Relatable Terrorism

 

Saw a Bluesky post yesterday morning alleging that the "exchange of fire" at the Washington Hilton Saturday night between the Secret Service and Metro Police and whoever and the Californian wouldbe assassin was all from one side, with the one Secret Service officer saved from serious injury by his bullet-proof vest having been hit by friendly fire when another of the cops was pulling his gun from its holster and it misfired.

Can't find the post any more, and it may have been deleted, possibly with good reason, because that bit about the misfiring doesn't sound right at all—but it's remarkably difficult to find reporting that contradicts the basic outline, that there was no actual exchange, in spite of most of the newspapers using the word, the gunman (Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance) never having gotten a shot off or even tried, as he was too busy running, presumably to get into the ballroom, but maybe at this point wanting to escape, so that the friendly fire story is mostly true; and a couple of the sources basically say so, delicately: Reuters

Closed-circuit TV footage released by Trump on Truth Social showed the suspect running rapidly through a security checkpoint, momentarily catching security personnel off-guard before they drew their weapons.

No shots were fired at the gunman who got through two checkpoints before being brought down.

"You know, he charged from 50 yards away, so he was very far away from the room. He was ​moving. He was really moving," Trump said after the gala ​dinner was canceled.

And VINNews ("VIN" short for "Vos Iz Neias" or "What's New" in Yiddish)

A volunteer at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner said a gunman appeared to prepare a weapon in a service area before gunfire broke out near the ballroom entrance, according to media reports.

The witness described the suspect moving from a little-monitored area toward the event space moments before shots were fired, triggering panic as guests and staff fled. The witness said numerous shots rang out, though that account has not been independently verified.

So he readied his shotgun in the service area and then tried to run right though the checkpoint and magnetometers, with no time to shoot, which makes some sense; the security forces shot (ineffectively, wounding one of their own but not badly), then caught up with him, tackled him, apparently stripping off his shirt (I suppose looking for additional weapons) and tying his hands behind his back, and left him on his belly while they moved on to emptying the ballroom of the dignitaries and other partygoers.

Gamechangers

Portrait of a bullet by Doug Mills, The New York Times, via Reddit.

Interesting report in Washington Post (this was a gift link from Bluesky that worked for me) on the presidential election campaign in Hungary, where the fascistoid incumbent Viktor Orbán appears to be in serious trouble:

Officers from the [Russian] intelligence service, or SVR, suggested that drastic action might be necessary — a strategy they called “the Gamechanger.” In an internal report for the SVR obtained and authenticated by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post, the operatives proposed a way to “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign” — “the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban.”

You know what it made me think of. 

I've never had any patience with the conspiracy theory of the assassination attempt on Trump of July 13 2024, because of all the uncontrollable variables: in the first place there really was a shooter, killed on the spot, of course, so his motives can never be investigated; the four seconds he was given before the local security team put him out of commission, he got off eight shots that hit either three or four people, killing Corey Comperatore and critically injuring two other audience members and probably grazing Trump's right ear (the hardcore conspiracy theory holds that he or somebody with him was prepared with fake blood to smear on his ear after he dropped to the ground). I don't see how the conspirators could have been certain that the shooter, who was clearly prepared to die on the spot, could be counted on to miss Trump, or that he could have come as close as he apparently did, if he didn't intend to kill him. The astonishing photo by NYT's Doug Mills showing a bullet flying toward Trump's right ear could conceivably have been doctored, but that would have expanded the necessary number of conspirators beyond plausibility to include the forensic analysts who decided it was authentic and Mills himself.