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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

Like millions of other Americans on both ends of the political spectrum, my eyes and my mind have been focused on political developments in recent weeks and months, but especially in recent days.  In these modern times of advanced communications technologies it seems that anyone and everyone with a smart phone and an opinion can broadcast or publish said opinion to the world via the Internet.  To be frank, I like it!

Some of my old friends may remember my “snail mail” newsletter from the 1980s, entitled The Albritton Letter, wherein I promulgated my stories, opinions and personal philosophies the old-fashioned way, i.e., typed on a sheet of copy paper with a portable Royal 12-point typewriter and folded and stuffed into a No. 10 envelope with a stamp on it.  In the mid 1990s I quickly became fascinated this miraculous technology called “The Internet” and I began posting an expanded electronic version of The Albritton Letter as an internet website.  I developed hundreds, maybe even thousands, of regular readers all over the U.S. in those early years.  My subscriber list was pretty puny compared to today’s podcast giants, but I was excited and proud to be learning new stuff day by day.  In later years I self-published two books, a novel entitled Baby Blue, and a collection of stories and poems entitled, oddly enough, The Albritton Letters.  Both of these books can be found and purchased in both digital and hard at Amazon.com.  In recent years I have also hosted a series of daily broadcasts on multiple local radio stations entitled, Lloyd and Friends, Interesting Conversations With Interesting People, featuring local personalities living in and around my hometown of Atmore.  Though my radio broadcasts are no longer on the airwaves, many of my interviews and commentaries are available via podcast on my YouTube channel under the name Lloyd and Friends, Interesting Conversations With Interesting People.  I continue to add content there from time to time and am a legend in my own mind.

I suppose I am giving you this brief resume of sorts to justify the forthcoming comment on the subject of politics.  I think we all have our unique political and religious beliefs and, however crazy, ill informed or controversial our views may be to others, we have a right to hold those views and to share them.  Lots of people these days are claiming that right and, having now offered my qualifications as an amateur “opinion-giver,” I dare to join the throngs and throw my two-cents into the mix.

First, permit me to say that I believe in divine miracles. Further, I believe Donald Trump’s escape from the assassin’s bullet on Saturday, July 13, 2024, at precisely 5:11 p.m. CST was such a miracle.  I think our nation is in peril and we need President Trump to lead us out of it.  I am sure there are many great leaders who are perhaps smarter, younger, more likeable, and have better hairdoos than Donald Trump, but I believe Donald Trump is the very man God Himself has chosen for the job. God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5 KJV).  Whether in this life or before the foundations of the world, I believe Donald Trump has likewise been ordained by the hand of God to lift this choice nation out of destruction.

Some cynics are certain to laugh this “naive supposition” to scorn. Many will argue that there is no God, no such thing as miracles, and that faith in such a God is merely a coping mechanism of the weak.  They will explain the events of last week as a commonplace coincidence or perhaps even “staged” by Trump himself.

I was brought to high emotions and even tears as I listened to some of the speeches at the Republican Convention last week and as I watched President Trump walk grandly into the convention center with a bandage on his wounded right ear.  I noted that a common thread in almost every speech given was a reference to God and His interest and intervention in the affairs of man.   I believe also in all those things.  And I believe that the bullet, which nicked President Trump’s right ear, instead of blowing his brains out, was guided by the hand of God.

Early news reports have indicated that the FBI is in charge of investigating the assassination attempt and that any preliminary suggestions of a deep-state left-wing conspiracy are ignorant, divisive, incendiary and completely unacceptable.  In other words, once again we are counseled not to believe our own lying eyes.

Instead, we are encouraged to believe that the world’s most elite personal protection organization, the U. S. Secret Service, was so negligent, stupid and incompetent that they allowed a 20-year-old nerd with a rifle and a range-finder slung over his shoulder to climb on top of a building located less than 150 yards away from where the former President of the United States and the leading Presidential candidate would be speaking, a location with a direct line-of-sight to the President, and that after alerts by local citizenry and local police almost 10 minutes before the first shots were fired, and after the Secret Service sniper putting the assassin in his rifle sights more than three (3) minutes before the assassin fired on the President, but being instructed by his superiors that he was not to take the shot until the assassin fired first, I ask, is THIS what they are asking us to believe?  I can hardly comprehend, much less believe, that the secret service could be so incompetent.

When asked by a media reporter why the subject building had not been secured by secret service agents, Biden appointed Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, stated that the slope of the roof on said building made it too difficult for her agents to post there and that she did not want any of her agents to get hurt.  One must wonder if Director Cheatle was referring to deficient agents hired under current government D.E.I. guidelines or to a traditional Secret Service agent who one might expect to be capable of swimming across a river underwater with a dagger clenched in his teeth and climbing a palm tree without limbs to accomplish his mission.

As to why the building was not guarded at all, Director Cheatle stated that it was outside the designated perimeter (a perimeter presumably designated by the Secret Service itself) and that local police were responsible for securing that building.  When asked by the reporter “where the buck stops,” Cheatle reluctantly admitted that “the buck stops” with her, yet, when asked if she would be willing to accept responsibility and resign her job, she quickly replied, “No.”

The secret service functions within the Department of Homeland Security, headed by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.  Mayorkas expressed his full confidence in Cheatle and stated that no changes in secret service protocols are anticipated, adding that, in his opinion, the Secret Service has done a great job in this matter.    

There is a reasoning paradigm called Hanlon’s Razor, which posits, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”  In the law, there is a point when incompetence and neglect can become so great that it extends beyond mere stupidity and becomes a criminal liability.  In the case of an elite personal protection organization like the U. S. Secret Service, I think it is very hard for any reasonable-minded person to accept that they could have performed so very poorly in this most important and sacred assignment without some degree of sabotage or intentionality being present somewhere in the secret service’s hierarchical line of authority.

Like most of you, every fiber of my being wants to believe that this assassination attempt could not be a planned inside job.  It just doesn’t seem possible that such an evil could actually exist, does it?  Yet, I find this hypothesis easier to believe than that Secret Service agents could be as incompetent as they were in their protection of President Trump.

I am hopeful, prayerful, and I have complete faith, that the ensuing investigation of this tragic affair will be performed, not by the F.B.I., whose integrity has already been tarnished by multiple tawdry shenanigans, but by Congress itself, that it will be done quickly, honestly and openly, and that those responsible, whether nefarious or just plain stupid, will be punished accordingly.