This came out so perfect part of me wonders if there is a god and I am some poor sinner getting punished.
Like, fuck man. This assassin missed and hit all of us. This is everything they want and you can pick out a number of other photos a lot like it that where incredible. These last two months basically lined up perfectly for Trump.
They didn't miss. The US government will think twice about appointing a president half of the country wants dead. Power fear chaos and unrest among people, they want to have everything in control under their eye.
It arguably could have been worse if they'd killed him. Opening space for someone just as vile but actually intelligent, who could easily just roll through to president on the back of "Saint Trumpf the Martyr"....
Who? Who would be capable of gathering the trump support and getting enough votes? Part of the right wing powerful 1 guy thingy is this: 1 guy. Take the guy away, and you have no idea what would happen and if someone else would manage to keep the gathered power going and maybe gather even more. Would be very different if trump were president when it happened, then the power is formalised and the takeover by another supervillain easier, but during campaign that would be quite the feat and I'm really wondering who would have been capable of it.
Yeah, one of the redeeming qualities of Trump is that he's incredibly stupid, and refuses to let advisors correct him. Makes him super ineffective. They had control of white house and both chambers and they did just limited damage.
The problem with this line of thinking is that the GOP doesn't have anyone else. They're a cult of personality for Trump and only Trump. We saw all the alternatives get paraded around in the GOP "primary," none of them are anywhere close to taking the reins. There's a very good chance that without Trump, the cult begins to fall apart.
After hearing the fireworks going off in my Maga-heavy area last night, I'm really not sure that the gunman missing was the better outcome. Trump has a special following in the republican party that gathers followers from those outside the party that wouldn't ordinarily vote.
You mock the ever living shit out of the photo. Fascists love to look strong and mocking the photo dispels the myth of appearing strong.
Edit: As Robert Evans said "blood is cool, milkshakes aren't" when talking about far right figures being humiliated by having milkshakes thrown at them.
Make sure those water balloons have been sitting in the sun a bit. Gotta make sure that they had a chance to develop a nice smell. Bonus points, if you can get your target to puke everywhere.
Nah, just vote for someone other than Trump. If you're in a swing state, sure. But if you're in a state that is extremely likely to vote one way or another (as most are), vote your conscience.
I'm in a deep red state where Biden has almost no chance, so I'm voting for Chase Oliver. He has the widest possible reach of the firmly anti-war candidates we have.
In the photo he is standing in the same spot as he was when he was speaking. So it would make sense that an astute photographer would have already lined up this shot on a tripod from when he was speaking. That's what I would have done
How could a Pulitzer prize winning photographer manage to take a very good photo? Surely it must be staged. I bet Trump paid that guy the secret service killed to shoot him and kill an attendee!
It's not upside down, that's just the angle. It's just hanging vertically. Even if it were hanging upside down, though, that wouldn't be unusual for this lot. A lot of Maga fucks fly it that way around here, almost as a way of saying how fucked they see this country. It plays into their victim complex.
You see, it's that sort of conspiracy bullshit that will erode everything.
Could it be the work of a professional photographer bringing their A game? No, it must be staged.
Why are all these random things like that? It must be "preplanned" ...or... Maybe you would have found similar things in any photograph from a political rally.
Thing is, you sound like a classic MAGA when you say daft stuff.
I agree. I don't actually think it's staged having seen the footage for myself and reading statements made by the secret service. My other comments are my first reactions to seeing this image
The flag is likely quite comically large (as in a hundred or more feet long), decently far away, and is being 'hung' by basically small construction cranes, which are holding it such that if there was no wind, it would be hanging vertically.
There is significant wind, so its going with the direction.
Zoom in on the connector point and you can see basically a jerry rigged, oversized winch. Theres a similar winch at the other point on the right side of the image, and the crane is presumably out of frame.
Its perfectly in frame because some photographers are quite good at their jobs.
Trump was allowed to stand up because he could, under his own power, and the shooter had already been declared down at that point.
Idk why everyone is assuming this will make him win. He's still a fascist. People who weren't voting for him before aren't going to start now just because he was shot. People don't like him for a reason. If people liked him he wouldn't be shot at lol
People who weren’t voting for him before aren’t going to start now just because he was shot
The decided voters are pretty much irrelevant. They made up their mind a long time ago. The issue is the swing voters.
Unfortunately, we have evidence that surviving an assassination attempt leads to a boost in approval. Reagan surviving an assassination attempt led to a big jump in his approval rating:
"In the wake of the assassination attempt, Reagan's approval ratings jumped -- providing a new baseline that propelled his legislative agenda forward and helped translate to his broad-based re-election. "
the issue aren't those two groups of people. The issue is the third. Those who weren't going to vote before, which is usually around 30% to 60% of the country.
Now, of those who weren't going to bother to vote, about 55% to 70% of them would vote for a Democratic president.
However, the 30% to 45% of those remaining - those are the ones who will be most likely 'energised' by this and convinced to vote. That extra turn out could turn it into a Republican landslide.
I wouldn't be so sure. Back in 2018 when Bolsonaro (also a very extreme fascist) was running for president in Brazil, someone also attempted to kill him and very nearly succeeded, and it's pretty much agreed that the failed assassination attempt gave him a massive poll boost and helped him win. I personally had the unfortunate experience of dealing with people here who were previously undecided but afterward decided to vote for Bolsonaro because they saw him as a vicitm trying to be silenced.
Considering how US elections are severely lopsided to depend on a couple handful of states that demographically generally aren't affected by the risks of fascism and therefore generally see American elections as a harmless sport, there's a very real possibility they'll see Trump as a "martyr" trying to be silenced and throw their vote behind him.
It also seriously doesn't help that Biden's just been making far too many gaffes while Trump came off like a "defiant strongman" over this. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm extremely pessimistic about this being anything but a massive win for Trump.
It only serves to play into the rhetoric. It empowers the base. The victim complex becomes justified and like for like retaliation is only fair and what they deserve. The silent majority is once again being silenced!!!
/S
It's not hard to think of a bunch of ways this plays into a fascists hand.
The prediction markets and gambling odds for the race have all swung drastically after the attempt. If Biden was going to win, betting on it now would net you a pretty good chunk of cash. Biden isn't even predicted to have a good chance of winning the popular vote at the moment.
But people that were on the fence no longer will be. They will 100% swing his now. It's 110% over. Especially after bidens mishaps over the last couple weeks i.e. debate, calling zelenzky putin as well misnaming many others. It's over
Are there people out there that were actually on the fence about Trump? Seems like the only thing that was going to determine this race is if liberal voters would go to the polls or not. Trump voters seemed to already be fully decided.
I don’t see how this event could change things for Trump.
Man, people on lemmy need to look outside of their own bubbles a little more. There's more than just those in my camp and those against my camp.
There are uninformed voters who genuinely do not pay as much attention to politics as those of us on this platform do. Uninformed voters exist and they are influenced by the big headlines like this.
This is why other factors regarding a candidate such as whether or not they are likeable matter. It's not for me. It's not for you or any other hardline party entrenched voter. It's for them, the ones who barely pay attention.
What I am wondering is among that uninformed voter base are there people who think "hmm, maybe I won't vote for the guy that somebody just tried to kill."
The scariest thing is not that there are people who would vote for trump, but the amount of people that can't imagine why someone would vote or think different than them. The level of "same as me" bias is really scary.
I get that, but people are acting like this is a guaranteed win for Trump just because he was shot at and can claim that he’s a martyr. I just don’t think there’s enough undecided voters that will swing the election for Trump this easily.
It might not even be about voting anymore at this point. Their god-king was almost assassinated. This will 100% mobilize certain people to do certain things.
Shit maybe they postpone the election. I don't even know if that would be a good thing or bad thing at this point.
Edit: By "they," I don't mean Trump or the Republicans. My point is that a whole lot can happen between now and November, and I think we can all agree by now that it's impossible to predict what that will be. If political violence escalates far enough, I don't think some kind of emergency declaration by Biden is outside the realm of possibility.
Would obviously have severe implications... But so does everything else that's happening so...
It's not that they don't know about Project 2025, they just don't care about it. I've seen so-called "centrists" straight-up claiming that Project 2025 isn't real just because Trump disavowed it... ignoring the fact that he had to since it was actually hurting his poll numbers. (The people who wrote P2025 are core members of Trump's campaign staff. How naive do you have to be to see that and still think a politician wouldn't lie?)
When you have an FPTP voting system, many people don't vote for, they vote against. Plenty will see Biden calling Zelensky a Putin, then this and... Good luck, Americans!
it's not (just) about convincing people to vote for Trump.
it's about convincing people to actually vote.
if voting were compulsory, then no, it wouldn't really matter. But it isn't. So people who would vote for Trump, but wouldn't bother to leave the house might be bothered to leave and vote for the convicted criminal rapist now.
This is the nugget of truth in this sea of tinfoil hats. This won't change anyone's decision, because it's not intellectual. It will convince people to go out and vote, because notlw they'll feel they have to. After all, is it such a big ask to go out and vote for your god-king, after he literally took a bullet for you?
I see how this could have helped his campaign. And it sucks.
war photography too is there and there were always discussions about its function.
As a photographer, you may hate trump and everything he represents, you're responsible for documenting what's happening there and then as well as you can.
yes, frame introduces interpretation and photography is never neutral but it's fidelity to light is unquestionable. That relationship with "reality" must be what distinguishes a photographer from somebody holding their phone unwittingly in front of their face.
To understand why, you have to look at how broken things were that one of the two major parties chose him as their candidate. He's a symptom, not the problem.
They more or less did. Watch the full video if you want to see.
The perspective here is a little weird, but he was pretty much immediately dogpiled by ~10 agents who all then guided him from the scene. He made them stop so he could fist pump for the crowd before leaving.
That said, the secret service apparently wasn't keeping a close eye on nearby rooftops. They dropped the ball hard on this one.
I always thought that was like one of the main things they did. We've been hearing for years that they've been getting sloppy and unprofessional but I always figured they'd get their shit together for protecting one of the ones they like.
I feel like it's at least possible that this will work like that trick of if you can't decide between two things, toss a coin and call it and then notice how you feel. Like a coin was tossed here and maybe some of these dead inside non-voters will feel something, maybe an anxiety, the absence of relief, wistful. You can act on that. It's not too late.
The real thing to report on is how while (aparently, because initial reports said no crowd deaths, then Fox reported a crowd death, and now everyone is reporting a crowd death), noone ran. They just kinda mulled around, then started chanting "USA. USA. USA."
My point was the whole being desensitized to gunfire and someone being shot right in front of you, and responding to not only a public shooting, but an assassination attempt with "USA! USA! USA!" like they were at fucking Medieval Times eating a chicken with their bare hands and drinking diet coke and the green knight just took a flail to the bread basket.
I have learned when to hesitate before I ingest media, and I'm still assessing the situation.
For either eventuality, we (Americans) are all so screwed, and the rest of the world is on notice.
The Secret Service protects not just the president, but their family, major runners for the race, and their families. Due to the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, the Secret Service was made to protect all major runners for the presidency, as his assassination could have been stopped if he had more protection than the event's guards.
That's actually really cool, surprised I didn't know this
I reckon this will come to Canada soon too. Trudeau used to go to metro stations and just say good morning to people on their way to work after he won first term. He doesn't do this anymore for obvious reasons
Not only do all former presidents get a detail, all frontrunners with a credible shot at winning get secret service protection. I'm not sure what the exact requirements for that are, but Trump would almost certainly meet them.
I understand that the abbreviation is understood different in the US, but SS is understood as the Schutzstaffel founded as a paramilitary arm of Hitlers NSDAP later to become among the worst criminals in WWII and the Holocaust.
🤔 I don't think that white line on the photo could be the bullet:
The line is horizontal. The shot came from up on a roof and would have had at least some downward angle.
More importantly, in the photo Trump's hand is raised at about his shoulder level. If you check the video, both his hands were gripping the podium at the time of the shot that hit his ear. It's after that shot (because he feels it), he first winces and only then raises his hand from the podium up to his ear. So it can't be that one in the photo.
His hand is up on his ear at the moment of the next shot. So it can't be that one in the photo.
Then as he lowers his hand there is a third shot, but by that time his shoulders are scrunched up and he's starting to duck, his head is turned more away from the mike--which is not what we see in this photo. Then he continues going down.
So that moment of the photo doesn't seem to line up with the timing of any of the shots. The only way it might is if the sound track is not in sync with the video.
No. Not without a very expensive camera. You need 10s of 1000s of frames a second to do that sort of shit. No one was filming Trump with a million dollar camera for fun.
The big press like CNN and Fox are all for Trump. He generated so many clicks for them, massive amount of income from advertisers. With Biden the government got back to doing what it does and is boring.
Why do you think CNN allowed Trump to lie constantly during that debate? It’s a fucking joke.
It's over. It was definitely a false flag op Are yall ready for a 100 year reign of terror from the trump family. Here comes the monarchy. I here Mexico is nice this time of year. Buckle up cause project 25 is incoming in 3, 2, boom
Trump after a shooting in Iowa that left one sixth-grader dead and six other staffers and students injured,
"So surprising to see it here. But, we have to get over it. We have to move forward..."
how were the secret service not on the roofs or monitoring the roofs from aerial POV? Most obvious spot for a sniper.
the dude interviewed by British journalist right after that says him and group saw man with gun climbing roof, told cops and secret service and neither did anything
his first and only focus was his shoes?
a man who is a documented coward and narcissist pushed against secret service to face cameras and have his head exposed for a long period of time?
secret service ignores protocol to cover and remove him and let's him vamp and pose
straight lines of blood on his face, history with pro wrestling
yes, the supposed gunman was killed, but on what day are there not thousands of trump cultists lined up and ready to die if someone tells them they are on a secret mission to help daddy?
yes, some in crowd may have been injured, but when has trump shown any hesitation to have pale injured or killed for his personal benefit (January 6th, church protests, etc).
his secret service were proven corrupt and involved in cover up measures for trump before (e.g. Deliberately erasing text messages relevant to January 6th)
this all happens as project 2025 narrative was taking form hold, leaked video/audio by the day and days before the RNC.
watch the footage, down the stairs, secret service is concerned with grabbing and carrying his special red hat? How the fuck would that ever be a concern in an actual emergency?
This is the dumbest shit and we need to fucking grow up a bit. These "questions" are asinine and not that hard to explain.
Not denying the incident was reported, but there's a heavy insinuation here that this was set up or manufactured. If so... They needed an entire Secret Service detail, local event police and everyone standing by to be in on it. A couple hundred people are going to be involved and no one leaks it?
"Supposed" gunman. I like how you pivot from "this is probably set up" to "ok even if it was real Trump is capable of worse"
Again, the insinuation of an inside job here. We're going to involve a hundred or more people and no one thought it would be a problem to kill a bystander? Or the gunman was so good he killed a specific plant? And they had a 100% success rate... No one heard the plan and thought "oh this is a bad idea" and spoke out about it?
Big difference between deleting text messages and MURDERING AN AMERICAN to further a political agenda.
Yes. Things happen all the time. Trump people are saying this is to distract from Biden being inept. There's always a convenient time.
Yes you dumbshit he was concerned about his hat because they already had the all clear. The shooter got taken out in seconds. They wouldn't have moved Trump. And they all were saying it was all clear. Also have you ever seen people in an absolute panic? Not the most rational state. Same thing with his shoes. That's ALSO why he took the photo op. They all dove on top of him. They figured out the shooter's location and took him down before Trump even got up.
There's pictures of the fucking bullet in flight. So either that was ALSO manufactured (a member of the press willingly heard the plan ahead of time and doctored a photo or they actually shot a bullet inches away from Trumps head AND captured it). But no let's just get Trump, a bumbly ass fuck to orchestrate this perfectly. I'm sure he had it a planned to go down, and everyone covered him and he pulled out a razor blade, cut his ear, and put it away, all perfectly executed and no one caught anything on camera from any of the dozens of angles.
This shit is so fucking stupid and I'm so sick of hearing about it. These points all rely on the most ass backwards way of thinking where dozens of people are in on this conspiracy and relies on all of them bring cool with killing someone to make it good for Trump.
Get this shit outta here. This doesn't deserve the pixels on the screen used to illuminate this nonsense. Be a fucking grown up. We're going to have to figure out a real way to beat Trump, not pretend this was some false flag bullshit. Accept reality. Be a goddamn adult.
I'm not even saying you're wrong for questioning, but I am saying you are wrong because the sheer volume of things that would need to occur for this theory to be even remotely possible is so ridiculous, I would consider aliens an equally plausible situation.