What Would GOP Say About the Secret Service If Carter Had Run In 1984?

The GOP is demanding Trump get the same Secret Service Protection President Biden gets. Every single bit. They insist on calling Trump “President Trump” even though he’s a FORMER President. We only have one President at a time and screw you conservatives it is NOT Donald Trump no matter how many times you call him ‘President.’ Ordinarily he’d rate the same level of protection as any other former President unless there was a credible level of (for a time) an elevated threat. Certainly running for President as a major Party nominee should come with additional protection and Trump HAS gotten that. In the wake of an assassination attempt (which had his own hand-picked personal detail done their jobs wouldn’t have happened) Trump got MORE protection including assets (i.e. his very own travelling bullet resistant glass shield) but even that’s not enough.  As far as Republicans are concerned Trump “merits’ EVERYTHING President Biden gets up to and including full military assets including communication. As in I guess use of a plane from the Presidential fleet. One that ordinarily only Biden would get to use.

Are they out of their cotton picking minds? It seems so, at least as far as this article from The Hill suggests.  The Secret Service says Trump is already getting the highest level of protection. Republicans disagree and are saying so:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he called the White House this week to demand that President Biden “supply for President Trump the same degree of protection that a sitting president has.”

“He’s a former president. I believe he’s going to be the next president, and right now, he’s a candidate under the greatest threat of any candidate in modern political history,” Johnson said Wednesday.

Is there more that can be done to protect VIPs including the sitting President and Vice-President? Well sure. There’s always something additional that can be done BUT there’s always the issue of cost vs. risk, and of course dealing with the FACT that politicians can’t spend their time locked away inside a six inch think bullet  proof glass room, surrounded by hundreds of Special Forces operatives with a full division of troops beyond that! No, they want and in fact need to make public appearances. And yes, they need to have some semi as normal seeming as possible times just relaxing at their old homes where they will live again later on. Or say playing a round of golf. Of appearing in front of voters for speeches and so on. Presidents and Presidential candidates can’t be locked down (and out of sight) from the public. They won’t tolerate it and neither will the public.  So choices have to be made.

Now, we DO have to address the fact that even though the would-be assassins incompetent jackasses two attempts have been made on Trump’s life. It’s common sense that somehow some additional assets would be found to ramp up his protection. I wrote earlier this week one trade off has been to take assets away from the protection of others who rate Secret Service protection. Let’s just hope that doesn’t wind up in tragedy. If it does I doubt GOP ‘thoughts and prayers’ will mean much to a victim’s family/loved ones.  Anyway the point is that the GOP is DEMANDING that Trump get everything President Biden gets.  They are of course making a show of introducing legislation to make it so:

The House will vote Friday on a bill from Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) that requires the Secret Service to “apply the same standards” for determining how many agents should be used to protect the president, vice president, and those running for those offices.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced a similar bill Thursday that also requires presidential-level protection for the same group, along with their spouses. But it also adds that Secret Service should provide “any necessary protective measure.”

The Secret Service would not comment on the legislation.

I included that last part for a reason. The Secret Service is famously reticent about providing details regarding specifics of the assets and methods it uses to protect its charges. The more they reveal the more someone who wants to do harm knows to plan for. But politics is politics and politicians just can’t resist getting their TV time playing the “hero who exposes the Secret Service’ so we already know more than we should. Still, what we’re talking about now is basically giving Trump everything Biden gets including I’m sure one of his jets and his own military component. That got me to wondering.

Let’s go back forty years to 1984. Let’s assume former President Jimmy Carter was a different type of man, and more vain and vengeful than he has actually been. AND that Democrats of his era, having seen what Reagan wrought, who knew in their hearts in “Official DC” they undercut Carter at every turn believing he didn’t deserved to be President had a Joni Mitchell ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ realization (You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone) and Carter had run in 1984.

Former President Carter COULD have said a number of things that would have outraged conservatives because they would have been true. For example he could have pointed out how during the post inaugural lunch when word came the hostages had cleared Iranian airspace REAGAN took the credit for freeing them. Even though CARTER was the one who worked to lock up Iran’s assets both here and overseas to eventually force their hand. And who negotiated all the details of the release. That’s not all though. REAGAN took credit for Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s progress on inflation even though it was CARTER who appointed Volker to the post with the assignment to hammer down inflation. REAGAN took credit for rebuilding our military including the goal of a ‘500 ship Navy’ when actually all that was put in the works by CARTER.

And Carter handed Reagan a relatively stable budge and a national debt of about a trillion dollars that had taken two-hundred years and during the 20th century leading two world wars, the war in Korea, the Vietnam war and keeping the USSR at bay during the Cold War and winning the race to the moon to create. And it was ALL blowing up under Reagan.  Imagine if Carter had a vindictive side and decided he’d had enough of Reagan’s ‘sunny optimism’ and taking credit for HIS work, and ignoring things that needed doing like developing clean energy and energy independence. That would have been a rough campaign for sure. And who knows? Since a crazy guy got close to Reagan with a handgun and shot him on the street CARTER could well have had an attempt or two made on HIS life.  I’m serious. Think about all that. Because if Carter wasn’t humble in addition to being a great man and a much better President than he was given credit for in his time he could have taken his shot in 1984 at ‘redemption.’

Given all that ask yourself this: Had things happened that way and Democrats started demanding ‘PRESIDENT Carter’ get the exact same protection as (title omitted for a reason) Reagan what do you think Republicans would have said?  Even back then under ‘old-school’ ways of behaving the reaction would have been ‘Are you f**king kidding me?’ They’d go on to remind everyone Carter had LOST the office of President in an election and was a FORMER President. As a candidate sure, he should get additional protection beyond what a FORMER President gets BUT they’d say ‘let’s be real here.’

I for one have no doubt there are Republicans who feel and a few will say so that protection (agents and assets) should be stripped from Biden and Harris too and re-assigned to Trump. I’m not kidding. Oh, and Walz can maybe have a half dozen guys plucked from the uniformed division of the Secret Service – the folks who do guard duty at the entrances to the WH and around the Capitol.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to Trump. At least not from an attacker/assassin. I want the “bad” to come in the form of him losing at the ballot box, preferably by an even greater margin than in 2020. “Bad” in the form of suffering the humiliation of losing. Again. Even Worse. And to a WOMAN. And worst of all a BLACK woman!  As such I won’t and in fact can’t object to finding more resources to protect Trump from physical harm. Even after the election and even if he loses ‘bigly.’ I want him alive and well to be sitting in more than one courtroom and hearing himself sentenced to prison. I want him kept safe and sound, so that he suffers a few years locked up in prison sleeping on a prison rack, eating prison food and wearing an orange jumpsuit.  And dying THERE.

In the meantime, the GOP needs to STFU with this ‘President’ (Trump is NOT President goddamit!!!!) Trump deserves exactly the same protection as President Biden nonsense.  Let the Secret Service do its job and if you want to check up to make sure they are do so quietly.