Former US President and Republican nominee for president Donald Trump might not make it to the election, former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Ray McGovern and former US Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts speculated in separate interviews with Sputnik.
“My question is whether they (the deep state) will take another shot at Trump,” McGovern said on Friday. “I’m serious here. There’s so much at stake. So damn much at stake. And I just wonder if he’s going to make it and, call me a conspiracy theorist, but these people, they don’t have much conscience if they tolerate genocide in Gaza, if they tolerate half a million Ukrainian youths being killed for their whims.”
Roberts expressed similar sentiments on Sunday. “The real question is: will the deep state get away with its assassination attempt and will it attempt another?" Roberts said. "I expect that there will be more attempts on Trump's life.”
Roberts pointed out that they utilized multiple tactics to get rid of Trump before turning to assassination: "Russia-gate, two impeachments, porn star-gate, documents-gate, insurrection-gate and then 4 criminal indictments and several civil indictments."
"The Democrats acting for the deep state believed they could get rid of Trump in these ways," Roberts said. "When these attempts failed, they turned to assassination. Acoustic evidence of the shootings makes it completely clear that there were more than one shooter. [Thomas Matthew] Crooks was the patsy. Trump survived the assassination because he turned his head."
Crooks, the alleged deceased shooter, allegedly managed to get through security carrying a laser rangefinder and scaled a nearby building as onlookers attempted to warn police officers and Secret Service agents to no avail. Information from authorities has also been inconsistent, with initial reports saying Crooks carried his rifle with him, later reports said the gun was planted before the event.
During live coverage of the shooting on US media, several eyewitnesses reported that they heard two shooters, with at least one mentioning a nearby water tower which has since become the subject of online speculation.
The excuses for why the building was not covered have also been inconsistent. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle initially said that the local police were in charge of the building, an assertion state authorities have denied. Later, she claimed the roof was too steep to safely place an agent on it.
Reports have also noted the Secret Service was made aware of Crooks anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes before Trump was shot.
Cheatle is scheduled to testify in front of Congress on Monday. Despite numerous calls from public officials, she has declined to resign from her post.
Meanwhile, the US House Committee on Homeland Security has issued a subpoena to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, demanding documents related to the security plan for the event. The letter says Mayorkas “failed to properly satisfy our requests for documents and information regarding the security efforts” related to the assassination attempt.
“Incompetence on the part of the federal agencies is the default position, you’ve got to know that first,” explained McGovern. “There’s so much ample evidence of that. But this one, [there’s] too much evidence. It doesn’t parse.”
"In order to keep the public's focus off the attempted assassination, the Secret Service is being blamed for withholding sufficient resources necessary to protect Trump,” argued Roberts. “This focuses attention away from a plot to kill Trump and places it on the sufficiency of the Secret Service's budget and the appropriateness of its ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ personnel policy."
But Roberts does not think the investigation, even if run by Republicans, will vigorously search for the truth.
"The Republicans are likely to agree to sweep the intent issue under the rug in order to ‘protect America's reputation,’" Roberts said, referring to the intentions of the deep state. "It wouldn't do to showcase the US as a country where presidents and would-be presidents are shot down by the opposition."
McGovern notes the deep state had the means, motive and opportunity to take Trump.
“There are a lot of guys in the deep state, a lot of guys Trump knows did him in for four years and tried to prevent him from being elected and then successfully deprived him from being elected in 2020. And he has a book on these guys. If he throws this book at the guys, they have a lot to lose, so incentive, motive, I think the motive is there,” McGovern explained.
“What better opportunity than a day or two right before the Republican National Committee nominates Trump? You get him before he’s nominated. They’re thrown into chaos and disarray… call me a conspiracy theorist if you will,” he added.
McGovern noted the growing desperation of Trump’s opponents as a contributing factor.
“That’s why, in my view, one should look for another shot. One should look for desperate means to prevent Trump from becoming president.”
On Tuesday, US media reported that US intelligence officials were concerned about an Iranian-funded attack against Trump, possibly on the eve of the election, but did not present any evidence and the sources cited remained anonymous. Iran vehemently denied the claim, calling them “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
Veteran Tehran-based Iranian-American academic and international affairs observer Dr. Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik he doubts the claim and agreed that forces within the US government could be involved. “We know that US intelligence always lies,” he said.
“The [attempted] assassination of Trump was obviously either an inside job carried out by the Biden regime, or elements within the Biden regime, or the US Secret Service was extremely incompetent because the shooter was very close and it should not have happened,” Marandi said. “If this was Russia or Iran or any other country with a competent government, there would have been no chance for such a thing to happen."
US officials, including US President Joe Biden and other Democrats, have been universal in their condemnation of the attack. However, since 2016, Democrats and left-leaning media outlets have falsely accused Donald Trump of being controlled by the Kremlin and called him an existential threat to democracy.
Days before the assassination attempt, the Biden campaign released an ad accusing Trump of being the “lapdog” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This is who Donald Trump is, a lapdog for a dictator who blames America first,” the ad, which was pulled after the shooting, said dramatically. “The United States must never be like Putin’s Russia; we don’t empower dictators, we don’t undermine freedom.”
“When he said he intended to normalize relations with Russia, Trump threatened the budget and power of the military and security complex, which needs Russia as an enemy," Roberts explained. "The director of the CIA, John Brennan, declared Trump to be a ‘traitor to America.’ This set the ruling establishment working against Trump."
In May, Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times in an assassination attempt. Like Trump, Fico’s killer was determined to be a lone wolf. Like Trump, Fico spoke out against some NATO policies, particularly in Ukraine.
“It is a carbon copy scenario,” Fico said of Trump’s and his assassination attempts. “Political opponents of Donald Trump are trying to imprison him, and when they don’t succeed, they enrage the public so much that some poor bugger picks up a gun.”