'If It Doesn't Gel, It Isn't Aspic'

Questions about the Trump assassination attempt

In Hitchcock’s Psycho, Detective Arbogast asks Norman Bates about a missing guest

Detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) senses that Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) story about a missing guest doesn’t hang together. ‘You see’, Arbogast says, ‘If it doesn’t gel, it isn’t aspic. And this ain’t gellin’.’ About the attempted assassination of Presdent Trump on July 14 at a rally in Butler Pennsylvania, the story presented so far doesn’t gel any better than Norman Bates’. Here, thanks to John Leake, Senator Rand Paul, and others, are key questions the answers to which might produce a coherent account:

1. Why was the security perimeter around President Trump less than 130 meters, giving the shooter a clear line-of-sight at close range from a rooftop?

2. Secret Service snipers having ‘scoped’ the shooter before any shots were fired — having aimed rifles with telescopic sights at him — why did they let him fire nine shots before shooting him?

3. Why did the Secret Service not enter and occupy all the buildings and rooftops in the immediate vicinity before the rally began?

4. Why did DHS (which oversees the Secret Service) refuse Trump’s repeated requests for additional protection?

5. What role did Joe Biden’s statement on July 8 — ‘We’re done talking. It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye’ — have in inciting violence against Trump?

6. Why did police ignore the rifle-toting man on the rooftop even after he was pointed out to them by a rally attendee outside the security perimeter?

7. How did a rifle get through magnetometer detection that is or should be routine around such events?

The answers will help determine whether this is yet another case of colossal Government incompetence, or something more sinister. We can only hope the story will gel, and soon, unlike the long-drawn-out obfuscations of previous commissions. Every possibility, no matter how repugnant, must be considered and investigated, in order to prevent further violence. Whatever may be the results of such an investigation, it appears that Trump Derangement Syndrome has gone kinetic — that, as Biden and others advocated, murderous talk has progressed into murderous action. President Trump will remind everyone the election is only four months away, and if done fairly — a big if — America will experience the blessing endowed by its Founders, a peaceful transfer of power.