This is the most obvious false flag of all time. Trump's protection had been half assed and lax since 2020, everybody would rather him be dead and he knows it. When he got shot he fucking turned around smiling like a schoolchild! Anything that would put one of the many Liberal Right VPs that are happily willing to sanitize the entire Reactionary Right agenda in order to secure a spot in upper management in the President's seat is something that 90% of the people with the most power in this country will support. Anything that would let the Liberal majority go back to pretending that none of this is actually happening and their own reality is true over the facts of the matter.
For my money it doesn't have to be a paid actor for it to be a baited attack. It just has to be someone who's hurt enough to consider and plan it well enough to not get caught while also not being smart enough to realize it's a really bad idea.
I don't foresee anything about this ending well. This might have handed him the election and gives justification for the right-wing crazies to be more violent.
Odds of a junta within the next year?
Scarily high
The military's political makeup is quite incredibly famously opaque to most people. You'd have to have personally collated a lot of information from people serving at all levels in all branches to get a good idea of whether a junta in support of Reactionary Conservatism would gather the necessary support. My own inexpert civilian opinion is that there'd be a big split between Commisioned Officers - typically Liberal left or right from what I can tell - and enlisted officers - over-representing Reactionary extremists - without even getting started on the full spectrum of opinion that comes from all enlisted grunts that actually move the machinery of all branches of the US military. I'd invite anyone with more knowledge to speak on the topic.
Trump says he heard the bottle whizz past and tear through his ear.
"I've heard these bullets whizzing past my ear, folks. We've been expect- ah, *sniff* we haven't ever seen, seeing an attack like this before, a big one! I've heard them talking on, on their on *sniff* Elon's big twitter folks. Big bullets, I've heard some say the biggest
Shot by an enemy *crowd begins applauding* that hates, hates our big beautiful country folks! And this *indecipherable maybe slur* *crowd begins screaming incoherently, pushing the counter towards probably slur * thinks these big, ah *coke sniff* Behg bullets can big *crowd applauds hard enough to peak the mics* bigger than- than, than Trump?