I have neglected Comments of the Day of late I know, and I am sorry about that. There have been many excellent comments, and also many I have not had time to read carefully: the responses to the “What do you believe?” post alone generated many strong COTD candidates (and they are still coming in).

I might as well start with a comment I said I would post under the designation three weeks ago, and whiffed: Michael R.’s brief arguing that the Secret Service’s epic botch in Pennsylvania that only avoided getting Donald Trump killed by the intervention of moral luck was no accident.

Is the EA post that inspired Michael moot? After all, Kim Cheatle finally resigned after the indignity of having Congress members of both parties tell her to. However, the information that has been drip, drip, dripping out about the near-assassination has not disproved Michael’s thesis; if anything it bolsters his argument.

Ultimately, the question, as it so frequently does in the Age of the Great Stupid, comes down to Hanlon’s Razor: Is it intentional malice, or is it incompetence? The COTD concludes, “To cling to an incredibly unlikely incompetence argument in light of a much more likely explanation is only required if you don’t want to acknowledge something you are unwilling to accept.”

Maybe, but I will still cling even while admitting that other recent Hanlon’s Razor mysteries that have been popping up (“Did Democrats and the media just miss the fact that Joe Biden was a proto-vegetable because they are lazy, biased and inept, or did they deliberately participate in a conspiracy to deceive the American people ‘to save democracy’?” is one obvious example) demand the malice label.

Here’s Michael R’s Comment on the Day on the post, “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job, and Only the Prominence of a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces Can Explain That.”

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You have to make a lot of hand wringing arguments to state:

(1) They didn’t put snipers on the roof that THEY identified as a threat.

(2) They didn’t secure the building despite the threat of the roof.

(3) They didn’t notice the guy on the roof despite the fact that the crowd had been taking pictures of him for 25+ minutes.

(4) They let a 20 year old kid drive up, unload a ladder, climb onto the roof spread out his blanket, assemble the rifle and take 7 or 8 shots accidentally. That is the most generous assessment. If THEY left the ladder to the roof there for access, it is worse.

(5) They were watching a credible threat to the president for 2+ minutes, discussing it with higher-ups for permission to shoot, and no one in the entire chain of command thought to pull Trump off stage. No one thought to pull Trump off the stage. This is the one that is virtually impossible.

(6) A local cop confronted the shooter beforehand and fled when the shooter pointed a gun at him. The cop didn’t radio anyone to get Trump off the stage, shoot the guy, etc.

(7) Many of the Secret Service agents did a good 3 Stooges impression.

(8) The Head of the Secret Service said she takes full responsibility, but also states that she will not resign.

(9) The Head of the Secret Service tells obvious lies and tries to throw the local cops under the bus.

(10) They thought the proper spot for sniper teams was inside a building, but these sniper teams didn’t notice the kid with the rifle climbing onto the roof of that very building.

(11) The 20 year old kid was killed 20+ feet from his rifle and blanket, meaning that the snipers didn’t stop him, he stopped, put the rifle down, and was killed as he tried to leave and while unarmed.

and claim it is all due to incompetence. This is the Secret Service that trains and trains and trains for these very situations. It is not reasonable to believe that this is incompetence.

A much simpler argument is that this was intentional. They intended for Trump to die. Now, maybe they didn’t put the kid up to it, but when the opportunity presented itself, a lot of people in the chain of command decided to let Trump die. It makes perfect sense for the head of the Secret Service to not resign in light of this. She did everything right. The only think wrong was that the kid missed.

The incompetence argument makes no sense. The only likely explanation is that they left Trump on that stage to die. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t like it. This is the most likely explanation. Making an incompetence argument with a 0.000001% likelihood that includes the requirement that every single Secret Service agent from the ground to the head doesn’t know the first thing about their job is not reasonable. To cling to an incredibly unlikely incompetence argument in light of a much more likely explanation is only required if you don’t want to acknowledge something you are unwilling to accept.