The perimeter around the Florida golf course where a gunman with an AK-47 style rifle was perched while former President Donald Trump played nearby was not secure because Trump isn’t the sitting president, authorities said.
The FBI is investigating the incident as the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life since July. The suspect is in custody.
During a news conference after the gunman was spotted pointing the nuzzle of the rifle through a chain-link fence toward the course, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the suspect was able to get within 300 to 500 yards of Trump because the former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee doesn’t get the same level of security as a sitting president.
“Well, you got to understand, the golf course is surrounded by shrubbery, so when somebody gets into the shrubbery, they’re pretty much out of sight, all right,” Bradshaw said after a question about how the gunman could get so close. “And at this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president. If he was, we would have [the area around the] golf course surrounded. But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible. So I would imagine that the next time he comes at a golf course, there’ll probably be a little bit more people around the perimeter. But the Secret Service did exactly what they should have done. They provided exactly what the protection should have been, and their agent did a fantastic job.”
Sunday’s incident occurred two months after Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Trump was grazed by a bullet in his ear in the Pennsylvania shooting just two days before the start of the Republican National Convention. The suspect in the earlier assassination attempt was shot ad killed at the scene.
The Secret Service was widely criticized for its lax security efforts after the Pennsylvania attempt. Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the U.S. Secret Service, resigned under heavy pressure.
Dan McCaleb is the executive editor of The Center Square. He welcomes your comments. Contact Dan at [email protected].
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Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker warned Friday on CNN that terrorists are “well embedded” within the United States, stating the threat level should be “higher” following an attack in Germany.
A 50-year-old Saudi doctor allegedly drove his car into a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany on Friday leaving at least two people dead and nearly 70 injured so far. On “Anderson Cooper 360,” Swecker was asked if he believes there is a potential “threat” to the U.S. as concerns have risen since the “fall of Afghanistan.”
“I think so,” Swecker said. “I mean, we’ve heard FBI Director Chris Wray talk about this in conjunction with the relative ease of getting across the southern border. And, you know, there’s no question that terrorists have come across that border, whether they’re lone terrorists or terrorist cells. And they’re well embedded inside this country.”
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“I’ve worked terrorist cases. Hezbollah has always had a presence here. They raise funds here, and they can always be called into action as an active terrorist cell,” Swecker added. “So I think the alert here, especially around Christmas time, is elevated. It probably ought to be higher than what it is right now, because I mentioned that complacency earlier. And I fear that complacency as someone who has a background in this field.”
Concerns over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the U.S. southern border have raised questions over the vetting process of illegal immigrants entering the country.
On Tuesday United States Border Patrol (USPB) Chief Jason Owens announced in a social post that an unidentified South African national who was “suspected of terror” was arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y. The illegal immigrant had originally been detained in Texas for criminal trespassing but was released due to the “information available at the time.”
In August an estimated 99 individuals on the U.S. terrorist watch list had been released into the country after crossing through the southern border, according to a congressional report. The report found that between fiscal years 2021 and 2023 USBP agents encountered more than 250 illegal migrants on the terrorist watchlist, with nearly 100 of those individuals being later released into the U.S. by the Department of Homeland Security.
That is what happens when “science” isn’t science at all and energy reality is ignored in favor of the prevailing narratives of the political left.
As Congress struggled with yet another chaotic episode of negotiations over another catastrophic continuing resolution, all I could think was how wonderful it would be for everyone if they just shut the government down and brought an end to the Biden administration and its incredibly braindead and destructive energy-policy farce a month early.
What a blessing it would be for the country if President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were forced to stop “throwing gold bars off the Titanic” 30 days ahead of schedule. What a merry Christmas we could have if we never had to hear silly talking points based on pseudoscience from the likes of Biden’s climate policy adviser John Podesta or Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm or Biden himself (read, as always, from his ever-present TelePrompTer) again!
What a shame it has been that the rest of us have been forced to take such unserious people seriously for the last four years solely because they had assumed power over the rest of us. As Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead spent decades singing: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Speaking of Granholm, she put the perfect coda to this administration’s seemingly endless series of policy scams this week by playing cynical political games with what was advertised as a serious study. It was ostensibly a study so vitally important that it mandated the suspension of permitting for one of the country’s great growth industries while we breathlessly awaited its publication for most of a year.
That, of course, was the Department of Energy’s (DOE) study related to the economic and environmental impacts of continued growth of the U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) export industry. We were told in January by both Granholm and Biden that the need to conduct this study was so urgent, that it was entirely necessary to suspend permitting for new LNG export infrastructure until it was completed.
The grand plan was transparent: implement the “pause” based on a highly suspect LNG emissions draft study by researchers at Cornell University, and then publish an impactful DOE study that could be used by a President Kamala Harris to implement a permanent ban on new export facilities. It no doubt seemed foolproof at the Biden White House, but schemes like this never turn out to be anywhere near that.
First, the scientific basis for implementing the pause to begin with fell apart when the authors of the draft Cornell study were forced to radically lower their emissions estimates in the final product published in September.
And then, the DOE study findings turned out to be a mixed bag proving no real danger in allowing the industry to resume its growth path.
Faced with a completed study whose findings essentially amount to a big bag of nothing, Granholm decided she could not simply publish it and let it stand on its own merits. Instead, someone at DOE decided it would be a great idea to leak a three-page letter to the New York Times 24 hours before publication of the study in an obvious attempt to punch up the findings.
The problem with Granholm’s letter was, as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board put it Thursday, “the study’s facts are at war with her conclusions.” After ticking off a list of ways in which Granholm’s letter exaggerates and misleads about the study’s actual findings, the Journal’s editorial added, “Our sources say the Biden National Security Council and career officials at Energy’s National Laboratories disagree with Ms. Granholm’s conclusions.”
There can be little doubt that this reality would have held little sway in a Kamala Harris presidency. Granholm’s and Podesta’s talking points would have almost certainly resulted in making the permitting “pause” a permanent feature of U.S. energy policy. That is what happens when “science” isn’t science at all and energy reality is ignored in favor of the prevailing narratives of the political left.
What a blessing it would have been to put an end to this form of policy madness a month ahead of time. January 20 surely cannot come soon enough.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
