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Inflammatory Rhetoric Leads to Secret Service Intervention at the ER
in-ˈfla-mə-ˌtȯr-ē
adjective
1: tending to excite anger, disorder, or tumult : seditious
2: tending to inflame or excite the senses
The Epoch Times has an account of Donald Trump’s arrival at Butler Memorial Hospital after the assassination attempt. Patients in the emergency room knew about the shooting before Donald Trump and his security detail arrived. According to a Ms. Foerster:
“Next thing I know, cops fly in, Secret Service flies up, and the shortest girl gets out, starts pointing at windows and doors, and telling people where to go,” Ms. Foerster said.
The hospital immediately went into lockdown, the Foersters said, and the computer system was down at that time, seemingly as part of the security protocol. People gathered by the window of the emergency room and watched as former President Trump emerged from his vehicle. They were elated once they saw him walking on his own. Secret Service had him surrounded.
A few people in the waiting room gathered together and prayed. Many people were looking at the news and comparing notes.
Mr. Foerster read a quote aloud, made by President Joe Biden days before:
“I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” President Biden reportedly said on a private donor call.
The Secret Service overheard the word bullseye and took Mr. Foerster into a room for questioning.
Now, there are certain words that one is not allowed to say. We all know that one never mentions the word “bomb” in an airport. Not even in jest.
Neither can one say “bullseye” in proximity to a former president, without being interrogated by the Secret Service. One could argue using that word is inflammatory, “tending to excite anger, disorder, or tumult.” Obviously, the Secret Service might consider it a threat.
Unless, that is, one is trying to oppose an “existential threat.” Under such circumstances, it is OK to say “bullseye”, but not “crosshairs.” One circumstance might be when the speaker is “an elderly man with a poor memory.”
Fortunately for Mr. Foerster:
He explained that he was reading the news, loves former President Trump and has attended many of his rallies. The agent let him go.
No one was allowed to leave until former President Trump left. But this time, before he made his way to the car, the Secret Service came into the waiting room, closed the shades, and said, no more photos and videos, Mr. Foerster said.
Extraordinary precautions must be taken in an atmosphere of violence!
Published in Election 2024
None of those actions are “extraordinary.” They are all relatively routine. I think I’ve been around four or five presidential “first pitches” at various times and they’ve all been the same: Bomb sweep, isolation of all non-essential personnel and no pictures. In the early days of my career covering a Reagan campaign stop as an ENG cameraman I was asked to shoot footage and play it back for USSS agents before being allowed in the perimeter. (A totally understandable precaution because ENG cameras back then were the size of grenade launchers. My shoulders hurt just thinking about it.)
The last time I had the “privilege” was a college football game attended by George and Laura Bush. The different wrinkle was the cell phone/internet jammer kicked in right before they walked into the stadium at SMU.
Now they get serious, huh? Too little, too late, most rational people say.
It is extraordinary that some people can say “bullseye”, while others cannot.
In the immediate aftermath?
I was trying to make a point using sarcasm. I see that I failed.
I think many here will get your point.
A lot of things that get written are interpreted by our minds differently due to what is going on.
Example: I’ve had novels suggested as being tremendous good reads. But I found them sluggish and unworthy of my time.
Then one day I read that some writers are “caffeine” writers and should be read while indulging in caffeine. Other writers are booze or wine writers and should be read while holding a serious drink in one’s hand. I went back and read the sluggish books while imbibing and thought they were brilliant.
I am caffeinated to the hilt right now and grokked your meaning. Maybe others weren’t onto their 3rd or 4th cup yet?.
No problemo. There’s a lot of that going around. (For some reason Libs of TikTok has decided to dox a lot of ordinary folks for remarks online.)
But getting back to the “bullseye” remark, I can imagine that those agents were wound a wee bit tight at that moment and, speaking only for myself, I don’t like to antagonize people with guns. Not even the “good guys.”
To be fair to the USSS, the hospital floor was NOT slopey, so they were able to take action.
I always liked that old comic with Aquaman yelling from the water to the robbers on the beach, “come out here and try that.”
If you think about their job duties and the circumstances, those agents deserve a little deference. Lord bless them.
Apparently, sarcasm ought to only be performed by Professionals.
To paraphrase an old line, “Playing the aggrieved victim is easy, comedy is hard.”
It was clear. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
As evidenced by the comment!
The attack was serious. A man was killed protecting his family.
So, yes, Lord bless them. It was a hard day for them too.
I think we also have to give Biden a pass on his “bullseye” remark. As Biden explained, he did not say “crosshairs”, which refers to aiming firearms. “Bullseye” is more related to archery. Now, if someone had used a crossbow to shoot at President Trump, Biden would have taken full responsibility.
Bullseye implies targeting him, and is a common term for all ranged weapon targets, including AR15s.
Yes. Bullseye is the target, crosshairs are in the sight.
I think Sis was being sarcastic
That’s funny!
It is interesting that most Republicans were outraged when Sarah Palin’s rhetoric was blamed for the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords many years ago, while many Republicans take the opposite position with respect to the rhetoric of Biden and others regarding the Trump shooting.
I do think that hysterical rhetoric should be avoided, but I see it equally on the so-called political right and left. I see it in foreign policy, too, on a more bipartisan basis.
This was even apparent in our own Revolutionary period, with the absurdity of Patrick Henry, in his famous speech, claiming that Americans were facing “slavery” and “chains.” The real dispute was a tax of about 10% on imported tea.
Lincoln did the same thing, in his “House Divided” speech, absurdly claiming that slavery was somehow going to spread to the North.
More recent examples range from Covid, to climate change, to Israel claiming that it faces an “existential” threat from a small number of poorly armed Palestinians.
Many people seem to be strongly inclined to believe that catastrophe is imminent. Exploitation of such fear is very effective politically, I think.
Yes, it’s the leadership that deserves scorn, opprobrium, and loss of taxpayer funded income. But, those women should not be on the front lines of protecting any president/candidate/first lady — and I bet in the case of Democrats, they’re not. They are literally and constitutionally not built for the job.
Let’s see who gets assigned to Harris once she becomes the nominee. . .
There is a huge, huge difference between one campaign poster that was deliberately taken out of context and constantly referring to Trump as Hitler. There level of invective from right to left pales in comparison to left on right and always has.
Only someone willing to turn his head from actual facts could think otherwise.
Oh, wait ….
Ah, finally. The last line in my post referring to “an atmosphere of violence” is a direct reference to the shooting of Gabby Giffords. That was the rallying cry of the Democrats in response to Sarah Palin’s campaign poster [with the crosshairs]. They beat the Republicans over the head with it. But is it OK for Biden to say almost the same thing?
He tried to defend himself by saying that he did not say “crosshairs”, he said “bullseye.” Does that make it OK?
[Edited]
Similar to the white kids pilloried on social media for singing rap songs and saying the n-word. (I hate that phrase. We shouldn’t give it special status, but the filter won’t let it through.) It’s okay for the singer to use it, but not a fan singing along to the song.
Not a WHITE fan singing along.
Better in the aftermath than the foremath.
Which word was it that Sarah Palin used? Or am I getting events mixed up?
There you go, doing Democrats’ work for them. When someone on YouTube was eagerly waiting for Joe Biden to say something to make him OK, and then that person quoted his anodyne remarks, I pointed out that that wasn’t all that Joe Biden said. I quoted the “bullseye” remark as reported by Politico on July 8. I recalled the Sarah Palin controversy the moment I heard about the “bullseye,” and I wanted a Democrat to do the work of pointing that out, accusing me of being a hypocrite, and explaining how this was different. Alas, nobody did until now.
I don’t think that was the “real dispute.” That wasn’t even the real dispute about taxes. Our Founders played up that reason for PR purposes for much the same reason the CDC gives dumbed-down covid recommendations, but they had to go into contortions to even make it “no taxation without representation.” You could say the real issue was that Britain was trying to centralize power, standardize power arrangements so all colonies would be treated alike (which meant abrogating many of the charters they were operating under) and take away self-government in those colonies that had it. But it’s harder to make a slogan about that that people will rally around.
It wasn’t absurd at all. The slavery issue was not leaving the north alone. The fugitive slave acts were requiring people in the north to enforce slavery.
Poorly armed and capable of killing small or large number of people, threatening them with extinction, trying with some success to drive them out of the world trade system, and not allowing them to live in peace.
Let me know when somebody, somewhere doesn’t exploit fear in politics.
A friend of mine who was vice president of a university in the MidWest once mentioned that there had been studies confirming that when candidates enter the fray against their opponents, those who bring up fears of what the other candidate will do to harm people’s lifestyles usually do better than the candidate who presents a clear and intelligent outline of the positive changes that he or she intends to make once elected.