Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics (emphasis ours),

The Secret Service had already been under investigation by House Oversight Committee Republicans for several months when a bullet came within inches of killing former President Trump, killed a bystander, and injured at least two others at a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday afternoon.

Even though Trump and his family members credited the special agents and a counter sniper assigned to his protective detail with saving his life and possibly many others, recriminations against the Secret Service started almost immediately after the assassination attempt.

Americans could see for themselves how the agents and officers traveling with Trump on Saturday acted heroically, falling on the former president after his right ear was pierced by a bullet and returning heavy caliber gunfire, killing the 20-year-old shooter, Thomas Crooks. But questions remain over how Crooks managed to perch on a nearby rooftop and come within inches of killing Trump, renewing past criticisms of the once-vaunted agency with a troubled history of security lapses, employee misconduct, and uneven discipline practices.

Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, has called on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing on Monday, July 22.

“Americans demand answers about the assassination attempt of President Trump,” Comer tweeted Saturday night.

In a letter to Cheatle, Comer was far more laudatory of the agency’s actions.

“The tremendous bravery of the individual United States Secret Service agents who protected President Trump eliminated the gunman, and possibly averted more loss of life cannot be overstated,” he said.

In late May, as RealClearPolitics first reported, Comer’s committee had launched an investigation into a previous incident that took place in April involving a female Secret Service agent, tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris, who was removed from her duties after suffering an apparent mental breakdown and attacking superior agents.

The incident took place just before Harris was set to depart Joint Base Andrews, the home base for Air Force One and Air Force Two, the call signs of the Boeing aircraft used by the president and vice president. (Harris had not arrived at the airport when the altercation took place.)

After Saturday’s attempted assassination, when live images of Trump clutching a bloody ear and raising his fist in defiance appeared on cable news and social media, critics began to question why Secret Service snipers didn’t fire sooner amid reports that onlookers were pointing to Crooks, who was positioned and crawling on a nearby roof, before the shots rang out.

A source within the Secret Service community tells RCP that the agency’s rules of engagement in this situation are to wait until the president is fired upon to return fire. 

“You want to take a shot then find out the guy was holding a telescope?” the source asked. “The Secret Service is by nature reactive … and you better be right when you do react or you’re f—–d.” 

The Secret Service protocol requires that any counter sniper aware of a potential shooter must radio directly to the intelligence division team to respond and investigate. In this case, the investigation may have been cut short by the shooter firing his weapon, so the counter sniper then fired as quickly as possible in return. 

The source praised the counter sniper who acquired the target and responded within three seconds, calling their performance “incredible.” 

“The counter snipers are highly trained and extremely accurate,” he said.

Others with law enforcement and military backgrounds want to know whether the Secret Service utilized drones to provide detailed situational awareness and, if they didn’t, why that decision was made. The use of drones has been a controversial issue within the agency since at least 2016, the source told RCP. Implementing drones would have provided detailed line-of-site analysis and aerial surveillance that would have easily identified the rooftop as a potential threat area. 

“The USSS has access to all the best imagery and elevation data,” the military expert told RCP. “I’m not saying they didn’t [use drones], but it’s an open question.” 

Other critics, including conservative media personality Dan Bongino, a former senior special agent in the Secret Service who is close to Trump, his family, and top advisers, have asserted that the agency officials denied requests for more security from Secret Service supervisors on Trump’s protective detail.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied that such a request and denial took place.

“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed,” Guglielmi posted late Saturday night on X.com. “This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”

The FBI, another agency buffeted by bad publicity – in particular, evidence of anti-Trump animus at the top levels –  has taken over the investigation into the attempted assassination against Trump. Special agents of the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office responded “immediately” after the shooting, the agency said in a statement.

“We will continue to support this investigation with the full resources of the FBI, alongside our partners at the U.S. Secret Service and the state and local enforcement,” the FBI said.

The Secret Service lost some of its former respect after a string of fence-jumping incidents, other security lapses, and discipline issues came to light during the Obama administration. At the beginning of the Trump administration, a senior special agent in the Secret Service came under fire for suggesting in a Facebook post that she wouldn’t “take a bullet” for Trump. Kerry O’Grady, the former agent in question, was placed on administrative leave but was allowed to retire with full benefits and her security clearance intact.

Others fired from the agency over discipline issues have lost their security clearances and at least part of their retirement benefits, spurring resentment among some in the Secret Service community.

This is the problem that my Secret Sources have cited: Secret Services resources were diverted to Jill Biden’s event and away from Trump’s because they followed agency protocol applying to Trump as a former president, according to two sources within the Secret Service community.… pic.twitter.com/9MzmS6Bia7

— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 14, 2024

The agency, more recently, has come under scrutiny for its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies after the female agent’s apparent mental breakdown at Joint Base Andrews.

An agency spokesman called the issue a “medical incident,” but other members of the Secret Service launched a petition over the agency’s DEI hiring and vetting policies during the Biden administration, as first reported by RCP.

Cheatle, in 2021, signed onto a new initiative to increase the number of women in the Secret Service workforce. The agency is one of numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that have signed onto the 30×30 initiative, an effort to increase the representation of women in all ranks of policing across the country to 30% of the workforce by 2030.

In early May, Guglielmi rejected claims that the DEI policy impacted agency readiness.

“Claims that the Secret Service’s standards have been lowered as a result of our signing this pledge are categorically false,” Guglielmi told RCP. Comer held his first briefing with Secret Service officials over that April incident on June 24. Afterward, an Oversight Committee spokesperson said the briefing was “thorough,” but “questions remain regarding recruiting, vetting, training and morale at the agency.”

“The USSS provided the Committee on Friday a thorough briefing for staff, and we appreciate their time and ongoing cooperation as we continue to conduct oversight to ensure the Secret Service is fulfilling its mission,” the spokesperson told RCP. Questions remain regarding recruiting, vetting, training, and morale at the agency and the Committee looks forward to receiving additional information from the agency soon.”

In addition, after the attempted assassination of Trump Saturday night, conservatives on social media blasted Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, for earlier this year introducing a bill co-sponsored by several other Democrats that would have denied Secret Service protection to Trump if he were convicted of a felony. The measure never gained traction in the GOP-controlled House. The Secret Service falls under the Department of Homeland Security.

After the attempted assassination, which killed one innocent spectator and injured at least two others, Thompson tweeted that he is “glad that the former president is safe” and is “grateful for law enforcement’s fast response.” 

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

48 hours after a ‘deluded gunman‘ with no internet footprint tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally from a nearby rooftop that should have been a layup for the Secret Service, the Biden administration is finally giving Secret Service protection to Robert Kennedy, Jr.

“In light of this weekend’s events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, adding “We are in a heightened and very dynamic threat environment.”

MAYORKAS: “The President has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.” pic.twitter.com/oJKUAVs0jD

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 15, 2024

Earlier in the day, Trump said it was “imperative” that Kennedy be granted Secret Service protection.

“Given the history of the Kennedy Family, this is the obvious right thing to do!” he said on Truth Social.

Over the weekend, Kennedy security consultant Gavin de Becker told Politico that the campaign had a pending formal request with the DHS.

Kennedy has repeatedly asked for Secret Service protection throughout his campaign for president – including after a man was arrested twice in the same day for scaling the fence of Kennedy’s Los Angeles home last October.

Kennedy had been twice refused by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“It’s not right for the President to provide protection to his family and political favorites while denying it to political rivals. During his first week as Attorney General, my father assembled all the DOJ’s senior prosecutors to tell them that he would not tolerate any politicization of law enforcement,” Kennedy wrote on X at the time.

President Biden displays a bust of my father in the oval office, but he seems to have forgotten this critical tenet of American democracy. During his administration, we’ve seen the wholesale corruption of federal law-enforcement agencies to censor criticism of White House…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 27, 2023

The incident came roughly a month after an armed man posing as a US Marshall was arrested at a Los Angeles event. 

Kennedy made a third request for protection in an Oct. 25 letter to Mayorkas, detailing the September 15 incident, as well as the Oct. 25 incident involving a man named Jonathan Macht.

Mr. Macht, 28, was arrested on the morning of Oct. 25 at Mr. Kennedy’s Los Angeles property after being detained by the candidate’s security detail. He climbed a fence and asked to see Mr. Kennedy, according to the LAPD.

Authorities said the man was taken into custody at a nearby police station where he was cited for trespassing and then released. Police said he returned to Mr. Kennedy’s home and was arrested at 5:45 p.m. for violating a protective order. He is being held on $30,000 bail.

Mr. Macht is known to the U.S. Secret Service and Mr. Kennedy’s security Gavin de Becker and Associates (GDBA), Mr. Kennedy’s campaign said.

“GDBA had notified the Secret Service about this specific obsessed individual several times in recent months, and shared alarming communications he has sent to the candidate,” according to the press release. –Epoch Times

“After being released from police custody, the man immediately returned to Kennedy’s residence and was arrested again. The candidate was home at the time of both arrests,” Kennedy’s campaign said in a statement.

Not the norm…

While the law dictates that all major presidential candidates and their spouses must be protected within 120 days of an election, history reveals that several have received Secret Service detail much further out than that – with Obama receiving it 551 days before an election, Trump and Ben Carson receiving it a year before the 2016 election (when Trump was a ‘joke’ candidate), and Ted Kennedy receiving it 410 days before the 1979 election.

Maybe they’ll do a better job than they did on Saturday, should an assassin target Kennedy.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“Trump is brushing off assassin’s bullets like dirt off his shoulder, racking up a mile long rap sheet of the fakest & gayest felonies known to man, chased through civil court by crazy-eyed harridans deranged by how horny he makes them. Joe Biden has jello for supper at 4pm.”

–  Aimee Terese on “X”

Dear Hitler, “Joe Biden” wrote his personal note of condolence Saturday night. 

So sorry to hear that you were inconvenienced by loud noises in PA, where I grew up in the black church. Chris Wray tells me that fine people may be behind it. Will keep you in the loop. Get well soon!”

Here’s some more consolation: The New York Times reports this morning that the FBI is looking into the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life as “possible domestic terrorism.” One must ask: are they trying to shed new light on this event, or just blowing more smoke up America’s ass — because that has been the FBI’s specialty for at least the past eight years. We’ll know if they take the definitive step of labeling the act a “hate crime.”

The weakness of narrative-tweaking is beginning to show. The amazing part is that only the elite thinking class of Americans fell for it, exactly the demographic that hangs on every word in The New York Times. The Deplorables out there in Flyoverland delivering Froot Loops to the Piggly-Wiggly and driving fork-lifts around the Amazon warehouse apparently never bought the narrative bullshit generated by the Media-Blob Industrial Complex. You’d hate to suppose that thinking is overrated. Or is it just a certain kind of thinking?

Try as you might to locate some malign, overweening, scheming cabal behind all the trips laid on our country, the truth is probably much simpler: set out on a journey defined by one lie, and then tell a lie to cover the first lie, and then another, and pretty soon you’re lying all over the place about everything until reality gets obliterated.

This is exactly what started in 2016 when Hillary Clinton sought to cover up her email and private server scandal with the Russia collusion hoax.

Have you forgotten how entrenched the FBI, CIA, and other agencies dug themselves in on that? It began as dumb-ass insinuation that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, but the FBI turned itself into fantasy factory when they ran with story. They manufactured one sub-plot after another, most of it comically absurd, like the entrapment of General Flynn for having a conversation with the Russian ambassador — as if foreign countries send ambassadors here for some other purpose than communicating with our government officials. Tell me, you Harvard grads who devour The New York Times every morning with your turmeric and wheat-grass detox smoothies: should an incoming White House National Security Advisor not speak with envoys from other lands?

So, following the election of 2016, scores of government officials from Barack Obama and Joe Biden on down set out to wreck Mr. Trump’s turn in office, and ran one hoax after another to disable and dislodge him, and each hoax was a battery of lies begetting more lies. The style of thinking behind all that is called unprincipled. Many of these lies entailed crimes, some of them gigantic frauds perpetrated on the citizenry such as the ballot-stuffing operation that jammed “Joe Biden” into office — and which you were not permitted to speak of on penalty of cancellation and prosecution.

By 2020, “Joe Biden” had racked up enough bribes from foreign lands that he was susceptible to blackmail and thus to manipulation. That his mind was failing through his entire term only made that easier. Both “Joe Biden” and the Neocon gang at State and the CIA were implicated in a web of crimes in Ukraine, and war there was one way to cover all of it up, so they made sure that war happened. The lies and hoaxes continued to multiply, accompanied by huge, destructive pranks — the George Floyd riots, the drag queens in the kiddie classrooms, the wide-open border, the FBI-instigated J-6 riot — and the Democratic Party was embroidered in that whole tapestry of degenerate politics along with the Deep State blob.

In short, the Democratic Party appears to be guilty of programmatic treason against the people of the United States.

They know that a reckoning awaits if Mr. Trump manages to return to office.

They’ve known it for years.

But two recent Supreme Court decisions really amped up their fears:

1) Trump v. the United States establishes presidential immunity from prosecution for acts involving his core constitutional duties;

and 2) Loper Bright v. Raimondo establishes that the federal bureaucracy can no longer rule over citizens unchecked by the courts.

Both of these would make it much easier for a President Trump to disassemble the Deep State.

And of course, that may lead to the investigation and prosecution of Deep State personae who abused their positions — possibly even prison. . . a discomfiting prospect.

The Democratic Party’s cover got blown on June 27th when Joe Biden had to go live in a debate and displayed his mental incompetency for all to see. That shock to the system forced a scramble to replace “JB” pretty late in the election cycle, since now just enough voters may be indisposed to re-electing an obvious human wreck. But the switcheroo effort seems to have lost traction. And the party may have muffed its blackmail leverage over “Joe Biden.” After all, his briberies are all well-cataloged by the House Oversight Committee, including the vast bank records of the many shell companies set up to receive the bribe money.

Is it possible, though, that “Joe Biden” holds blackmail material over his party confederates? After all, he’s still President. He has access to things you’d never dream of and, demented as he is, he has plenty of help close at hand from Hunter, Dr. Jill, and the Lawfare posse for sorting it out. He probably knows a thing or two about his old pard Barack Obama, too, that would make some folks uncomfortable. So, looks like “JB” is fixing to hang in there as his party’s nominee, and whoever doesn’t like it can go suck an egg.

After the stunning events of Saturday evening, it also looks like candidate “Joe Biden” would go down in flames against Donald Trump on November 5, stuffed drop-boxes and all. Not a few Democratic Party bigshots have already made noises about leaving the country if that happens, possibly to nations lacking extradition treaties with the USA. Many others must be gobbling Xanax like Tic Tacs now that Donald Trump has survived the ultimate affront to his existence.

You know the old nugget of wisdom: if you come at the king, you better not miss.

Ooops.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

The ‘Trump trade’ played out today…

Source: Bloomberg

…as prediction markets surge in the former president’s favor…

Source: Bloomberg

Trump’s media stocks soared…

All the major US equity indices were higher today with Small Caps absolutely ripping and S&P and Nasdaq meh…

The outperformance of the Russell 2000 over Nasdaq 100 over the past three days is outdone only by the moves made in March 2001 as the dotcom bubble imploded…

Source: Bloomberg

The almost 800bps spread is on par with events such as Lehman (Oct 2008), Trump Election (Nov 2016), and Biden election (Nov 2020).

Goldman’s treading desk noted that overall activity levels are up +25% vs. the trailing 2 weeks with market volumes up  +4% vs the 10dma, as their floor tilts -1% better for sale,  with both HFs and LOs tilted that way

• HFs skew -9% better for sale, tilted that way in every sector except Materials & Industrials.  Supply is most concentrated in Energy & Staples where short supply is most prevalent.  Tech, Fins, HCare and Cons Disc also net for sale, but mostly long supply

• LOs are -4% better for sale, as every sector ex-Fins, Energy & Macro Products tilts that way.  Supply is heavily concentrated in Disc, HCare & Utes with more modest profit taking in Mega Tech

Energy stocks outperformed and only rate-sensitive Utes were dumped today (and in that context, Real Estate was stronger than expected – Trump?)…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were all higher today but with a notable underperformance at the long-end (30Y +6bps, 2Y unch) which has dragged the long-end basically back to unchanged since CPI (juiced by the Trump trade too) as the short-end doves it up….

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve (2s30s) disinverted for the first time since January (which some also look at as driven by a ‘Trump’ bet)…

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-cut odds shifted dovishly for 2024 today (66bps now priced in  – so a 50-50 chance of 3 cuts by year-end), while Powell’s comments prompted some hawkishness for 2025 (looks like Trump odds just bringing fwd cuts)….

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin soared after Trump’s assassination survival (as the crypto-friendly candidate)…

Source: Bloomberg

Ethereum also rallied and was juiced a little by today’s chatter that ETH ETFs will launch tomorrow, which lifted it back from the weekend’s underpeformance relative to BTC…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold surged back up near record highs today…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite energy stocks’ gains, oil prices slipped lower today (drill, baby drill; less geopol risk?)…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, as we detailed here, US equity futures traders have never, ever been ‘longer’ than they are now…

What could go wrong?

Source: Bloomberg

Don’t worry though, it’s different this time.

Almost two months after the SEC unexpectedly cracked amid mounting political pressure – from Democrats – and granted 19b-4 approval for Ethereum ETFs, moments ago Bloomberg’s in-house ETF guru Eric Balchunas reported that the SEC has “finally gotten back to issuers today, asking them to return FINAL S-1s on Wed (incl fees) and then request effectiveness on Monday after close for a TUESDAY 7/23 LAUNCH.”

Ironic and kinda funny 7/23 is right in the middle of the biggest bitcoin conf of the year, which @JSeyff will be at btw

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 15, 2024

And as Balchunas also notes, the presumed start of ETH ETF trading would coincide with the biggest bitcoin conf of the year, one where Donald Trump himself will be a guest now that crypto has become one of the biggest political talking points, just as we predicted it would more than a year ago.

Crypto becoming a top 2024 election issue as expected. On one hand you have Pocahontas and her “Anti-Crypto army”, and now you have DeSantis going all-in crypto, anti-CBDC and anti-Warren. https://t.co/cmrGcPQIcY https://t.co/vK5MqiOhNj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2023

The news helped push Ether to a session – and two week – high just above $3,425 before some modest profit-taking kicked in following an impressive surge in ETH which jumped from $2800 – thanks largely to the recent German liquidation – to $3400 in just ten days.

The lift in ETH also helped push the ETH/BTC ratio modestly higher, even though it still remains far below its post-2021 average of 0.065, which implied a fair value for ETH is above $4,000.

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

• AI’s rapid growth threatens the stability of the energy industry, economy, and climate due to its high energy consumption.

• The tech sector’s decarbonization goals are challenged by AI’s power demands, with Google reporting a 48 percent increase in carbon emissions over the last five years.

• AI and electric vehicles are expected to add significant electricity demand to the US grid, potentially leading to energy shortages and increased energy bills.

The growth of Artificial Intelligence has come on so strong and so fast that it threatens to destabilize the energy industry, the economy, and the climate. 

Last week, Google stated that its carbon emissions have skyrocketed by a whopping 48 percent over the last five years.

“AI-powered services involve considerably more computer power – and so electricity – than standard online activity, prompting a series of warnings about the technology’s environmental impact,” the BBC reported Thursday.

Indeed, a recent study from scientists at Cornell University finds that generative AI systems like ChatGPT use up to 33 times more energy than computers running task-specific software. Furthermore, each AI-powered internet query consumes about ten times more energy than traditional internet searches. 

This runaway increase in power consumption as AI picks up speed poses a direct threat to the tech sector’s ability to make good on its decarbonization promises. While Google hasn’t budged from its net-zero by 2030 goals, the company has admitted that “as we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging.” 

Altogether, the global AI sector is expected to be responsible for 3.5 percent of the world’s electricity consumption by 2030. In the United States, data centers alone could consume a whopping 9 percent of electricity generation by 2030. That represents a two-fold increase of current levels. That punishing growth rate will have major implications for national energy security, not to mention the economy. 

“When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, an electricity regulator, told the Washington Post back in March.

“It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”

Together, AI and electric vehicles are expected to add 290 terawatt hours of electricity demand to the United States energy grid by the end of the decade according to projections by Rystad Energy. By 2030, these two sectors alone will consume an equivalent amount of energy to the entire nation of Turkey – the world’s 18th largest economy. 

All this means that the country has to add a whole lot of energy production capacity at a breakneck pace, or the United States risks running out of energy altogether.

“This growth is a race against time to expand power generation without overwhelming electricity systems to the point of stress,” said Rystad analyst Surya Hendry. 

And the American public can expect to bear a whole lot of that burden in the form of ballooning energy bills. Furthermore, there’s nothing that the average consumer can do to stop it, as it’s not a consumer behavior issue so much as a tech sector issue. Electricity prices are already on the rise, and growth rates aren’t going to slow down any time soon according to projections from the Bank of America Institute, a think tank that crunches proprietary data to provide economic insights. In the bigger picture, industry insiders have warned that if the nation can’t produce enough energy to keep up with these ballooning demands, they risk hindering economic growth. 

No one is more aware of this power crunch than Big Tech. CNBC reports that heavy hitters like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta, are all begging for increased energy as they continue to add data centers to the grid, often at a gigawatt of electricity a pop. In order to fill this massive and increasing supply gap, many tech bigwigs are calling for an increase in nuclear energy deployment and nuclear fusion research, as it is a proven zero-carbon technology capable of producing large volumes of baseload power, avoiding many of the technological and bureaucratic pitfalls associated with renewables. 

The reality, however, is that no single power source can save the United States from the crushing weight of its own technological ambitions. Feeding the insatiable hunger of AI, EVs, and related sectors will likely require additional extraction and exploration of fossil fuels in a business-as-usual scenario. And this is a huge problem.

However, AI could be the solution as well as the problem. It could be employed in ‘smart grids’ to ensure efficiency and reduce emissions. However, this would require restraint that the tech sector isn’t exactly famous for. The Department of Energy has warned that this approach could cause more harm than good if applied ‘naively.’

Authored by Ken Silva via HeadlineUSA.com,

The FBI has reportedly taken alleged Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks’s phone to its lab in Quantico, Virginia, where its technicians are working to unlock it as part of the investigation into his possible motives.

But according to Fox News reporter Laura Ingraham, the FBI’s finest techies are struggling to crack the phone.

“An official is telling Fox they believe the shooter acted along. We’re also learning they can’t get into his cellphone,” Ingraham said on Sunday. “They have it at Quantico but haven’t been able to get any data out of it.”

BREAKING 🚨 Quantico reportedly cannot get into the alleged shooter’s cell phone, who they state: “Acted alone.”

pic.twitter.com/voRPYiHlGV

— Toria Brooke (@realtoriabrooke) July 15, 2024

The FBI’s claim that it can’t crack Crooks’s phone should be treated with skepticism. The bureau has a track record of lying about such matters.

The most notorious case of the FBI claiming it couldn’t crack an encrypted phone happened in December 2015, in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, in which two shooters killed more than a dozen victims.

At the time, the FBI claimed it couldn’t access one of the shooters’ iPhones. The bureau sought a court order to force Apple to help the FBI break the phone’s encryption.

Apple resisted the FBI’s coercsion, but the dispute was never fully litigated. It turned out, the FBI hired an Australian cybersecurity firm to hack the phone around March 2016 or shortly thereafter. The purported true story of how the FBI unlocked the phone wasn’t told until 2021.

A similar situation occurred in May 2020, when then-Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray criticized Apple for not helping investigators who were attempting to gain access to two iPhones used by Mohammed Alshamrani, who launched a terror attack at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida in December 2019.

Wray has continued his anti-encryption throughout the years. In March 2021, for example, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that encryption was stifling his agents from investigating domestic extremism.

“Like Alshamrani, the plotters who sought to kidnap the governor of Michigan late last year used end-to-end encrypted apps to hide their communications from law enforcement. Their plot was only disrupted by well-timed human source reporting and the resulting undercover operation,” Wray said at the time.

“Subjects of our investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol siege used end-to-end encrypted communications as well.”

According to Wray and other law enforcers, tech companies should be able to build “backdoors” into their encryption that preserves privacy, while allowing for access when necessary. That, they say, strikes the proper balance between data security and national security.

However, numerous tech experts, civil libertarians, and others say that it’s impossible to build a backdoor that can’t be exploited by hackers. They also say that by banning encryption, the United States would be following in the footsteps of authoritarian countries such as China, which blocked the encrypted messaging app Signal.

“It is important to understand that any kind of back door (or front door) access for the ‘good guys’ can also be exploited by the ’bad guys,’” the pro-industry Information Technology & Innovation Foundation stated in a July 2020 report, in the midst of the Apple-Barr controversy.

“For example, key escrow systems would introduce new attack vectors that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted information, such as by compromising the system that maintains copies of the keys.”

…and in case you hadn’t put it all together, here’s Matt Walsh…

Guys there’s nothing strange going on here. The 20 year old shooter had never used social media or posted a single thing on the internet, ever, and his phone cannot be accessed because it has a password which our government’s best hackers cannot bypass. That’s all. Normal stuff.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) July 15, 2024

…what do they need to hide?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

The people that guard our leaders are supposed to be the most highly trained security personnel in the world.  So how could something like this have happened?  As I mentioned in a previous article, I have been trying to put the pieces together.  To me, it appears that we either just witnessed incompetence on an epic scale or something more insidious was going on out there.  The American people deserve answers, and hopefully we will get them.  But I think that one thing is clear.  I don’t see any possible way that the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, can be allowed to keep her job.  There is no way that this shooting would have happened the way that it did if competent people were running the show.

I have been digging into what many of the experts have been saying about this incident, and there is so much that just doesn’t make sense.

So I have compiled a list of 10 burning questions that every American should be asking about the Trump shooting…

#1 How did the shooter get so close without being seen by the Secret Service?  It is being reported that he was able to crawl on to a roof that was just 130 yards away from Trump…

How on earth did a gunman who was acting suspiciously crawl onto the roof of a building 130 yards away from where former president of the United States was speaking and manage to fire at least eight shots before he was taken down?

That is just one of the damning and terrifying questions that are unanswered after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that is being described as an enormous security failure.

Terrifying new video from TMZ has captured the moment Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, lay down on the roof of a nearby building, in full view of horrified Trump supporters, and fired towards the stage.

#2 Why weren’t security personnel on that roof?  Every roof that had a direct line of sight to Trump should have been covered, and a former SWAT commander is saying that what we just witnessed was “a fundamental security failure”…

Steve Nottingham, a former SWAT commander in Long Beach, California, called Saturday’s shooting “a fundamental security failure.”

He has worked security details for visiting world leaders, including presidents, and now trains officers on how to respond to critical incidents. He pointed at likely breakdowns in the pre-event scouting and real-time monitoring of places a gunman could shoot from.

“They were behind the curve, because they should have had those places covered ahead of time,” Nottingham said.

#3 Why didn’t authorities respond when they were warned about a man with a gun?  One witness says that he repeatedly tried to warn law enforcement about the shooter but he was ignored…

A man who was present at the Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet during a failed assassination attempt Saturday night said police ignored him when he told them there was a man with a rifle crawling on a rooftop moments before the shooting.

In the immediate aftermath of the deadly shooting, a man wearing a red “Trump 2024” visor spoke to BBC News from the community of Butler and claimed he tried to warn law enforcement officers about imminent danger regarding the president.

“Probably five to seven minutes of Trump speaking… we noticed a guy crawling – bear crawling – up the roof of the building beside us, fifty feet away from us,” the man said.

#4 According to testimony from another eyewitness, the shooter actually had time to “move from roof to roof” before he started shooting at Trump.  If people in the crowd could see this movement, why couldn’t the Secret Service?

An attendee at former President Donald Trump’s rally at the Butler County fairgrounds says he saw the alleged shooter on a nearby rooftop as Trump was delivering remarks to supporters Saturday.

Trump is safe after he was rushed offstage by Secret Service agents and whisked away to a secure location. Blood could be seen coming from his face after shots rang out. The shooter was fatally shot by a Secret Service sniper, law enforcement sources told CBS News.

Ben Macer told KDKA-TV’s Jennifer Borraso that he was up along the fence line and “saw the guy move from roof to roof. [I] told an officer [the alleged shooter] was on the roof.”

#5 Once the shooting started, why did it take so long for the Secret Service to get to Trump?

There should always be agents just a couple of steps from Trump at all times.

But somehow Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to get off at least eight shots at Trump.

As I watch video of the incident over and over, it seems like an eternity before Secret Service agents get there.

After Trump is shot, there are several long seconds before a couple of agents finally get to Trump.

If the shooter had better aim, Trump would not have survived.

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino is calling this entire episode a “catastrophic failure”…

Actively communicating with a number of former colleagues from the Secret Service about the assassination attempt.

This is an obviously catastrophic failure and NO excuses should be made, or even attempted.

The failures are profound and questions must be answered about ground surveillance, air surveillance, post-stander support, and counter-sniper advance work and response.

We have ONE job, and we came within inches of a deadly failure today. An uneventful failure is NOT a success.

#6 Why was security so much better at previous Trump rallies?  One man that was there when Trump was shot said that there was a “noticeable” difference between security at this rally and security at a previous rally that he had attended…

Robert D. Philpot said he attended a Trump rally at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport during the previous presidential campaign and immediately noted that the location had a lot of buildings similar to those from where the shooter took aim during yesterday’s attack.

“Every rooftop of every hanger had three, four five guys on top,” said Philpot, noting that armed Secret Service and law enforcement were everywhere.

“First thing I did when I got here yesterday, was I did a complete look around at every rooftop and I said to myself that’s strange, I don’t see one cop, sniper, nothing, I don’t see anything, and I just thought that was kind of weird,” said Philpot.

The eyewitness said it was “so noticeable” that the security was so lax for yesterday’s event compared to the one he attended four years prior.

#7 U.S. Representative Mike Waltz claims that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas turned down requests for better Secret Service protection for Trump on multiple occasions.  Why did he do this?…

A House Republican lawmaker is alleging that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denied stronger Secret Service protection for former President Trump multiple times.

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., made the accusation hours after Trump was grazed by a bullet at his Saturday Pennsylvania rally.

“I have very reliable sources telling me there have been repeated requests for stronger secret service protection for President Trump. Denied by Secretary Mayorkas,” Waltz wrote on X.

#8 Did inflammatory rhetoric inspire the shooter to do what he did?  As J.D. Vance has aptly observed, the Biden campaign has been labeling Trump as “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs”…

Today is not just some isolated incident.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.

That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.

And many have pointed out that less than a week ago Joe Biden stated that it was time to put a “bullseye” on Trump…

President Joe Biden reportedly told donors on a phone call on Monday that it was “time to put” former President Donald Trump “in the bullseye.”

“Biden told donors on a private call this afternoon: ‘It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye,’” Kenneth P. Vogel, a reporter with the New York Times, wrote in a post on Monday.

#9 I think that the timing of this shooting was very interesting.

If Trump was killed just before the convention, he would not be the Republican nominee.

So who would have come out of the convention as the replacement nominee?

#10 How will this shooting affect the general election?

When Ronald Reagan was shot, his poll numbers went up dramatically.  Will the same thing happen to Trump?…

The polls already suggest that Trump is likely to win back the presidency in November, after a torrid few months for his opponent and a criminal conviction that has had little impact on his popularity.

If history tells us anything, the events of Saturday will only increase his support. In the months after Mr Reagan was shot, the newly-elected Republican president saw a poll boost of eight points.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens to the poll numbers, but already Trump’s odds of winning in the betting markets has been spiking…

On Saturday, prior to the assassination attempt, Trump’s odds of winning the 2024 presidential election were 8/15 (65.2 percent) according to William Hill, a U.K. based betting company. However, after the shooting, this was slashed to a 4/11 (73.3 percent) chance of Trump achieving victory.

I know that Trump likes to hold big open air rallies where he can interact with huge crowds of people.

But I really do hope that he will be a lot more careful in the future.

We really are moving into a time of unprecedented chaos, and what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

It certainly isn’t going to take much to push our nation over the edge.

If Trump had not moved his head at the last moment, he almost certainly would have been killed.

That would have completely ripped our nation apart, and it is probably only a matter of time before someone else tries again.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

FedChair Jerome Powell is sitting down to have a conversation with David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington.

Just last week, in two days of congressional testimony, Powell specifically declined to speculate on the timing of the Fed’s first rate cut:

“I’m not going to be sending any signals about the timing of future actions.”

Today’s appearance by Powell is his first public opportunity to respond to the better-than-expected June inflation data. He described the May data as “very good” and traders will be intently dissecting what Powell might say after his congressional testimony last week reinforced growing consensus that the Fed may cut as early as September.

We think Powell will  – as usual – take the opportunity to emphasize the importance of keeping the Fed politically independent, but would also acknowledge the unsustainable trajectory of the national debt.

Ian Lyngen at BMO Capital Markets says, “Powell will retain flexibility on the precise timing of any looming cut and reiterate the messaging from last week’s congressional testimony.” 

At the very least, BMO expects Powell’s tone will keep the 2yr yield below 4.5% and in turn “there is little preventing 2s/10s from pushing to the -15bp/-20bp range and 5s/30s to this year’s peak of 38.2 bp.”

Just a couple hours before Powell’s remarks, Goldman Sachs economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a note to clients that there was a “solid rationale” for cutting rates as soon as July 31.

Watch Powell speak live (due to start at 1230ET):

By Benjamin Picton, senior macro strategist at Rabobank

The Shot Heard Around the World

The US presidential campaign was upended over the weekend by an attempted assassination of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania when a shooter opened fire from a nearby rooftop. A bullet grazed the 45th President’s ear, drawing blood before he dropped to the ground and was surrounded by members of the Secret Service. Before being escorted off stage, Trump stood and defiantly punched the air, producing what is sure to be the defining image of the campaign.

The shooter was killed by Secret Service snipers moments after the assassination attempt. According to media reports, one innocent bystander was killed by the shooter’s stray bullets and two others critically injured. Donald Trump was immediately sent for medical evaluation but is reportedly in good health and issued a statement via Truth Social calling for unity. President Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office a short time ago, also calling for unity, condemning political violence and urging partisans to “lower the temperature” in US politics.

The assassination attempt comes just days before the Republican National Convention, due to kick-off in Milwaukee today. Donald Trump arrived in the city on Sunday ahead of his presumptive confirmation as the Republican Party’s nominee for the Presidency and keynote address on Thursday. It is widely expected that Trump will unveil his choice of running mate this week, with odds shortening on Ohio Senator J.D Vance ahead of GOP establishment-type candidates like Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio.

Vance is seen as a torchbearer for the MAGA brand of conservative nationalism. His best-selling memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ (later adapted for film by Ron Howard) was widely seen as a guide to the Trump support base, and an explanation of Trump’s ‘America First’ approach to trade and immigration issues. Does Donald Trump’s recent brush with mortality make the selection of a MAGA true believer as VP more likely? There is also the consideration that, if Trump does indeed win, he will not be eligible to run again in 2028 and may therefore be looking to anoint potential successors who will carry on his program.

In one sense, there is a remarkable symmetry between the events of the weekend and the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981. At the time of Reagan’s shooting, the ‘Reaganomics’ experiment in Neoliberalism that has been the dominant economic paradigm of the last 40 years was still in its infancy. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump perhaps bookends the Neoliberal years as the world turns again to mercantilist economic nationalism, characterized by protective tariffs and tighter controls on the international mobility of labor and capital.

After Reagan was shot in 1981, he received a substantial poll boost and went on to win the 1984 Presidential race against Carter VP Walter Mondale in one of the all-time electoral drubbings. Mondale won just 13 electoral college votes against Reagan’s 525, carrying only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

The Biden campaign will be acutely aware of the historical comparison. Biden had hoped to wrest back some momentum after his disastrous debate performance and subsequent gaffes at last week’s NATO conference saw numerous Democratic politicians and donors express a lack of confidence in the President’s ability to defeat Donald Trump. Bloomberg’s Jordan Fabian suggests that the attempt on Trump’s life deprives the Biden campaign of a favored campaign tactic: making Trump’s behaviour and agenda the central campaign issue.

It will be difficult for President Biden to simultaneously argue for national unity and lowering the temperature of the debate, while also suggesting that Trump’s character and program are a risk to American democracy. The Biden campaign is snookered and will have to run instead on the President’s record in office: a message that has thus far failed to cut through with voters.

Market reaction to the events of the weekend has been reasonably muted. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot index is up minorly on haven buying, crude oil prices are slightly higher and Asian equities are mixed. Aussie 3 and 10-year bond futures have caught a small bid in early trade.

If the assassination attempt improves Donald Trump’s electoral prospects as dramatically as pundits seem to be suggesting, markets may be under-pricing the consequences of universal tariffs and a potential curtailing of Fed independence.

For now, the price action suggests traders remain primarily focused on when the first cut to the Fed Funds rate is going to come, and not on momentous geopolitical recalibrations.