Assassin Assessin'
Assassinating Trump
I will start today’s post with a return to the one on the attempted assassination of US presidential candidate, Donald Trump, that I sent out early yesterday (Monday, July 15). The original, for reasons that are unclear to me, was never sent out, as scheduled, by Substack to all my subscribers (free as well as paying). So I am repeating it here but, at the same time, I am developing and updating it:
I don’t believe this (the attempted assassination) was a set-up as, clearly, such an operation would have been suicidally dangerous. I have some sympathy for those who suspect an element of theatre, given the unususal presence of mind that Trump displayed in exploiting the events in support of his candidature, and the immense publicity advantage that this lends to his campaign, especially on the eve of the Republican convention. But I do not at this moment have any evidence whatsoever that would support this view other than noting, further down, the otherwise extraordinary failure of the Secret Service to protect Trump.
Let’s then, for the time being, rule out the Trump camp itself as a potential culprit. I don’t think it likely that Ukraine’s SBU would have been up to this, disappointed as Ukraine is with the prospect of a Trump presidency. Certainly, the SBU is hardly a contributor to global moral fiber, and the Chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, has recently boasted that his service has several times attempted to assassinate President Putin. (Putin, by the way, has had several opportunities to assassinate Zelenskiy but, obviously, has not done so). But in the matter of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, I don’t believe that Ukrainians would have had the necessary internal connections nor competence for such an operation. And the consequences, had they been discovered, would have been disastrous for Ukraine and for the Banderite cabal that runs it. So let’s rule that out.
Of course, we have the classic “loony lone gunman” theory, whose silliness in the case of JFK (another classic Secret Service debacle) disastrously undermined the credibility of the Warren Commission and, in many people’s eyes, marks the crucial transition of the US from Republic to Deep State Autocracy. In this case, if we stick to lone shooter theory (already disclaimed, I read earlier today, by some witnesses), we have to make sense of the astonishing degree of incompetence of the Secret Service. Any analyst who thinks at the present time that he or see can afford to digest this simply as another example of the cock-up theory of history (whether to avoid being tarred with the brush of conspiracy theory or for some other reason) is behaving unprofessionally, especially given that it has been highly predictable that an attempt might be made on Trump.
The most obvious potential beneficiaries, if we are skeptical about the usual “loony lone gunman” theories, are the Democratic Party, with the collaboration of the Deep State and national security operatives who are embedded within it (proof - see the Russiagate hoax involving the FBI, in particular, alongside other intelligence agencies, both domestic and British, in a host of lying shenanigans against Trump). Were there any connections of this kind to the attempted assassination then of course they have gone seriously awry. Instead of removing an opponent from the picture, they have ended up greatly consolidating positive public perception of him, very much as happened with the attempted assassination of Charles De Gaulle by the OAS in 1962 in protest against De Gaulle’s support for the independence of Algeria. But plotters tend to presume their plot will be successful and perhaps do not typically give sufficient thought to the aftermath of a failure of their plans.
In discussion between Judge Napolitano, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson early on Monday, the following considerations surfaced - speculative perhaps, but pertinent and hardly ridiculous:
(1) The shooter was seen by local police out in the open, heading for the building from which he would shoot, openly carrying a rifle. He was apparently intercepted in some way by a local police officer who backed off when the gunman pointed his rifle in his direction. Perhaps it was “just assumed” (!?) that the shooter was a security operative. But how is it even possible that an officer who has just had a rifle pointed in his direction would not rush to warn colleagues and Secret Service agents, in the time between spotting the gunman and the gunman’s firing?
(2) A ladder was reportedly in position for the shooter to climb to the roof. Did the shooter himself do the preparatory reconaissance necessary to identify this position as the one most likely place for an attempt to be made? How did he know that there were not secret service operatives already on the roof? If there were no secret service operatives on the roof, why not? Did the secret service depend entirely on its counter-sniper team, located to the rear of Trump?
(3) We have a supposed sniper, Jonathan Willis, who claims to have had the assassin in his sights for three minutes, but that the “head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took shots at President Trump.” Clearly, more needs to be known about this person and, if genuine, to which wing of security he belonged, and we need verification that the story is true.
Nobody by the name of Jonathan Willis is employed by the U.S. Secret Service, agency spokesman Nate Herring told FactCheck.org by email, and FactCheck notes that the Willis post was sent to 4Chan, a source also for the QAnon conspiracy theory.
As of yesterday morning, the whereabouts of this person were apparently unknown, nor the whereabouts of the head of the secret service. Nor were the whereabouts known of an alleged red-haired man who had spotted the sniper on the roof and had tried in vain to attract the attention of any security operatives. The New York Times today reports that there were several witnesses who tried to get the attention of the authorities to the presence of the gunman on the roof. If it is true that the sniper was in the sights of secret service operatives, then Trump should have been removed from the stage at the very instant at which this knowledge was obtained.
If there was partisan Deep State involvement, then of course this will not be the first time, given what we should understand are the facts of Dallas, 1963. In the light of the Russiagate hoax, the FBI should be the very last body tasked with an investigation of this matter. And of course we can go back a long way to the scandals of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Thomas Merton, in none of which can it be said that the FBI provided exemplary evidence of professionalism. Nor do the histories of either the Warren Commission or the 9/11 Commission (and I am sure there were other, comparable instances) recommend themselves as effective channels of inquiry.
The Approaching Trump Presidency
Taking the events at a prima facie level, we can say that Trump handled this event with exceptional presence of mind. Alexander Mercouris, commenting on this yesterday, even called Trump’s behavior “heroic.” Mercouris has been very critical, and to some extent justifiably, in my view, of the “lawfare” waged against Trump, first in the matter of Russiagate, then in the matter of Trump’s reluctance to cede power following the Biden win in 2020, as well as over such matters as “shush” payments, pressure on election officials, abuse of classified documents, exaggeration of wealth to secure loans, etc.
While we can decry the political persecution of Trump there are also many features of his history and personality and behavior that are, in my view, deeply troubling. First of these does concern his indirect role, at least, in inciting a potential coup d’etat on January 6 2021, having already and I believe uniquely, shown extreme tardiness in acknowledging the Biden victory. I note that the FBI found scant evidence that the US Capitol attack was coordinated. But Trump has made various comments that suggest an proclivity to autocracy, not to say dictatorship, to retribution against his perceived enemies, a vengeful taste for violence, dishonesty, sexual abuse and outrageous nepotism, all very good reasons not to want to support him as president.
In 2016, as today, Trump has shown an ability to think outside the box of neocon-strapped foreign policy thinking. It is quite likely or at least reasonably conceivable that he would bring an end to the war in Ukraine, if the Deep State finds itself on this occassion unable to subdue his unconformity (it was very successful in this regard after 2016). The Financial Times today comments that a Trump-Vance team will herald a weakening of European-US security ties and perhaps even an end to NATO.
But it seems to me too much to expect that Trump - who inaugurated the US economic war against China - will resist the neocon drive for (suicidal) war with China (in the context of its alliance with Russia and the other members of the SCO/BRICS community). And he has shown himself to be petulantly unpredictable and dangerous in other spheres of foreign policy, including the destruction of what was otherwise an extremely promising agreement with Iran and his order to assassinate Iran’s most prestigious military leader, Suleimani. All of these disturbing personality traits will be nourished by the impunity recently granted him (and his successors) by Trump and Bush appointees to the Supreme Court. It is simply not enough, nowhere near enough, to say that the tool of impeachment still exists. That merely reduces high crimes and misdemeanors to the vagaries of politics, not to the rule of law. Worst of all, possibly, is Trump knee-jerk support of Israeli Zionism, even in the face of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
So, the long-touted system of US-style “democracy” (and, believe me, there are many other formulae for democracy) has presented us with a choice between Genocide I-run-the-world Stumbling Joe and Genocide I-Want-to-Rule-the-World Fist-Thumping Don. Somehow even less an appealing choice than the more conventional choice between two Uniparty candidates for Corporate Capitalism and Plutocracy. Does either one of them really matter if the country fumbles along without a functioning president or even one who behaves, as did those students confronting Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial all those decades ago, as though he has no control over anything, really?
One thing, at least, that is certain about the assassination attempt on Trump is that the Secret Services, like so many other US institutions, including its military, judicial, educational, religious and other institutions, no longer work in the way that they were intended.
President Putin has said in the recent past that if he had a preference between the two US presidential candidates it would be for Biden, on the grounds that Biden is more predictable (I guess he means predictably awful) whereas Trump, in effect, is a wild card (unpredictably awful). I somehow think he would now prefer Trump given Trump’s indications that he wants to pull NATO or at least the US out of Ukraine. How Trump is going to do that, as I argued in a recent post critiquing the peace proposals being canvassed by his advisors, is by no means clear-cut. On the other hand, what Putin’s Russia needs (and possibly wants) is something far more ambitious than a deal on Ukraine namely, a new global security order negotiated with all world powers.
I suspect that Alexander Mercouris, who rarely has much to say that is critical of Russia and whose sympathies appear to lie with Trump, is also expressing a mainstream Russian view in the sympathetic analysis he offers today of Trump, Vance and the Republican Convention. Trump has today been formally introduced to the Republican Convention, and has announced his choice of Vice-President as Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. Mercouris recalls that Trump’s previous VP was Mike Pence, a more mainstream establishment figure, whereas Vance comes from the same wing of the party as does Trump and can be described as a “conservative realist.”
Vance is skeptical of the European and neocon “domino theory” of Russian expansionism; he was critical of the Congressional $61 billion subsidy to Ukraine in March; he thinks that Europe will have to learn to live without knee-jerk US support for the conflict in Ukraine and decide how it is going to live with Russia in the future. Vance on occasion has also indicated that he thinks a future conflict with China is inadvisable. Vance’s reputation as level-headed, hard-working and intelligent may recommend him more to the American people than Trump himself, and is already being fingered as a potential President in 2028.
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I am pleased to report this call from Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Zepp-LaRouche Calls for Organizing a ‘Council of Reason’ of Elder Statesmen To Stop the Drive for Nuclear War
“The world is still in a state of shock. The only reason the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump failed, was because of the extremely accidental movement of his head by a fraction of an inch, so that his ear, and not his eye, was hit. Had that movement not occurred, the shot could have been Sarajevo 2.0 for throwing the U.S. and subsequently the world into chaos, followed by a global nuclear war.
“The next three and a half months will be a period of maximum danger, escalation of military conflict around Ukraine and Southwest Asia, increasing ungovernability in France and possibly other countries, increasing financial turbulence, and above all the escalating danger of a direct military confrontation between `Global NATO’ and Russia and China.
“Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary started an exploratory mission to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing, and found that the road to diplomacy does exist. We therefore call on Elder Statesmen, religious leaders, former diplomats and elected officials, retired military and other civilian leaders—from all nations—to step forward and create a Council of Reason to explore the potential for a new international security and development architecture, which can take into account the interests of every single country on the planet.”
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In a discussion with international associates today, Zepp-LaRouche discussed the organizing challenges posed by the global crisis, including the shocking attempted assassination of Trump. “I think this is a very good image for people to reflect on. That may be how far we are from the total annihilation of the human species.… The world’s fate is as fragile as this accidental movement by Trump’s head. If one reflects on that, it should send shivers down your back. Because that is the reality, and it should help people wake up from their complacency about what is obviously the most dangerous moment in history ever.”
The attempted assassination of Trump occurred scarcely 48 hours after the July 9-11 NATO summit concluded in Washington, D.C. That meeting activated a policy of replacing all sovereign governments—including that of the United States—with a supranational military structure under NATO command, with the British in the catbird seat. A major feature of their gameplan is to render the United States itself ungovernable, to unleash a “strategy of tension,” including orchestrated violence and chaos.
Was the assassination of Donald Trump intended to kick that off? Was there deliberate security-stripping at the Butler, Pennsylvania event to facilitate the job?
We don’t yet know the answers to those questions. But what we do know is that the “Global NATO” policy is consistent with that; and we also know that the only way to stop their policy of destroying all semblance of sovereignty and development is to organize a new international security and development architecture. The International Peace Coalition’s Declaration of Independence from Imminent Nuclear War: Begin Negotiations for Peace Now lays out a pathway to bring that about, beginning with initiating discussions and then negotiations along the lines proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his June 14 peace proffer.
A “Council of Reason” of Elder Statesmen from around the world can be a decisive catalytic force in furthering that process.
Zepp-LaRouche concluded her discussion with associates today by stressing that such a new approach is urgently needed if mankind is to be saved. “If we stay within the confines of `I belong to this party and can only talk to this person and think this,’ as long as you are staying within that kind of a corset, we are all doomed. We somehow have to catalyze this discussion about what a new paradigm really means in terms of sovereignty, elimination of poverty, health systems, infrastructure, credit system, education—a different way of thinking.” She insisted that “these are the issues which are important, and people have to be organized to think along these lines. And that coincides with what the Global Majority is attempting to do.” It is the methodology of Lyndon LaRouche that has provided us with a way of thinking, which breaks with the axioms of reductionist thinking and “has taught us not to believe any one doctrine, but how the progress of science has moved forward from one thinker to the next, and how that became the self-enriching manifold of which there is no end. That’s the beauty of it.”
Zepp-LaRouche concluded: “We are at the end of an epoch: 500 years of colonialism are coming to an end irreversibly. At the end of it, it’s either a new paradigm or World War III. And I don’t see any middle ground to that.”
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Battlefields Note
The first items of the list of agenda items for today’s talk by Mark Sleboda on The Real Politik says a great deal about the current near collapse of either the Ukrainian army or Ukraine or both (even if Zelenskiy is in high spirits about the “success” of Ukrainian mobilization and the promise of monetary aid from the US, the EU and the interest on frozen Russian assets held mainly in Europe):
Many Ukrainian Men Die Trying to Flee Kiev Regime Conscription to Fight West’s Proxy War Against Russia
Ukrainian Men Desperate to Escape War Are Drowning as They Flee
Thirty men have died trying to leave Ukraine to avoid fighting since war started | Reuters
Ukraine’s desperate draft-dodgers drown in the river of death (economist.com)
Ukraine Says Guard Shot Dead Deserter At Moldova Border | Barron's (barrons.com)
https://t.me/SputnikInt/61771NATO Officials Demand Kiev Regime Conscript Ukrainian Teenagers to Fight West’s Proxy War Against Russia
Ex-NATO ambassador tells Ukraine to conscript teenagers — RT World News
The Miitary Summary Channel today leads on the very hot weather that is being experienced in Ukraine right now, and its impact on the fighting along the combat line. There is little evidence of any progress on the ground. The heat is exacerbating problems with the electricity supply throughout Ukraine, with blackouts of 24hrs duration in many areas. Might this lead Russia to conclude that it has done sufficient damage to Ukraine’s energy system for the time being and until Winter, which itself will make things very difficult for Ukraine, or until the beginning of some kind of negotiations?
The main activities in the current season are Russian artillery attacks and FAB bombing. Russian has been bombing towns in the Sumy, Chermihiv and Kharkiv areas (including on Chervona Zoria close to the border in Kharkiv) and on Kharkiv itself, perhaps in retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian border villages yesterday, which have occasioned some blackouts there as well. There has been a Ukrainian (drone?) attack on a factory in Korenevo, in Russia’s Kursk area. Russia has also been bombing Ukrainian concentrations and supply roads to the West of Vovchansk. In Vovchansk itself, Russia has recovered a section in the southwestern cone of the northern sector that was reported yesterday as taken by Ukraine. More details of battlefield conditions will be shared later in the week.