Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania
And the idiocy of the “staged assassination attempt” believers
As I get older, I have to shave my ears. I’m told that this annoyance of little hairs sprouting on the helix happens for lots of men as they age. One time I moved the blade too fast or angled wrong — and I cut my ear. Wow, so much blood when it was really just a nick. I learned later that a concentration of blood vessels that exist not just on the helix but on the entire ear accounted for the intense bleeding. I learned something new.
Which takes us to what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024: Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight shots at Donald Trump using a rifle his father bought for him. One of the bullets wounded Trump. You can see the sequence of events and mental states of Trump in the above photos. From left to right: a) lying to his fans, b) what th-, c) is that blood? Ronny Jackson, who acted as the White House physician during Trump’s first term, issued a statement on what happened. Can Jackson be trusted to issue an accurate report? I’m no fan of Jackson, but I see no active reason to disbelieve him.
I’ve had people tell me to get a grip because cartilage doesn’t grow back. Listen, if you’re going to craft a conspiracy, you have to get at least some facts straight. One fact is that nobody said anything about a part of Trump’s ear getting blown off. What Trump experienced was, in essence, a severe scratch. The bullet grazed his helix; it did not puncture his ear; it did not create an entry and exit wound.
“Whatever. The whole thing was staged anyway! The Secret Service was in on it. It’s a conspiracy!”
Let’s be clear about what the word conspiracy means. Instead of directing you to a dictionary, I’ll keep this simple by pointing to an awful day in American history: September 11, 2001. There was a conspiracy that led to the attacks; a group of men conspired to commit the atrocities of that day.
And it’s important to keep in mind that many things had to fall into place for the plan to work: the guys had to arrive in the States without raising suspicions; they would take flight classes but put little focus, if any, on learning how to land a plane — which didn’t raise any suspicions; they had to show up at the respective airports to board the planes. All sorts of things had to be executed perfectly for them to carry out their appalling mission.
If you’re going to hawk a conspiracy, you can’t just scream “It was a setup!” and think that’s it. You have to own the thing. You have to own the event down to its smallest details. Fortunately, there’s a record of what happened in Butler: Reporters were there, photographers were there, and the shooting was broadcast on TV. So let’s take a closer look at those photos by Doug Mills (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work that day) that you see above to see what we might find there.
In the photo on the left, you can see a streak in the air: the bullet that grazed Trump. “Come on. That’s Photoshop!” Oh, so Doug Mills and his employer decided to insinuate themselves into photographic history with a lie? “Doug, put a streak in there to make it seem like Trump was shot.”
And notice something else about that first photo. Trump’s hand is clean. If this shooting was staged, how did the blood suddenly appear on his hand, as we can see in the third photo? Are you suggesting a magician’s blood capsule was rigged to his ear and that at the right cue — the rifle shots — Trump pushed the capsule to yield blood? How was the capsule rigged in advance? And how is it that nobody noticed it as he approached the stage?
“I don’t know how they did the blood, but just look at the Secret Service. They let Trump raise his arm in triumph. They allowed Trump to have this moment. They were in on it. It was part of the act.”
To which I ask you to look at a video of Trump pushing away the prime minister of Montenegro at the United Nations. Trump wouldn’t even deign to look at Duško Marković as the man got shoved aside. And then there’s Trump’s obnoxious tugging of his jacket. “I’m the boss here!”
What does Trump’s behavior at the NATO summit have to do with Butler, Pennsylvania? One word: arrogance.
Trump is self-aware enough to know when to seize a chance to do something in front of the cameras that he knows will be used to make him look good. After the Secret Service received an all-clear from other agents and got Trump to a standing position, what do you suppose Trump was thinking? Was it “Am I okay?” “How injured am I? “Am I going to die?” “Is everyone else okay?” (Heh, as if he’s ever shown genuine concern for anyone.) No. Here’s what Trump was thinking: “This can work for me.”
The Secret Service is nonpartisan in its work, but they know full well that Trump is a blowhard who will do what he wants. And so Trump, ever the intuitive tactician (I’m unhappy to say he is often a brilliant marketer), “shoved” the agents in order to give his big gesture. “I’m invincible!”
Make no mistake, the Secret Service had the upper hand and would rush Trump off the stage, but for those few split seconds during that melee, Trump saw an opening, literally, and used it to his advantage. Trump’s gesture after surviving an assassination attempt was simply of a piece with his blustering I-own-this-space arrogance that we saw on display at that NATO summit.
And now for the worst fact of that day: Corey Comperatore, an attendee at the rally, was killed.
And what about the victims who were injured? Are doubters suggesting the Pennsylvania State Police, with its report on who was injured and who died, was in on the act? That the Secret Service was in cahoots with the police with some advance notice? “Listen, we’re working on a staged attack to gin up some sympathy for Trump, but we have to take somebody out and injure a couple of people to make things look real. Just report that one guy was killed, that two others were wounded, and leave the rest to us.”
Let’s now look at all the key players involved in this alleged cover-up: the Secret Service, the Pennsylvania State Police, Doug Mills, the New York Times, Ronny Jackson, the people who run the Pulitzer Prize Board, and, let’s not forget, the special effects guy who got Trump to bleed on cue.
That’s a lot of people conspiring to pull off a big lie. But never mind about all these individuals and institutions when there’s a more glaring and obvious question that needs to asked: Is there any evidence to suggest that Trump was acting that day?
While you’re giving that question some thought, I’d like to remind you of this old exclusive from The Onion, “America’s Finest News Source”: “KENNEDY SLAIN BY CIA, MAFIA, CASTRO, LBJ, TEAMSTERS, FREEMASONS – President Shot 129 Times from 43 Different Angles.” You might want to check that out.
Barry Lyons is a New Yorker who writes about almost anything that strikes his fancy: the Beatles, the five Indiana Jones movies, how to use the apostrophe s, and the true meaning of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
