Security Failures Lead to Trump Assassination Attempt at WHCD, and Melania Calls For Kimmel To Be FIRED, with RCP and Pat Brosnan | Ep. 1304

28:02She was treating him as any old former president like Jimmy Carter. There was not enough assets at Butler. Some of them were being pushed over to Jill Biden's event. She had more post standards than even Trump did that night because she had a similar 400 person event in a closed ballroom that night. All of this is just I expected way more reforms. And I'm telling you, the White House pushed back on those on some of the reforms that they wanted to put in. I have a statement I can read to you by Carolyn Levitt when I reported that Susie Wiles is pushing back on this. She tells me this morning, nobody cares more or has pushed harder or has asked more hard questions about President Trump's safety than Susie Wiles.

28:54The insinuation that Susie would object to anything that would help strengthen protection for her boss and friend is absolutely absurd. But you're reporting that it's not absurd. That Susie Wiles did push back on an attempt by Kristi Noem to add an additional person overseeing the security protocol. There's two attempts. One was to put a political chief counsel in charge of the Secret Service or install him there. The other issue was a deputy chief of staff at DHS was at the Secret Service to provide recommendations for reforms. This is recently. And he was walked out of the building when Sean Curran complained to Susie Wiles, according to my sources.

29:39Wow. But this is relevant because what we're what we're told is that the reason that the White House Correspondents Dinner did not have a higher security profile is because there's typically a DHS employee who would make the recommendation. This one needs to be bumped up like this. Don't treat this like some random dinner. You need to treat this more like a state of the union. And our our understanding is that that didn't happen, that that recommendation was not made because I presume it had never been made in the past. And I guess whoever the DHS person was, and I don't know if this is Mark Wayne Mullen or somebody beneath him, didn't see the need, notwithstanding the fact that this is not an ordinary president.

30:18This is somebody who they've already tried to kill three times. Absolutely. They were using a 2023 model, Biden model, on Donald Trump. It is the same issue that we had at Butler. Trump broke the mold when it comes to the threats against him. the national security should be should revise all of their former models they have these models that's the first step when you when you get assigned to be in charge of the white house correspondence dinner for the secret service you pull out the old model and then you revise it if there's been any renovations to the the space the hotel there haven't been um and you right now though, are you kidding me with all of these cabinet secretaries in this?

31:04This was a disgrace to have all of our cabinet and dignitaries under the tables. It was a disgrace to the entire world. And there were warning signs that I have reported on consistently over the last year. Dan Bongino at the time when Sean Kern was up for this job said, Sean Kern is not a reformer. He's not a change agent. Suddenly, Dan Bongino went silent when he joined the administration about that. I did not stay silent. I was ready for the reforms. They did not come consistently in terms of getting rid of the DEI that the Secret Service was riddled with under Joe Biden. And they have a goal of 30 percent female workforce.

31:53That's exactly right. Like 20, 25. Keep going. That's exactly right. And they also were, you know, there was a lot of things that needed to be reformed. There's an exodus, mass exodus out of the Secret Service, a brain drain from the senior talent. And now they're trying to hire really quickly, but they have lowered the hiring standards. You no longer have to have a college degree. Recently, they lowered the drug standards. It's completely different than it used to be 10 years ago. it's time and time again you see it and the the people that they're hiring you had they missed a glock at donald trump's golf course in sterling virginia i reported on that they've had like i said multiple sex scandals there was a cat fight outside of between two uniformed officers outside of obama's residence i mean these are just signs of problems within the secret service and when you have an agent falling asleep at the, there's also been an FBI raid.

32:58And this is when the Secret Service stopped talking to me last year. They used to get back to me regularly. And they stopped talking to me when I reported on an FBI raid of a Secret Service's agent's home. And I think he was on presidential protective detail. Last December, because he was involved an attack scheme that involved possibly 30 other agents. What is going on at the Secret Service? This was his moonlighting career. There is serious problems going on at the Secret Service. And, you know, I was more than happy to report on the reforms. In fact, I kept telling them, if you were doing some hiring at, you know, for college athletes, if you're reaching out, whatever you're doing, let me know.

33:44I'm happy to report on positive elements. But they never engaged me. And I know why. There were some serious problems going on on that detail, even a couple months before Donald Trump, before the Butler assassination attempt, and the subsequent one at the golf course nearby, his Mar-a-Lago. There were some problems going on in that detail. And I reported on those problems. And ever since, they've been concerned about me. And I'm sorry to say there were formal complaints lodged against Sean Kern and his deputy, and they were cleared. But Secret Service is notorious for playing favorites with agents, and this culture of corruption has to end.

34:30they retaliate against agents. And this DEI problem has never been, because they have a hiring problem, they can't really effectively deal with the DEI issues that occurred under the Biden administration. And meanwhile, President Trump is sent out there like a sitting duck, because they won't get real about what the problems are. Susan, I know you got to run. Thank you for coming on and giving us your exclusive information. We appreciate it. Great reporting as always. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Turning now to Pat Brosnan. Pat, your reaction, first of all, to everything Susan just said.

35:06Well, she's spot on, though. Good afternoon on the vast majority of the points that she referenced. I mean, to be very frankly, Megan, if I had a burner in front of the front burner, ramping up the president's security detail would be on that burner. Thrown out the outdated model that Susan astutely referenced from 2023. I'm in kind of a little bit of a unique position. I've been physically present by design and by coincidence at all four locations. I went out to Butler because I had to see Building 6 in late July, jumped on a motorcycle and went there. I was out at the Irish Riviera, Long Beach Island, So it wasn't a long haul.

35:52And I went there and I took a close look at the field. I scoured the terrain. I made some assessments and and did some pretty significant reporting on it. Painstaking, detailed reporting. But I also walked the perimeter of the Trump International and saw the area where Wesley Routh was secreted for 12 hours. Also, as in Mar-a-Lago, I've been through that North Gate a hundred times And then I've had a number of different dinners and business meetings at the Hilton, Washington So, what does all that mean? Well, it means a lot because I'm intimately familiar And the fact is that what we saw Saturday night was a, I would call it a catastrophic failure of the four C's, communication, coordination, control, and command.

36:51And that's the omniscience that's needed and necessary and required when you're protecting the biggest of all the big shots, President of the United States. What do you make of these reports that people were allowed to just come into the hotel room, check in, this shooter, he checked in Friday. The event was Saturday. No one ever magged his bags. He just ran down the stairwell with his guns in his duffel. The woman saw him take the gun out, assemble it. She said he ran out and did a bunch of shooting. I mean, it's so easy, Pat. Making this catastrophic failure on so many levels. I don't know, should I go alphabetically, chronologically or just random?

37:32But let's start with the Connecticut Avenue entrance. to this hotel with 1 ,100 rooms, 2 ,500 guests coming in, and folks coming in and out all week. At Brosnan Risk Consultants, my security company, over the years, we've provided security for the Republican National Convention. We provided it for King of Saudi Arabia, the prime minister, so a lot of different folks. So we know a good bit about the protocol process and procedures that are absolutely mandatory when it comes to attempting to completely fail-proof in terms of not just the security measures, which were delinquent, and we'll discuss that, but the rudimentary stuff, like the due diligence.

38:24And the due diligence is critical. the fact that they did not vet and do a background search on all the guests in that hotel for the prior three to seven days, somewhere in there. OK, the significant failure and a particularly glaring red flag with this individual, Cole Allen, is he hit both checkboxes. He's solo and he traveled a great distance and he got in the night before. yes those are clues yes Stevie Wonder would have picked up on them let's be crystal clear they're easy ones they're ground balls I mean that is so true I know this just from my own from my own security team like if I travel if I'm going to be up close with people and they know who they are in advance they will they'll make sure it's not somebody who's like appears to have a grudge, who traveled a long distance, like all those red flags.

39:22That's for me. This is the president and the entire cabinet virtually. It's incredible that they allowed this guy to get within 100 yards of him, never mind 100 feet. Mind bending. It's mind bending. When you think of the concept of layered security, this is the textbook example of what was needed and necessary and was failed to be implemented. A 200 or 250-foot lobby in the distance from Connecticut Avenue west to the doors to the international ballroom, which is subterranean, by the way. I've been there. To not have hosted as fixed hosts armed and uniformed and plainclothes armed officers throughout that lobby is the height of negligence.

40:17It's the height of reckless negligence to not have a fixed post at the stairway at ingress and egress points is supremely negligent. And to not have a fixed post at the base of the elevator is supremely negligent. These are fundamental. Like, Pat, why wouldn't they have said, OK, we got to think about people who are staying in the hotel and there's going to have to be a person at every stairwell? Like what? Maybe this is just 2020 hindsight. I don't know. You've done these things before. Is that 2020 hindsight or was that is that an obvious one to have looked into? It's it's really a very obvious one to look into.

40:56And it's and it's coordinated and implemented in conjunction with the CSO, chief security officer of the hotel. They work hand in hand. That's how we operated. Our senior leadership would interface not just at the RNC with the CSOs of the specific hotel, but hotels in every direction, east, northwest, and south, for a few blocks from Madison Square Garden and different venues. That's called doing your homework. That's called intelligent and pragmatic due diligence. And it was not done here. And it's shameful. okay how about how about the fact that this guy we saw the video of him running through the mag there was one mag still standing they were in the process of dismantling the other mags there's one that they were taking apart as this guy ran through the one mag they seem to have like gone into well the dinners started potus is inside the dinner like we're good the people we're not going to let anybody else in so we're going to take everything down like without anticipating pat But what if somebody isn't respectful of the 815 start time?

42:02What if somebody comes right now when we're all feeling super lax with two guns and a bunch of knives and tries to run through us? Hate to say it. Because I was in civil service as a detective. What you're seeing in real time, front and close. The civil service mindset. Civil service mindset. And that doesn't apply to this president. Not when we are now in an everything, everywhere, all at once threat environment for the past 22 months, where you astutely pointed out, Megan, and no surprise that it's four. That's right. Four. Cole Austin Martin on February 22nd of 26th. He wanted to go in and kill the president.

42:43The president just happened to not be in Mar-a-Lago at the time, and they neutralized them at the North Gate of Mar-a-Lago. But to not have this at this particular time is unbelievable. It really is that that these fundamental and rudimentary steps are not in place. And the civil service mindset. And that's why I said early on, if I had a front burner in front of the front burner, it would be throwing out the rule book as it relates to the Secret Service methodologies. That was before Trump. That's another guy. That's Carter or somebody. somebody sleeping at the switch and unremarkable. Trump is, if nothing else, extremely remarkable.

43:25And he has developed an army of wicked, evil haters who are committed to murdering him. That book has to go out. What has to come in? I have some thoughts on it, but I will say the first thing is it's got to be a consideration for bringing in special forces operators. They are the best and the brightest and the fastest. And they do not have a civil service mindset. They have a battlefield mindset. It's entirely different. They adhere better. And I'm saying it as a former civil service detective. They adhere better to ironclad protocols. They're much better at the command structure, reporting structure.

44:05They would not ever be disassembling the magnetometer. And they would not, Megan, have had their faces buried in their phones, which I saw on various clips. Not in this lifetime. I hate to ask this because I'm sure anybody could make this mistake, but we saw six rounds fired when that guy approached the golf course. You know, he was lying in wait for Trump for 12 hours. And when Secret Service finally discovered him, they fired on him six times and missed every single time. Now here we see a collection of, I think it's both local law enforcement and Secret Service. But this guy, like, this is why we arm the Secret Service.

44:52This is why we arm cops who are sent there to protect the president in case a shooter comes by with a gun. This guy had two of them, ran right past the good guys with the guns, who did appear to open fire and once again missed. Missed and missed and missed and may have actually hit a fellow Secret Service officer. We're not sure who hit him. And we don't know exactly how many rounds, if any, the actual assailant fired. We just have this one woman's eyewitness testimony saying he shot a bunch of times. So we don't know. But like, does it does it surprise you at all that there's so much missing going on?

45:27I'd like to think that they're all like that sharpshooter who took out the killer and butler. But these guys were a lot closer. They were a lot closer than that sharpshooter and with a lot worse aim. Well, again, it comes back to civil service mentality. You may be mandated to train every six months, perhaps every 12 months. I'm not certain, but probably not much more than that. Completely unlike the military. It's a completely different set of protocols for for practicing and for training with your weapons. And I do concur. A lot of rounds do miss. We don't have the facts yet. That may very likely have been friendly fire Saturday night.

46:08But certainly at the golf course, there was a number of rounds fired at Wesley Roth and he was unscathed. But again, it comes to gross negligence at every level. Even then, September 15th to 24th, the International, one dog, Megan, one foot patrolman and one dog would have detected him in minutes. I walked exactly that path where he was up against the gate in the bushes. A dog would have picked him up lightning fast. One drone. He was lying in wait for 12 hours, that guy. 12 hours. 12 hours he was there. 12 hours. He had his little pack of food. He had his waters, his supplies, a little blanket for his little leggies.

46:58I mean, you just can't make it up. You can't make it up. 12 hours. And it wasn't the Amazon forest. I feel like Trump is going to get killed. I'm I'm I'm very worried that he's going to get killed. If we didn't start taking this extremely seriously after Butler, Pat, after Butler, then we're not going to. I mean, so Susie Weil is going to have a meeting. Oh, great. Great. But like a meeting, what are you talking about? Like, I don't know if everybody should be fired. What if they call you tomorrow and say, Pat, please come in and take over, take over all of the president's security, all of it, secret service everywhere.

47:36What's the first thing you do? You bring in the best and the brightest. We pay up. I would make sure that they made double so they wouldn't leave, which is exactly what I did at my business. You pay up. You make sure that the best and the brightest stays with you. surround yourself with them, learn from them, forget that you're the leader because they've forgotten more than you know, and take their collective wisdom, expertise, and experience and meld that into an ironclad policy protocol procedure training vetting that ensures that the president will not be murdered. Because I share that with you, Megan, every single day, I think that a bullet could catch him.

48:16And I thought, mistakenly, sadly, that after Butler, which was beyond biblical level catastrophe, I thought, and September 15th, I thought when he was out of 46 and in again as 47, that it would have been far, far, far superior. And it's not. These fundamental missteps, and they're not even missteps, they're catastrophic failures in terms of planning. textbook on the response right when he ran through the magnetometer but it's all in the planning it's all in setting the stage and yeah never should have gotten to that point it's what about the fact that jd vance was removed from the stage before the president and the fact that all these people are under their tables pat and trump is still sitting up there without an agent in front of him without being pulled away like how does that happen He's a tough cookie from Queens.

49:13That's all I can say. He's a tough cookie. He wouldn't he wouldn't leave. And I watched a 60 Minutes interview and I know from Butler because a friend of mine was present, a Secret Service guy, and he gave me the inside skinny on it. When when Trump stood up with his fists raised and had somehow kicked off his shoes that were tightly laced, they had to wrestle him off that stage. They had to wrestle him off the stage. He's a he's a tough guy. I saw the same exact thing and they were yelling at him to hit the floor and to crawl out. And he just stayed at it. He's he's really not scared of these threats.

49:49And it's he was extremely cool and composed. Yes, I know. He was incredibly cool and composed. And of course, immediately was like, let's let's go back out there. We'll we'll have the dinner. We'll have the dinner. They talked him out of that. Because when I was watching it, I remarked for the bride. I said, he's definitely going to come out and finish this up because he won't let a criminal thug disrupt his plans. That's how his mind thinks. And that's what he kept saying on 60 Minutes. But I guess other minds prevailed. But overall, horrific, horrific. It's terrifying, Megan. It really is. Because these were fundamental resource allocations, labor allocations, fixed posts.

50:31And this could have been mitigated. This guy should never, ever, ever have been able to run through the magnetometer checkpoint. Should never, ever have happened. Yep. I really hope they are calling you, Pat Brosnan. And I hope somebody listens this time before this happens again. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Megan. Unbelievable, right? I mean, it's stunning. It's like, we're getting used to this. How crazy is that? not just assassination attempts on Trump, but left-wing violence. What's causing it? What is it? I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I have a lot of thoughts on the messaging around this.

51:11We're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back. I'll talk about it with you guys, and we're going to bring in the guys, the rest of the team, from Real Clear Politics to react to everything that's happening. Stay tuned. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet, and now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card and the security it offers are under attack, and that Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Walmart and Target at the expense of you, the everyday American consumer.

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53:07Joining me now, Tom Bevin, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics, Carl Cannon, RCP's Washington Bureau Chief, and Andrew Walworth, the Chief Content Officer for Real Clear Politics. Together they host Real Clear Politics on the Megyn Kelly channel, Sirius XM 111, right before this show. And you can listen to their show via podcast later in the day as well. Guys, welcome back. Okay, so two of you guys were there. And I've got to start with this. As I completely understand that there was a real threat. There was a lunatic with two armed guns, loaded guns and knives out there. But the dramatics of some of these reporters who are talking like they just got back from NAMM.

53:51It's like, OK, like deep breaths. You're fine. You were never actually in danger. And they like just the over the top acting is a bit much. I'll give you just one example. Brian Stelter was out there today comparing like the trauma that he went through to that experience by actual shooting victims in mass shootings like one we saw last weekend where a nutcase killed his seven children. Look at this. Today, I've been having some memories come back from last night, but I've also been thinking about Shreveport, about the mass murder a week ago. I was thinking about the mall shooting in Louisiana where that teen girl died a few days ago.

54:34So the scourge of gun violence is all too common in America. And I've been thinking about how people process it. My sources, my contacts, my friends who are in the room with me, they're processing the traumatic stress. And I know for me personally, the memories have been flooding back today. I remembered talking to House Speaker Mike Johnson two minutes before all this went down. And then I remembered as we were crouching on the ground, hearing people shouting, get down and wondering if there was some assailant who was loose in the ballroom. So those memories are coming back. And I'm also thinking about how people who work at places like CNN, people like this, we have access to counselors, we have access to employee assistance programs.

55:10We typically have health insurance. But what about folks in Shreveport, right? What about folks who experience this in their communities, in their hometowns, in their schools, in their churches? Okay. First of all, Brian Stelter tweeted out, oh, it was just a bunch of plates that fell. It was. So like, which is it? You were so terrified you need counseling or you actually weren't one of the scared ones because you thought it was plates. And second of all, like to even raise an actual mass shooting in comparison to what he went through is absurd. I I personally at my favorite of the night was this guy, Michael Glantz, who's an agent from CAA, who never missed a bite of his salad through the whole thing.

55:56And somebody took a video of him eating his salad. I'm like, that's hashtag goals. like everybody's under the tables and he sat there eating his meal and then Dana White I was told I didn't see it personally but I was told he was like this is the greatest night of my life he was like on top of the table he was watching the security do its thing he was had like admiration and respect for them this guy spends his life in the arena so he like he's tough to scare Tom Bevan you tell me your take on it as somebody who was actually there so and i saw brian stelter's thing and i i tweeted something back at him saying you know listen there was a moment there was about 90 seconds when after after the noise right which was this muffled sound that that we couldn't be sure was a gunshot and you know that the the doors opened and the secret service came swarming in the room like 50 agents and they were like plowing through climbing over tables and all that and that was kind of dramatic and we didn't know if there was a shooter in the middle of the room they were trying to get to or what was going on and everyone was looking around and and um but then we realized that you know they were trying they were there trying to get to the cabinet members and get them out of the room and once they did that and they obviously they got the president the vice president the first lady off the stage then there was that was it i mean we were all kind of stood there and for about 15 minutes trying to you know and there was you there wasn't good wi-fi in the in the ballroom Megan, which is why like people couldn't send texts or get calls or whatever.

57:30So there was a bit of an information void. And then there was, you'd hear, oh, someone said, well, maybe it was a tray dropped or something that, you know. But there was this bizarre reaction from folks. Some folks were like diving under tables. There was a table right next to us where after about 10 minutes, these two women literally crawled out from underneath the tablecloth, like they were under there the whole time. I just stood up to try and see what was going on. I'm not mocking them, but when everybody else is milling about, you saw these people who were crouching under the tables for a long, long period while everybody else had already started milling about again and going about their business.

58:10And they were giving off Michelle Kaczynski vibes. Do you guys know that reference? Michelle. She was the NBC Today Show correspondent who was rowing her little canoe through the non-existent flood. And then the firefighters walked right by her and like ankle deep water. It's like, at some point you have to stop pretending that you are in the middle of a mass shooting and just eat your salad. Yeah. I will say, you know, there, there were exceptions, you know, Erica Kirk was there and obviously she has trauma that's, that's real and recent. And when she left, you know, she was in tears and, you know, Carl, you know, RFK Jr.

58:48was there. Obviously, he's got some family trauma that's wrapped up. But for the fact— He had no reaction. RFK Jr. also ate his meal. His dad was killed in a ballroom like this. He was like, I'm good. Where's my—what are we—is the steak coming? Is it going to be medium or medium rare? Like, there were examples of people who—let's just face it. Like, it's—one of these things is like a test of how you deal with trauma and, like, fear. And I think we'd all like to believe that we—look, this is poor Katie Miller. I feel so bad for her. She's very pregnant right now, and that's clearly a Secret Service agent with her, Major Garrett, and Stephen Miller trying to protect her.

59:26And if you were married to Stephen Miller, you'd have to seriously be worried that they were going to target him because the left has made him into such a villain. There's Cheryl Hines running after. They swoop away the principal, RFKJ. They leave the spouse behind, unless you're Melania. So she's running after. It's not great to be the spouse, but you do kind of wonder how you'd react, and I do respect the ones. I'm sure Tom and Carl, you were two of them who were just cool, just cool about it. We just, I mean, Carl actually went, started walking. He's an old school reporter. I'll let him tell his story.

59:55He started walking away from the table, heading toward where he thought the action was. I just stood up and was like, we were looking around and just kind of, you know, as I said, it was like 90 seconds of drama. And then the rest was kind of just, it was low level chaos and confusion about what was going on. And that was it. why is it always the carl cannon types like the sweet ones who you never see who are like i'm good we're it's fine and like the big burly men are like under the table like everybody down carl's like could you pass the salt actually actually you explain it to me well i i had a glass of wine in my hand and all i'll say is i i kept it in my hand you know you see those pictures you know You know those guys with the baby at the ballgame and they catch the foul ball without spilling their beer while they're holding the baby?

1:00:44You know, that's who you want to be. That's you. Yes. Well done. Well, you know what? You're a seasoned political pro. This ain't your first rodeo at an event like this. I don't know. It's like, I'm sure it was scary. I do not mean to take that away from those who are in the room for like those 10 minutes. And then after you realize you're fine and nothing happened to you, you should act like a normal human. But a lot of these reporters truly are acting like they just got back from Fallujah. It's like, OK, can we let's keep some perspective here. I'm just going to give you one more. Here's Olivia Reingold.

1:01:21She writes for the Free Press. I got a thought or two on this one. Stop 31. We were just seated over. I'm seated near one of the doors.

1:01:43People are shouting USA now. I don't know. I just heard like four huge knocks by this door. everyone.

1:02:01I don't know if I'm safe now, but

1:02:12Okay. First of all, you don't wear mini pigtails to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Second of all, she shows herself crouching. And all the guys she shows, the guys, all the guys are standing up all around her. She's like the only one left crouching. And third of all, note to self, Olivia, to be a good reporter, you turn the camera outward to film what's happening in the ballroom, not yourself. Is there a better example of the vainglorious upcoming class of reporters in America today? Keep it on me. I'm telling you there might be a shooter here, but I want you to see me and how scared I am.

1:02:55Carl, I object. Well, you know what, Megan, you're on to something. So in my day, the way you got to cover the White House, you started at a small newspaper. You covered police and courts and fires. Then you went to a bigger newspaper. You covered police and courts. Then you went to City Hall. You covered, you know, you covered and you go to courts, you covered trials, murder trials. If you're really good, you get to go to the state capitol and then finally you get to go to Washington. Well, you know, those newspapers, the pipeline doesn't exist anymore. And you get people covering the White House who've never, never, never covered a murder case, never covered a trial, never covered a fire.

1:03:35And sometimes it shows, you know, Brian, Brian Stelter. I think Tom's, as we speak, in sort of an exchange with his fans on X. But, you know, you don't compare yourself to victims of a shooting. He wasn't at those places. He wasn't in Shreveport. Having said that, there were people in that room, Megan, who had every right to be very alarmed and very scared and very upset. You know, Tom mentioned a couple of them. You mentioned Erica Kirk is one. The White House press secretary is nine months pregnant. And I thought, as you did, Megan, immediately of Bobby Kennedy Jr. I had spoken with him, had a reception at some length just before, half an hour earlier.

1:04:22And he asked me where I was from. And I told him. And I told him a story about one of the reasons I went into, became a reporter, was when I was on my paper route in Sacramento the night his father was killed, his father in namesake, as you point out, in a crowded, chaotic ballroom. And I had to hand out the newspapers that morning to, you know, 96 in the morning, people were up. There was no cable television. I had to hand the paper and the paper didn't even have the shooting. It had Bobby Kennedy won the California primary. And I had to tell people, my mom told me, she said, I said, mom, nobody will be awake she's they'll be awake and i said where's dad she's he he's at work he was a newspaper man in sacramento so i had this three by five card and i read these and the route usually took me about 45 minutes it took me two and a half hours this day and usually the woman in the house would come out and people would hug you and they were sad and so bobby kennedy at every right you know you're right he you know he the somebody came the security got him pulled him up literally climbed on a table he's very you know he's big and athletic and then his wife was right behind him He had a, if he's traumatized, he has a right to be.

1:05:30I don't know that he was. How about Steve Scalise? Yeah. They had at least two people there, Steve Scalise and President Trump, who had been shot before in acts of political violence. I mean, it's like, I haven't seen Steve's reaction, but I saw, you know, President Trump was cool as a cucumber. Here's a little of the president. I thought this is actually a really good point. He said this, he held a presser right after. Went back to the White House, held a presser. The press corps is sitting there in their ball gowns and tuxes. President Trump's still in his tux. And he made a good point here in SOT 17.

1:06:02I've studied assassinations. And I must tell you, the most impactful people, the people that do the most, you take a look at the people, Abraham Lincoln. I mean, you go through the people that have gone through this where they got them. but the people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they're the ones that they go after. They don't go after the ones that don't do much because they like it that way. And when you look at the people that have either, whether it was an attempt or a successful attempt, they're very impactful people. Just take a look at the names here, the big names.

1:06:44And I hate to say I'm honored by that, but I've done a lot. We've done a lot. We've taken this country and we were a laughingstock for years and now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. We've changed this country. And there are a lot of people that are not happy about that. Andrew, he talked about how his job is a dangerous job. And he knows that in today's day and age, and he's willing to take the risk. Yeah, most dangerous job in America, I think he's called it on more than one occasion. And he's right. And that press conference he gave immediately after, I thought he struck the right tone.

1:07:23I thought that he was complimentary to the press. He said that he wanted to hold the dinner again within 30 days, said that he wanted to keep the dinner going that night. So you got a sense of his resilience in these situations, which you know, happen all too often now, but this is, what, his third time around in the last two years where he's been the subject of an attack. So he, you know, I hate to say he's kind of used to it, and I hope we aren't used to it, but his sort of, his affable give and take with the press after that, I thought, was to his credit. Yeah, he was magnanimous. He was, he sounded like the Trump at the Republican National Convention, which was days after the Butler assassination attempt, where he sounded much more magnanimous than we're used to President Trump sounding.

1:08:21You know, we're used to the fighter and the one who's like, you're an idiot, you're a loser, you're low IQ, whatever. But Megan, just a historical correction here. these assassins don't only go after impactful presidents. They tried to kill Jerry Ford twice in like a month. There were two assassinations. He never hurt anybody or did anything. He was a caretaker president. Buzzkill, Carl. Yeah, I'll give you another one. I think Trump's thinking Lincoln. He's thinking Kennedy. You know, he's thinking some of the Reagan, the attempt. James A. Garfield. I'll give you Kennedy. I'll give you Kennedy.

1:09:00I'll raise you. detail. Okay. Here is an example of what I'm talking about, though. Listen to him. He's like, he's he gives a shout out here to Weijia Jiang, who's the president of the White House Correspondents to Dinner, who is the person sitting to Trump's left on the dais, who organized this whole thing. And now they're back at the White House for this, you know, impromptu press conference here in SOT 15. Madam Chairman, I just want to say you did a fantastic job. What a beautiful evening and we're going to reschedule.

1:09:36And after that, it's very tough for her to ask a killer question, right? But you have done a fantastic job. Please. The Pressure - Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate it. As you mentioned, it all happened so quickly. And I wonder, especially because, unfortunately, you have experience with these sorts of threats. In that moment, when you realized there was a threat and service agents were telling us to get down. Can you describe what was going through your mind, how you were feeling in that moment? That's a very good question, actually. It's always shocking when something like this happens, happened to me a little bit, and that never changes.

1:10:20So just a different tone entirely there, right, from a president who's normally much more combative with the press, But he was openly calling for actually the temperature to be turned down. I'll play one more, guys, not just between him and the press, but with Americans. Here he is in SOT 12. So, as you know, this is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin who sought to kill in Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago. You all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close. We really had again, we had some great work done by law enforcement.

1:11:03But in light of this evening's events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts and resolving our difference peacefully. We have to we have to resolve our differences. I mean. I don't think this moment of detente with the press will last, Tom Bevin. And unfortunately, I don't think and I don't think it'll last on either part. I don't think the press will be any nicer to Trump, and I don't think Trump will be any nicer to the press. And I think we will devolve back into the very low-level name-calling situation within hours. But I also, unfortunately, don't believe the president is going to convince anybody to tone it down, to resolve our differences peacefully, as he said.

1:11:50There's just too many nut jobs out there. and the messaging around Trump has been too ubiquitously catastrophic in its levels of hysteria. Like, I don't even know if you can turn it down. You know, what do you think? I agree. And look, Nora O'Donnell already ruined it. And I heard your righteous rant on that earlier in the show. I mean, you know, that so it's already it's already spoiled. And, you know, the headlines were, oh, Trump's detente with the press, you know, is over or something. I mean, And she's the one who basically ruined it by reading that quote and then pretending that she was, oh, you know, you think that's about you?

1:12:26It was really, really disingenuous. But I think you're right. Look, the coverage of Trump – and I know, look, Trump has played into this too. He's used harsh language about his political opponents, and the left always points that out. but you know when you look at the at the shooters if we call it a manifesto the stuff that he said about trumping a pedophile and a rapist and a traitor and a fascist and all that that is what you get on msnbc every single day for 10 hours a day and have gotten for 10 years and so i yes he's not a he's not a mentally ill person the shooter he's not some deranged wacko.

1:13:10He's basically been radicalized by the left and the media into thinking that they create this permission structure, which allows some of these people who, you know, to malfunction and decide that, you know what, I'm going to take care of this. And I'm doing so, my doing so is justified and in some ways righteous because I believe this person is so evil. And they've done that. And then And they all come out like they did. You know, Hakeem Jeffries, who just last week said maximum warfare every day, all day, is now like it's a time for unity. And I'm so glad that nobody was hurt. And they try and wave it away like, you know, they haven't been complicit in the demonization of this president in particular for a dozen years.

1:14:02And the irony, of course, because Trump, while very not normal in his rhetoric, is actually quite moderate in most of his policies. Now, he's been hardline on immigration up until recently anyway. That's what the American people put him in office to do. The polls showed that the public was majority behind him on the deportations and closing of the border. But on most of everything else, Trump has been very moderate, even like the trade practices and the tariffs and all that. that's not right wing. That's not right wing at all. He wants to take over Spirit Airlines. That's like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren should be, you know, breaking out the pom poms.

1:14:39Right. Like Trump is not radical in his policies at all. He's just a fighter, right? Rhetorically, he's a fighter. He engages with the press. Just he gives as good as he gets. And that's led them to hate him and write the worst possible things about him. And you're right. They all show up here. It's no accident this guy was well-educated, had an advanced degree. He says things like, I don't expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it onto why I did any of this. Alert, Barack Obama, this part's for you. We may never know the motive. Here's why I did it.

1:15:16Wait, okay. Literally, he says that onto why I did this. I'm a citizen of the U.S. What my representatives do reflects on me, and I'm no longer willing to permit a pedophile rapist and traitor to cope my hands with his crimes. Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I've had to do something about it. Then he goes through who he will kill and who he won't. For some reason, he exempted Kash Patel. He appears to like him, but everybody else was fair game, especially administration officials. He didn't want to have to kill hotel security, Capitol Police, National Guard, hotel employees or guests, but said he would if he had to in order to get to the targets he wanted.

1:16:04And then he goes on to say, rebuttals to objections. One, as a Christian, you should turn the other cheek. No, my rebuttal is turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I'm not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not the fisherman executed without trial. He's talking about those Venezuela drug boats, I think. I'm not a school kid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. I don't know what that is. I'm not sure what that's a reference to. Objection two, this is not a convenient time for you to do this. He's just making this shit up because I don't think anybody would have said, this is not a convenient time for the murder.

1:16:41Find a more convenient time. But in any event, his rebuttal to his fake objection is, take a couple minutes and realize the world isn't about them. Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be inconvenient for people who aren't the victim? Objection three, you didn't get them all. Rebuttal, got to start somewhere. Objection four, as a half black, half white person, you shouldn't be the one doing this. Rebuttal, I don't see anyone else picking up the slack. Objection five, yield unto Caesar. What is Caesar's? Rebuttal, the U.S. is ruled by the law.

1:17:14not by any one or several people. Insofar as our representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so lawfully ordered. And he goes on from there. And then, by the way, he has a whole long page on how incompetent the Secret Service is. Astoundingly so. Talking about how he had free reign over the hotel. No one stopped him. He walked right in. There were no security cameras. His hotel room wasn't bugged as he thought it might be, I guess, given his rhetoric about the president. He thought he'd see armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.

1:17:48What I got, who knows, maybe they're pranking me, is nothing. No damn security, not in transport, not in the hotel, not in the event. Goes on from there, so it's amazing when he gets onto that part. So you guys tell me, because I'm very interested in this piece of the debate. You could, Tom's right, you could see all those terms, rapist, pedophile, etc. on any MSNBC show, on any left-leaning podcast, radio show, etc. etc. But the left has been doing this to the right for many, many decades. You know, a shooter shows up, a mass shooter, and says something that tracks something Trump said in a speech, or Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh back in the day may have said.

1:18:29And we on the right have said for years, nutcases are nutcases, and you can't pin their nutcase behavior on the words of an anchor or a radio show host. And I still believe that. This is my own take. I still believe that. But I also believe that the incendiary rhetoric around Trump is ubiquitous now. It is so out of control and so constant. You also cannot just write it off like it had no effect when we keep hearing it out of shooter after shooter's mouth. I mean, I could say the same thing about Charlie and then what wound up on that shooter's bullets. But like, so where do you stand on the rhetoric has something to do with it or it doesn't have anything to do with it?

1:19:19Andrew? Well, I think the rhetoric does have something to do with it.

1:19:26Certainly, well, I'll just back up one thing. Carl and I talked about this earlier on our program. um we should not refer to this document as a manifesto which we just read it's about a thousand words that the guy wrote it it's pretty nonsensical it doesn't make sense it's not when we we give it too much credit when we call it a manifesto there is such a thing as a manifesto uh the communist manifesto is a good example of it i you know this is not that um but i think that the you know there's you don't have to go all the way to you know a murder like this a political murder to to understand why this level of political rhetoric is bad i mean we see it in our everyday lives um if you try to have a political conversation with a friend right now it's very difficult um and you know on our program where we kind of disagree on things but we're all friends we're trying to model in some sense how we used to have political discussions in Washington and how we think it should be done.

1:20:31So I do think that the rhetoric should be turned down on both sides. I think that would be nice. But I also agree with your original point, which is that there are going to be people out there. We live in a country with a lot of guns and a lot of freedom and a lot of freedom to move around the country. And if we don't want to live in a police state, we're going to have to sort of securitize the area around our politicians and our leading officials in order to keep them safe. I don't think there's any way around that. That's right. So we have, this is a very good point, because here's what we have.

1:21:09We have the same security perimeter around Trump that we would have put around Carter at the White House correspondence dinner, which is just foolish. Right. But it's especially, because of Trump and who he is, but it's especially foolish when you consider that we do live in a cesspool of really charged rhetoric around this president and his top admin officials. And here's the third piece, where political violence is more accepted than ever, especially amongst young people. If you look at the polls, like young liberals are just fine with political violence. They, in like some scary numbers, over 20 % are like, yeah, it's fine to feel happy when somebody I don't like politically gets assassinated.

1:21:54I'm good with that. And so while I wouldn't say, you know, you can't blame this assassination attempt on a Joy Reid type who says the most incendiary things, Carl. You have to factor in that there's not only that ubiquitous message, but there is ubiquitous leftist celebration of political violence. I agree with you. I guess ubiquitous is not the right word there, but it's widespread. It's widespread on the left. I'm just going to give you an example. Here's Corinne Baum, another teacher. This would-be assassin was a teacher. the Lucy Martinez who did the shooting in the neck infamous video outside at the No Kings rally after Charlie was killed over and over to a to a truck going by with an American flag that praised Charlie she's a teacher here she is disgusting filth that woman and here's another teacher Corinne Baum teacher of young children at the Children's House Ohio on TikTok watch this Sat 21.

1:22:57Man, there's been a few creators on here saying that like Friday or yesterday could have been the day. And then I wake up to that news, but not that news.

1:23:11We're going to have to pay really close attention to what they're trying to actually distract us from. One more. Another, another, another soundbite here. Sat 22. two. I wake up each morning hoping he has died. I go to bed each night hoping by the time I get up in the morning, he has died. I'm fully convinced that we can't even begin to start fixing any of our problems until he has died. For the love of all things good, just fucking die. Another teacher. The he too is a teacher. And Carl, that also relates. So it's the acceptance of political violence. Deb sent me the poll, YouGov polling. 22 % of liberals under age 44 say it's okay to feel happy when a political opponent dies compared to just 6 % of conservatives that same age.

1:24:13So it's all that. But then all these teachers have access to our children coming up through the pipeline. What does the lesson plan look like in history, in English, even in math and gym these days, they find ways of indoctrinating the children K through 12. It's not just college anymore. Right. So like all of these factors have gone into why it's more dangerous than ever to be a Republican. Let's face it. It's to be a Republican because it's our side of the aisle that's getting killed. Well, I agree with you that that one teacher said we can't begin to solve our problems until Trump dies. I would turn that around.

1:24:53I said, we can't begin to solve our problems as long as we're letting people like this have access to our children. Let's just start there. And Megan, they're taught the mantra on college campuses, it started out that speech is violent. Speech is violence. Speech I don't like is violence. And then the next level was silence is violence. Well, if you actually say that, then how are you telling, if you're teaching young people that, then how do you tell them that violence is wrong? Because, you know, it's like anything they don't agree with is violence so that they can respond violently to it. And it's a real, it's an existential problem for this country that we're teaching a whole generation of Americans that if they don't like somebody, it's okay to kill them or root for their death.

1:25:41And it's not only that it's so destructive, it's that it shows they're not even capable of abstract reasoning. We're teaching people not to think because the abstract reasoning there is, oh, well, it'd be okay if somebody who disagreed with me would kill me? Well, no, I guess not. Well, they're not even getting that far. So we're teaching a generation of people, first of all, apostatizing them on politics. Then we're teaching them that violence is okay. And then we're teaching them not to think. And it's a toxic combination. and i'll say one other thing megan to your original point you know was rush lumball you know responsible for the oklahoma city bombing of course not but you know you know was alex jones responsible for the nut the poor bastard who showed up at the pizza place in washington dc yeah maybe but this is not alex jones types in the democratic party these are members of congress who are repeating things from the Jeffrey Epstein files that they know are false or they should know are false.

1:26:40And they're slandering Trump on a daily basis and demonizing him. And so there are gonna be some people, and this shooter to me is clearly not legally insane. He doesn't meet the legal definition, but he's clearly been radicalized, as Tom pointed out. He's a misanthrope. He's malcontent. He's got this grandiose idea, but he's operating under things he thinks are factual because he'd been told, not by crazy people, not by Joy Reid, not by people who make money by being incendiary, but by elected members of the Democratic Party, leaders in the Democratic Party who repeat this stuff, knowing it's wrong.

1:27:18And what's going to be the result of that? It's going to be this. Yeah, the reference to a teenage girl abused does suggest he's been watching MSNBC or listening to top Democrats who took those unsubstantiated Epstein allegations and just put them on the board as fact and accepted. They're not only unsubstantiated, there's a lot of evidence that they're not true. I mean, I don't just say that. I think they're lying about it, Megan. I think that if they thought about it for a minute, there's no evidence it's true at all. And they should know that. Yes. Can I just add one? But they ran with that.

1:27:53I saw many segments on MSNBC about those ridiculous allegations. We did not touch them. It was ridiculous. Go ahead, Tom. I just want to add one of the things that disturbs me most about you play that clip of the teacher and the other is that we're – the inhumanity. I mean we're just – as a country, as individuals, we're losing our humanity. If you can't, if you're rooting for the death of another person or you celebrate the death of another person for any reason, but certainly over politics, over ideas, over, you know, a difference of viewpoints, I mean, you have really, your soul has been corrupted.

1:28:36and I don't know how we turn that around. And that's disturbing to me most when I see these people and I'm like, how can you possibly, just as a human, be saying and feeling and thinking these things because they're so deeply inhuman? Mm-hmm, I know. I've said before, like, I can't think of somebody on the other side of the aisle whose death I would celebrate. I just, that's so crazy. And in fact, people have asked me many times, like, clearly, President Trump and I have had our ups and downs together over the many years that I've been covering him. And I just, I don't hold it against him personally.

1:29:16I don't love it. Of course, it is annoying, but I don't hold it against him personally. Because as they say, and you guys know this better than anyone, politics ain't beanball. And it's like, if you're going to get in the arena and you're going to have your own sharp commentary, Every once in a while, you're going to run into a politician who's going to elbow you right back in the eye socket rhetorically. And you have to be able to take that without getting too personal about it, like making it a personal thing. This press corps can't take it. Like they can't take his return rhetorical fire. They personalize it.

1:29:48They internalize it. They grow to loathe him. It's reflected in their coverage. It's just got to stop. We got to get back to the way it used to be when the reporters would try to be objective and at a minimum to project objectivity to remove the adjectives from their reporting. You know, Carl, I came up in a different way. I was a practitioner of law for many years, almost a decade. and then I got into reporting. But I too started in local TV and was out there doing snow preps, standing in front of the salt mines, covering all like weather and hurricanes and all the stuff. And you do learn one thing when you're doing that, humility.

1:30:30You learn humility, that you are but a cog in the wheel, that you are a part of an important system, but it's really not about you. It's not about you when you're standing out there. It's about the potential loss of life that's coming your way. It's about your audience who's watching you for reliable information. It's not about you, Olivia Reingold, as you're crouching in your very weird double mini pigtails. All right, stand by. I have to take a break. We've got to talk about Margaret Brennan and Melania, who just launched one at Jimmy Kimmel. Paying 70, 80, 90 bucks a month to big wireless for unlimited data is insane.

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1:32:14The guys from Real Clear Politics are back with me now. Start your day at realclearpolitics.com and you will be a happier, smarter person. Okay. Margaret Brennan of CBS News gets an interview with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche yesterday. And you could go so many different places with what happened on Saturday night. We've gone to most of them in these two hours here today. This is one place you should not go. This is not the place. Maybe 10 days after the shooting, some leftist might raise this. Even then it would be dumb. But you definitely, within 24 hours, 12 hours of the event, don't go here on how the shooter took a train with a gun.

1:33:00Watch this. Here in the District of Columbia, open carry is not permitted. You just said he traveled from California across the country by train. At this point, are you thinking at the federal level of changing security protocols in any way to, for example, match on trains what you are expected to go through when you fly, where you do have to declare a weapon when you cross state lines? And look, this isn't about, in my mind, changing the law or making the laws more restrictive around possession of firearms. It appears he purchased these firearms the past couple of years. We don't know how those firearms ended up in his possession in D.C.

1:33:40I'm not talking about changing the law in terms of possession of a firearm. I'm asking about crossing state lines with that firearm and arriving in the Capitol. If you try to fly, you do have to have your firearms declared in some way. You don't when you get on a train. that's

1:33:58we need TSA at Amtrak that's where she went with it guys because like why don't we have TSA before you get into your car everyone has to be inspected before they at Avis at Hertz and then also at their homes before they get into their cars and dare drive across the country Tom I mean look Margaret Brennan is she has distinguished herself not in a good way many many times over the last year or so with her line of questioning her performance in the debate all of that and this is almost inexplicable you've got how many minutes 10 minutes with the acting attorney general of the united states to talk about a significant major news event that just happened the night before and this is what you choose.

1:34:52I mean, it just, it boggles the mind and it does, it does make you question, you know, what these reporters are, are thinking and, and how skewed their viewpoints are that this is the kinds of questions that they would, they would eat up that valuable time with. Well, there's a reason for it. She was more interested in virtue signaling to her audience than she was in actually doing journalism and you need look no further than her stupid little arm tag at the event for verification. She showed up at the dinner wearing a hideous dress, hideous gentleman. I'm sorry, but it couldn't have been uglier or less flattering.

1:35:35It's so bad. She's got like the Madonna pointy breast thing happening in the front of it with the points above that too, all pointy, pointy, sharp, pointy, nothing soft about her. And that's she needs something soft, given like the face, the makeup, it's harsh, the hair, like something feminine. And then these all the way up to the shoulder gloves, red as well, with a little armband. It looks like a purchase price stuck on there. And it reads, same as Jake Tapper's little pocket square, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press or of speech because she really needed a virtue signal that she was there, but she hates Trump.

1:36:16I've got to say, I was saying this to my team beforehand. Don Lemon did this weird thing where he was like, I'm not going. He's a fascist or whatever he called him. He's like, I'm not going. I got to tell you, I respect that. I actually, if you believe that, as I'm sure Marco Brennan does too, then do what Don Lemon did. Don't go. He's right about that. Of course, he also thinks the whole thing was a hoax, that it was staged. That's what he's asking. So only can only go so far in painting him as the reasonable one, but that's why she asked that question. She's got to wear her armband and Carl, she's got to tell everybody there that everybody watching her show, that she knows this is really at its heart about gun violence.

1:36:53Well, that's, that's right. That's what this is. That phrase gun violence came up and I, I, I, I get it. I know what it means. And I, I remember, you know, Jim Brady was the press secretary. I met him once. He was a lovely man. He was Reagan's press secretary. He was shot in the head and grievously wounded, was never the same, and eventually died at that same hotel. And his widow started a campaign against handguns because a guy like, she wondered quite properly, Sarah Brady, why a guy like John Hinckley could buy a handgun. It's a debate worth having. It was an issue that I covered, and I thought her heart was in the right place.

1:37:28But when Democrats today use the phrase gun violence, they almost mean something else. Like the way they say it, it's like the gun didn't, it's like the gun did the violence on its own. And I don't think this is a gun control story. Some crimes are, Megan. This one isn't. This guy, he never had a record. He bought guns legally, as you pointed out in your immutable way. He could have driven across country just as easily as taking a train. This is not really a story about gun control, if you're being honest if you're being, if you look at the issue fairly. But, you know, we look, but we have, you want to be careful not to have double standards.

1:38:05And, you know, Tom and I and Andy, we're, we always talk about that on the show. And I think sometimes we're guilty of it. I mean, we were just talking about people dying, you know, rooting for a person to death. Well, Tom, I mean, just didn't Donald Trump say how he was glad Robert Mueller was dead? I mean, this doesn't only come from the left and this kind of rhetoric. And so, you know, I wanted to point that out as well. Well, it's true. But I would say, I think the vast majority of Republicans and Trump supporters, I mean, maybe not the most hardcore, but the vast majority condemned that, you know, like when, when president Trump does that, he gets ripped by his own side.

1:38:43He did get ripped for that. And he should have gotten ripped for it. They, the left doesn't do that to, they don't self-police over there. Andrew, what did you think of Margaret's dress and why am I ready?

1:38:55Oh, God. I mean, questions. She loves you the most, Danny. She wouldn't ask you questions like that. I have three daughters and a wife who would be able to answer that in a heartbeat and tell you everything you want about the dress. I think she looks great. She looks like Cruella DeVille. I think she looks great. No, you don't think that. No, you don't. No. I deny that. On your behalf, I deny that. He's trying to stand his wife's good side. No, no. I do not criticize women's choices in dresses. I think she looks terrific. How about her choice in questions? There I think you have a point. And I think the interesting thing that struck me about it is if D.C.

1:39:37has these terrific gun laws, it again shows that the gun laws really can't stop this sort of thing. I have friends who come out to the eastern shore where I live to shoot. and you have to be very careful about when you're driving through Washington, D.C. with a gun in your car. You have to have it locked and disassembled. So if you're a legal gun owner coming out to shoot some clays, you take it all very seriously because there's horrible, horrible consequences if you don't. But I think for someone like this, obviously it just shows that if you want to get into a hotel in Washington, D.C., uh, with a firearm, uh, you can do it.

1:40:21Um, you know, I just, I do want to bring up Hassan Piker, if we could, for just a second, because we're talking about, um, he's a left wing podcaster. Right. And, um, cause it helps if you do have a sort of a, a, a mythology, mythology and an ideology that, that allows violence. And he, you know, these leftists, cause he brought this up in the New York Times last week. He called it, it's called social murder. It's, he quoted Frederick Engels on it. He said, Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaged in a tremendous amount of social murder. And that's a fascinating story for me because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment.

1:41:03They're very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private healthcare system has created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place. I mean, to me, that's frightening. I mean, that is justifying murder through a left-wing ideology. And I think that that's one of the things we have to contend with, with the sort of rise in socialism in the United States. There's a lot of stuff that comes along with the economic part of socialism. It's mostly about using violence, actually. And people just should be aware of that going forward.

1:41:45That's my take. Oh, you know, not to steal this moment for a book plug, but my husband's book is about to hit, and it's called The Lost Fortune of Emmanuel Nobel. And it's got a lot about socialism, the rise of it, and exactly that, Andrew. Thank you, guys. I got a couple more things to get to, and I'm going to be back on the opposite side. We'll see you guys soon. You may have tried everything out there to aid your metabolism and stay healthy, diets, detox teas, juice cleanses, other so-called miracle fixes that are often just hype. But let me tell you about Veracity. It's a company founded by a hormonal health coach whose personal experience with metabolic issues inspired her to develop actual holistic solutions for achieving optimal health.

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1:44:00To face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this. Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megyn Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth unfiltered with no agenda and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

1:44:46Okay, we've got to get to Jimmy Kimmel before we go, all right? Jimmy Kimmel never misses a moment to be crass and off point and inappropriate. Thursday night, he decided to do a mock White House Correspondents Dinner as the comedian who would have been, you know, invited. They didn't have a comedian this year. They had a mentalist. Somebody actually made a funny comment about it because the mentalist was apparently onstage accurately telling Caroline Levitt what her baby's name was going to be. like he figured it out some magical way. And people were saying like, he was literally on the stage when they like kneeling down by her at the time when the shots rang out.

1:45:28Somebody was like, there was a much more useful prediction you could have made in that moment if you really did have the magical powers, sir. Okay. Thank God everybody's okay. So Jimmy Kimmel does this mock White House Correspondents Dinner comedian routine on Thursday night. And I'm just going to show you, I'm driving towards something here, but I'm going to just show you how unfunny the jokes were. Truly, we all think that we can be funny, but if you actually had to sit down and write jokes, and maybe you've tried to do this for a speech, you cross out every one. You're like, this isn't funny.

1:46:05I thought I was funny, but I'm not. Wrong again, wrong. This is a much higher art form than I give comedians credit for. It's not for me. Jimmy Kimmel needed to come to that realization. These are so on-the-nose, like, 11-year-old humor. Like, an 11-year-old could come up with these stupid jokes. They're so obvious. Not clever. Not surprising. Not even a mild laugh or, like, bemusement as you listen to them. Watch. It's hard to get J.D. to come to an event like this. He's a real homebody. His wife had to peel him off the couch. Please do not get up from your seats during the performance because the vice president will f*** them.

1:46:49Stephen Miller is so racist, the reason he went bald is because his hair was black. Stephen Miller puts the cyst in white supremacists. If anyone starts any trouble, fear not because FBI Director Cash Patel is standing by. Waitress, can we get Cash a vodka soda and a booster seat, please? Okay, Pete's hair has more oil in it right now than the straight of Hormuz. Bobby Kennedy, years ago, he wrote in his diary that he pulled his car over to the side of the road to carve the penis out of a raccoon. And his son asked him, Dad, why did you do that? Why did you chop the penis off a dead animal? And he looked at his son and he said, because I'm a f***ing psychopath.

1:47:34Now get out of this car and go get measles. I don't even know where to begin. They had fake reaction shots from administration officials. Nothing funny. Nothing remotely clever. That didn't sound anything like RFKJ. He doesn't talk like that. He doesn't actually talk like that at all. For some reason, you gave him a Brooklyn accent, which he doesn't have. and the laugh track meant to boost his sagging audiences, I'm sure, like smattering of applause. Even leftists don't find that funny. That was so not funny. Jimmy Kimmel is not funny. And here he was, least funny of all. What he said about Melania Trump now is making major news.

1:48:24You would think he would have learned after making light of the Charlie Kirk assassination, suggesting that the guy who did it, Tyler Robinson, who's been accused of doing it, is MAGA, remember? That led to his show getting pulled off the air for five days, and then they turned him into Rosa Parks on the left. But listen to the terrible, quote, joke he made about Melania Trump during the same routine. And of course, our first lady Melania is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. Who would make a joke like that knowing that Trump had almost been killed relatively recently?

1:49:06This is obviously before Saturday night. But I mean, it is not an exaggeration to say that Trump was almost killed in July of 2024. That's recent. And for this guy to get up there and say she's got the glow of an expectant widow, like how insensitive can you be? Honestly, like Trump, he's got children. He's got grandchildren. He does have a wife. He has millions of people who love him. And the glow of an expectant widow. How sick are you? That, I mean, truly the left and the desensitivity that they're trying to create, you know, in people to the thought of political violence is truly pernicious.

1:49:51It's a force for evil in this country. And he doubles and triples and quadruples down on it every other week. Um, now today, Melania Trump actually responded, which she never does. As you know, Melania is, she does not seek the spotlight. Did you see her by chance the other night when Trump came out and spoke in the White House press briefing room after the shooter was apprehended, attempted shooter? Uh, somebody asked a question about Melania and how she reacted. Of course, she hasn't been with Trump or by his side. You know, she wasn't right next to him on the stage in Butler or when Ruth tried to open fire on him on his golf course and so on.

1:50:33So poor Melania, you know, this is, I hate to say it so cavalierly, but her first assassination attempt, forgive me. So she puts out the following, and by the way, so Trump said, do you want to say something at the end of that presser? And she, no, she does not like the spotlight. It's very rare when you hear Melania speak out. So she has today. She posted online, Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn't comedy. His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel should not have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.

1:51:11Wow, how about that? A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community? Wow. How about that, guys? That is extraordinary. That's the closest I've heard to her Melania getting, I mean, explicitly political and actually appears to be calling for him to be fired, obviously. Enough is enough. It's time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will they allow him and his atrocious behavior? to go on.

1:51:54Well, no sooner did she post that than I'd say two or three hours later, we get this from her husband, who is the president of the United States. Wow. Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible TV ratings, made a statement on his show that is really shocking. He showed a fake video of the first lady Melania and our son Baron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren't and never would be. He then stated, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. A day later, a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents' dinner, loaded up with a shotgun handgun and many knives.

1:52:36He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason. I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel's despicable call to violence and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said. but this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Trump. It's pretty explosive. I can only imagine the oh shit moment that any normal person would have after saying she has the glow of an expectant widow and within 48 hours someone tries to kill her husband. Like a normal person would have a complete meltdown at that series of events.

1:53:22It was bad enough. Poor Caroline Levitt in a pre-interview before the event got kicked off was talking about the president's expected speech, which always historically includes it's all about barbs against the media. That's the fun thing of having him there. You make fun of him and do corrosive coverage of him all year long. And with your typical president, they never say anything about you. And this is their big night to rip on you, the press, by name and network and so on. President Trump does it differently. As you know, he's nonstop ripping. But she said, oh, there's going to be some shots fired tonight.

1:53:57And some nutcases on the Internet are now suggesting she was in on it. OK, get a grip. Get a grip, people. That's a figure of speech. If you haven't used that phrase, you need to expand your vocabulary. But this was, you know, pretty extraordinary for this guy 48 hours before to say she's got the glow of an expectant widow. I mean, if President Trump, God forbid, had been killed at that event, can you imagine? Can you imagine? ABC would have no choice but to rip this guy off the air once and for all. He's irresponsible. He is so deeply offensive. Truly, imagine someone saying that about Michelle Obama.

1:54:40Imagine what the reaction would be. Just think about that for a second. Think of if somebody had said that about Erica Kirk before Charlie had been killed. Like these predictions, I'm not saying that the shooter was motivated by Jimmy Kimmel. Though, to be honest, who knows if he'd watched that episode. I don't. I'm saying this is irresponsible talk, given his professional position. You don't make jokes about assassinations of the president, especially when he's had multiple assassination attempts against him. Okay, you don't make light of it. Honestly, and I'll say one other thing, I can even understand in the wake of an assassination, easy for me to say, assassination attempt to like a comedian like Jay Leno, who's universally beloved and is not known as a partisan hack who actually really does hate the president who just got shot, making a joke like that was in good faith.

1:55:43You could find a way, like that's not in bad taste, to help the nation heal. That's actually always been one of the great roles of our great comedians, to help us heal through humor. This was not that. We were not healing from anything. It was in advance of a massive gathering where he knew the president would be attending and Melania too. He was pretending that he was at the event and that he was the comedian there. And just sending the message out to whomever follows that show that wouldn't it be funny? It's so funny to think of Trump dead and Melania as a glowing widow. It's just sick. So we'll see.

1:56:23Ball's in your court, ABC. You're not gonna be able to ignore this. You are not gonna be able to ignore both the president and the first lady. She's even more powerful than he is in this particular moment on this particular issue, speaking out. We'll see. Ball's in your court. Do the right thing. Honestly, like I can't imagine this. Like, think about it. ABC fired Chris Harrison from The Bachelor, because a bachelorette on that show went to an antebellum party years earlier when she'd been a young college student, and they thought that was racially insensitive. And all Chris Harrison said was, are we judging her by the standards of today or by the standards of when she did it?

1:57:11That's all he said. And ABC ruined him. He's never been heard from again. Have you seen Chris Harrison hosting some network show? No, his life was ruined. His career was ruined. But you can say this as Jimmy Kimmel, as like the face of ABC. You can say she's got the glow of an expectant widow about a husband who was almost killed at least once and two other times. Attempts were obviously in the making. And now a fourth, very ill-timed, too bad for Jimmy. What are you going to do about it, ABC? Right? Disney, they're the ones who fired Gina Carano over a totally anodyne online posting about World War II and Hitler and the excesses of the left.

1:58:06She got fired. That was too much. Her tweet, her one post online. Okay. Your move. What are you going to do? Let's see. You paid Donald Trump$16 million when George Stephanopoulos said erroneously, a factually that Trump had been found liable for rape over and over. You recognize the deep offense caused by that comment when it wasn't true. How about the libel of Melania Trump suggesting she wants her husband dead? That's what you just did to her. Forget what you did to President Trump there. But you suggested she wants her husband executed. How about that? You paid$16 million for civilly found liable for rape.

1:59:02Are we going to do anything about she wants her husband fucking dead? Or normalizing the thought of an execution. Anything? Okay, we'll wait. We'll wait. Look forward to seeing what ABC does. All right, that's it for us today. Tomorrow on this show, you will be joined, as will I, by our friend Stu Bergeer. Can't wait. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

1:59:38The wrongs we must right. The fights we must win. The future we must secure together for our nation. This is what's in front of us. This determines what's next for all of us. We are Marines. We were made for this.

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