Reports streaming out about the Secret Service response to the assassination threat that ultimately cost a volunteer fire chief his life and nearly killed former President Donald Trump are heading down a slippery slope.

Conspiracy theories are heating up. The multitude of missed opportunities to have stopped 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from nearly killing Trump and plunging the nation into a civil war are making it difficult to accept that only ignorance or ineptitude were at play.

The notion that the Secret Service may have intentionally played matador defense with a lunatic is becoming more and more plausible.

Various reports have discovered that Trump’s security team was understaffed, they failed to secure the rooftop from which Crooks was perched, and had multiple opportunities to step in and stop the attack.

They didn’t.

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Now, CNN reports that the would-be assassin was on the radar of the Secret Service three hours before the shooting after he tried to enter a secure area with a rangefinder, a device used to line up long-range shots for hunters.

Somehow, they lost sight of him — even though he had “aroused suspicion” — and had no idea that, according to law enforcement’s current working theory, he went to retrieve his rifle.

Having missed that opportunity, Crooks was once again on the Secret Service’s mind when agents, 40 minutes prior to the shooting, were circulating an image of him “appearing to crawl on the ground.”

On top of that, minutes before the attack, a Secret Service counter-sniper team codenamed "Hawkeye" had spotted Crooks on the roof. They had ample time and multiple opportunities to stop this guy. And they didn’t.

Why? Is it so easily dismissed as incompetence?

Perhaps, but the conspiracy theorist in me couldn’t help but recall that Tucker Carlson, on multiple occasions last year, was sounding the alarm that bad deep state-level actors might be trying to get Trump killed.

Last summer, in an interview that almost broke the internet, Carlson engaged in a discussion with Trump that pointed to the obvious escalation in what the deep state cabal had been engaging in, from impeachment to indictments.

It’s how he extrapolated things beyond what was known at the time that raised eyebrows.

“I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015 when you got into politics, you know, for real,” Carlson told Trump.

“And then won, there, it started with protests against you. Massive protests, organized protests by the left, and then it moved to impeachment twice,” he continued. “And now indictment.”

“I mean, the next stage is, is violence … Are you worried that they’re gonna try and kill you?” Carlson queried. “Why wouldn’t they try and kill you? Honestly?”

Trump deflected a bit, but did note that the organized resistance against him consisted of “savage animals.”

Tucker to Trump: "Do you think Epstein killed himself? Sincerely?" pic.twitter.com/u29SnjLU31

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) August 24, 2023

Just a few short months after his interview with Trump, Carlson again offered up a grim analysis of what the 2024 presidential election cycle might bring, noting that every left-wing entity in government was actively trying to stop the Republican nominee from winning “like when they killed Kennedy.”

“You have Trump … all the liberal polls are showing him leading the race, beating Joe Biden in the battleground states,” Carlson said in a podcast interview with Redacted News at the time.

“So, like, they can’t let him win, but if they don’t let him win, then it’s just super obvious that all this democracy stuff was fraudulent and that it’s not a democracy; it’s an oligarchy run by the richest people,” he continued.

Carlson proceeded to state that “every power center in the country” was working together to stop Trump.

“And so at that point, like the veil’s off, we can’t pretend anymore,” he said. “Like when they killed Kennedy – which they did – they could kind of pretend like everything’s fine.”

“But after this election, there’s no pretending, everything’s fine. Everyone will know,” Carlson continued. “And it is a little bit like you get kidnapped, you get thrown in the back of the car, and all of a sudden, the kidnapper turns around and lowers his mask, and you see his face. And that’s not a good thing because once you see his face, he has to kill you because you know who he is.”

Tucker Carlson on fire:

"It's not a democracy; it's an oligarchy run by the richest people. When they eliminated Kennedy, which they did, they could pretend everything was fine But after this election, there's no pretending everything is fine." pic.twitter.com/UY6QbXJlbk

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) December 22, 2023

Carlson has long been a believer that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He’s mentioned the idea on numerous occasions, even beyond the above segment.

Is there a parallel between what just happened to Trump and the JFK assassination? Did the Secret Service allow the first shots to be fired?

I asked Tucker that very question.

“Do you think they allowed the shooter to get the shots off first before taking him out?” I wondered. “And do you see any parallels between this and the CIA obviously taking out Kennedy?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he replied. “Which is scary and awful.”

The fact that we must choose exclusively between two possibilities here is indeed frightening. Either the Secret Service is incompetent beyond repair, or they opted to look the other way, however briefly.

What a country we live in right now that the latter option seems to be the most likely.