285. TRIP US: DONALD TRUMP SHOT

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0:49Welcome to The Restus Politics US with me, Cadi Kay, and Anthony Scaramucci's with me too. We have both rushed to our microphones to do an emergency recording because of the news that came in last night from Pennsylvania where Donald Trump was shot at while he was giving a speech in Butler, Pennsylvania at a campaign rally. Gunshots were fired from a rooftop. One person attending the rally was killed, along with the gunman. Two other people have been critically injured. Donald Trump was hit with something. Initially, the reports were that it was shattered glass. That is all still being confirmed.

1:22It may have been a bullet that Nick Tazeer, but either way, you can see the images online of him with blood on his face. He's pushed to the ground by the Secret Service and then they whisk him off the stage. But before they get him off the stage, Donald Trump pumps his fist to the crowd and there are rules of USA, USA that go out around the crowd. President Biden has put out a statement saying there is no place for this violence in American politics. But Anthony, I think this is a very defining moment. I mean, my immediate thoughts were Bobby Kennedy when he was shot as a presidential candidate in 1968 and the kind of impact that this event could have on this campaign.

2:00I don't know that we know definitely what the impact is, but it's certainly throwing everything up in the air. Well, I mean, a couple of things. I think on behalf of Cadi and I, we firmly believe there is no room for this type of violence period. There's no room for this type of political violence. And so we condemn it in every shape and form as people that are students of democracy, lovers of democracy who thankfully have been blessed to live in democracies our whole lives. You certainly want whatever political battles and the rhetoric of the politics and the policies to be debated and then give the opportunity for the voters to vote.

2:37And whoever wins the other side has to accept that. That's just the nature of these things. But Cadi, I just want to say before we go into the analysis, unfortunately, in the United States, this type of political violence is part of our history. Unfortunately, we can talk about Abraham Lincoln, Garfield McKinley. I could list the different people. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt was shot at after he was elected. He was president -elect. It was a few weeks prior to his inauguration. Obviously, in our lifetimes, Cadi, Ronald Reagan was shot. Thankfully, survived it. Gerald Ford was shot at twice as hard as that is to believe.

3:15And so unfortunately, you're mentioning Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, obviously, Slein Wild President. This is a terrible, terrible thing. And I speak about this with great sadness as an American because you certainly don't want one person or a cabal of people to interrupt the democratic process. But I guess I want to throw it to you for a second and ask you this question. There were some defining pictures that were taken last night. But before I say that, I just want to one more comment, our hearts go out to the family members that are now dealing with two critically wounded people. And of course, there's been one man Slein at this event.

3:56That's a result of this unspeakable tragedy. So our hearts go out to them as well. But I'm just wondering from your perspective, your years as a journalist, seeing a bloodstain Donald Trump get up with the secret services help screaming fight blood in his ear, an American flag over his head. The symbolism of all this. What are your thoughts there? Like you, Anthony, the first reaction is sadness and shock. And obviously for the families there. And I know sad, I think sadness from my point of view, because this historical violence is not historical in American politics. There has been an uptick in political violence, even during the course of the last year or two on both sides.

4:36And I think the circumstances that led to this incident in Pennsylvania have been ripe for a while. I don't think any of us are totally surprised. Maybe we're surprised about the details of why the secret service didn't see this guy up on the roof, even though there were bystanders trying to point him out. But the amount of violence in America, I think from an outside perspective in Americans sometimes don't appreciate the degree to which foreigners see the country through the prism of guns in the country. And we know there are so many guns in the country. And we know there is so much tension in the country.

5:07And we've seen an uptick in violent language. And we've seen an uptick in violent incidents. I'm thinking of even the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband in her home. It feels like the back drop is ripe for this kind of an event at the moment. People have compared this election campaign to 1968 before I've resisted that. I've said that there was nothing like the violence in America at the moment. There wasn't 68. You don't have the military out on the street. You don't have the when this kind of thing happens, you realize how fibrile America is at the moment. And in a country that has a lot of guns, shootings like this can happen.

5:43And we'll have to have the investigation as to why it happened. That image is extraordinary. Just from a journalist perspective, there are two images that I'm thinking of this morning. One is of Donald Trump with blood on his face and the American flag behind him and the Pennsylvania sun shining. And it's bright and vivid and bold and violent, but also defiant. And the other image that I'm thinking of is that is taken almost through the legs of a secret service agent or the arm of a secret servant agent. And there is Donald Trump being held down with his face on the stage. And there is something about that image too that we're going to see a lot of these images over the course of the next four months during this campaign.

6:22It seems a little heartless and perhaps tried to delve into the longer term ramifications of this incident. But I think we're going to have to do this during this podcast. And because I think this could potentially change the race in Trump's favor. I think in Trump's favor. Okay. All right. So let me give a historical reference, give you to react to it because obviously times have changed. Teddy Roosevelt was shot at. He was running against which were Wilson and William Howard Tath. He had a shot fired at him, hit him in the chest. He had a steel glasses case in his breastplate there and it protected him.

7:00He finished his speech. He said that he was as strong as a bull moose. And a shot like that wouldn't stop him. The party's name became bull moose. Everyone said he would go on and win the election. He lost the election. But I think you and I would agree that times have changed. And so I'm actually in your camp analytically. I believe that this is a big moment for Donald Trump because you're now juxtapositioning one candidate who is vigorous presents at age 78 a much younger version of somebody that is age 78. You have another candidate sitting present at this 81. He waits over an hour and a half to start speaking.

7:39He's flubbing lines again from the teleprompter as he is speaking. He does say the right things. God bless him. Joe Biden. I think we would both agree that he's a good person. He does say there is no place in America for this kind of violence is sick. And I believe him that he is being sincere when he says that. Yeah. He purposely calls him Donald by the way. I know that that was he didn't call him President Trump. He didn't call him former President Trump. He didn't say Mr. Trump. He says I'm trying to get a hold of Donald. And so somebody told him to say Donald as opposed to using the two words President Trump.

8:10We can debate whether or not that was a good idea to do or not. But it's a candidate that's presenting himself slightly infebold. It's a candidate that's presenting himself Malapropping. The New York Times this morning has an op -ed on him basically saying that his paths to the presidency now are narrowing. If you look at the polling spreads, many of the swing states are now outside of the margin of error. For Joe Biden, you mean the Joe Biden calls to presidency a narrowing yes. Yes. And so now President Biden would have to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The Democrats call that the blue wall.

8:49But those races are mathematically tied. And all he has to do is lose one of those. And he has no path to the presidency. So what do you think happens here? I believe the Biden family is resisting the changes that the Democrats want to make. Insiders have told me as recently as last night that they're extremely frustrated about the situation. There's many people on the Democratic side, the Democrat party that basically say, hey, if we had a different candidate given the track record that they had this four years and given the nature of Donald Trump, they'd be 15 points ahead. This probably would have never even happened.

9:27But it looks like he's going to lose unless you tell me differently. So what are your thoughts there? I think these images help Donald Trump. And I can see them appearing cynical, though that might sound in campaign ads going forward. And I think more than just the images themselves, it reinforces two things. One, it that Donald Trump's narrative that he is the victim and that the people who support him are the victim of liberal opponents. We don't know much about the shooter at this point, the 20 year old. But I'm sure we will hear more about that. Look, you see, the left is out of control. The country is violent.

10:02It needs a strong man to restore order. And we are the victims of that violence. I think all of that narrative gets reinforced by what happened in Pennsylvania. I think the second thing is the way Donald Trump responded himself. And there's no way he could have planned for this. But Donald Trump has an extraordinary instinct for the moment and for the big moment when the cameras are on him and how to respond. And the way he got up off that stage and before being hustled into the van made the secret service agents pause a moment so that he could pump his fist into the air and get a rallying cry of USA, USA.

10:39As some of his supporters have said, he is a fighter. He came out of that moment strong and defined and fighting. And he rallied the crowd with him. It was their struggle as well as his. And I think it plays into Donald Trump's incredible political sort of acumen and strengths and his sharp political instincts. As you know, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house said, Trump is unstoppable. And there is such that it feels today, Anthony, while the Democrats are in disarray, the party is incredibly divided, you're going to have a big rallying around even more so around Donald Trump because of this incident.

11:16You've already had a couple of big donors. Elon Musk come out and say they're supporting him. And I think it's the Democrats have got to think very hard about how they take this on. Do you think that Joe Biden will leave the race or this will further dig him in to his candidacy? I think in the short term, this takes some pressure off Joe Biden ironically because he did come out with that statement. Yes, he mungled a few things, but he said the right thing. He did what presidents do. The attention now switches to Milwaukee. Milwaukee had been a little bit of a side show, frankly, over the last couple of weeks because of the Democrats own troubles.

11:49There will be full -on attention on President Trump in Milwaukee. And the press will be preoccupied with that for the next three or four days. But I think in the longer term, and I'm talking about end of this week, the following week, the pressure still builds on Joe Biden to get out of the race. And it's the discussion we've seen since you and I recorded the last podcast. He made those fluffs in the NATO press conference where he called Vice President Kamala Harris Trump and where he called Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin. So he got names mixed up. Now, he also said in the course of that press conference, quite a lot of detailed foreign policy things that were perfectly reasonable.

12:29I mean, there were some words salad, but he held that press conference. It was good enough for the press conference. And I spoke to a couple of Republicans and Democrats after that press conference and they said this was the worst of all possible world for the Democrats because it made Joe Biden the ability to say, look, I can handle a NATO press conference. I should keep going. But I think the DIC absolutely no signs of the panic amongst Democrats abating. And the question is still the question we posed when we recorded our last podcast on Thursday. Who gets to him? How do they get to him? When do they get to him?

13:02And who has the ability to persuade him to drop out? Because at the moment, he's not saying he's going anywhere. We're going to take a quick break.

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14:21So, we'll say something that it want to be as objective and speak with as great as clarity as I can. Number one, I agree with you, Mr. Trump, President Trump, is an unbelievable showman, great political instinct, showman instincts to get up and do that. I think some people were like, why is the Secret Service actually letting them do that? Because it could have been other shooters and so on and so forth. I mean, I'd have been a wreck on a puddle of, you know, mass on the floor stage. I think it's going to be completely gone to hell and back. Yeah, listen, listen, an enormous great and credit and courage on his part.

14:56I will say that his family members have to be shocked and upset because he's in harm's way. And we'll have to have some type of investigation related to how someone is 450 feet away from him with a gun. Now, thankfully, it was an inexperienced sniper with an AR -15 because an experienced sniper with the right long range rifle. Unfortunately, we would have had a tragic ending. People did die, but they would have killed a leading political figure. And this would have been another unbelievable tragedy for America. And so, I just think that the narrative is now Trump's. This is Donald Trump's election to lose.

15:37He's captured the narrative. People will like that or dislike it. It's too bad. You just have to frame it for what it is. He's going into the Republican convention as a wounded, almost martyred candidate for the right. And so, he's there now to say, I have literally taken bullets for you people. You have to get out and you have to vote for me. Now, counter -opposed that to Joe Biden. He's going to go to his convention. I guess a month later, malapropping, misspeaking, misspeaking at the teleprompter. Maybe he'll call Kamala Harris vice president Trump again. He also said vice president Trump was not qualified to take over for me.

16:18He did say that. I mean, that's in the transcript of his remarks. You could see his aides winsing. You know, we want to talk about blinking. Anthony Blinken, appropriately named, was literally shuttering and blinking when Joe Biden was doing that. So, you have to be of your a democratic strategist. You have to be sitting here saying, wow, some of this is luck. Some of this is surfing. You know, Mitt Romney once said to me after the 2012 election, Cadi. He said, you know, politics like surfing, there's waves that are coming in. You have your surfboard, which is your platform. Are you a good surfer on your platform?

16:55But different waves come in. You know, if there's a conservative movement and a conservative wave and Ronald Reagan is doing a good job surfing, he gets his surfboard to the beach. I was up against Barack Obama. The wave was this sort of progressive movement away from conservatism. I flubbed and fell off my surfboard. What wave is hitting the beach right now? And whether people like this or not, Donald Trump is making the waves. Okay, he's creating the narrative. He's framing the narrative. And whether you like it or not, coincidences, universe, whatever, he goes into the Republican convention next week with his right ear bloodied, literally grazed by a bullet.

17:35It doesn't even matter, Cadi. If it's grazed by the teleprompter glass or the bullet, it doesn't matter. He was hurt. There was blood. Yes. And I took a bullet for you guys. So are you going to come out of vote for me? Yes or no? And now, how is Joe Biden countermandat? It's a good question. I have to think about it more. I honestly don't know. I would have thought he would have said, okay, I got to come out of this race. I'm not at age 81, given my infirmity, given my cognition. I got to give it, I got to toss it up either to my vice president or open up the convention. But we'll see if he stays in the race, he will go down in history as a guy that really cared more about himself than the country because he squandered a good presidency, a good agenda, and he squandered it as a result of his Shakespearean ego.

18:21So for the last year, this campaign has been kind of in neutral, right? The two candidates were in the same position pretty much in every single poll. Neither of them was particularly liked. It was clear the American people was not excited about this race. And I would say that in your wave analogy, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump were on a very flat pond that had no waves. Nothing was propelling them. Nothing was giving them motive. There was no impetus, no excitement really on either side, apart from amongst Peps, Donald Trump's small base of supporters. I think in the last couple of weeks, since that debate, now perhaps because of this incident, we can see a very clear red wave coming towards the shore, and it's being written by Donald Trump.

19:06And it seems that the country is shifting to looking more like a right -leaning political movement that is where the country wants to be at the moment. Now, there has also been about Donald Trump over the course of this campaign that I feel is different from 2020 and 2016, and I don't know what you think about this, growing kind of messianic language. He is saving us. He is some kind of savior. Marco Rubio said that God protected the former president last night. And that adulation, which his base has had for a very long time, is fueling this wave as well. So you've got a very potent combination of people really looking at the Democrats.

19:52And I think that this will again turn back against Democrats, because people will say, listen, it's Democrats who are responsible for the disorder in the country. It's Democrats who are behind this kind of event. Democrats who are making the country lawless. We need a strong president to take that back again. So I think you're going to see a shift away from the kind of left and democratic movements towards Donald Trump because of this incident. This plays into that that force field that seems to be shifting. I'll add another log to the flyer and perhaps more lighter fluid while you're saying that as you pointed out, Elon Musk has endorsed the president, dropped money into his pack.

20:31He obviously controls Twitter. You have 200 plus million followers at Elon as. And you can like him or dislike him, but he supported him, Bill Ackman, someone in my industry, the hedge fund industry just went out and endorsed him. And so the assassin nation attempt will trigger sympathy and support for Donald Trump. And it will also create more Trump amnesia, Cadi -K. It'll force people to have sympathy and don't forget some of the hysteria and a way it'll whitewash or wash over some of his deficits, if you will. And by the way, you have nobody on the other side that can make the litigation, that can make the case against them.

21:15You just don't. He's not able to have a debate. He couldn't rebut him. At a debate, he couldn't call out his lies. At a debate, he couldn't say, well, no, you were talking about this, but I reassured manufacturing the United States on building microprocessor foundries. I put a trillions of dollars into infrastructure in the US, my legislative agenda in modern history is only second to Lyndon Johnson's first term as president. We didn't hear any of that. You've articulated his agenda and his accomplishments faster in the last 30 seconds than he did in a 90 minute debate Anthony. And there's no wait for now him to rebut that.

21:50And so the fact that he has people around him, whether it's his wife, his son, his age or say, no, you're the guy. You're the only guy that can be Donald Trump. And you're the guy. And he can't determine if it's president's Alinsky or president Putin or vice president Harris or vice president Trump. It's a big problem for him. And for us, not to say that, yeah, would be malpractice. Would be malpractice as podcasters, analyst, pundits, whatever it is. And so he's got to he's got a severe problem. And he better wake up basically. I think it's not just that support for Joe Biden is declining. I think because of this, we're actually going to see support for Donald Trump increase.

22:30And those are two slightly different things. So you're going to see those people in the middle, perhaps suburban housewives who have these mythical non non -decided voters, whoever they are. I think they are because of this kind of incident. They may just decide you know what? There's too much chaos on the other side. Who is the real leader? Is the Democratic candidate Gaga? Is he actually even there? Is he functioning? Well, Donald Trump stood up, got up off the stage and pumped his fist and looked strong. And I think that's very powerful for them. I had a very interesting conversation. I'm at an event, a family event in Shropshire in England.

23:03And there are a lot of Americans here and a lot of American political types here. And I had a conversation with a conservative legal scholar yesterday. And I asked him, he's not a fan of Donald Trump's, but he's definitely a conservatively worked in the Bush administration. And I asked him what he thought the biggest downside was of a Trump presidency from his point of view. And this was before the shooting. And he said, listen, I think Donald Trump gets elected. And the left goes crazy. And Donald Trump uses that to pull out the military onto the streets of the United States. And we have a huge escalation of political violence in the country.

23:37And I think I'm thinking of those words. He said it before the incident in Butler, Pennsylvania. But I'm thinking how much true are those words sound to me today? Yeah, listen, it's a dangerous and perilous time. And it's not the cooler heads that are prevailing. But just a quick question. If you had to get three sentences, three points into Joe Biden right now, what would it be? But with him at the top of the ticket, Democrats will lose the House and the Senate. They won't take back the House, but they'll be terrible impact on down ballot races. That his political legacy, if he loses, which looks lightly, will be shot out of the water.