While the rest of us thought the gunman who shot and killed Charlie Kirk was still on the loose Thursday night, we learned Friday that the FBI had the likely shooter in custody since 10 PM in Utah the night before.
Why did the bureau withhold an announcement that could have helped ease the minds of many? So that incoherent geezer Donald Trump could look presidential on TV the next morning.
Via The Daily Beast:
Two days after Kirk’s murder, a tense manhunt was set off. Patel revealed on Friday that Tyler Robinson, 22, had been taken into custody at 10 pm on Thursday in Utah, or midnight Eastern Standard Time.
However, the bureau did not inform the public that an arrest had been made until about nine hours later, allowing Trump, a former reality TV star-turned-politician, to reveal the crucial breakthrough during an interview with Fox & Friends.
“You always have breaking news, Ainsley,” the president told Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt before making a joke about her partner Sean Hannity, who has his own late-night program.
“Sean’s going to be very disappointed that we’re not doing it on his show.”
Oh, and while he was looking to bask in glory for his own self, Trump took a swipe at the network he was using as his platform. He announced the capture with a reference to Fox’s huge defamation lawsuits for lying – on his behalf – about the 2020 election: “Can I always say, I think just to protect us all and so Fox doesn’t get sued and we all don’t get sued and everything else, but I think with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s FBI chief, Kash Patel, has proven himself to be exactly the incompetent, sycophantic head of the FBI we feared he would be. No wonder The Daily Beast called him “Keystone Kash.”
Trump treating his job as a reality TV show gig should surprise nobody. The bigger tragedy is that plenty of Americans are buying the act.
Democrats, for the sake of our democracy and our country, you need to figure out how to play and win this game. Stat.