International
Former Secret Service agents describe ‘apocalyptic security failure’ at Trump event
Police vehicles near the site of the Butler, Pa., venue where President Donald Trump was speaking when he was struck in the ear by a bullet in an assassination attempt
From The Center Square
Former U.S. Secret Service agents and security experts argue the Secret Service’s failure to prevent an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Saturday was “apocalyptic,” exhibiting a “massive security breach.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, has called for a congressional investigation. Multiple members of Congress are asking how a shooter ever reached a rooftop of a building to fire a shot at Trump, including U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Florida, an Army veteran and counter sniper for the State Department who coordinated protective details for then Vice President Joe Biden, Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush.
The assassination attempt on Trump was “a massive security breach,” Mills told CNN. The distance between the shooter and Trump was roughly 400 to 500 feet, “which is nothing for a shot adjacent to the stage of the president,” he said. “There was no one on that building, … in the building, standing next to the building to ensure there’s no access to the building,” he said. If there were, they “could have prevented this shooting.”
In an interview with Fox News, Mills said that the shots fired were the kind that soldiers learn in basic training boot camp and are “requested to make within nine weeks. This is one of the easiest shots.”
He said his job at the State Department involved working with an advanced team to establish a perimeter and “identify areas of threat that you would be able to mitigate … whether it be a building, … a lone tree … a parking lot. … Bottom line is this is massive negligence.”
Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi has said agents responded quickly and the agency “added protective resources and technology and capabilities as part of [Trump’s] increased campaign travel.”
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino questioned this claim, asking on Fox News, “Which ones? You’re telling me the best technology you have was deployed and you missed a shooter 130 yards away … and even worse, it’s broad daylight on a white roof.”
He asked if there was forward-looking infrared deployed and if there was aerial support like drones and helicopters.
Bongino also pointed out that Trump “knew to duck … and saved his own life. That’s just a fact. The evacuation did not go right. The rule with the Secret Service is ‘cover the protectee’ and evacuate. The other rule is ‘maximum to the protectee, minimum to the problem. … Because you don’t know that’s the only problem. It could be a distraction. There could be another person in the crowd … you could be looking at multiple shooters.”
“The failure here is absolutely catastrophic,” he said, calling on Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle to resign immediately. He said Secret Service “absolutely resolutely 100% failed. This was an apocalyptic security failure. … An uneventful failure is never a success. The fact that Donald Trump didn’t die … is no reason for anybody to take some kind of victory lap.”
Former Secret Service agent Jeff James agreed, telling WTAE ABC News the agents on the stage should have moved Trump off sooner because the first shots fired “may have been the precursor in the real attack. There may have been four more gunmen who were going to start opening fire. I would have rather seen him get him into the armored cars and get him out of there more quickly.”
Bill Pickle, a former deputy assistant Secret Service director, told the Wall Street Journal, “The reality is there’s just no excuse for the Secret Service to be unable to provide sufficient resources to cover an open rooftop 100 yards away from the site. And there’s no way he should’ve got those shots off.”
Retired Secret Service agent Donald Mihalek called the failed assassination attempt “historic, drawing parallels to the 1912 shooting of Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee,” the Journal reported. “Roosevelt, then a former president who was running for a third term in the White House, was shot while heading to a campaign event. He survived the attempt on his life.”
Erik Prince, who previously provided diplomatic security services, said, “unaccountable bloated bureaucracies continue to fail us as Americans. Donald J. Trump is alive today solely due to a bad wind estimate by an evil would be assassin.”
Prince analyzed the wind at the time of the shot, arguing it was enough to displace the bullet two inches from Trump’s “intended forehead to his ear. DJT [Trump] was not saved by USSS [U.S. Secret Service] brilliance. The fact that USSS allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yards to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.
“Clearly there was adequate uncontrolled dead space for a shooter to move into position and take multiple aimed shots,” he said, adding that one counter sniper “was clearly overwhelmed as his face came off his rifle instead of doing his job to kill the shooter.”
A counter sniper killed the alleged shooter after he shot several rounds, wounding Trump, killing one, and critically wounding two others.
“In my old business of providing Diplomatic Security in two active war zones we were expected to execute the basics, or we would be fired,” Prince said. “Clearly USSS failed at the basics of a secure perimeter and once shots were fired, their extraction was clumsy and left DJT highly exposed to follow on attacks.”
He also expressed no confidence in anyone being held accountable, saying, “That’s not the Washington way. Unserious and unworthy people in positions of authority got us to this near disaster.”
Censorship Industrial Complex
Mark Zuckerberg Tells Joe Rogan That Biden Admin Would ‘Scream’ And ‘Curse’ At Meta Employees To Censor ‘True’ Content
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Cohen
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan on Friday that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration would yell and hurl profanities at his company’s employees over content censorship.
The Biden administration pushed Facebook to censor posts about COVID-19 that it deemed misinformation, according to documents published by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan in July 2023. Zuckerberg, on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” revealed that also Meta faced investigations and backlash after Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” in July 2021 for not censoring so-called COVID-19 misinformation.
WATCH:
“Basically, these people from the Biden Administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said. “And it’s like these documents are — it’s all kind of out there.”
Rogan asked if Meta had recorded any of the calls, but Zuckerberg said he did not believe so.
“I mean, there are emails. The emails are published. It’s all kind of out there …. And basically, it just got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to — we’re not going to take down things that are true. That’s ridiculous,’” Zuckerberh said. “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how ten years from now or something, you’re going to see an ad that says, ‘Okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you’re eligible, like for this kind of payment,’ like this sort of like class-action lawsuit-type meme. And they’re like, ‘No, you have to take that down.’”
“We just said, ‘No, we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are true.’ And then at some point, I guess — I don’t know — it flipped a bit,” he added. “I mean, Biden, when he was — he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like, ‘These guys are killing people.’ And I don’t know. Then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal.”
Facebook executives believed they were engaged in a “knife fight” with Biden’s White House on COVID-19 censorship, according to a House Judiciary Committee report published in May.
Zuckerberg in August expressed remorse that Facebook caved to pressure from the Biden administration to censor content in a letter to Jordan. He wrote that senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook teams to censor COVID-19 content that the platform otherwise would not have suppressed, and voiced frustration when Facebook disagreed.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
Zuckerberg also alleged in 2022 on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that the FBI warned Facebook of a “Russian propaganda” dump just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke.
“The FBI basically came to us and some folks on our team and said, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election and we have noticed that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that, so be vigilant,’” he said.
The Meta CEO said he could not recall whether the FBI specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop story, but asserted it fit “the pattern.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Meta referred the DCNF to documents released by the House Judiciary Committee and Jordan.
Daily Caller
Sweeping Deportations to Begin in Chicago Day After Inauguration
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Hopkins
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to launch his promised large-scale deportation operation the day after he is sworn into office, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The incoming Trump administration will immediately begin mass deportation efforts in major sanctuary cities across the United States, with Chicago predicted to be first on the docket, according to The Wall Street Journal. The raid in Chicago is anticipated to begin Tuesday morning and last the entire week, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deploy 100 to 200 agents to execute the operation.
Incoming border czar Tom Homan — who led ICE during the first Trump administration — previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the White House will focus on the “worst first,” prioritizing illegal migrants who have criminal histories and orders of removal. However, Homan also made clear that any illegal migrant in the U.S is fair game.
“Like the first Trump administration, we’re going to prioritize public safety threats, national security threats and fugitives,” Homan stated to the DCNF, adding that gang members and other criminals would be their main focus. “Those that had due process at great taxpayer expense, were given orders of deportation, never left and became a fugitive – them too, they’re a priority.”
“The ones who pose the biggest threat to the country – they come first. The worst first,” Homan went on. “But let’s be clear, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
The Chicago City Council recently slapped down an attempt by two moderate aldermen to scale back the sanctuary city laws currently in place.
Aldermen Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares, both Democrats, proposed amending Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance to allow for ICE cooperation when an illegal migrant has been arrested of certain criminal activities, arguing that such a policy would be a net benefit for the city’s immigrant community as it would allow deportation officers to better focus on criminals instead of making enforcement actions in the city at large. However, their proposal was quickly shot down by the council on Wednesday.
Other sanctuary cities in the U.S. have also expressed steep opposition to Trump’s enforcement agenda. Los Angeles passed its sanctuary law shortly after Trump emerged victorious in the presidential election, San Diego County doubled down on its existing law and Boston reaffirmed its sanctuary status in December.
Homan has said that city officials refusing to cooperate with ICE will not deter their agenda, and he added that those who knowingly harbor illegal migrants from law enforcement will be recommended for prosecution.
Along with large-scale deportation operations, Trump has also vowed to end birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil by illegal migrant parents, resume construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, bring back the Remain in Mexico program and implement other hawkish policies.
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