Not long after I came to New Hampshire, decades back, a chap in Littleton decided to hold up the local bank. Unfortunately, he made the elementary mistake of rolling the ski-mask down over his face not just for the robbery but also to case the joint. A teller at the bank, strolling back from lunch, noticed the ski-masked bloke standing on Main Street peering through the windows for some length of time, and she thought it rather odd. So, when he entered the lobby to hold up the joint, they were ready for him.
That's pretty much what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania - except, instead of a perspicacious bank clerk acting swiftly to prevent the crime, there were vast numbers of Secret Service agents who instead let the guy go ahead and commit it.
In the last seventy-two hours, we have learned there were at least three government snipers in the very building whose rooftop the assassin was trying to access. They sat inside and watched him through the windows, as he arrived and peered up at the roof, and then wandered away.
They watched him when he returned and took out a laser range-finder to calculate the distance between the building and Trump's head, and then left again.
They watched him a third time when he returned with a bulky backpack.
They watched him for the best part of half-an-hour ...and then they let him go ahead and shoot the Republican presidential candidate.
The Federalist's Sean Davis asks the relevant question:
Who gave the order to do nothing until after the assassin shot Trump, killed an innocent man on that stage, and fired round after round after round after round?
That's a good way to put it: a building full of Secret Service agents did nothing for half-an-hour because that's what they were ordered to do, by some fellow somewhere in the bureaucracy in a position to give such an order. Who is he?
There were consequences to his decision: A genuine public servant - volunteer fireman Corey Comperatore - died shielding his wife and daughters because the ersatz "public servants" of the Secret Service allowed his killer to open fire.
They sat back and watched as his killer cased the roof, made his range-finder calculations, returned with the backpack, and then ascended to his position. The Secret Service provided no service whatsoever; they were the Secret Spectators: they did nothing until after Mr Comperatore, Trump and the others had been shot.
Why?
Sean Davis's column is a tough read:
Biden's Team Deliberately Kneecapped Trump's Security To Allow An Assassination Attempt
Against that dark hypothesis is the state's version of events:
Mr Walsh does not include the latest government explanation for what happened: per the Director of the Secret Service herself, it would not have been possible to secure that rooftop in advance because it has an ever so slightly pitched gable and so to ask a Secret Service agent to stand on it would have been in breach of health-and-safety regulations.
You might be wondering: er, hang on, in that case, isn't having to take a bullet for the President in breach of health-and-safety?
Bonus: CNN reports that in recent weeks the feds had human intel of an Iranian plot to kill Trump. So they had supposedly "ramped up" security - by diverting the experienced guys to Dr Jill and allocating a platoon of five-foot-two-eyes-of-blue Keystone chorus girls to a 6'3" target.
Something very disturbing is going on, very deep and comparatively high up in the federal government. We shall try to break it down on today's edition of our Clubland Q&A, live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. If you chance to be elsewhere, do check local listings below.
~Many listeners have asked how they can support one or other or both of my free-speech lawsuits on either side of the Atlantic, in the District of Columbia Superior Court and the King's Bench Division of the High Court of England, respectively. There are several ways:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;
b) buying a near-and-dear one a SteynOnline gift certificate; or
c) ordering a copy of my latest book, The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it, says Kathy Gyngell).
~Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our Clubland Q&A live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the globe - from Hampshire to Haifa, Michigan to Moose Jaw, Sydney to Skaneateles, West Palm Beach to West Dunbartonshire. Whether you've joined this week either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.
But, if you're not interested in joining, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London, 9pm in Paris, 10pm in Jerusalem; half-past-ten in Teheran; midnight-forty-five in Kathmandu; 3am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 5am in Sydney and Melbourne; 7am in Auckland, and a rather more convivial hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead I've probably already lost my appeal by now...