[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

On Saturday, July 14, a 20-year-old local boy with virtually no online footprint or history of political radicalism brought a ladder and rifle to the Pennsylvania grounds where presidential candidate Donald Trump was about to speak to supporters. The would-be assassin stationed himself on a low, unsecured, slightly sloped rooftop with a direct line of sight to Trump, a mere 130 yards away, and got off a shot that came within a hair’s breadth of killing the likely next President. A Secret Service sniper then eliminated the threat (but only after he got off a total of eight shots, murdering one Trump supporter and critically wounding two others).

A profile of Thomas Matthew Crooks was quickly constructed: a bullied loner with a small circle of friends. a classmate told Fox News, who “were definitely the type, and they did, make threats to shoot up our school.” In the subsequent investigation, the FBI announced that it couldn’t seem to get into Crooks’ phone, and yet the Bureau also asserted confidently and swiftly that he acted alone.

Those are the bare bones of the story you’re expected to accept. And the mainstream media, who have done the heavy Democrat lifting over the last eight years of smearing Trump as Hitler 2.o and a fascist Threat to Democracy™, are now doing their best to keep the narrative focused on Trump and his supporters as being primarily responsible for the country’s heated political rhetoric and violence, including Trump’s own shooting.

In spite of the media’s efforts, a counter-narrative is building momentum, centered on what many are describing as a “sh*t show” of a security failure on the part of the Secret Service. How did the Service drop the ball? Let us count the ways.

Joe Biden’s security apparatus reportedly starved Trump’s security team of the resources it needed, not only for the Pennsylvania rally, but repeatedly over the course of weeks and months. With Trump’s security detail understaffed, Biden’s security team diverted even more resources to a hastily planned Jill Biden event that just happened to be in the area.

NBC News has the timeline of what happened at the Pennsylvania rally. To summarize: Crooks — who also had a range finder and a backpack with him — was reported as a suspicious person a full hour before he began shooting, and yet the Secret Service managed to lose sight of him. Roughly 30 minutes after that initial report, State Police notified the Secret Service of a suspicious person at 5:51 p.m. The Secret Service notified its snipers two minutes later. At 6:02 p.m., Trump took the stage, and seven minutes later, bystanders in the crowd began pointing out Crooks on the rooftop and shouting for law enforcement to stop him. Two minutes later, he opened fire on Trump.

A local police counter-sniper team reportedly was stationed inside the building Crooks crawled on top of; the building was a “watch post” for local police snipers to scan for threats, law enforcement sources told the New York Post. Sources told the Post that the team was inside the building, but not on the roof.

Even as Secret Service snipers on the roof near Trump saw the gunman, security took no action either to neutralize the threat or to surround Trump and remove him from the stage to safety.

All these factors considered, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see this as a just a series of bumbling errors. On the contrary, they begin to resemble a deliberate plan to render Trump vulnerable while appearing to be mistakes.

Add to all this the humiliating spectacle of female agents of the DEI-weakened Secret Service on the scene of the vehicle into which Trump was hustled, fumbling ineptly with their weapons and sunglasses, and generally exuding uncertainty and panic rather than calm and efficiency.

Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle, who had elevated “diversity” to one of the top priorities of the organization, offered this jaw-dropping explanation for the decision to leave the roof unguarded: “That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she said.

One look at the roof belies this ridiculous excuse. The angle of the slope can’t be more than, say, 5-10%. Law enforcement officers who were photographed standing over the shooter’s dead body afterward clearly have no difficulty balancing. And agents were stationed on nearby rooftops that had slopes of greater angles than the one on which the shooter lay. Cheatle’s justification for leaving the roof unguarded is so unconvincing that one can only assume she is either shockingly dense or lying.

In a television interview with ABC on Monday, Cheatle appeared to accept full responsibility for the security debacle, declaring that “the buck stops with me”; and yet in the face of a veritable tsunami of calls for her resignation, she vowed “to stay on” and failed to even make a report to the public. Instead of firing her, Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, her boss, stated that his “confidence in Kim is 100 percent.” To stonewall the public on the worst security lapse in 40 years raises even more questions rather than resolving them.

Hanlon’s Razor is a concept that warns us never to attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, although Hanlon misgauged just how evenly distributed malice and stupidity are when it comes to politics. In this instance, the mountain of Secret Service incompetence is so enormous that it strains credulity to accept it as mere stupidity. Considering the reach of the Deep State, the virulent hatred for Donald Trump that suffuses the Left, the Democrats’ history of obsessive attempts to subvert his first presidency and to derail a second term, and the Left’s unrestrained lust for power, it’s far from unreasonable to suspect foul play.

If the assassination attempt on Trump is the result more of malice than stupidity, then where does that buck stop? Who is the most likely candidate to have green-lit the security failures leading to Trump being shot, and possibly even given the go-ahead to the shooter himself? Some in the media are still pretending that the shooter’s motive is unclear; would it be too on-the-nose to suggest that perhaps eliminating the presidential candidate who is crushing the incumbent Biden was the motive? An unstoppable juggernaut of a candidate whom even Democrats were beginning to concede could not lose in November? Hey, we’re just asking questions. But the only person with the answers by her own admission – the head of the Secret Service – is not answering.

Now ask yourself, cui bono? Who benefits most from Trump being removed from the picture? The entire Democrat Party, sure, but who would have the power to authorize such a nefarious scheme? A Deep State operative in one of the alphabet agencies? One of the puppet masters pulling decrepit Joe Biden’s strings? What about the Biden crime family itself? Who would benefit more than Trump’s corrupt, floundering opponent Joe? Or perhaps wife Jill, who is determined to keep her husband in the Oval Office no matter what? Perhaps even their convicted-felon son Hunter, whose fortunes (and a presidential pardon) are directly tied to Dad’s?

Hey, we’re just asking questions.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior