The Days of Strange Things and a Death

Two incidents within five days paint a picture of a nation under pressure. On Tuesday, February 17, Capitol Police in Washington stopped an 18 year old man who was heading toward the Capitol with a loaded shotgun. Early Sunday morning, February 22, a 21 year old was shot and killed outside Mar a Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach. The details differ, but the message is similar: someone acts.

Carter Camacho from Smyrna, Georgia, parked a Mercedes SUV near the Capitol and then ran about 300 meters toward the building with a loaded shotgun. He wore a vest and gloves and had a helmet and a gas mask in the vehicle. Capitol Police under Chief Michael Sullivan stopped him before he reached the building. Sullivan later said the police had conducted drills at that exact location in the months prior. The timing was fortunate. The police chief asked rhetorically: who knows what would have happened if officers had not been standing there? Camacho was not known to authorities, the vehicle was not registered to him, and he had multiple addresses. The investigation into his motive was ongoing, and the open question was whether members of Congress were the target. Congress was not in session. Camacho is now in custody on charges of illegal activity, unlawful possession of a weapon, an unregistered firearm, and ammunition.

Five days later, early Sunday morning, Austin Tucker Martin drove through the north gate of Mar a Lago as another vehicle was leaving the property. Martin was 21 years old, from North Carolina, and had been reported missing by his family days earlier. Investigators believe he drove south and picked up a shotgun along the way. He was carrying a gas canister.

Secret Service agents and a deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office confronted Martin at the north gate. He was ordered to drop the weapon and the canister. Martin dropped the canister, then raised the shotgun into a firing position. The agents and the deputy fired. Martin was dead. Sheriff Rick Bradshaw described the scene matter of factly: the man was ordered to disarm, put one thing down, raised the weapon. They shot to neutralize the threat. The FBI asked residents to review their security cameras. The motive was unclear. Investigators were working on a psychological profile.

Trump was not at Mar a Lago. He had been at the White House the evening before with governors. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt commented that the Secret Service had quickly and decisively neutralized an armed man. In the same statement, she criticized Democrats for causing a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security - a political shot that had little to do with the incident itself.

What remains: two armed men, two different locations, both under extreme protection. One was 18, the other 21. Neither was known to authorities. Neither had a clear, communicated motive. They simply act. The strange thing these days is not the spectacular nature of the events, but their ordinariness. A young man with a shotgun at the Capitol. Another in front of the president’s golf club. Routine interventions by security forces. Everyone goes home, except two young men.

In between, almost in passing, someone called C SPAN and identified himself as John Barron. The voice sounded like Trump.

The caller complained about a Supreme Court decision on tariffs and called Hakeem Jeffries a fool. John Barron is a pseudonym Trump has long used when speaking to journalists. No one knows exactly whether it was Trump. But in these days of strange things, it fit perfectly.