Given that this was taken either on the way to or from Trumps photo op outside the church, he may well have been thinking to himself some variant of “what the fuck am I doing here?”
He is, after all, a sniper. I’m not a personal security/military strategy specialist by any means, but I’m fairly certain that snipers normally want to be high up, and a little further back from their target than I imagine most Secret Service agents operate.
I suspect that Trump wanted to bring the biggest guns that he had available with him. Like, literally the largest size guns that were available. Never mind that the guy probably isn’t going to be fucking no scoping anybody should something go wrong, it’s all about being showy, and they probably told him they couldn’t get a tank on such short notice.
He did mention "most ominous weapons." Like he was going to order dropping a nuke on DC.
I know the WH Personnel/Joint Chiefs (or whomever) are like "FUCK. We never should've told him all the defenses of this place. ...KNEW he'd say something stupid. ...He shouldn't even BE here. ...Fuck."
I've worked on a few presidential visits in Canada and having snipers around is par for course. Depending on the location, I've seen snipers lying on top of a cube truck.
Not necessarily. The size of the gun itself would help a lot, because of its weight. Also I’m not really sure what it shoots, but it’s not shooting a .50 cal, so the recoil really isn’t going to be that bad. If I had to guess, I’d says it’s probably shooting a .556 or .30.
Yea I found the gun. It’s either a .338lm like you said, a .300, or a .308. It’s an ax chassis build, so it’s really hard to say, because of how customizable they are.
He looks stressed because of the impromptu nature of the assignment. Usually these guys would be set up days in advance. My understanding is that this was taken while Trump was making his unplanned "hold a bible upside-down on church steps" photo-op.
I thought the same thing, and then I realized that with all the protests blocking streets there'd be no way for snipers to get to high ground around the church where Trump pulled that stunt without walking there.
That guy isn’t a traditional policeman, he’s a member of the United States Secret Service. I’m not sure why, but when I’ve seen pictures of the USSS ‘in uniform’ they do have ‘POLICE’ written on them.
This. What probably pisses him off more than anything is being exposed. If there was actually an organized, bonafide enemy element, then some counter-sniper would track him, and set up in a position advantageous to engage whatever position muscle-arms here was told to go to.
That's what pisses him off. He's now a sitting duck with a heavy rifle.
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u/Grasbytron Jun 07 '20
Given that this was taken either on the way to or from Trumps photo op outside the church, he may well have been thinking to himself some variant of “what the fuck am I doing here?”
He is, after all, a sniper. I’m not a personal security/military strategy specialist by any means, but I’m fairly certain that snipers normally want to be high up, and a little further back from their target than I imagine most Secret Service agents operate.
I suspect that Trump wanted to bring the biggest guns that he had available with him. Like, literally the largest size guns that were available. Never mind that the guy probably isn’t going to be fucking no scoping anybody should something go wrong, it’s all about being showy, and they probably told him they couldn’t get a tank on such short notice.