07/19/24

Good morning! It’s Friday, July 19th.

National Daiquiri Day!

Well timed. Whoever is in charge of deciding what days are what clearly knows about the news because it is… time for a daiquiri.

Or a sweet treat of your choosing.

And now, the news.

Bob Newhart

-via Hollywood Reporter

Let’s start with the sad news that comedy legend, Bob Newhart, died on Thursday. He was 94.

I felt like the most appropriate quote was this one: “There’s gratification in making somebody laugh. It’s a wonderful sound. I find myself, to this day, doing it, wanting to make people laugh.”

Trump Assassination Attempt Update

-via CBS News, AP News, NBC News, and Washington Post

Although there are still a lot of unanswered questions, I wanted to put what we know so far about the assassination attempt against former President Trump last Saturday because what we lack in information, people are trying to make up for in misinformation. So why not try and correct some of that?

Let’s first talk about the day of the shooting.

You may have heard that the Secret Service was alerted to the presence of the shooter before the shooting. That is true. At 5:51 PM, twenty minutes before the shooting, state police told Secret Service that there was someone on the ground with a rangefinder. Though local police didn’t know he had a gun at the time, information about someone having a rangefinder was spread around the team.

Trump took the stage just after 6 PM and six minutes later, at 6:09 PM people alerted law enforcement about someone on the roof with a gun.

You may have seen an interview on the BBC with one of those witnesses. It’s a great interview because the interviewer thinks he’s just talking to a witness and you can very clearly tell that, as the witness is telling him all about how he saw the shooter and pointed him out to Secret Service the interviewer is, in real time, trying to wrap his head around what he’s hearing.

Around this time, an officer approached the shooter. According to the Butler Country Sheriff, the officer had both hands on the roof and was prepared to climb on it, but stopped when the shooter turned towards the officer.

All of that starts at 6:09 PM, and two minutes later, so pretty much right after the officer backed down, Crooks began to shoot at the rally. The shooting, as well as the Secret Service shooting Crooks, all happened in a manner of seconds.

Trump was grazed in the ear and it took a minute and a half to get him into the car because he was very concerned about his shoes (in videos he can be heard asking for his shoes multiple times) and needed to stop to raise his first for the crowd before encouraging them to “fight.”

By 6:40 PM, the emergency room at the nearest hospital was cleared and Trump was treated for, and I’m not trying to minimalize this at all, but he was treated for a flesh wound that did not require stitches.

He left the hospital at 8:50 PM.

It should be noted, and frankly, this isn’t being talked about enough, that we only know that Trump was shot at the top of his ear because he posted about it.

We have not gotten any official medical reports. The campaign has refused to answer any questions and the doctors who treated him have not been made available. This is highly unusual. I’m not trying to say his condition is worse than it is, but I am saying that, just as we deserve answers to questions about President Biden’s health (answers which, by the way, the public has received), we also deserve to hear official reports on Trump after an assassination attempt.

If you haven’t been watching the RNC, you might not know that Trump has been seen wearing a large, kind of odd-looking, bandage over his entire ear. And if you have a life and are not terminally online as I have been the last few weeks, you may also not be aware that people at the convention have now taken to putting bandages, or even paper, over their own ear. Which is… certainly a choice. That’s for sure.

So that’s what we know about the timeline as well as what we don’t know about Trump’s health (although that’s really an evergreen question that, again, is not being talked about enough. We really don’t have any idea at all about Trump’s health, pre or post-shooting. Or even post-covid. We know, from witnesses, that his covid was much worse than he said but we never got the truth then. Again, I’m not trying to infer anything here. He appears to have been lightly grazed and hopefully he’s feeling better soon but we deserve the truth about his health, in general).

Anyway, so what do we know about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old shooter?

Well, in addition to Trump and Biden, he had photos of AG Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and members of the British royal family on his phone. He’d also looked up information about the Trump rally as well as next month’s Democratic National Convention, and major depressive disorder.

This is not someone who is going to fit into an easy-to-understand box. In fact, not to self-promote, but if you go listen to my latest interview on Kim Moffat is a Fan, political commentator Jared Yates Sexton best accurately described him as an accelerator. Someone who just thinks the whole thing is a mess and wants to make change at all costs.

Early on, it came out that he donated $15 to a Democratic PAC, and then posts debunking that spread quickly. But it has been verified that he did, indeed, donate that $15.The group he donated to is known for being really spammy and having misleading emails. So who knows what specifically he thought he was donating to. He could have thought he was donating to Biden, or he could have been misled. I don’t really think we need to put too much stock into this, given that he was also looking up information about the DNC and classmates described Crooks, who was a registered Republican, as being conservative.

Crooks is still being investigated as authorities try to better understand what happened.

Meanwhile, it sure seems like the Secret Service had a little lapse in their programming. Top Republicans are calling for the head of the Secret Service to resign (she says she won’t) with House Oversight Chair James Comer issuing a subpoena for her testimony and Speaker Johnson noting that he will convene a special House task force to streamline the multiple investigations.

So that’s where things stand right now. Like I said – more questions than answers but I did want to debunk some misinformation.

Biden’s Political Future

-via NBC News

And of course, the other big political story is – hey what’s up with Biden? That dude still running for president or what? Well, I guess that depends on when you listen to this episode.

I want to preface this with – this is gossip! Hot goss!

But according to top Democrats (which is how you know, again, that this is hot goss and not hard news), President Biden is aware it is time to stop his bid for re-election with one person close to the president saying, “we’re close to the end,” which is… not what you want someone to say when they’re talking about the political future of a man where the biggest concern is age.

His announcement could come as early as this weekend (lucky for you, I record on Sundays! That’s why you always have up-to-date info on Mondays! Who else is doing that?)

It’s unclear if he will put his support behind Veep Harris. I think he should. I think not doing so is absolutely absurd. But we will see what he does when he does it.

Or I guess, if he does. Because again – hot goss.

We’ll see what the weekend brings.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I am, and I can’t stress this enough… so happy it’s Friday.

I’m proud of daiquiris, and/or anything else it takes to just find a little bit of joy throughout the day.

But more than that – because you are a whole lot of joy throughout all the days… I’m proud of you.