Missing Bullet Casings, Fortune Cookies, and The Presidency

Here’s the official narrative:

It is a total surprise that President Biden dropped out of the race. The world was blindsided. This had nothing to do with his cognitive abilities. Kamala Harris, the VP, is the successor. Democrats pretend that the assassination attempt on President Trump is not important and cling to the idea that no one in their right mind would support him anyway. Trumpers believe that the assassination attempt was a sign from God that Trump is divinely blessed and/or the victim of a Democrat-inspired conspiracy and cling to the idea that no one in their right mind wants a Democrat anyway. Both parties believe they “own” outcomes because they spend so much money on polls and pollsters and on buying loyalty.  Plus, each has massive corporations, media platforms, and Silicon Valley tech bro’s behind them, so they are invincible. Nobody mentions Robert Kennedy.

Here is something closer to the actual story:

The lights are on, but nobody is home in the White House. The President is indeed cognitively impaired. So, while he may not be running for office again, he still has to conduct the affairs of office. Yet, everyone understands that The President has not been running things for quite some time. So, who is in charge if it’s not the President? That’s an open question. The simple answer might be “the staff.” That fits with the Republican concerns that the US Government is being run by the so-called “deep state.” But, the real story might be that competing factions within the technocracy are vying against each other now, making it much harder to explain why things did or didn’t happen. A key driver now is the overwhelming threat that the other side will get into power and start investigating the previous tenants of the White House and the broader government. It’s the threat of accountability and the fear of it that is now driving a lot of decision-making.

For example, The White House had to provide President Trump with a security detail. But, it’s becoming increasingly evident that, like Trump or hate him, he was given the worst security detail the White House could find. Most, it seems, were not Secret Service but from a group called Homeland Security Investigations, which has entirely different staff and training than the Secret Service. The people on his detail were clearly not well practiced and physically unsuited to the task. You’ve got to be at least the target’s height, not shorter than the President, which most of them were not. Security experts are deeply analyzing why some of those details were physically unable to draw or holster their guns. In a country where that national sport is constantly practiced at shooting ranges (or in the streets), how could The former President end up with both a shooter and a security detail that don’t know how to shoot? In a country where conspiracy theories are also a national sport, questions abound as to whether the White House nominally supplied a detail, refused to expand that detail despite the President’s requests, and actually left him effectively unguarded. Meanwhile, given all this, the joke is that Robert Kennedy, who has been begging for the official security he is entitled to as a Presidential candidate, may be safer with his private detail.

Meanwhile, thanks to the ubiquitous presence of smartphones at the shooting, an excellent record of the ballistic acoustics is now being dissected by an army of concerned citizens. The results make JFK’s Grassy Knoll moment seem simple in comparison. We still don’t know how many bullets, or how many bullet casings, or how many shooters were involved. The acoustics records seem to indicate that there are serious questions as to whether the young eye-glass-wearing, ladder-climbing, drone-operating, bicycle-riding, rifle-carrying-bad-shot-shooter was working alone. He happened to be in a Blackrock commercial but was not a cool kid at school in spite of his two-minutes of TV fame? The Oversight Group, which is part of the Heritage Foundation, which is part of Project 2025 and a huge Trump supporter, revealed on X that they believe the cell tower and cell phone AD-ID records indicate that the young man often visited nearby FBI offices, or was visited by cell phone carrying people from the FBI, in the weeks before the assassination attempt. The Head of the FBI just implied Trump might not have been hit by a bullet but by shrapnel. Trump is livid. If Trump wins the Presidency, one can imagine he’ll want to SWAT the whole Secret Service, FBI, and other enforcement agencies. The legitimacy of the US Government and trust in it now hangs on something as simple as a bullet casing.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris has been suffering more backstabbing wounds than Julius Caesar. In the moments after President Biden’s announcement that he was withdrawing from the race (posted on X but without the Presidential Seal on the letterhead because he was only resigning from the campaign not the office), Harris was immediately endorsed by The Biden’s and the Clinton’s. Notably, she was notendorsed by The Obama’s. Barak and Michelle posted a carefully crafted letter (now almost impossible to find on the net), also within minutes, which drew a collective sound of shock from all clued-up observers because it definitely did not endorse her. Word is that they did not think she could beat Trump. It took days to fix. The fix came in the form of a highly-staged theatrical video of Obama speaking to Harris via cell phone. George Clooney jumped in too. He had written a letter to the NYTs (which the conspiracists believe President Obama actually approved of, if not drafted) calling on Old Joe to leave office after he faltered at a live fundraiser, but did not endorse Harris until the Obama’s did. Speaking of staged events, The President went on TV to announce his departure from the campaign and his intention to stay in office until after the election of the new President. This, too, attracted a lot of conspiracist commentary from “there are no such trees blocking the Oval Office window” to “he looks very tan and healthy for a guy who is down with COVID” to “if he’s that cogent, why is he leaving?” Trump is focusing on the cash, of course, not the cogency. He has brought a case to the Federal Election Commission arguing that $91.5m cannot be transferred from one candidate to another under the FEC rules, calling it “a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended.” Observers of American politics are hanging on to her every word now because she has so few clear policy positions on foreign affairs or many of the critical issues in the election.

Then there is the ongoing mystery of the third Presidential candidate. Robert Kennedy is, so far, the only one who beats Trump in the polls. He has become “He Who Must Not Be Named but Who Must Be Called.” On July 13^th, Kennedy announced his intention to create a “Unity Government” by appointing a “Unity Cabinet.” He told a libertarian audience, “I pledge to appoint a cabinet comprising members of the Democratic Party, Republican Party, Libertarian Party, and people from the Green Party and other parties and parties outside the political process.” Trump called him (again), no doubt offering him something in his own cabinet. Kennedy has said he will talk to everyone, including Trump. The two met at the RNC Convention. This is portrayed in the press as Kennedy being a shameful traitor and struggling to remain relevant, especially in the face of growing unification on the left