No one will ever be able to prove that Donald Trump, when he fell under a shooter’s bullets that not-so-fateful day in Butler, Pennsylvania, popped a Halloween blood pellet on his right ear, then to return to his feet to shake his fist at a presumed assassin with red liquid streaming across his face and neck. And for his part, no matter how he might choose to have his (or a faceless stand-in’s) ear mutilated, no one will ever be able to prove that his ear was creased by a bullet in flight.

All that we know is that on that day, he enacted a fearlessness such as would have stood him in good stead in the late Sixties had he donned a uniform of the country whose president he has already once been, shouldered a rifle, and faced the many enemies it then had and continues to have.

But he didn’t. A doctor averred that he had “bone spurs” in his feet that might have impaired his ability to march in the most-motorized army in the world. His march in the decades since through the halls of wealth and power has not betrayed such an impairment. Like the bullet said to have passed within an inch of his skull, the bone spurs cannot be proven nor, likely, could they even be disproven.

We do know that three hapless spectators in the crowd were shot, one fatally, while a presumably murderous young man seemed to be firing his AR-15 in Trump’s direction in the seconds before a somewhat belated counterfire from Secret-Service snipers on an opposite rooftop cut him down.

It is possible, if only speculatively, to weigh the respective likelihoods of the two scenarios, the surely fatal near-miss and the secretive crushing of a costume blood pellet amid the tumult and near-panic of five or six Secret-Service agents piling atop the candidate who might have attracted the fusillade from a rooftop 400 feet away. Such speculation might include some estimate of the likelihood that the former president would undertake, even conceive, such a nefarious plot. Would Cadet Bonespur actually stoop to such lethal subterfuge just to gain electoral advantage against his forgetful, corrupt, prevaricating opponent?

Moral capabilities of anyone, never mind of a politician, are truly among the things most beyond pondering, so we shall omit them from our own, and merely consider the choreography, and the props, and the ever-so-slightly errant sharpshooting involved. First, it seems beyond imagining that Shooter Thomas Crooks, from a distance of 400 feet, could deliberately wing Trump’s ear without piercing the candidate’s cranium in the process. William Tell’s splitting the apple atop his son’s head with his crossbow would seem child’s play by comparison.

Could such have happened by accident? Yes, undeniably. Conceivably, some ingenious sharpshooter/statistician might even be able, after exhaustive effort, to generate a probability, but such an estimate would unavoidably involve an assessment of the acuity of a sniper who unfortunately lies under six feet of soil today. We do know that Thomas Crooks tried out for the varsity rifle team of his high school, and somehow didn’t make the cut for membership in that select group. Perhaps this is how the conspirators found him. He also, like his purported target, received no training from the armed forces. Personally, having fired a rifle exactly one time (I missed, clean), I estimate the chances at about .00000 … you finish this very small number yourself, please.

Now, how probable is it that the one-time game-show host could have palmed a fake-blood pellet onto his face while rolling around under the tramping shoes and boots of his protectors? Well, we know that the requisite equipment (the pellet) is cheap, readily available, easily concealed, and easily applied. Very little chance of missing that one, or even of being seen applying it. Would anyone else even need to know about the caper?

Yes, of course, and here the process becomes … wait for it … a conspiracy. Here is where we go beyond physical possibility into the infinite realm of concealability, or getting away with it. The challenge is not up on the stage with the mark. It’s at a distance, out to and beyond the “perimeter” that security projects such as the one Trump’s protectors faced here and at every time and place where he had occasion to be exposed to the view (and gunfire) of unknown persons.

First, the shooter had to be lured, incented, tricked, or even somehow forced to perform the essential role of firing a rifle from a rooftop within range of the host of the rally. How and why Thomas Crooks came to perform this role and, indeed, to become able to do it remains at this point a deep mystery. It may never all be fully resolved. The shooter, a kitchen worker at a local elder-care facility, was by all accounts not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, may he rest in peace. He is conveniently also blamed for the three spectators who were shot in the stands, with no positive evidence that his bullets were the ones that hit them.

He took up his position in full view of the crowd, and was indeed viewed by it, had to have his rifle and to fire more or less on cue, observed as he was by so many, apparently including no members of the Secret Service, who were installed with all manner of firepower and visual aids on a nearby roof. Indeed, ensuring this apparent lapse on the part of the Secret Service was obviously essential to making the stunt a success, and this part stands out as perhaps the most-difficult part of the charade. However, the appearance (and reality) of ineffectuality does seem to come very easily to those who turn the wheels of our government. And President Franklin Roosevelt managed something tragically similar on a vastly larger scale in 1941, so it’s not like the more-recent president was inventing anything new, even out-of-office as he was.

So I conclude, very conservatively, that the theatrical stunt is a hundred or more times as likely to have occurred than the event so unquestioningly reported in the media, who confidently expect to exist under their subject’s second administration beginning January 20 of next year. We all know that the once and future president, however, would never do such a thing (anymore, anyway), so there goes my ten-thousand-percent spread—POOF—in a cloud of obfuscation.

But let us imagine, hypothetically, that we (you and I) somehow know that the more-likely scenario is indeed what happened. What do/should we do about it? One thing we don’t do, even if we would so subject ourselves to the doubt and derision of all who heard us, is tell others what we think/know, much less try to convince them of our correctness. Do we vote against the heroic Survivor of Butler? For Biden? For Harris? For the Libertarians? Even doing so would have effectively zero impact on his ascent into the office he’s campaigning for.

Keeping things like this necessarily entails more killing (cf. JFK assassination). Thomas Crooks was merely the first to die. Watch this spot; there will be more deaths—maybe even mine (he is going to be president, after all). I’m old enough (79) that my cause of death should be easy to cover up. Butler High recent alumni. Butler Police Department. Certain eyewitnesses. Yes, even the Secret Service, perhaps.

Bullets flew. People got shot. It isn’t known who shot whom

But it is known who did not get shot.