House report blasts Secret Service failures

A bipartisan House task force released an initial report detailing the calamitous security failures preceding the first failed assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump earlier this year. 

The failures are “stunning,” one of the staffers involved with its drafting told The Spectator. “Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,” the report says.

Those who worked on the report noted to The Spectator that the failures that allowed a would-be presidential assassin to nearly kill Trump on live television and fatally shoot Corey Comperatore predated the Butler rally by days. 

The “pre-planning was a disaster as well,” one said. The Secret Service “did not provide guidance ahead of the rally to local law enforcement, there was never a unified briefing beforehand, the chain of command was never made clear, causing confusion about responsibilities.”

Other failures included in the report are that local law enforcement said that the Secret Service gave no guidance about the placement or roles of their snipers on the day of the shooting — and that “federal, state and local law enforcement officers could have engaged Thomas Matthew Crooks at several pivotal moments” during the rally, but that “fragmented lines of communication” allowed Crooks to dodge law enforcement, ultimately “climb[ing] on to the roof of the AGR complex and fir[ing] eight shots at the rally stage and crowd.” The list of failures is so long that it appears nothing short of miraculous that Trump had gotten that far into his campaign without a serious threat on his life. 

Barring the “wake-up call” that Crooks’s failed assassination attempt presented, those working on the report told The Spectator it’s unlikely that the Secret Service would have felt any need to implement reforms. Following the events of Butler, the Secret Service’s director resigned. The task force is hardly the only one to condemn the agency’s failures; an independent review released last week also found “deep flaws” in the Secret Service. 

The congressional task force, which is led by Republican representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and Democratic representative Jason Crow of Colorado, will also issue a final report that is due in December.

-Matthew Foldi

On our radar 

POLL WATCH The RealClearPolitics national polling average has Vice President Kamala Harris up one percentage point on former president Donald Trump with just two weeks to Election Day. A new Washington Post poll says Harris and Trump are in a “dead heat” in the seven swing states. 

60 MINUTES SOUNDS OFF CBS News released a statement from its 60 Minutes news program amid backlash over an edit of Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview with anchor Bill Whitaker. The network said it is “false” to say that they deceitfully edited the interview, arguing that a clip shown on Face the Nation merely used a “different portion” of Harris’s response to a question from Whitaker. 

VIVA LA VOTING In a troubling sign for Democrats, the GOP is leading early voting in Nevada, with nearly twice as many Republicans turning in their ballots thus far. The trend holds in Clark County, home to Las Vegas and one of the key districts that could decide the electoral outcome in the state.  

LIV AND LET LIV Olivia Nuzzi has parted ways with New York magazine, after being cleared by a probe that found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in her reporting. Nuzzi had been on leave from the magazine following a “personal relationship” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a presidential candidate-turned-Trump surrogate who she had profiled earlier in the campaign.

Musk’s million-dollar giveaway

Democrats are pretending they’ve just now realized that money is at the root of American politics — and are feigning horror that billionaire Elon Musk is planning to use his fortune to try to affect the outcome of the presidential election.

Musk’s America PAC has been circulating an online “Petition in Favor of Free Speech and the Right to Bear Arms” in my home state of Pennsylvania (and, presumably, in the other states where Musk’s offer is advertised). According to the America PAC X account, “Every day until Election Day, a registered swing state voter who signs the petition will be selected to earn $1M as a spokesperson for America PAC.”

“Our goal is to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” the online petition page says. “This program is exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Expires October 21.”

Even if people aren’t selected to win $1 million, they can still earn “$47 for each registered voter you refer that signs this petition.” Voters in Pennsylvania, one of the most contentious swing states, get a “special offer” of $100 for signing the petition and another $100 for referring someone who signs it.

Not so fast, says Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro, who went on Meet the Press yesterday to call the kettle black. He said Musk’s scheme is “deeply concerning” and “something that law enforcement could take a look at,” adding:

Musk obviously has a right to be able to express his views. He’s made it very, very clear that he supports Donald Trump. I don’t. Obviously we have a difference of opinion. I don’t deny him that, right, but when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions.

Shapiro, meanwhile, has made buying votes — under the guise of “enhanced benefits” — the bread and butter of his administration. And let’s not forget how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $350 million “saved” the 2020 election.

–Teresa Mull

Trump shifts at McD’s

Former president Donald Trump divided the internet this weekend when he showed up for a shift to “do fries,” as Vice President Kamala Harris would say, at a Pennsylvania-based location of the American fast-food institution McDonald’s. Trump, sporting his standard uniform of a crisp white button-down shirt tucked into suit pants with bright red tie, took a turn at the fryer and later handed orders out through the drive-thru window. Supporters of the president praised him for showing respect to service workers and for giving them a plethora of memes.

Trump’s critics mocked him for the “staged” photo-op as the Bucks County McDonald’s was officially closed during the president’s visit and only serviced customers recommended by the franchise owner and pre-screened by Trump’s advance team. But this should come as no surprise given the recent assassination attempts against Trump; surely security wouldn’t allow him to stand at a drive-thru window where any random car could pull up and take their shot.

Trump’s stint at the Golden Arches served another purpose: giving more air time to the suggestion that Vice President Kamala Harris may have lied about working the fry machine in her college years. Harris left her supposed summer job off of early résumés, and it was never mentioned in any biographies or political speeches until 2019. McDonald’s said in a statement released in the wake of Trump’s turn at the deep fryer that “our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early Eighties.” Harris’s campaign has provided no evidence beyond her word that she ever worked for the chain.

McDonald’s, however, also affirmed that they are “not a political brand” and that other franchisees have invited Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, for visits. 

–Amber Duke