“Thinking about the Unthinkable” is the title of a once famous 1962 book by Herman Kahn imagining scenarios for an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Perhaps it helped to prevent a nuclear war from occurring.
“Thinking the unthinkable” has become a trope. A Google search for the phrase will turn up dozens of books in various fields. Sometimes contemplating something so repulsive is necessary because the unthinkable does happen. We are not well-positioned to prevent the unthinkable from happening, or recurring, if we are unwilling to even imagine it. That was the premise for Herman Kahn’s book.
Is it really “unthinkable” that someone in power might try to kill his or her political opponents?
It is time to think the unthinkable about the assassination attempt on the life of presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Everyone knows it failed by less than an inch. What we do not know, and perhaps may never know, is how it was allowed to happen.
What We Know Now of the Assassination Attempt
The latest is that a local cop warned the Secret Service days before the shooting that they should station someone on that fateful roof that was within easy shooting range of where the former President and leading presidential candidate was going to speak.
Plus the people supposedly guarding the former president saw a suspicious guy with a range finder near the roof. That’s the last straw for me. It is time to start thinking about the possibility that the shooter did not act alone and that someone somewhere wanted that roof to be left unprotected for some reason.
Yes, I served in government and I do know that the feds probably think the local cops are fools and would ignore their advice about how to do their job. That is certainly a possibility. And it also certainly is possible that the shooter acted alone and was enabled by gross bureaucratic incompetence. That happens.
But there are also more sinister possibilities that should be thoroughly investigated, and I am dubious that even a “bipartisan” congressional investigation will get to the bottom of it. The next administration should appoint a distinguished special prosecutor to investigate whether crimes were committed, and if so, by whom. If the Russia hoax needed a special prosecutor, these events certainly do.
There are just too many alleged “coincidences” here to continue to ignore the alternative possibilities. These events are beginning to remind me of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged “suicide.” Remember him. He’s the guy who set up lots of powerful men with underage girls and supposedly took his own life while in a New York jail under a suicide watch.
His cell mate was moved to a different cell and the two guards who were supposed to be watching him allegedly fell asleep, and the security cameras just happened not to be working. “Nothing to see here,” we were told.
Similarly, we are supposed be reassured by the FBI telling us that they found no evidence that the shooter did not act alone and for unknown reasons. But “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” And, oh yes, there is that little matter of those encrypted messages on the shooter’s cell phone that the FBI claims it cannot decipher.
Lest I get canceled for peddling a “conspiracy theory,” I am not saying there was a conspiracy to assassinate Trump. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, “It may have happened, it may not have happened. But it could have happened.”
I will confess that before it happened, I predicted that it would happen, telling several friends that the powers that be would never allow Trump to take office again and so if it looked like he was going to win re-election, he would be assassinated. Someone tried once; someone else could try again.
Is it really “unthinkable” that someone in power might try to kill his or her political opponents? Assassinations of political opponents have happened throughout history. For example, many people, including President Biden, believe Putin was behind the mysterious explosion that killed Prigozhin.
Machiavelli even recommends assassination as a tactic in his book The Prince, writing that a despot should invite his rivals to a peace conference, hide his henchmen behind curtains so they can spring out and kill his opponents.
Do I think someone in the White House ordered the assassination? No, that’s the stuff of James Bond movies. But all it takes are magazine covers portraying Trump as Hitler, plus inflammatory statements by prominent politicians, including President Biden, that Trump will be a “dictator”; that there will be a “bloodbath” if Trump is not elected; and that “it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” That plus an unguarded rooftop is all it takes for a volunteer to take a shot at him.
An Assassination Could Happen Here
Think that nothing like that could possibly happen here? Think again. At least twenty assassination attempts on U.S. presidents or presidential candidates have occurred in American history.
As Justice Gorsuch recently noted, it was unprecedented that one presidential administration might try to put a previous president in jail — until it happened.
In her dissent from the recent presidential immunity case, left-leaning Justice Sotomayor, writing for herself and the two other justices appointed by Democrats, envisioned that a future president might indeed order the assassination of a political opponent:
When [the President] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
To be clear, I am not claiming that President Biden or his inner circle was behind the assassination attempt, nor that Justice Sotomayor’s inflammatory statement is an accurate summary of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.
But to date the “explanations” by the Secret Service and the FBI smell like a cover-up. They may well just be covering up bureaucratic incompetence. But it is time to investigate the unthinkable that something more sinister may have been behind leaving that roof within easy shooting range unguarded.
Otherwise, even innocent events, such as the recent “mechanical problem” on Trump’s plane will result in speculation by the public that someone in power is trying to kill him.
READ MORE from E. Donald Elliott:
Are the American People Smart Enough to See Through the Political Theater?