The 1993 film In the Line of Fire was about a Secret Service agent, Horrigan, played by Clint Eastwood, who was on the job when JFK was killed. 

That the Secret Service did not save him has haunted him for years.  Thirty years later, he is still an agent, a bit long in the tooth, but still wants to be on the job.  A few weeks out from an election, an obsessed predator is planning to kill the president, and he involves Horrigan in his plan, seemingly staying one step ahead of him along the way. 

But for the assassin’s numerous taunting phone calls to Horrigan, there is much to learn about how the Secret Service, established  July 5, 1865 (to combat rampant counterfeiting of currency), is supposed to function. 

That was a movie. On July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, they did not function at all. 

It is very difficult to believe that this once-esteemed, highly trained, and truly courageous institution could fail as badly as it did that day when an assassin took aim at President Trump at a rally. 

The shooter was observed more than an hour before he fired, but no one questioned him, seen after he was seen using a range finder.  On that day, everyone dropped the ball.  They were all careless and unprofessional. No one seemed to be in charge. Kimberly Cheatle, the then-Chief of the SS, certainly was not, and, to date, whoever was in charge has not been named.  Does he or she still have a job?

The internet is overflowing with countless theories.  That is what happens when the government is so unforthcoming, so secretive, not transparent.  There are questions but few answers, and some of their answers are ridiculous.   How many shooters?  One, two or three?  From what locations did the shots come from?  How many shots?  What happened to the shell casings that were on the roof, and then they were not?  According to the bodycam videos that have been released, there was no marking of the location of those shell casings that were on the roof of the AGR building. Why was the shooter’s gun lying about eight feet from his body when the law enforcement (local? SS? ATF? FBI?) made it to the roof? 

There have been no press conferences to address the public’s concerns.  Not one.  Is there more information to come?  More shoes to drop?  More details on the shooter, who apparently had little or no social media presence?  What about his family?  We know nothing.  It’s been reported that his family’s home had been “scrubbed,” as in sanitized, with even the silverware gone.  True?  Who knows?

There is a line in the film – the assassin, on one of his phone calls to Horrigan, says, “You have such a strange job.  I can’t figure out if it’s heroic or absurd.” 

Good question, then and now.  We’ve always thought of it as heroic, but now?  Perhaps, as some have suggested, the catastrophic failure can be blamed on DEI, the hiring of persons wholly unqualified for the job beyond their race, gender, or gender identity.  It did seem unwise to have a few women who were maybe 5’5” guard a man who is 6’3”, assuming that they even were Secret Service agents, whose numbers were few. 

It is, of course, an actual miracle that Trump was not killed and that more than one death did not occur.  That death of the firefighter, Corey Comperatore, is such a terrible tragedy. But how, with all the bullets flying, eight or nine or ten of them – no one seems to know for sure -- were more innocents not killed? Divine intervention?  That is probably not debatable.   It was clearly a chaotic scene with no one in charge.  Kudos to those SS agents who did rush to cover Trump and get him safely into the SUV, but they were obviously not nearly as well-trained as they should have been.  One panicked SS woman could not holster her weapon.  It's been reported that being short-staffed, not all of them were actually SS agents but borrowed from DHS, so not at all trained for the situation at hand that day.

Despite so many on the left’s expressed sorrow that Trump was not killed, their regret that the shooter “missed,” this was a day like no other. 

For those of us who remember the day JFK was murdered, this attack on Trump was so nearly an equally horrific event it will be similarly imprinted on our brains, especially for those of us who support President Trump.  The Biden administration has been the most destructive to this nation in U.S. history.  He was not fairly elected, he was installed, meant to be the puppet of Obama, China, Ukraine, and the deep state, which absolutely is the singularly most dangerous threat to our democratic republic. 

Biden was always corrupt, always corruptible.  He has certainly fulfilled his debt to all those who found him a willing partner in betraying America.  Now they’ve blackmailed him to bow out and to endorse the thoroughly unqualified Kamala Harris, a woman who has done absolutely nothing of consequence during her term as VP.  She is a shallow, moronic, and unserious person, ambitious far beyond her abilities, with a resume that should prevent her from ever holding public office again.  What will happen next? 

We shall see but one thing is certain:  Trump is still in the line of fire.  Why?  Because he’s the good guy, the fly in their ointment, a hitch in their git-along, the monkey wrench in their Maoist plan.

In the 1993 film, the SS agent asks the assassin why? Why does he want to kill the president?  His answer?  “To punctuate the dreariness.”  Hmmm.  Biden has certainly infected our nation with dreariness, but his political opponents are not the murdering kind.  They are the law-abiding kind who rely on fair elections.  One can only hope we can ever have a fair election again.

Image: Picryl // public domain