Trump shot: Understanding the Response

Interpreting the actions of armed service for civilians

Former President Trump has been shot at in a PA rally. News outlets are more hesitant to call it, but watching the coverage, I know a sniper when I hear one. Here is my hot take on how to understand the military response that unfolded. Im writing this under five minutes after viewing this footage;

First sound is the sonic boom produced by a bullet in flight. Trump feels his ear and the sniper knows he fµ¢cked up. The rest of the rounds are them trying to clean up shop and GTF outta there. No question in my mind it was a deliberate attempt on the former president’s life.

If you watch, you’ll see who appear to be Secret Service dash toward him only after he goes to the ground holding his ear. That’s because the camera picked up the sound before they heard it. Trump buckling over was the first sign anything was amiss and by the time he’s on the ground, he already has trained, dutiful federal agents on top of him with kevlar everything.

They keep him there expecting the sniper to keep shooting, which he does, sporadically, as he empties his mag as he breaks down his weapon (or not) before relocating to the nearest airport for a flight to a non-extradition nation. They want him shooting because there are just as many plainclothes and crowd-duty officers watching the rim to see if they can locate a muzzle burst to locate the sniper/s.

Then the swatted guy in black gets up in front and waltzes around like he’s on America’s Got Talent. He wants to be shot for the same reason the officers protecting Trump want to be shot - to locate and engage. It looks weird unless you’ve been in an infantry platoon in particular situations, but this is what we called “the man in the breach” in MOUT training. He weighs down an obstacle like barbed wire with his limp body so others can carry on the mission. He is a strategic red herring saying to the shooter “look at me, an easy target” so others can do the work of location and engagement.

The Secret Service can then be heard giving coordinating commands to lift and move Trump, all the while surrounding him with kevlar undies to keep him alive. When he broke their ranks to pump his fist, he was endangering himself and pissing his agents off. Their mission is safety, not political points. They move him into the vehicle only after he panders to the crowd once more.

I will try to write more about the political implications of this later, but I wanted to narrate the incident from a military perspective since the military community can be jsut as polarized as the wider civilian population. But also because any time a shooting occurs, soldiers and veterans are put under the microscope as likely perpetrators despite the fact that, pound for pound, more emergency technicians are veterans than mass shooters. As I type this, I suspect news anchors and reporters are wondering out loud about military experience, as though firearms can only be understood and used effectively via the military… 🙄