Welcome back in for Al’s Afternoon Tea, our chance to stop and sample the latest news.

And frankly, the more we learn about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the worse the taste in my mouth gets. But at least Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is out the door now.

But first, an update on Joe Biden.

Did Biden Have a Mini-Stroke in Vegas?

We mentioned on The Brew this morning Charlie Kirk’s post claiming a source told him Joe Biden had some sort of medical emergency in Las Vegas last week that sent law enforcement and medical personnel scrambling to get him to a hospital, and then back to Delaware.

Now, we have confirmation from local news station KNSV that the University Medical Center trauma unit had been alerted about a possible medical crisis involving Biden. Medical teams prepared and law enforcement began securing the perimeter in anticipation of his arrival. From what UMC CEO Mason Van Houweling told the station, and what police sources told The Dossier, they were expecting Biden to be suffering from far more than a mild case of COVID.

“Far from a case of the sniffles, this was sent out on encrypted police airwaves as if something akin to a five-alarm fire had broken out,” the Dossier’s Jordan Schachtel reported.

However, plans changed. Schachtel says law enforcement was then ordered to clear a path to the airport to get Biden out of town as fast as possible.

In fact, according to the Daily Mail’s Emily Goodin, Air Force One made it back to Delaware in three hours and 48 minutes. That’s about an hour less than the normal flight time. According to Goodin, “AF1 flew so fast the plane shook.”

So what happened to the president? According to Red State:

An additional source (not a medical person) in a position to know tells me that Biden had stroke-like symptoms (but did not elaborate as to what those were), but when the doc traveling w/Biden determined it wasn’t a “full stroke” they could treat on AF1 en route to Andrews, the motorcade diverted to the airport.

The source said it was believed “Biden had a transient ischemic attack (TIA).” What’s that? A warning. According to the Mayo Clinic, TIA is “a short period of symptoms similar to those of a stroke. It’s caused by a brief blockage of blood flow to the brain. A TIA usually lasts only a few minutes and doesn’t cause long-term damage.”

One in three people who experience a TIA have a stroke, half of those within a year. Remember, Joe Biden had two brain aneurysms in 1988.

As of this morning, the White House has not confirmed the story. But this would explain the initial plan to get to a trauma unit, the rapid escape from Nevada, Biden’s difficulty getting up the stairs and into his limo, the five-day-long disappearance, the sudden decision to drop out of the race, and the statement Frank Biden made about having Joe “back to enjoy whatever time we have left.”

We pray for Biden’s full recovery, and that he be spared more serious incidents.

Trump Assassination Attempt: Cheatle Out

After yesterday’s disastrous, incomprehensible and maddening appearance before a House committee — to say nothing of her agency’s colossal inability to do its one job — Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned.

Good riddance. May she take her DEI mandates with her.

Still the question remains: Did Cheatle not do her job, or did she do the job her superiors asked her to do? Namely, leave Joe Biden’s political opposition leader wide open for assassination.

Conspiracy theory? Just yesterday, when he phoned in to his campaign headquarters, Joe Biden again said Donald Trump is “still a danger to our nation, a danger to our communities.” Why wouldn’t Biden want to neutralize a danger to our nation, if he’s convinced that’s true? And it’s not like voices in Congress and the media weren’t fantasizing out loud about taking Trump out after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. It’s not like the intelligence community and FBI, which lied about Hunter’s laptop and have held open malice toward Trump since 2015, don’t have motive to take him out — starting with self-preservation.

Don’t be shocked. People have been talking about this for months. Tucker Carlson, in particular, was laying out how this was the next step after the lawfare against Trump failed, “obviously.”

Echoes of JFK

I’m reminded of the scene in Oliver Stone’s JFK where Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison has trouble wrapping his head around the idea that government entities would take out their own president. “Kings are killed, Mr. President,” said the late Donald Sutherland. “Politics is power. Nothing more.”

Looking at what happened on July 13 and the events leading up to it, a paraphrase of the movie comes up: “Why was Trump shot at? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?”

Then you think, “No, that can’t be intentional. It had to be ineptitude.” You see the story a whistleblower told Sen. Josh Hawley about an officer being assigned to the roof, but who abandoned the post because the roof was too hot, and it makes you wonder … but then you combine that with communications errors and the fact that resources were stretched too thin in part because the First Lady and Vice President Kamala Harris were both holding events the same day in Pennsylvania, and you tell yourself, “Yeah. They just got careless and stupid.”

However, then you see video demonstrating how the officers or agents stationed on the second floor of the American Glass Research building had a perfectly clear view of the adjoining roof … and thus the would-be killer. And did nothing to stop him.

🚨New video shows Secret Service perch at Trump Butler, PA rally had clear view of roof sniper staked out to attempt assassination on President Trump

pic.twitter.com/fRdkfNd5nC

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 22, 2024

And then …

The Mysterious Ping: Why Was Someone Tight with Crooks Hanging Out Near FBI Office?

Perhaps it is nothing, but given how often the FBI has been caught identifying, enticing, and entrapping troubled, angry souls into committing foul deeds, you have to wonder.

The Heritage Oversight Project, using available cell phone data, has determined that a phone associated with would-be assassin Thomas Crooks visited a complex in Washington, D.C. that houses offices of the FBI.

🚨ASSASINATION INFO DROP🚨

We found the assassin’s connections through our in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates.

To do this, we tracked devices that regularly visited both Crooks’s home and place of work and followed them.🧵 https://t.co/T5HETLhkgM pic.twitter.com/hMsI9dFwNk

— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) July 22, 2024

As The Blaze reports:

According to Oversight investigators, a phone associated with Crooks’ work address at a nursing home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, traveled to the Gallery Place complex in Downtown Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2023. The phone “pinged” seven or eight times from that location the same day.

Gallery Place — an 11-story mixed-use building constructed over the Chinatown Metro station — is filled with retail stores and restaurants but also houses offices of the FBI on the upper floors, former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin told Blaze News.

“It is the closest [location] off-site that I’m aware of to the Washington Field Office,” Seraphin said. “Agents are assigned to Washington Field, but they work out of Gallery Place.”

Whose phone was it? That is unknown. The only thing that is known is that its owner regularly visited Crooks’s home and workplace.

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway is right.

Given the disastrous hearing and deluge of supposed incompetence, Cheatle et al should be treated as suspects. And in no way trusted. "Secret Service Director Claims There Are No Recordings Of Radio Traffic From Trump Assassination Attempt" https://t.co/vfuLphii8y

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 22, 2024

Even If We’re Wrong, What Does That Say About the Administration?

Let’s flip this around for a second, for our liberal friends. Let’s say no one in the Biden administration deliberately sabotaged Trump’s security. With the little information we heard from Cheatle yesterday about the lapses that occurred, what does that tell you about this administration’s competence?

Do you feel secure having the Secret Service watch over Kamala Harris? She’s already had one female Secret Service agent have a mental breakdown on her watch, and that was a relatively minor incident compared to actually being struck by a bullet.

The Year’s Already So Strange You Have to Ask

After vanishing like Amelia Earhart for nearly a week, Joe Biden called into his campaign headquarters yesterday when Kamala paid a visit. Or was it really him? He sure repeated himself and lost his train of thought enough for it to sound like him. Unfortunately, we’ve seen so much manipulation and fictionalization from this administration, people are wondering if the call was legit or prerecorded.

Harris didn’t help matters by appearing to almost slip up and say “recorded.”

Does Kamala just stop short of saying "recording" instead of call?

"Joe, I know you're still on the rec— call…"

pic.twitter.com/5evMqTvN1G

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) July 22, 2024

Kamala Is “Brat”

Fresh off covering up for Biden’s incapacity, look out for the new con. Kamala is being peddled to Gen X voters as this fun, likable “Brat.” It started with British prop singer Charli XCX on Sunday.

kamala IS brat

— Charli (@charli_xcx) July 22, 2024

What’s that? The singer explained in a TikTok video.

“You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things some times. Who feels like herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”

Harris’ campaign is embracing the label in an effort to appeal to younger voters. She’s going from “cringe to cool,” croons CNN’s Van Jones.

Except the real Kamala is closer to the old definition of “brat,” according to those who have worked for her.

Axios has a new report detailing the incredibly high turnover rate of Harris’s staff. Of the 47 staffers listed in 2021, only four remain as of this spring, according to OpenTheBooks. Former aides describe her style as “prosecuting the staff.” This is consistent with Politico’s story of the toxic office environment Harris has created.

“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” a source told Politico in 2021. “It’s not a healthy environment, and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like ***.”

Just last year, The Atlantic wrote about “the top-to-bottom dysfunction” of Harris’s office. And The Washington Post wrote of staff issues with Harris going all the way back to Sacramento. “One of the things we’ve said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this, and it’s her,” Gil Duran, a Democratic consultant who worked with Harris when she was California’s attorney general, told the WaPo in 2021.

The Atlantic, Politico, Axios, The Washington Post. Keep in mind these are liberal outlets.

Had to Rehearse Dinner?

Another theme running through the stories about Harris is that she is averse to risk and needs things tightly controlled. Not exactly a trait desirable in a commander-in-chief. Axios has one story that is particularly peculiar:

In April 2022, Harris was the guest for a dinner at D.C. news mogul David Bradley’s home — a salon-style event Bradley hosts with Washington journalists and newsmakers.

• Harris’ anxiety about the dinner was such that her staff held a mock dinner beforehand, with staffers playing participants, according to two people familiar with the event.

• Harris aides even considered including wine in the mock prep so Harris could practice with a glass or two.

• They ultimately decided against it.

When you are so stressed you have to practice dining and conversing at the home of a friendly journalist, how in the world are you prepared for the world stage?

On the Stream Menu

Just up, a new one from the wonderful Chenyuan Snider: “Confessions of an Ex-Never Trumper.” 

Mat Staver details the “Secret Service Under Fire: How DEI, Low Morale and Systemic Agency Failures Threaten to Take Down America’s Elite Security Force.”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.