286. Trump Assassination Attempt: The Aftermath

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1:50We're here today to focus on the attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump. So just for quick background, I'm the whole world will have heard about it, but I think maybe we've heard so much about it. It's getting a bit confused in our minds. So Donald Trump was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler, Pennsylvania is a little town about 13 ,000 people, just north of Pittsburgh. And when you look at it on Google Maps, you see it as a sort of pretty sprawling, I guess, effect for a suburb of the big city in effect. But it's also famous for its farm show. He was addressing a crowd in a pretty open area where they normally hold their farm show.

2:31And in the middle of speaking, he was struck in the year by bullet. And he goes down on the ground, and we can talk about that a little bit. And it appears that the man who shot at him is called crooks 20 years old was then killed almost certainly by a secret service sniper shooting back. And he got far too close to the president. If you look at the setup, it's very strange. Initially, it's often very difficult to monitor all the roofs in a big city, but this is a very, very rural area. There are very few roofs that close to where the president was speaking. And he got right on top one of the 400 feet away.

3:10And the president pretty lucky to make it because a shot at 400 feet was what seems to be an equivalent of an M16 assault rifle. And he was very, very lucky to be alive. Another man tragically was killed in the audience. And President Trump is physically fine, but the defining moment is that when he got to his feet again, he lifts his fist and shots fight. And now these images of him position right next to the American flag apparently defines and courageous with blood streaming down his face is now having a huge impact on the election. So over you, Alisa. It certainly has the capacity to. I think, look, first of all, I think we should, I'm sure both regardless of what we think of Donald Trump, which is not a lot, have to condemn any attempt on his life.

4:00America is a democracy like we're a democracy. And these issues should be resolved by peaceful debate. But interestingly, I think because America is so polarized, just looking at the comments that are coming in even now on our on our chat for the podcast. So, for example, slim Charles, some countries would take an incident like this and unify, if only briefly, around a shared interest, not the USA, however, within minutes, the blame is being attributed to Dupter Biden and the Democrats. Some day else, I wonder how many will now be saying Trump's presidency is ordained by God. And indeed, people are saying that, including, I think, JD Vance has been saying that.

4:39Matt Simmons, I've noticed a lot of Republicans trotting out the way the mainstream media talk about Trump is the reason for this line. All of the violent rhetoric has come from the mega side of politics. Then somebody replies, honestly, it comes from both sides, both candidates, both sides of the media. America needs to stop this nonsense. Now, I think that is going to get to the heart of this, the polarization. We don't know anything about this crooks guy. We know that he's 20. We know, as you say, that he had a pretty sophisticated rifle. And again, the gun issue will doubtless be part of the debate as this thing goes forward.

5:14We know that he's a registered Republican, but we also know that he made a small donation to a Democrat cause. So, of course, in the polarization, you're getting Democrats say, ah, he's a Republican. And he's getting Republicans say, ah, and none of us know anything about him. And first thing, isn't it? Because we'll get onto this. And this, of course, is going to be the heart of a lot of conspiracy theories very quickly. You can imagine you can put conspiracy theories on both sides. You can have a conspiracy theory if you really want to go for it, that this is Democrats trying to kill Donald Trump.

5:47And I suppose you could come up in a elaborate conspiracy theory that it's Republicans trying to promote Trump. That one, I think, is the least plausible of all because you certainly need to be a pretty brave man to be prepared to stand there and let someone shoot you in the ear and they're not going to go one edge to the right. But anyway, the conspiracy theories will come. Very striking, the New York Times put in an immense team of people on trying to find out about Thomas Crooks, and at least as of half an hour ago, a very large team of journalists was unable to find anybody in his neighborhood or his extended family who was prepared to speak.

6:17So they're going on a grainy image of him at his graduation, a little bit of details, as you say, on his campaign contributions. But very, very little to go on a tool. A couple of things out of, so maybe first thing, you mentioned this question of polarization in the US. It is so striking. I remember you and I often are sort of seen as kind of centrist dads. And I made a speech in New York a couple of months ago trying to make the case for the center. And I remember Democrat friends coming up to me afterwards saying, worry, forget that speech in the US. Nobody's interested. We just want to kill the other side.

6:59I know, obviously, they didn't mean it literally. But there is the sense that on both sides of this debate, they are so, I mean, and I remember people saying to me when I was asking to try to understand why people were voting for Trump and you've talked a little bit about that fascinating book of somebody traveling through Trump country. But often I get people saying, I'm not interested in understanding them. I just want to defeat them. And then of course, I think the second thing, which maybe we can get into a little bit, is the question of violence in American politics because, you know, for American presence being killed, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK.

7:41There have been, there were attempts on Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, two attempts on Gerald Ford and attempts on Reagan. So it is a very, very different society to the UK. I mean, we've had a promise for Sassadon and having attempts but nothing like that. And that's only since the 1860s. Yeah. And of course Martin Luther King as well. Not a president that attacks on political figures are certainly not new in America. But this thing about the polarization. So on the one hand, Joe Biden clearly despises Donald Trump. despises what he did as president. despises the fact that he's still there and is determined.

8:23It will maybe talk a little bit later about Joe Biden now. This effect says candidacy. But he comes straight out. Says that this is outrageous, condemns it unequivocally, explains that he is going to reach out to Donald, cause him Donald as opposed to Trump, which is how he normally, or president Trump, but former president Trump is normally causing. And you've seen that from most Democrats, senior Democrats, they've come straight out and said, this is unacceptable. We must condemn political violence wherever it rises. And yet on the quite senior figures on the right, Newt Gingrich, for example, comes straight out.

9:00And essentially says Biden couldn't get him with all this legal baloney. So now these people are trying to kill him. Okay. Laying it straight at the door of Biden. Nigel Farage, getting his usual easy pass onto the BBC airwaves. I notice in Western, not clackton on the on the caption. And he comes out and starts at one point seem to be blaming the comedian Joe brand, because she made a joke about him when he had a milkshake thrown at him, saying it's the rhetoric of the liberal left. And the way that people talk about Trump, it's no wonder that this hasn't happened, etc, etc, etc. In other words, that sense is that as that earlier commenter said, I can remember when the assassination attempt on Reagan happened.

9:45And it was, it was a moment of unification for America. You saw virtually everybody coming out and saying, this is wrong, this is bad, wish him well. What you see, even with the Trump fight, fight, fight. And I think it's, look, I remember when you and I talked to Hillary Clinton on the podcast, and she talked about what it was like against Trump on stage, and she talked about his animal instinct. And he does have an instinct. This is his political skill. He has an instinct for scene setting, for, for, for presentation. And essentially, he, so he knows the protocol, he will have been talked through.

10:21If there is something like this happens, the secret service, they are instructed, they pile him to the ground and they pile on him. So if there are any more bullets coming, they take it for the president. That's how they're trained. And so he's down there for a while. A bit of chaos, I thought the crowd actually responded pretty well in terms of, you know, not too much panic. But then as he gets up, you can see the secret service trying to keep him shielded from view. And he's thinking, no, I am not having that. I've got blood on my face. I'm going to show it, but I'm not going to show pain. I'm not going to show fear.

10:54I'm going to show strength. And he stands up with his fist and goes fight, fight, fight. Now, who's he fighting in that? Like us, he knows nothing about what's happened. He knows nothing about the person who shot him. And yet it's fight, fight, fight. And we'll see. He's put out a statement since then, very calm, grateful to the people who've been expressing the support for him and so forth. And then saying, onto the next campaign stop. Again, I mean, what he went through is horrifying and terrifying and will be terrifying. And also terrifying for family when you're watching it live on TV. Oh, it's terrifying.

11:31Yeah. And for his kids and everybody. I mean, it's a real sense of that the terrifying stakes that he's up against. I've only once had somebody shoot at me in a and a slightly bungled attempt for somebody to get on top of me. In my particular case, my my protection officer threw himself to the ground and then stood up again and then threw himself on top of me. It is, as you say, a very, very strange moment. And of course, you're under huge pressure from your security team to follow protocol instructions. And as you say, what, what present Trump does? He senses he needs to show this moment. His whole head and body emerges up above the security detail, which will worry them because they are, of course, very worried that there could be something else going on.

12:18The deal is that they're doing three things. They're they're hoping they've neutralized because they've killed the man who shot at him. They think, but they don't know there is no second or third shooter. They're trying to decide whether they're going to stay in place or get out. They really want to get out because they want to get to a secure location. They've, they've already practiced what the roots are. They're going to have a safe place with medical assistance they want to get him to. But as they're going on that evacuation, that's a very vulnerable moment. If there is another shooter in the chaos that they could get closer a bump could get in.

12:50So they'll want him off the stage with his head down. But he says stop and you can hear him say, wait, wait. And then he he punches his first start to get to get that extraordinary photograph. And my goodness, he's been vindicated because that is the photograph that's gone around the world. And that is the photograph that Elon Musk immediately put on Twitter. And of course, you've got the US flag behind it. By the time I look, I think it got, I think I'm right in saying 30 million likes, you know, in a very, very short period. Oh, it, and this is what often happens in these these amazing moments in history is that a picture will define.

13:25So the whole thing is on television. And it'll be watched again and again and again. But often it is a still photograph that will define a moment. And the, the, and there's no doubt about it. It is politically, you know, and it's horrible and such, to some extent, talking these terms, but let's be absolutely frank, this is our political strategies think. It is, it is likely to help Donald Trump. And so let's, let's just dig into this question of, I mean, I mean, immediately it's only a few hours in. But what the impact can be on voters in the election. And sort of brief reminder, the traditional viewers that these US elections were going to be decided really by a few hundred thousand votes in Pennsylvania, where the shooting just took place.

14:14Michigan and Wisconsin. Yeah. And maybe one tiny district, Omaha, Nebraska, so there's sort of super geeks. And so two things, one is I suppose if we're still looking at the traditional numbers, if they haven't changed dramatically over the last few hours, what is it going to mean for turnout of Trump potential Trump voters, for example, in Detroit. So we know that there are a lot of young African American voters who have said that they are interested in voting for Donald Trump, but haven't traditionally voted. So is this image going to be an image that's going to motivate people to get to the polls who wouldn't otherwise vote?

14:53But is it also going to have a more dramatic impact? Is it going to mean that he's going to be reaching into new voters? And then the battleground isn't only this famous thin blue line. And finally, how does it play out against the images that we've seen recently of present Biden and will it accelerate present Biden stepping down? So for example, I make a lot of reckless predictions on the show, but the one that I made, obviously a few months ago, and we've done a number of times and stages to say, do you remember we used to say who do you think is going to be next present to my stick was it could be a third person?

15:26And I used to get no hands at all. I think Biden is now, until the shooting, I would have thought that he might step down on Monday. But I wonder whether you think, well, I've thrown three different questions actually. What's it going to have on the impact? What do you think it'll make on Biden's decision set down? Any of the above? I think that the situation of Joe Biden was getting more and more difficult, but he seemed to be digging himself more and more. I also think that he was starting to win arguments within the Democrat Party that quote, this thing is not as simple as you think. And that therefore we just have to kind of hold on and keep going.

16:08But what I think this shows is that if we when we talked about our election recently, which you know, Kierstowne winning recently, but just over nine days ago now, and we talked a lot about the sort of game changing moments. And essentially the only two real game changing moments were Boris Johnson and Partikate and Liz Truss mini budget and the conservatives suffered massive blows from which they never recovered. There hasn't been much to sort of change any game within the Biden Trump debate. They're both amongst the best known political figures in the world. They've been going along on their own tracks.

16:44Biden's health and age, which you have always, you're fair to you, you've always said you thought was going to be a really big problem, has become a big problem. And that has the potential to change the game. And this has the potential to change the game because Donald Trump can show strength. It will, it is just a one sort of immediate happening that as a result of what happened today, the Democrats have pulled a multi million advertising campaign doing negative attack ads on Trump. Now Donald Trump is the same person today as he was yesterday. He's got the same values. He tells the same lies.

17:21He's got the same record. But the Democrats have made that decision because they know that in within the context of the guy, somebody just tried to kill the guy and they nearly succeeded. That means that the Democrats have had to change their tactics. Now that, that means that for the next bit, and Barry, we're going into the Republican Convention, where Donald Trump is going to be greeted as a kind of conquering hero. You've got this heritage project 2025 that is, has been, was just beginning to get into the debate. It's now gone. They're not going to be talking about that for a while. So I think this changes the nature of the debate.

18:00And the thing I think it underlines for the Democrats is the only thing they have left now for changing the game is to change the candidate. Now you may be right that that was moving in that direction. Lots of people seem to have been saying that in the last few days, but you saw no signs of that from the Biden's. But I think that is the, I think that is the, where this might lead. So if I were thinking that President Biden might have been about a step down tomorrow, would I be right in saying that this thing means that it's unlikely that he'll step down tomorrow because that might look a bit weird.

18:37Might look like he's stepping down because of yeah, the assassination Trump. So if he were to step down, we'd expect it to be pushed out a few days or weeks. It would happen. I think we did it today or tomorrow. Well, first of all, we don't know. There's no indication from him from him that it's going to happen. But if it were, if he were thinking about it, it wouldn't be, and he wouldn't do it in the middle of the Republican Convention. I don't think a might to sort of, you know, take all the attention away from that. But in their current planning before what happened today, they would have wanted attention on that.

19:05Take a break.

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20:20People are asking, by the way, whether Anthony Scaramucci and Katika are going to do an emergency podcast as well, the truth is they've already done it, and it was very, very good. I recommend people listen to that after they've listened to us. But I think for the Democrats, they are in disarray, maybe they're all word, because they know they've got a record to fight on, they know that they've got an opponent that they can attack. But at the same time, they are all over the places to who the candidate should be and how to get there. Just to play this through, we know that these assassination attempts, almost however you respond, have tended to lead to short -term boosts in popularity.

20:57There was an attempt on Berlusconi, Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, which led to a temporary boost in his popularity. Ronald Reagan's famous attack, the assassination attack, where he cracked this rather wonderful joke to the surgeon of, he was wheeled in saying, I hope you're not a Democrat, led to his popularity rating going up to 76 % in hugely high popularity rating. It's also true that we often, at this society, maybe a McCarred rescue, but we often in our popular consciousness want to believe that bullies are cowards. And so there would have been a hope for people who see Donald Trump and he is a bully, as somebody who would go to pieces, but of course he didn't, he pulled himself together, responded very, very vigorously.

21:47And that image, I think, will really help him. And I do think that up against Joe Biden, particularly, it just reinforces the sense of somebody who's vigorous, energetic, quick on his feet, whether or not he had his shoes on. I'm not sure what happened to shoes. You did, he said, let me get my shoes on. Yeah. And there was a little bit of the secret service saying, okay, found one shoe, found the other shoe. I also noticed that I know it was chaotic. But the person in the secret service who seemed to be kind of taking the leaders it was a woman, which I have to be honest, I've met a lot of secret service people in my time around different presidents.

22:27I don't remember seeing many women, but I thought that was an interesting detail. It's also incredible to see them in operation. And obviously they rehearse it and practice it again and again. But what I discovered in this sort of brief attempt, someone shoot me as how easily the whole thing can go wrong unless you were rehearsing it. Tell us a little more about it. It was in Iraq. And I had been given this very, very expensive security team who were mostly ex -British soldiers, but one of them had been in the French foreign Legion. And it was a big team. I think at one point I had six people all earning credible amount of money walking around around me to try to stop people from shooting me.

23:10And we were in the government building and somebody fired at me. And my lead security person who had been quite sort of, I don't know, mentioned his name and he moved on to other things, but he had been quite sort of pompous about showing off about his record. And incidentally, most of my security people were unbelievable when we were attacked and are compound, you know, credible things. You know, Mark Mitchell, who's going to use an MP up on the roof for the heavy machine gun holding off people in extraordinary. But on this particular occasion, it wasn't Mark, it was another guy immediately threw himself to the ground.

23:43And for while I was looking around, wondering what was happening. They kind of dusted himself off, stood up again and gone to me. But in the Trump situation, they move very quickly. And you can see a man coming forward, you can see the sniper on the roof immediately taking the shot. He's clearly seen, I think, the muscle flash, they've identified very quickly what's coming from the question is, how on earth they allowed this person to come so close? It's difficult, obviously, protecting people. But that should have been one of the easier places to protect people. There were very few roofs anywhere nearby.

24:11And they showed that. There was also, there was a thing that everybody had to go through to be body scanned and searched and so forth. So there are, listen, there's going to be an awful lot of questions about that. And of course, you know, if you go back to the JFK assassination and the report that was into that, which was at a time again when the country came together, but that has spawned so many conspiracy theories. And this one, we now live in a near -aware conspiracy theory is a much more commonplace. But I think just on this business about protection, I can't remember actually which president it was.

24:49But I remember once being on a trip to the States. And by comparison, we shouldn't really talk about the levels of security, but by comparison with American presidents, British prime ministers have relatively small numbers of people around them. And they have people ahead, they have people you know, planning and so forth. But they travel much, much lighter than the Americans who literally go with hundreds wherever the president goes. And I don't know where the Trump will be on the same level of protection as he was as president, but it'll certainly be very, very, very, very high. And I remember the then presidents head of the Secret Service detail kind of, it was a kind of, you know, something was going on.