The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a political rally in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, Saturday implies a colossal failure on the part of the Secret Service, his sworn protector.
A gunman, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, apparently managed to crawl, with his weapon, onto a roof with a direct line of sight to the former president, who was a few hundred yards away. Even though numerous media reports suggest bystanders saw what he was doing and sounded the alarm with the authorities, he got off several shots at Trump.
Crooks appears to have missed either killing or seriously injuring Trump by a matter of inches; one person at the event was killed and another seriously injured. None of this should have been possible, and the agency and its head, Kimberly Cheatle, must now expeditiously explain the reasons for this failing and their plans to ensure it does recur.
That’s especially true since the Republican National Convention starts Monday in Milwaukee with the Democrats to follow next month in Chicago. Understandably, there now must be a renewed focus on security at both events; political violence of this nature does not impact only the famous but ordinary people in attendance. There now is more evidence that some fear is justified. Bullets, we all have learned, can travel far.
We don’t doubt that Trump’s affinity for sprawling and relatively porous outdoor rallies made things significantly more challenging for the Secret Service, and we are glad that Trump is safe, seemingly unbowed and still plans to go to Milwaukee, as he should. Nonetheless, this does not exactly look like the agency’s finest hour.
For ordinary Americans enjoying a summer Saturday, the event was a severe shock and yet another unanticipated jolt in an unstable and abnormal presidential campaign season more befitting a fragile democracy than one that bills itself as the greatest in the world. Most of us are aware of the hatred in the air and the calcification of what once were healthy differences of opinion into the sort of sectarian hate that can signal the young to do the wrong thing.
The Democrats have said they will take down their ads demonizing Trump for a short while, as well they should, and it is hard to know what effect, if any, the events Saturday night will have on the campaigns. That can wait.
But this cannot.
Americans are sick and tired of gunmen, often young gunmen, with access to weapons and deadly intent, haunting and bloodying their collective gatherings of all stripes, be it a campaign appearance by a presidential candidate or an initially joyous July 4 parade in a small town.
The people seek a solution.
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