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Not necessarily. To my knowledge, we don't know where any explosives would have been planted. He was seen wandering around the rally area a few hours before the rally. It's possible at one point he thought he could plant some explosives near Trump's podium or something so he gets taken out in the blast, and maybe abandoned that plan when he walked around and realized it wasn't viable.
IMO, there's nothing indicating he had any intents other than taking out Trump by any means available to him. Anyone else was probably either collateral damage in his mind, or "deserved it" for being Trump supporters in the first place. He may have decided that trying to snipe him from that rooftop was his most viable option, but it looks like he woke up that morning with at least two separate plans on how to go about it.
Fair. None of that speculation is inherently any better than the mass shooting speculation though, there's similarly zero indication he had anything personal against Trump. He even had potential dem targets in his search history. There's no sound evidence for anything so far, that I've heard at any rate.
Though I do think it's a little far-fetched that what appears to be an intelligent engineering student is going to think sneaking over and planting explosives is going to be a viable plan. That's a little video gamey.
It's a lot video-gamey. Let's be realistic.....the United States Secret Service just got owned by a 20 year old kid camping in one of the windows from Nuketown. The kid looks like he got beat up for his lunch money last week. Whatever plans were gong through his head, the plan he ultimately settled on involved him climbing to the one rooftop that the Secret Service somehow missed and was somehow able to not get caught until he fired off half a dozen or so shots. Everything he did that we know of so far looks like something a newbie would do the first time they played COD.
We'll of course never really know his true motives. Remember that despite all the speculation over political motives, Ronald Reagan's would-be-assassin did it because he was trying to impress a teenage Jodie Foster. For all we know, this kid could have woke up that morning and believed that Trump was Gargamel and it was his responsibility to kill him in order to save Smurf Village. Why he suddenly wanted Trump dead remains a mystery especially since he was supposedly a long-time Trump supporter, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe that his target was anything other than Trump himself, and maybe anyone who was just unlucky enough to be in the way.
Again, there is also no evidence he specifically wanted Trump dead and was not simply committing a blaze-of-glory act of terrorism for some misguided chance at fame. Having no evidence does not mean we default to one preferred interpretation.
Regarding the rooftop, from all indications he carefully scouted his method. The drone, the rangefinder, the ladder, etc. The building was local police's responsibility, as well, they actually even had a cop inside that very building. Regardless though, it certainly was embarrassing for the SS anyway, hence the director resigning.
No, but you at least go where what evidence you do have leads you. The kid fired off half a dozen shots, at least one of which came within an inch of killing him. If his plan were a mass shooting, bullets would have been sprayed everywhere. If his plan were to go for some blaze-of-glory shot at fame (or the most convoluted suicide-by-cop of all time) but didn't want to kill Trump, he could have just shot well above everybody's heads.
When you get that close with that many shots, it's more reasonable to assume that Trump was the target and he missed than it would be to assume that Trump wasn't the target because he missed.
Right. Which is why I think we both can agree the whole situation is video-gamey. The kid came up with an elaborate plan that was 100% reliant on the United States Secret Service somehow forgetting to cover that specific rooftop, and him being able to get all that equipment over there without a single bit of interference. If that isn't the stealth mission of virtually every first person shooter in the past 30 years, I don't know what is.
Oh absolutely. A lone 20 year old kid essentially playing out the plot of Call of Duty made the entire Secret Service look like a laughing stock live and in real time. There should have been a lot more than that director resigning.
Successfully shooting Trump would garner more fame than any of the other things you described. He unquestionably wanted to shoot Trump, I think. After Trump dropped down and got piled on by the SS, though, he seems to have begun shooting other people.
Trump stuck his head up once or twice after the Secret Service piled on. It's possible he was still trying to get Trump, but I will concede that it's also very likely he started firing randomly or at others to cause chaos and cover a potential escape.
I'll give them credit for piling on him though. They are very lucky that he didn't decide to just start shooting into the pile.