Our National Bullet Dodge

President Trump, and America, dodged a bullet Saturday.

While speaking before an estimated crowd of 15,000 in Pennsylvania, President Donald J. Trump was shot and wounded in the right ear. Video shows him grabbing his ear, then ducking behind the podium for cover as the Secret Service rushed to cover him. He then stood up, ordered the Secret Service to “wait, wait, wait,” then turned to the crowd, raised his fist defiantly, signaled he was okay, and said what appeared to be “Fight! Fight! Fight!” before being hustled off-stage.

Eight shots were allegedly fired from “an AR-style” weapon by a shooter positioned on a rooftop some 130 yards away. The shooter was unalived with extreme prejudice by a Secret Service counter-sniper. One rally attendee was killed, and as of the time of this writing two more were in critical condition. Witnesses indicate that one or more were less seriously injured, but the final report is pending.

President Trump gave a statement on his Truth Social account early Saturday evening:

“I want to thank The United States Secret Service, and all of Law Enforcement, for their rapid response on the shooting that just took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. Most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the Rally who was killed, and also to the family of another person that was badly injured. It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country. Nothing is known at this time about the shooter, who is now dead. I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

Former AL-6 Congressional candidate Ken McFeeters was one of several local Republicans I reached out to for comment on the shooting, and he said, “I am thankful President Trump appears to be OK and I hope and pray I can vote for him in November. That said I have zero faith in our federal alphabet agencies nor the media to tell us the truth about anything, including this. After all, they have given us the January 6 “insurrection,” Russian meddling in our election, another senseless war that has cost us hundreds of billions, masked our kids, let out parents die alone in hospitals, gave us senseless social distancing, imprisoned us in our homes, told us the 2020 election was the “most secure in history,” closed 25% of our small businesses, and this has been just in the last four years. No, I do not trust a thing our federal government or media says.”

He’s certainly not the only one who feels that way, and that’s the crux of the matter.

A former (and hopefully future) President of these United States has just survived an assassination attempt, and the people who’ll be investigating it work for the same guy who said “It's time to put Trump in a bullseye.” (Joe Biden, on a private call with donors, July 8th, as reported by Politico)

The Secret Service has already asked the FBI—the same weaponized FBI that’s been persecuting J6ers and moms yelling at School Boards as “domestic terrorists”—for help with the investigation. The same Secret Service, headed by Director Kim Cheatle, that denied Presumptive Nominee Trump the full Presidential protection package (and RFK Jr the “standard” protection package).

But wait—there’s more!

The BBC showed a clip of a witness who claims he and his friends saw the shooter climbing up the building to the roof with his rifle and told the police, who ignored them, as the Secret Service also seemed to ignore the shooter until they “blew his head off.”

And did the shooter really miss? President Trump has reportedly begun wearing a bulllet-proof vest, and there’s at least one picture making the rounds on social media that there’s what looks like a hole in his coat. As best as I can tell, his ear was only clipped, thank God. That’s messy and bloody, and fiddly to repair, but not really dangerous. A bullet to the chest, on the other hand, is another thing altogether.

Predictably, some on the Left wigged out that the shooter didn’t kill our President. I put a link to one of these below, but there are more. The mainstream media was also quick to condemn the “divisive rhetoric” from people like J. D. Vance, who posted “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.”

According to the legacy media, that’s divisive, but Biden’s “put Trump in a bullseye” is not. Neither is Dan Goldman’s November, 2023 comment that Trump “needs to be eliminated.” Nor are all those dozens of Dems like Hillary and Rachet MadCow calling Trump a dictator, or Hitler, or…you get the idea.

The Left has been inciting violence against Trump and MAGA for years now, with no consequences. Now a former President, who’s leading in every halfway honest poll to be the next President, is nearly assassinated, and pointing this out is “divisive?”

Sorry, Charlie; that gaslighting isn’t going to work any more.

This government, specifically this President and the Alphabets under him, have no coins left in the trust bank. The media is equally bereft of any credibility after their coordinated coverup of old Joe’s mental decline was so rudely exposed by the debate. There have been too many lies laid bare, and too many fake narratives revealed for us to have any faith in what our Fearless Leaders will tell us in future.

Now the man many of us see as the last, best hope of the Republic has survived an assassination attempt by literally fractions of an inch, and the suspicious bits are already coming out. Certainly there will be an investigation into the glaring failure(s) of the Secret Service and local law enforcement, but I’ve already heard from people who won’t believe it, whatever it says. “Another Warren Commission” and “whitewash” have been tossed around, and we’re less than 24 hours out from the shooting.

We can only be thankful that President Trump is alive and doing well, and that he and the RNC have already announced that the Republican Convention will proceed as planned. I’m not sad to not be going—it’ll be a nightmare after the shooting. At least it won’t be the fustercluck the Dems can look forward to in August.

Best of all, we don’t have to contemplate what we’d be facing if Trump had fallen today. I only have two words for that: Black Swan.

Social media lit up Saturday with #CivilWar trending, as people realized just how close we came to seeing our President killed, right before our very eyes. The nation was very, very lucky Saturday afternoon, and if the Left is smart, they’ll dial their rhetoric back to more reasonable levels. Sadly, I don’t think most of them are that smart, or even capable of understanding just how thin the ice under them has gotten.

America dodged a bullet Saturday when Donald J. Trump dodged his. For that, we should all be grateful.

***

Dan Bongino discussing the Secret Service protection package issue and calling for Director Cheatle to resign: https://truthsocial.com/@dbongino/112782283966305188

BBC witness who saw shooter and tried to notify police and Secret Service, from @PrepperCanadian https://x.com/preppercanadian/status/1812273345939087565?s=46&t=Lc2EZlMEXlWLpVSTrK_Y8Q

A hole in Trump’s coat? From @KailashGWagh: https://x.com/kailashgwagh/status/1812298458000191855?s=46&t=Lc2EZlMEXlWLpVSTrK_Y8Q

Lefty melting down because the shooter missed, from @libsoftiktok: https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1812297150442946877?s=46&t=Lc2EZlMEXlWLpVSTrK_Y8Q

Dr. Bill Chitwood is a retired Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist who does political consulting and media relations. He is the author of Beyond Maga, available on Amazon under his pen name, Doc Contrarian. He can be found on Substack and social media as @DocContrarian.

Opinions expressed in the Alabama Gazette are the opinions and viewpoints of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Alabama Gazette staff, advertisers, and/ publishers.