Now that the Republican convention ended without incidents, we must get back to considering the implications of the near-assassination of former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump two days before the convention began.
Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle says she will not resign, despite the failure of her agents to secure the rooftop from where the shots were fired at Trump, and despite her refusal to come clean about the causes of the failure.
The Secret Service is being praised for protecting Donald Trump from an assassin. This praise is justified if one focuses on the bravery of the agents who risked their lives to shield Trump from the immediate threat posed by the shooter after he fired the initial shots, but that well-deserved praise must be accompanied by constructive criticism for the failure to prevent the shooting in the first place. The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, came within an inch of succeeding. An armed person should never have been allowed to be at a location from which he could take aim at a presidential candidate.
It is not as if this attack could not have been anticipated and planned for. It is quite similar to the shooting of then President John F. Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. The major difference is that Lee Harvey Oswald shot at a difficult moving target, whereas Crooks shot at an easier stationary target. In both cases, there was a failure to secure an obviously dangerous location. One would think that the Secret Service would have learned from their failure in Dallas. They did not.
There must be changes in the protective procedures employed by the Secret Service, especially at large outdoor rallies. Everyone admitted to the venue is vetted for weapons, but apparently there is insufficient protection against potential snipers shooting from outside the actual venue. This failing must be remedied before the next rally. The Secret Service should be devoted exclusively to preventing and responding to attacks on its protectees. It must get out of the unrelated business of investigating currency counterfeiting and other crimes.
This assassination attempt may well be an outgrowth of the increasing acceptance of violence by extremists on all parts of the political spectrum. We do not yet know the specific motivation of Crooks, but it is certainly possible that he may have been influenced by the current rhetoric justifying violence as an appropriate response to perceived injustice. We do know that in addition to possessing a rifle legally purchased by his father, he also had explosives in his car and home. He was determined to murder Trump, though for what reasons we do not yet know. Although there is no direct evidence of his motive, politically-inspired violence is increasingly common, especially among the younger generation of activists.
Our universities are turning out students who engage in violence and are only rarely punished for it. Some faculty members are teaching that noble ends justify ignoble means. The result has been physical attacks on fellow students based on political, ideological and religious disagreements. It is only a short step from physically attacking those with whose policies you disagree, to shooting at political candidates who support such policies.
An atmosphere of violence has become pervasive and is likely to increase as a result of this nearly successful assassination attempt and the growing divisions over the coming election.
The Secret Service must learn from its mistakes and must redouble its efforts to protect candidates from what are likely to be increasing dangers over the next four months and beyond. In its press conference, the Secret Service said it was not changing any plans regarding the Republican convention. Nor did it permit any questions regarding the failures that led to the attack.
Even more important, political, educational, religious and other leaders must denounce violence advocated and practiced by those on their side of the political divide. It is easy to denounce violence by one's opponents. It is far more difficult, but more important, to denounce violence by one's allies.
Social media is filled with extremist left-wing praise for Crooks and regrets that he missed. Had he succeeded, there would likely be blood on the streets. This is an even more dangerous time than back in the 1960s, when three major assassinations occurred.
We must do everything in our collective power to prevent a recurrence of the near-assassination and tragedy that occurred in Pennsylvania. We are not doing enough.
