The Paranoid Temptation
Who are 'they,' and why are they out to get you?
After the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump, an acquaintance of mine raised the possibility that somehow, the CIA was behind it. This suggestion made no sense at all to me, based on what was known at the time, and nothing we’ve learned in the past 72 hours adds anything in favor of this being a CIA plot. However …
U.S. authorities are concerned about possible attacks in retaliation to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said Monday in a rare joint intelligence bulletin.
Violent extremists or others “may attempt follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence” in response to the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally over the weekend in Pennsylvania, the agencies said in the bulletin obtained by POLITICO.
No specific targets are mentioned, but the four-page bulletin notes that extremists have conducted or plotted attacks against “perceived political or ideological opponents,” in the past, the DHS and FBI said.
Watch: Witness footage shows chaos after shots fired at Trump rally
“The FBI and DHS remain concerned about the potential for follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence following this attack, particularly given that individuals in some online communities have threatened, encouraged, or referenced acts of violence in response to the attempted assassination,” the bulletin said.
The warning comes amid what authorities had already determined was a “heightened threat” environment, with the country deeply polarized as the Republicans gather for their nominating convention in Milwaukee and the Democrats prepare for theirs in Chicago.
“This attack reinforces our assessment that election-related targets are under a heightened threat of attack or other types of disruptive incidents,” the bulletin said.
The agencies said that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year–old shooter in Saturday’s attack at the rally, had improvised explosive devices in his car as well as his home and ordered packages potentially containing hazardous material over the last several months.
Authorities have not yet determined what motivated Crooks, who was shot and killed by the Secret Service after he opened fire on the rally, killing one spectator and critically wounding two others.
For the sake of argument, suppose that you harbor a deep distrust of federal agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Further extend the supposition that you’re a Trump supporter, who is well aware of how the FBI and the intelligence community sought to sabotage Trump’s presidency with the “Russian collusion” hoax, the claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “disinformation,” etc.
Now you see this FBI/DHS memo about “extremists” potentially plotting “retaliatory” violence against “perceived political or ideological opponents” — a memo sent to law enforcement agencies. Does such a memo reassure you? Or does it make you even more concerned that the usual suspects in the federal government have some kind of dirty trick up their sleeve? Perhaps you get the point I’m driving at here.
Have you forgotten about that? Two FBI agents plotted to prevent Trump from becoming president. It’s not me saying that; it’s not Gateway Pundit saying that; it was in a report from the Inspector General of the Justice Department.
Maybe you’re not a Trump supporter. Maybe you don’t watch Fox News or follow any other GOP-leaning media outlets. Maybe you dismiss this as “right-wing” stuff, but my point is, perhaps there are reasons why Republicans don’t trust the FBI (or DHS, or the CIA, or any other “deep state” bureaucracy). So you can scoff at my acquaintance suggesting that the assassination attempt against Trump was some sort of CIA-directed scheme, but is it really that far-fetched, considering what is known about the anti-Trump bias of some employees of federal agencies?
Mystery of the Opaque Assassin
“What we know” isn’t very much, OK? The FBI is allegedly the best investigative organization in the world and yet, we are told, they have been able to learn nothing at all about what could have motivated a 20-year-old geek to become an assassin.
Do you see why this apparent mystery might arouse suspicion among those who are already deeply distrustful of the FBI?
Here’s the official story so far: a random 20 year old acting completely alone walked within 150 yards of a presidential campaign rally with a rifle, climbed onto a rooftop in full view of Secret Service snipers, set up his shot and fired without anyone intervening and with no help from anyone. This 20 year old is also so politically radical as to attempt an assassination and yet not radical enough to have ever posted any political writings or commentary on any social media site ever in his life. He also wrote no manifesto and left behind no indication about why he did it. His last and only political act, before attempting to kill the Republican candidate, was to register as a Republican. You must believe this and ask no questions about it or else you are a conspiracy theorist. And one thing we know about assassination attempts is that there’s never any conspiring involved.
For the past few days, I’ve found myself trying to discourage my conservative friends from any kind of rush to judgment about the gunman’s motive:
Yes, obviously, the gunman wished to kill Trump, but as to why he wanted to kill Trump, I have to insist that we still don’t know. It would seem to be the simplest common-sense deduction to say that the would-be assassin’s motive was political, but does the name John Hinckley ring a bell?
In 1981, he tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan: “Hinckley was reportedly seeking fame to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had a fixation after watching her in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver.”
That’s not a political motive. That’s just plain crazy. And it is too early to rule out the possibility that Thomas Matthew Crooks was just plain crazy.
So here we are, some 72 hours after the shooting, the FBI claims that it can’t find anything indicating why this geek wanted to assassinate Trump, and yet — and yet! — the same FBI is issuing warnings to law enforcement agencies about the potential for “retaliatory” violence by “extremists.” So they know what’s going to happen in the future, even while they offer no explanation for what has already happened.
You can say whatever you want, but you cannot say that the FBI is doing very much to inspire public confidence in the agency. And if some people are yielding to the temptation of paranoia — imagining a shadowy conspiracy behind recent events— what is the federal government doing to assuage such fears? Not enough, certainly.
Trump-Haters Promote Paranoia
Less than two hours after shots were fired at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Dmitri Mehlhorn (an associate of anti-Trump billionaire Reid Hoffman) sent an email “addressed to sympathetic journalists,” in which he suggested “this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash. This is a classic Russian tactic … a classic Putin play.”
After one of the journalists who got that email wrote a story about it, Mehlhorn apologized for this bizarre suggestion, but it says something about the temperament of Trump’s enemies that Mehlhorn evidently believed his paranoid assertion — that Trump “staged” a fake assassination attempt in “a classic Russian tactic” — would be taken seriously by “sympathetic” members of the media.Supporters of Trump are often accused of being in “cult,” but doesn’t it seem like the anti-Trump crowd — delusional kooks like Dmitri Mehlhorn — are themselves acting like cult members?
Myself, I’m just trying to stay sane amidst all this craziness, which means being skeptical even of conspiracy theories that might appeal to my partisan bias:
OK, so if the CIA was doing some kind of updated MK-Ultra experiment to brainwash an assassin, why choose as their guinea pig this particular dork?
It's like paranoia in general, which fails the most basic test of common sense. While I don't doubt the pervasive evil of "Them," the question arises, why would "They" take such an obsessive interest in you?
See what I mean? Of all the potential dupes and patsies in the world, why would the CIA choose this 20-year-old weirdo? Did I mention — just a coincidence, I’m sure— that both of the shooter’s parents are licensed counselors? So the son of two mental health professionals gets his hands on an AR-15, climbs onto a roof 130 yards from the Republican presidential nominee, and comes within a fraction of an inch of splattering Trump’s brains all over the place. Nothing suspicious at all about that.
Have you considered the possibility that you’re not paranoid enough?
As a former member of what's called "the intelligence community," one of the things that the analyst side of the house had to contend with was a thing called "confirmation bias", which was the urge to take a particular piece of information more seriously *because it fit with what you expected the enemy to do*. Your warning people not to jump to conclusions reminded me of that. But as you say, in an age where the ATF/CIA/FBI/etc. are demonstrably out to get people like us, is it possible to be too paranoid? I for one am going to sleep a lot better once President Trump charges VP Vance with internally exiling a lot of intel community bureaucrats to Amchitka.