Maybe they were just quiet quitting.

God damn it. I'm so disappointed in myself for missing that pun.

Better a martyr than a president.

Blood has iron in it. Iron comes from rocks. Boom - geology.

Yes, well, there are many reasons to be concerned about what's going to happen in November.

The only real historical example that can be looked at as a parallel is when Reagan got shot in 1981. Yes, he did win the 1984 election in a landslide, but:

• He won the 1980 election in a landslide as well, so he was already super popular in the country
• He was the incumbent, and incumbents historically have done well in their re-election bids
• His opponent was Walter Mondale, a milquetoast neoliberal who was so boring it's surprising that his name didn't become synonymous with yawning.

In short, there's not really enough evidence to say definitively that an assassination attempt will bolster a candidate's chances at the polls.

I mean, maybe. But let's not confuse our fears with evidence, here. There's no evidence as yet that this incident or this picture will lead to a statistically significant bump in people voting for him.

It is a pretty great picture, but it's not going to somehow magically make people who hate Trump suddenly decide to vote for him. At best, it'll energize his base into voting, but his base was already really energized.

I think that the idea that it was faked is so outlandish that it would require a good amount of evidence before the prospect could even be considered in serious conversation. There is zero evidence that it was faked. By far the most likely explanation is that someone who had a bone to pick with Donald Trump, and who was not particularly skilled at making shots 150 yards away climbed up onto a roof and grabbed the opportunity that lax security provided.

You start throwing in conspiracies about how it was an inside job, and everything becomes so much more complicated, logistics-wise. Complicated plots do happen, but to suggest that was the case here with zero evidence is laughable.

Careful, now. Don't want to get caught not doing the requisite amount of performative hand wringing. Might get banned.

Yeah; the FBI were doing undercover operations with them for 15 months before arresting them. I don't know any more details of the case than the wikipedia article highlights, but surely you'd have enough evidence to arrest people trying to build a death ray at some point prior to 15 months. Maybe our gov't just thought that their innovation was useful and figured they'd wait and see where they went with it.