Cheatle's Got a Lot of 'Splaining to Do

There are other questions, of course: What were the would-be assassin’s motivations? Were they political? Did the shooter have accomplices? What role did the agency’s reliance on local law enforcement play, if any? Was this a one-off catastrophic failure, or are there reasons to think it could happen again?

But for any veteran of presidential campaign rallies – those of us who’ve crisscrossed the country to follow candidates and have witnessed the minutiae that goes into securing a site – perhaps the most vexing element is how the alleged shooter, identified by authorities as Thomas Matthew Crooks, could climb onto a rooftop roughly a football field-and-a-half away from Trump and have an unobstructed field of fire.