MEGA THREAD - Trump shot but safe, 2 others killed at PA rally
WHAT
Former U.S. President Donald J. Trump was shot at a rally in PA.
TRUMPS STATEMENT
“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!”
Do not advocate or celebrate violence, please. Comments advocating violence will be deleted and bans will be issued.
Also, please avoid promoting conspiracies. Discussing current events is fine but suggesting things like “it’s a false flag” without evidence is spreading a conspiracy.
There is a difference between background-level bulk sniffing and someone-here-maybe-incited-violence targeted sniffing. The former is data collection, which is passive in the form practiced by “the feds”. The latter is data connection, putting effort into connecting a subset of the data that has been collected to form a story. Data connections need a framing, a nucleation seed, an impetus for why the feds might think such a connection is interesting or relevant or worth adding to their story about a larger incident. Collecting data is cheap and done in bulk, partly because it can be done passively and partly because the US govt paid a lot of money on storage and collection mechanisms. Connecting data is something that requires a lot more time, effort, patience, and vetting to make sure you are doing it right.
Or you can give the job to generative AI and hope it doesn’t hallucinate that someone innocent is guilty; with a large enough data pool (ie the internet, reality, what-have-you) it’s possible to select a misleading subset to support whatever hallucination you want.
It’s easy to do wrong, which is exactly why you don’t want the feds sniffing around. Especially now that they have the tools to automate doing it wrong, and might not know how to use them yet.
That's not a justification for more violence, two wrongs don't make a right. He was wrong for doing what he did and this is wrong as well. This is because political violence in it's entirety is wrong. Jesus, do people not have principles anymore? Seeing all the supposedly moral people turn into Q anon level conspiracy theorists who condone violence is depressing.
But these are vastly different situations. For the record, all three of these individuals used political violence to achieve political aims, that's one of the reasons why history doesn't remember them fondly. The constantly killed people they didn't like under the justification that it's for the greater good or self defense. Saddam Hussien did that when he genocided the Kurds in Iraq and the invasion Kuwait, Hitler did that with the Holocaust and the invasion of Europe, and Bin Laden did that with 9/11 and the other terrorist attacks he launched.
Keep in mind, we actually have a justice system in this country that actually works. If we want Trump to face justice it has to go through the justice where he faces trial and is found guilty based on evidence... which has already happened btw for one of his crimes. That's how justice is handled in a civil democracy. We can't have randos going on self righteous terrorism crusades killing political candidates they don't like. If someone tried assassinate Biden, would you being say the same? Probably not, and rightfully so, but the terrorist who tried to kill would be making similar justifications to what you're trying to make right now. The very idea is wrong.
Donald Trump intentionally and maliciously mishandled an epidemic and allowed it to turn pandemic for his own stupid and shortsighted political gains. He then intentionally hindered national response.
And then he intentionally incited a literal insurrection. He has absolutely employed political violence.
I'm not here to defend him. He's one of the worst of the presidents in our history. His list of horrendous acts goes far beyond his pandemic response and the insurrection, and it goes was past his presidency too. He's truly awful. But with that being said, things like assassinations and terrorism should not become normalized as a legitimate way of achieving political means.
The US invaded Iraq under GW Bush on a lie about WMD's. Killed Saddam and countless Iraqis, including journalists, for nothing.
The US invaded Afghanistan rather than negotiate with its ruling power to hand over Bin Laden, then didn't get their hands on him for another decade even though the US won the war and took over the country from day 1. 20+ years of bloody occupation later you lost the war and the Taliban is back in power. Another pointess war started with deception.
Don't get me started on Vietnam.
You guys have some twisted idea of democracy where the 'Democrats' don't even elect their own candidates.
Please stop exporting democracy. The world doesn't want your perverse version.
At a news conference in Islamabad, the Taliban ambassador said he was sorry that people had died in the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last week, but appealed to the United States not to endanger innocent people in a military retaliation.
"Our position on this is that if America has proof, we are ready for the trial of Osama bin Laden in light of the evidence."
Conflating a government or regime with an international terrorist organisation is the lie the propaganda told you to accept invading and occupying an impoverished foreign country that had just gone through a famine.
Really? You don't realize that the US didn't join a war that started in 1939 until 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor ... so was only part of the war for less than 4 years?
I think this poster is saying: “since you believe two wrongs don’t make a right, then when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the correct thing to do in your view would to turn the other cheek.”
No, I'm just pointing out that your comparison is flawed. We didn't know about the Holocaust until the war was almost over. The Soviets were the first to discover and liberate the camps back in 1944 (too bad they ended up having their own brutal camps) and the Americans liberated the first camp they discovered (Ohrdruf) in April 1945... the war in Europe was over in a month. That's when the then general Eisenhower ordered the American soldiers to find the other camps, free the captives, and take pictures of everything they came across so Nazi crimes can be thoroughly documented and the American public can be made aware of them.
My point is that we didn't intervene in the war because of what the Nazis were doing like you seem to imply, we intervened because we got attacked and declared war on.
Fair, but the situation is similar to what's happening to Uyghurs in China right now. We know something is going on there, but it's not exactly sufficient grounds to invade China and intervene.
I mean one could argue that Tibet is an invaded country, but that's besides the point. The only way we would realistically intervene is if China decides to either invade an American ally like Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea or if they directly attack and declare war on the US proper. Even then, it would be quite a stretch for us to have soldiers reach western China, but if we did and if our soldiers found camps where people are imprisoned, then we would have a similar reaction to what we saw towards the end of WWII. However, until then, we don't have sufficient grounds to invade a major world power.
The ends don't justify the means politics, that's how you end up with terrorism, tyrannical governments, and atrocities. I'm all for bringing Trump to justice, but it has be done through civil and democratic means via the established criminal justice system. If Trump goes through trial and is found guilty, which has already happened for one of his crimes, then our criminal justice system will punish him accordingly. If the punishments aren't deemed harsh enough then we reform our punitive laws. We can't have self righteous assholes going on terrorism crusades assassinating political candidates they don't like. That's a sign of a failed state.
True, which is why now is the most important time to condemn political violence, get people politically active, and vote to keep the fascist wannabes out of power.
The reasonable conservatives have already jumped off ship a long time ago and are now mostly either apolitical, independent, disenfranchised Democrat, or still a minority Republican opposing Trump. The only ones left that support Trump are his cult, and they will never see reason. However, we can't get rid them with violence. It's like what America tried to do with the Taliban or Israel is trying to do now with Hamas or what Saudi Arabia has tried to do with the Houthis, you can't use violence to get rid of ideologies. The way to get rid of ideologies is to make them irrelevant. This can happen either by defeating them in democratic elections or using their track records to delegitimatize them or ignoring them or providing better alternatives or whatever. Political violence will only fuel them, and that is something I don't want to see.
When it's used as a means to achieve power in a democracy. Normalizing violence is not okay in general, but especially during democratic elections, and this applies to everybody regardless of who does it.
the word right has different meaning in different contexts, I assumed you were talking about human rights as in the legally protected privileges that are granted to people... idk wtf you're talking about
Well, yeah, I mean, we can go back a hundred years, conservatives will always be pushing violence and division whatever era you look at since they can't hold power without it, I mostly mean it's come out fully into the open since 2016. The mask dropped off completely and they're no longer even pretending to be anything but the Confederacy 2.0.
Babbitt plus suicides, and other "natural" deaths.
On March 7, the District of Columbia’s Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board declared that Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith’s suicide in the days after the Jan. 6 riot was a line-of-duty death. The board concluded “that Officer Smith sustained a personal injury on January 6, 2021, while performing his duties and that his injury was the sole and direct cause of his death.
I know you have to say this, but holy shit do I disagree.
This person advocated significant violence and contributed to the deaths and loss of human rights of thousands. A good whack of the world would turn up hungover to work tomorrow after celebrating only a few inches over.
The best thing Trump could do is just die of natural causes after a long illness, so everyone can see his death coming and get used to the idea, and with no focusing point his merry band of lunatics dissolve back into the etha. They have always existed, but Trump acts as a catalyst to get them all worked up.
Trump is the problem since he is the leader of the cult. Without him they dont know who to follow. If Hitler had been assassinated in one the many attemps there might have still been a WW2 but depending on how early on he was assassinated millions of people would not have been killed in concentration camps.
This would have been early enough to prevent much damage Trump will do. Better would have been 2016 but that didnt happen sadly.
Trump is absolutely the problem when he’s the mouthpiece of American fascism. Why are we pretending his death would be bad? We’re a couple years from having concentration camps in the US if he wins and everyone’s wringing their hands over this attempt at saving millions of lives by taking one.
Yea it might cause a civil war, that looks unavoidable at this point anyway. I’d rather civil war than concentration camps
And how do you kill the ideology? By having the most successful voice of it ultimately accomplish nothing and die as a sad old man.
There's a reason his rhetoric has been: "The election was stolen!" Because that feeling is powerful, that they were right on the cusp of doing something great, if only the enemy hadn't poisoned it. It's got the right mix of victimization and hope that really motivates a movement. You'll get that 10x now that he's victimized. And you'd get it 20x if he's martyred.
The only effective end to the tyrrany of their ideology when it had enough momentum wasn't strong words and voting. MAGA is about three small steps from turning the US into a literal fascist state.
The only thing that holds authoritarian regimes like the MAGA crowd together are narcissists like Trump. They would collapse without someone as good at stoking their anger, and he really is the only one that is personally revered by the MAGA crowd. Sure, other grifters make money and get ciews, but nobody cares when the other grifters like Alex Jones face some justice.
We can educate and shame a population for voicing their support for said fascism. In fact it was working pretty well until Trump made it ok to be a bigot publicly again. That’s what’s the whole MAGA thing is about
He's the only one because he's still around. If he died yesterday we'd have someone new leading the charge by election time.
You've specifically pointed out ideologies that weren't allowed to die because of how oppressed they were. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have fought the Nazis, but victory inherently creates an oppressed underdog that people love to rally around.
The ideologies that die are the ones that fail on their own and people lose faith in. Think monarchies, feudalism, mercantilism, the OG version of Communism, colonialism, etc.. So ideally we won't want to use force if at all possible. Let them lose election after election until they realize they've alienated too many people to ever be successful.
Ron DeSantis already tried. He only failed because Trump is still around. The GOP learned that they need to wait for him to leave the scene before they try again.
Communism, not Fascism, or to protect workers' rights if you go back far enough. We only got involved in fighting fascism because we were drawn into the war, otherwise it's never been that big of an issue to Americans and many schools aren't even allowed to teach about it anymore because "kids shouldn't have to feel bad about something like that" or whatever excuses the far right is currently using to prevent their schools from teaching about Anne Frank, concentration camps, slavery, anything else they want to implement themselves.
Advocating for violence to prevent a fascist from abolishing the democracy is the only acceptable violence. Sometimes a democracy has to be protected violently if it is too weak to protect itself. Trump allies always say its why they have the second amendment. Now that it is used against them they cry about it.
Violence is rarely good for anything as we have seen it just now. It would be better even if this guy shot at Biden that’s how counterproductive it is.
Modern problems aren’t solved with blood but with marketing. You cannot kill an idea but you can ridicule it
You cannot just eradicate everyone who opposes you. China tried, Soviets too. Now they have something vastly better - troll farms.
Not sure what you mean, but Ukraine and Zelensky have been marketing themselves all over the place. They need all the help they can get, and they are doing whatever they can to boost support. So far pootin hasn't achieved his goals so it's working.
You're right, better to allow a violent oppressor to slowly eradicate your people than attempt to free or defend yourself by whatever means necessary....
Eh I think you guys see what you want to see in my comment. I was talking about Russia. putin attacked Ukraine, it was insane in any case and what did he got out of it really?
The violence on Ukraine was just plain stupid.
I am kinda surprised and amused you take me for some pacifist goodie two shoes, other cheek blah blah. funny from my pov. Idk how you extracted that from my comment, I bet you will now continue to argue with something that doesn’t exist. My congratulations
Appeasement of an aggressor never works. History has taught this over and over and over again. We still haven't learned I see. I'm mainly talking about Ukraine. Palestine is a lot more complex.
Your last point is actually not a bad analysis - but it is missing that the ones operating their propaganda and troll farms already also control the violence monopoly. And both entities also use violence where they deem it practical.
Um, no. The SCOTUS ruling, Project 25 and The Fascism must be stopped before war breaks out. Besides, they already threatened to kill anyone opposed to it when they reach power.
Um, no. The SCOTUS ruling, Project 25 and The Fascism must be stopped before war breaks out. Besides, they already threatened to kill anyone opposed to it when they reach power.
He said Monday’s decision — which gives presidents broad immunity from prosecution — is “vital” to ensure a president won’t have to “second guess, triple guess every decision they’re making in their official capacity.”
😬😬😬
Yeah, last thing I want is for the president to have to think through their decisions.
Um, no. The SCOTUS ruling, Project 25 and The Fascism must be stopped before war breaks out. Besides, they already threatened to kill anyone opposed to it when they reach power.
Ban me.
How does this violate Lemmy's content policy? To clarify, I am quoting a comment and asking for transparency, not reposting.
The post in question was removed for advocating violence. The mod log is public, including the original content, so it is not necessary to repost a removed comment for transparency.
I know this is off-topic, but can we please go back to saying "conspiracy theory"? Conspiracy and conspiracy theories are not the same. There are actual conspiracies (a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful) , and there are theories of conspiracies. They should not be confused.
Surprised you're not already banned just for the c-word. I mean, if someone crashes their car through a storefront, I could speculate without evidence that the driver was excessively old, young, drunk, or just plain stupid and it's left up to the reader to take my comment with a grain of salt, but if I so much as entertain the possibility of this shooting being anything besides what is being reported by official channels, I must be silenced.
How do the people get justice for a convicted criminal that's above the law? Is there a reason why the constitution has an amendment for guns? Why are so many platforms against the constitution and against the need for correct course when apt?
Seems like he was convicted, thus not above the law.
You keep him from being president by getting enough people to vote against him, or you accept the will of the people.
The 2nd Amendment was originally to make sure militias weren't disarmed, in a time when militias were more relevant. Has nothing to do with political assassination.
While they await sentencing? If a judge allows it, obviously yes. People have lives and jobs, if they might not even get prison time it would be cruel to force them into all the downsides of prison time (lose your job, child care difficulties) and then let them go.
Trump would be more impacted by his inability to campaign, but we only have one justice system and I don't want to betray my beliefs on how the justice system works just because I don't like this guy's politics.
Most sit in jail until sentencing, and the time spent waiting will be accounted with the sentencing. I say most, because only the king walks around free.
Also convicted criminals people should not run for president. The corrupted courts made a new law, something they don't have the power to do, where the criminals can run, explicitly the hitler felon.
Also convicted criminals people should not run for president. The corrupted courts made a new law, something they don’t have the power to do, where the criminals can run, explicitly the hitler felon.
No, they didn't. There's just nothing that requires a candidate for president not be a convicted felon, other than the willingness of people to vote for them.
How about when said political candidate openly calls for violence and murder against his opponents, to the point of asking the Supreme Court if he could assassinate people.
Maybe the 2nd amendment comes in to play a little? Last I checked we didn’t vote king George off our shores.
We did not vote Gore or Hillary into office. They got more popular votes and lost in electoral votes, and only electoral votes count for president. They lost fair and square, in the system we have.
No the difference between republics and monarchies is not "talking about assassinating rivals." You can say anything, that is anyone's right. In the context from above, this difference is why political assassination is not acceptable in a republic. It would be insane to say that political assassination is OK if the person had ever talked about assassinating rivals. The penalty for distasteful speech is not death.
He left after his last stand Jan 6. There is lots of news coverage of that, with many arrested as well. There are plenty of vids of Trump talking about Jan 6 people, not condemning them.
Also answer one question: What was Trump asking Pence to do on Jan 6?
Trump was asking Pence to return legally cast electoral votes to the states for reconsideration on false pretenses. Yes obviously bad and we don't want a president who would do such a thing. But not assassination worthy.
We know just as much to say this was a conspiracy as we do to say this was a legitimate assassination attempt: Nothing. The man has been caught in so many examples of lying and fraud that Occam's razor points more in the direction that this was a false flag than that someone legitimately got around his security detail to take a shot at him
True: confirmed information.
False: unconfirmed information of a speculative nature.
Do you see a specific issue you disagree with or are you just trying to argue?
You are just moving the problem around via definitions not actually saying what method you used to know exactly what happened yesterday.
All I asked is how you arrived at the truth. Did you see evidence that the general public didn't? Because what I am seeing is you all are so absolutely certain you have literally compared it to Covid misinformation. Amazing, a 30 hour news event is so well understood you can compare our knowledge of it to the single most studied virus in human history months after a new variant had appeared.
It is not unreasonable how you were able to obtain information the rest of us apparently do not have and how you were able to eliminate all other alternatives so quickly.
Advocating for, or not advocating for, violence is a political stance. Many people defend Israel's ongoing genocide and are not blocked from doing so. That doesn't feel like the rules being consistently enforced. The people speculating on whether or not this is staged have access to the same information as everyone else, and in the spirit of true discourse, if it was seen to be false you could figure that out by discussion rather than censorship.
If you have evidence that it was staged, feel free to share it. If you don't, then we ask that you not speculate. It's no different than any other claim for which we'd require a basic amount of credible substantiation.
"widely speculated" ... like I said, I don't think it was staged, but it's clear that most of what is being stated the day after this event is speculation.
Saying that someone who shot a president is likely an assassination attempt is not a logical fallacy. There are pretty much 2 possibilities: targeted attack and random acts of violence. The fact that he seemed to be aiming at Trump suggests the former.
Speculating on an event that has already occured is not a "life or death situation" in the way spreading information that discourages the use of life-saving vaccines is.
NEW YORK — The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”
It's INSANE to me that you'd suggest we do nothing or even promote political violence over this.
The Lemmy.World content policy prohibits advocacy of violence. We are enforcing the rules of Lemmy, not our own personal preferences. If you prefer an instance without such limitations, you are free to engage with another instance.
Yet you seem to think acting like a petulant child is appropriate. Some of us have had our hands slapped because we crossed a line. But you can still act like an adult when it happens.
If you don't like the rules, fine. Then go elsewhere.
Obviously someone set this up, bullets don't just appear out of nowhere. It may have just been the gunman who acted entirely alone. We have no evidence that anyone worked with the gunman but what's that saying about the absence of evidence?
You can't use the English language in an openly misleading fashion and expect that people are going to go along with it, not in a situation like this. The expression "someone set this up" clearly implies the existence of a second person.
What made you think that another person is involved? Nothing. If we were to look at historical evidence, we would find that a lot of these situations are done by so-called lone wolf attackers. So if we're going to blindly speculate, we should at least be consistent with historical evidence, and we should certainly speak unambiguously.
I take issue with inaccurate language. This is how trains crash. A conspiracy is where 2 or more people plan something in secret. A conspiracy theory is where an outsider speculates about the nature of such plans.
Also, without wanting to speculate myself, logically it was either a lone actor or a group conspiring, since it clearly wasn't publicised in advance. I personally doubt it was some grand conspiracy.
Yup, a peaceful coup would be just as bad and that is in the works through the courts and SCOTUS right now by setting the stage for Republicans to refuse to certify election results.
It isn't actually immediately clear which comment would have been the one I saw here. And it looks like they were banned from another community? Is there some other evidence of ban evasion from this particular community? Trying to understand.
Edit: ah, see the timestamps are hidden behind a hover/tap... the question about evasion stands.
So there is no available form of public accountability for comments? I have had mixed experiences in the past with DM-ing mods and I do not trust private communications.
Let it be known that you've had removed-then-reposted comments re-removed multiple times in the past 2 days by three different moderators. If you do so again, a ban will follow.
There is absolutely accountability. Unlike any other platform, the entire history of moderator actions is public, and may be reviewed from the mod log. I have already mentioned to you several ways to make public comments about a moderation decision that are within the rules. Please take the time to review the responses I have already taken the time to research and send.
I am working on answering your questions, but I am only one person, and I can only review one at a time. All Lemmy mods and administrators are volunteers, myself included.
Also, please note that DMs on Lemmy are not private. They are only shared with the person you are messaging, but are unencrypted and may be visible to others. Please keep this in mind for your security.