Wild Mother - the online alias of a woman called Desirée - lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.
About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.
The two women are poles apart politically - but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.
Their views on the shooting in July and the apparent foiled plot earlier this month were shaped by different social media posts pushed to their feeds, they both say.
I travelled to Colorado - which became a hotbed of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen - for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Why Do You Hate Me? USA. I wanted to understand why these evidence-free staged assassination theories seemed to have spread so far across the political spectrum and the consequences for people like Camille and Wild Mother.
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The part that gets me is how utterly unbelievable it is that the Secret Service did not secure a nearby roof with a clear line of site to where Trump would be speaking and then allowed a kid with a rifle to climb up there during the speech and they didn’t notice? Cops noticed. Audience members noticed. But the Secret Service didn’t? They just didn’t notice a huge gaping hole in their defenses while guarding a former president and current candidate? I know the saying is that you shouldn’t ascribe to malevolence what can be adequately explained by incompetence, but come on. Incompetence just cannot do this kind of heave lifting.
I mean… the Secret Service hasn’t exactly been exuding competence these past few years…
They frankly don’t have the manpower to secure every rooftop, that’s not a reasonable expectation. He was spotted earlier on the roof supposedly, but they can’t simply start shooting at every guy on a roof. A guy on a roof at a public gathering is not a confirmed threat.
Now if they saw his rifle because he had lifted it, instead of keeping it laid down, that would look suspicious to me.
That could certainly be the case but they were working with other law enforcement agencies and have already admitted that they did not give clear instructions to local police that the rooftop needed to be secured.
Also,
No, but a guy on a roof with a rifle, particularly a rifle pointed at the target you are supposed to be protecting, sure as hell is a confirmed threat. Had they been paying attention to that roof, they certainly would have shot him before he got any shots off. Just like the agent in Florida started shooting immediately when he saw a rifle barrel sticking through the fence at the golf course.
Yes, if a rifle is sighted. He crawled up to the peak of the building, he was not particularly visible. If you watch the video, the secret service snipers were already scanning that direction with motivation, so they were aware something might be up. Likely looking for visual confirmation of a gun.
There was not much time between when he peeked the roof and when he started firing, partially because an officer comes the roof and saw him, which rushed the shooter. If the police officer hadn’t dropped off the roof when the shooter turned to him, that might have prevented the shooter. But I don’t necessarily feel your average cop has enough training to move towards danger with a high likelihood of being shot in that situation.
More important, in my opinion, is the fact that the secret service snipers do/should have that type of training and FLINCHED AWAY FROM THEIR SCOPES/RIFLES AND HAD TO RE-ACQUIRE THE SHOOTER after he had already started shooting. That was the most insane part to me, and definitely cost them several vital seconds. Their training definitely didn’t show in that moment.
Don’t even get me started on them letting Trump have a photo op before the area was secured with his head and chest fully exposed, unmoving, and perfectly silhouetted seconds after an assassination attempt or the 5’5 agent hiding behind the podium and then pretending to give body coverage to someone a foot taller than they were. Not like the upper chest and head are vital areas or anything.
Lots of huge mistakes that day. It’s no wonder the head of the secret service resigned.
Agreed. But until a rifle is sighted all you could do is call it in and have someone go check it out. You also wouldn’t want to just focus in and watch the guy when you’re supposed to be watching an entire area for any potential threats.