts on Sunday questioned whether adding local units — who may not receive the same level of training as Secret Service agents — could create risks given the profile of Trump and the enmity he has engendered among his detractors.…

The Secret Service had two of its counterassault agents on the scene and filled out the rest of the typical platoon with at least six members of Butler County tactical units, [Secret Service spokesman Anthony] Guglielmi said. Two Secret Service countersniper teams were on the scene, but two additional teams that had been recommended for adequate protection at the rally were staffed by local units, he said.

As well, “in the days before the event” the agency knew the rooftop was a spot from which the president could be shot, NBC reported, citing two anonymous sources. “The Secret Service was aware of the risks associated with it,” the sources said:

“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” said one of the sources, a former senior Secret Service agent who was familiar with the planning. 

The Secret Service worked with local law enforcement to maintain event security, including sniper teams poised on rooftops to identify and eliminate threats ... Guglielmi said. But no officers were posted on the building used by the would-be assassin, outside the event’s security perimeter but only about 148 yards from the stage — within range of a semiautomatic rifle like the one the gunman was carrying.

The Secret Service had designated that rooftop as being under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement, a common practice in securing outdoor rallies, Guglielmi said.…

The former senior Secret Service agent also said that even if local law enforcement “did drop the ball,” it’s still the agency’s responsibility “to ensure that they are following through either beforehand or in the moment.”

“Just because it is outside of the perimeter, it doesn’t take it out of play for a vulnerability, and you’ve got to mitigate it in some fashion,” the source added.

Another former agent, Anthony Cangelosi, who guarded 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told NBC he wants to know how Crooks got “onto that roof undetected.”

The fist pump seen ’round the world: As former President Trump exited the stage after a bullet struck him in the ear, he implored the rallygoers to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” (AP Images)

He said that “mistakes were made” and that the attempted assassination was “preventable.”

Continued NBC:

Although it’s common to task local law enforcement agencies with patrolling outside an event’s security perimeter, Cangelosi said, the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that all vulnerabilities are covered rests with the Secret Service.

If officials had placed an officer on the building where the gunman fired from, Cangelosi said, chances are he “wouldn’t even attempt what he attempted.”

“You don’t surrender the discretion of what’s supposed to be done to the local police,” he said. “In other words, you guys have the outer perimeter, but you would want to say, ‘We need an officer on that roof.’ Not ‘that’s your responsibility; do what you see fit.’”

Rallygoers Warned Cops

Yet beyond that remarkably strange series of events, rallygoers warned cops about Crooks. A crucial witness named Greg spoke with the BBC at length.

He noticed Crooks “bear-crawling” to the roof some 50 feet away:

We’re pointing at the guy crawling up the roof.… He had a rifle. We could clearly see him with a rifle, absolutely. We’re pointing at him. The police are down there running around on the ground. We’re like, “hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle.”

Police didn’t seem to know what was happening, but Greg and others continued to point at the man. “Right here on the roof, we can see him from right here. We see him. He’s crawling,” Greg said.

“I’m thinking to myself … why is Trump still speaking.” He continued: 

Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I’m standing there pointing at him for you know, two or three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I’m pointing at that roof.… And next thing you know, five shots ring out.

Greg said he is “100 percent” certain the shots came from Crooks. Crooks was there at least three or four minutes, he said:

We were telling the police. We were pointing at him for the Secret Service who were looking at us from the top of the barn. They were looking at us the whole time when we were standing by that tree [with] binoculars.

Another witness said he told police about Crooks as well.

“I was standing there like everybody else, waiting for Trump. And as Trump started, I noticed two officers that were looking for something or somebody,” the man told CBS:

So I was looking around myself and seeing a guy on top of one of the buildings go in between one building to the next and went and told the officer that he was up there. And when I went back to my spot, I heard that people could still see the person from where they were standing. So I checked that out and I went back to tell the officer that if he came over there, he could see them. And when I turned my back is when the shots started and then it took me a second or two to figure out exactly what it was. 

Multiple videos show rallygoers pointing at the roof where Crooks lay in ambuscade.

DEI at Secret Service

Those details, of course, don’t explain how Crooks stationed himself just 150 yards away from Trump on top of a building occupied by local police. Nor do they explain why Crooks wasn’t stopped before he opened fire given that agents saw him with a rangefinder three hours before he tried to assassinate Trump.

That aside, the news reports have avoided one glaring problem with the protective detail around Trump. Thanks to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, it included at least three women who clearly panicked and didn’t know what they were doing.

Video showed that one woman couldn’t holster her gun, another danced about, seemingly clueless, and a third fiddled with her sunglasses and adjusted her coat.

A still photo of a female agent seconds after the shooting showed her cowering behind the agent — a man — who covered Trump.

That raises the question of just what’s happening at the Secret Service, with women in two of the top three slots. 

One example of what’s happening is the female agent on Vice President Kamala Harris’ detail who attacked fellow agents at Joint Base Andrews. A former Dallas cop who sued the police department for discrimination, the agent went berserk and even attacked her superior. Experts said a woman with her background should never have been hired, and wouldn’t have been before the age of DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

A petition at Change.org said the woman was not only nuts, but also incompetent:

Most shocking is a report that this agent failed the situational judgement course, known as “Hogan’s Alley”, where agents are placed in a series of simulated ambush exercises and then evaluated on their ability to correctly discern between the “bad guys vs innocent civilians” in their decisions to shoot or not shoot pop up targets during various training scenarios. At the time, the Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of the Rowley Training Center was Kimberly Cheatle, before becoming Director of Secret Service. Director Cheatle reportedly decided to not heed the warnings by the tactical range instructors and instead authorized this agent’s graduation from training in support of filling the quota to support the 30x30 pledge.

The 30X30 pledge is Cheatle’s vow to ensure that 30 percent of agents are women by 2030. Last year, CBS revealed that the disgraced director permitted a female YouTube influencer to train with agents.

Said Cheatle, “I’m very conscious as I sit in this chair now of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce and particularly women.”

Missed opportunity: Though Secret Service countersnipers killed would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, no one was stationed atop the building from which Crooks fired. (AP Images)

No wonder a seemingly mentally disturbed woman was cleared to serve on the protective detail of the vice president. No wonder “Secret Service Barbie” — so dubbed in a video of her repeatedly failing to reholster her sidearm amid the confusion in Butler — was cleared to “protect” a 6-foot-3-inch man who weighs some 215 pounds.

Adding to the suspicion that Cheatle herself is either incompetent or lied about the crime was her excuse for not posting agents or local cops on the roof from which Crooks fired.

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” Cheatle weakly explained to ABC News. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

A former Army Ranger, Sean Parnell, called Cheatle’s excuse “total BS” and accused her of “absolute incompetence” — as did others.

Cheatle has mulishly refused to resign. She was scheduled to appear before the U.S. House Oversight committee on July 22.

Unalloyed Hate

But Cheatle’s focus on hiring weak, incompetent women over highly trained former Marine Raiders or Army Rangers and her permitting local cops to handle presidential protection only explain how Crooks nearly killed the 45th president.

What might have inspired him is another question. Answer: At least eight years of vilification directed at Trump from top Democrats and the leftist, hate-Trump news media.

President Joe Biden, who said political rhetoric had to cool after the shooting, is no innocent bystander on that count.

“I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump,” Biden said in a phone call to big donors five days before the attempt on Trump’s life, Politico reported:

I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.

“We must stop him,” he wrote on X on July 2 over a photograph of Trump with the false message that “DONALD TRUMP VOWS TO BE A DICTATOR ON DAY ONE.”

In late June, Biden delivered this message about Trump on X:

Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation.

He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.

The day before their presidential debate, Biden said Trump opined that “Hitler did a lot of good things.”

“Let’s be clear about what’s at stake in 2024,” he said last year. “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy.”

Also last year, Biden’s campaign stated that Trump “channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.”

In June, just weeks before Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump, the Democratic Party’s War Room offered this: “Donald ‘Dictator on “Day One”’ Trump Is an Existential Threat To Our Democracy.”

“He [Trump] must be stopped,” former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “He cannot be President.” 

Former Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill said Trump is worse than Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

“A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship,” McCaskill said:

The difference, though, I think, makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in. He is not trying to expand the boundaries of the United States of America. He’s not trying to overcome a neighboring country like Putin is in Ukraine. He is not going through some grandiose scheme of international dominance. All he wants is to look in the mirror and see a guy who’s president.

Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat, promised to “take Trump out” and encouraged violence against his aides and Cabinet members.

As for the leftist mainstream media, in June, the cover of the The New Republic featured Trump caricatured as Hitler. “Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways,” the magazine explained on X. “We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’”

“If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said last year.“The Jew, Hitler wrote, ‘poisons the blood of others.’ … Donald Trump’s language mirrors this directly,” Tapper said in December 2023.

Former Republican Joe Scarborough, host of the eponymous Morning Joe gabfest on MSNBC, accused Trump of going “full-on Hitler.”

And that rhetoric is nothing new. It goes back to 2015.

To cite just one example, Rick Wilson, a founder of the hate-Trump Lincoln Project scam, whose key players covered up a boy-grooming scandal, was clear in 2015: “They’re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.”

As for celebrities, they are open about their desire to kill the 45th president.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a president’s official acts are immune from prosecution, the leftist media immediately began pushing the narrative that Biden could order Trump’s assassination and get away with it.

Hollywood lunatics joined in. “Joe, you’re a reasonable man,” said lesbian “actress” Lea DeLaria:

You don’t want to do this. But here’s the reality: This is a f***ing war. This is a war now, and we are fighting for our f***ng country. And these a****les are going to take it away. They’re going to take it away. Thank you, [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence “Uncle” Thomas. Joe, you now have the right to take that b***h Trump out. Take him out, Joe. If he was Hitler, and this was 1940, would you take him out? Well, he is Hitler. And this is 1940. Take him the f**k out! Blow him up, or they’ll blow us up. Facts.

Years ago, “comedienne” Kathy Griffin famously posted a photo of herself holding what was supposed to be Trump’s decapitated head, while actor Johnny Depp and has-been singer Madonna both fantasized publicly about murdering Trump.

“When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” Depp asked, referring to John Wilkes Booth, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.

“Yes, I thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House,” Madonna said.

And that’s only a tiny sampling of what leftists and Democrats said and say about Trump.

Post-assassination-attempt Hate

Leftists did not hide their glee that Crooks nearly succeeded. Social media exploded with commentary from top Democrats, university professors, and nobody leftists who expressed their anger and frustration.

One of the most prominent Democrats was Jacqueline Marsaw, an aide to Mississippi Representative and 1970s insurrectionist Bennie Thompson. “I don’t condone violence, but please get some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time oops that wasn’t me talking,” she wrote.

Thompson, who led an effort to pull Trump’s Secret Service protection, fired her.

The Libs of TikTok X feed collected a barrelful of hate that ended in the firing or suspension of many teachers and health professionals.

“A for effort,” wrote crackpot Democrat Jess Branas, a former aide to Pennsylvania House member Heather Boyd. Boyd fired her, but she remains a councilwoman in Upper Darby.

Colorado state Representative Steven Woodrow deleted his account after writing this: “The last thing we needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.”

Still employed by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, apparently, is Tyler Barbieri. “Too bad he missed,” he wrote. Barbieri received a two-week suspension without pay.

“Missed him by that much,” wrote Kenneth Gucker with a meme from Get Smart, the 1960s spy spoof. Gucker is a Democratic candidate for the Connecticut House of Representatives.

Biology professor Shoshanah Jacobs “teaches” at the University of Guelph in Canada.

“When 4 inches really matters,” she wrote over a photo of the assassination attempt. She also ridiculed Comperatore, the firefighter who died while protecting his wife and daughter.

Another deranged pedagogue, John James of the Catholic Bellarmine University, wrote this: “IF YOU’RE GONNA SHOOT, MAN, DON’T MISS.” He too was suspended from his job.

“Too bad it didn’t hit him square” wrote Tony Bendele, a firefighter in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.

Bendele did the right thing and resigned.

Unknown social-media leftists were just as nasty:

“Just got out of the movies and for a split second I thought Donald Trump had been assassinated and I thought to myself this is the best f****** day of my life. And then he wasn’t. So it’s the worst day of my life.”

“I think we forgot to mention when we were asking for, you know, someone to bring back assassinating presidents like they used to. We forgot to mention that they have to have good aim.”

“You literally had one job. One f***ing job. A job that lots other people wish they could have. And you had it and you missed. How the f**k did you miss? Not only did you miss, you didn’t even graze him. You didn’t even pinch the b**ch.... I hope your parents are truly disappointed in you.”

“RIP Thomas Crooks,” Cyberclops wrote on X. “Rot in hell Donald Trump.”

Professional “anti-racist” and Trump hater Tim Wise thinks the assassination was staged.

“That fist pump sh*t after Trump was ‘shot’ is too perfect” Wise wrote. “No way someone thinks to do that after an assassination attempt. It’s what a MAGA script writer would write though.”

Wise’s words of wisdom appeared verbatim elsewhere.

Days after the assassination attempt, the violent rhetoric continued. Former Biden aide Kate Bedingfield, now spewing her hate on CNN, said Democrats must “turn their fire on Donald Trump.”

In response to those Democrats who said the attempt on Trump’s life was an awful thing and that political violence is unacceptable, writer Glenn Greenwald answered with a good question.

“I still don’t understand the response of Dem officials and liberal pundits,” he wrote:

If Trump is Hitler, who will build concentration camps for his critics and never permit another US election — all of which they claim — why would they lament this attack and pray for his recovery?

Good question. But a better one, again, is why Crooks wasn’t stopped.