BREAKING: Another Trump Assassination Attempt Foiled, with Buck Sexton, Rich Lowry, Susan Crabtree, Dave Aronberg, Bill Stanton, and More | Ep. 888
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to a special edition of The Megyn Kelly Show. We are live on youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly and also on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111. And here we are again, two months and two days after the first assassination attempt on our former president's life, we have yet another.

Yet another, an assassin somehow got by near the fifth hole at Trump's golf course down in Florida, the International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, shortly before 2 p.m. with an AK-47 and was apparently determined to kill former President Donald Trump.

Most importantly, the former president is safe at this hour. This we know, he released a statement a short time ago saying, there were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first. I am safe and well. Nothing will slow me down. I will never surrender. I will always love you for supporting me. Unity, peace, make America great again. How many times is this man gonna have to go through this? How many times are we gonna have to go through this?

Eric Trump said to Sean Hannity and he nailed it. My father's running out of lives here. How many rifles are going to be in firing range of my father? Good question. According to reports, the incident happened around 2 p.m. It was at Mr. Trump's golf course, as I said, in West Palm Beach. This is a private golf course. You cannot get in. Not just anyone can come on the course right now.

it and the area are engulfed in law enforcement personnel, as you can imagine. Reports say the former president was between the fifth and sixth hole when it happened. An armed suspect was spotted by the Secret Service detail protecting President Trump. And they were traveling about two holes ahead of where the former president was golfing. This is apparently the protocol that they have set up for him. And they noticed someone there.

It was about 300 to 500 yards away from Donald Trump. As they ran over to the suspect, he fled the scene. Local authorities tracked down the car. One person was taken into custody. This man had an AK-47 style weapon, scope, and a GoPro camera on the scene. It appears he meant to tape or video in some way the act of carnage he was planning. So he is alive and well right now.

in the custody of the feds, which is a good thing because we will have the opportunity to learn more about this man. And you can bet right now the Secret Service, the FBI and others are going through this guy's social media. I'm sure they're at his home and interrogating him while in custody about what was behind this assassination attempt. He did not fire shots. He was shot at according to the officials.

And I'll give you just some details as we bring in our guests, our first guests. I'll play the sound bite first from the FBI presser. This is West Palm Beach Sheriff Rick Bradshaw describing exactly what happened here. Watch this. 1.30 this afternoon.

call came out shots fired that was called in by the secret service fortunately we were able to locate a witness that came to us and said hey i saw the guy running out of the bushes he jumped into a black nissan and i took a picture of the vehicle and the tank which was great we were able to get a hit on that vehicle on i-95 as it was headed into martin county and they spotted the vehicle

and pulled it over and detained the guy. After that, we took the victim, I'm sorry, the witness that witnessed the incident, flew him up there, and he identified as the person that he saw running out of the bushes and jumped into the car. Now, in the bushes where this guy was is an AK-47-style rifle with a scope,

Two backpacks which were hung on the fence that had ceramic tile in them and a GoPro which he was going to take pictures of. Joining me now, Buck Sexton, former CIA agent and Bill Stanton as well, both are former NYPD guys. Thank you for being here. I want to tell the audience that while we don't have an ID on the shooter or attempted shooter at this moment,

We do have a tweet from Carol Markowitz, who reports for the New York Post and has been on the show many times with what she says is a picture of the man. We were told by the police he's 58 years old. We saw a picture from Carol. Again, we have not yet verified this. We have not heard law enforcement verify this. But she is down in Florida. She moved to Florida a year or two ago. And it does show a man appearing to be about that age, a white man, wearing

There's not much to describe other than that, but we're, Carol's going to join us momentarily and explain exactly what she saw and how she has this photo. So when she pops in, I'll put you guys on standby and we will talk to her. Let me start with you on it, Buck, as somebody who is former CIA, and we've been talking about this for a while, what's happened to former President Trump. What do you make of what we know so far? And why don't we have more from the authorities now, since they clearly have him in custody, they definitely know what his name is, and they know a lot more than they're disclosing to us.

Well, there's obviously a lot coming in, Megan. And I think to call this a second wake up call would be to minimize at some level what the threat environment has become, which is just entirely intolerable when it comes to President Trump's safety. I mean, we got the first time around unvaccinated.

by a miracle, and we were talking about that right after it happened. By some miracle, President Trump wasn't killed by the first shooter. This time around, the law enforcement response was better, at least in this regard. They shot before shots were able to be fired at President Trump on the golf course, but it does seem that there's clearly not enough advanced security work being done by Secret Service.

I was very clear before when I came on after the first, now we have to put numbers to them, right? The first assassination attempt, the second assassination attempt. After the first assassination attempt, it was quite clear that Secret Service failed miserably. And of course, the Secret Service director ended up being fired as was well-deserved. And there are others who I believe have been put on

essentially in paid leave. Well, wait, though, was she was she officially fired or was she allowed to resign? She resigned under I mean, she resigned under pressure. That's part of the but that's part of the irritating, to put it mildly, things about what we're watching here. Well, you know, the accountability or lack thereof. Go ahead. Sorry, finish. Nobody in D.C., as you know, Megan, is really fired. They're all told you resign or I'm about to fire you. But she deserved to be fired.

I agree. Some people deserve to be fired. This is actually the point Donald Trump was making at the debate the other night, that they don't fire anybody in this administration. Only he fires people. Sorry, keep going. No, it's fine. I mean, just from the security perspective, let's just take a look at what we know and what happened. First of all,

Something bizarre occurred in the reporting of this. I live in South Florida. I live in Miami Beach. And I have a lot of friends, including Carol Markowitz, who will be with us shortly, who are down here. We have tons of contacts in law enforcement. We know, you know, when you're closer to these things, you hear about them more quickly. Long before this hit the wires, I was getting text messages. I think someone just took shots at Trump again, right? And then there was this reporting after it broke publicly. Oh, no, they weren't intending to hit President Trump. How?

How there was this period of time for about an hour, I think today where that was the storyline. I want to know. I want to know how that came up. That's just utterly bizarre. The Trump golf course is in a pretty nice part of West Palm Beach. Not a lot of shootouts in broad daylight, you know, in the early afternoon with an AK-47 with an AK-47 with a scope on it. I mean, it's not, you know, so something was very weird with that. I can't give you more other than that just seems completely bizarre in retrospect. Look, Secret Service.

fired before he could be fired upon this time, but how somebody could get within the effective range of a scoped AK-47 and be in a position to threaten the life of President Trump a couple of months here before, less than two months before the election, after what happened here,

It's a massive challenge, I think, to the security situation or rather massive challenge to those who think the security situation is in hand. And just beyond that, Megan, the politics of this are you can't separate them. I mean, they've been saying President Trump is a threat to democracy and will destroy the country if he wins again. And they keep saying it even after he took a bullet in the ear.

And now another lunatic probably decided, hey, I'm going to save the country and be a hero because I'm a psychopath and I'm going to try to assassinate a president. You know, we're in a very high threat environment. And the rhetoric from the Democrats is completely irresponsible about this stuff. And they have not changed at all, even after Trump was shot.

Here's here is a discussion, a Q&A with the local authorities when they just had a presser on why President Trump did not have more secret service protection. A man who already almost had his life taken two months ago. What happened and for future reference, is there any other security involved in this?

Well, you got to understand the golf course is surrounded by shrubbery. So when somebody gets into the shrubbery, they're pretty much out of sight. All right? And at this level that he is at right now, he's not the city president. If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded. But because he's not, the security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible. So I would imagine that the next time he comes at a golf course, there'll probably be a little bit more people around the perimeter.

Unbelievable, Bill. So he's the foreign president, so he doesn't have adequate secret service to meet the moment, which I guess if you're talking about like George W. Bush, that maybe that would make some sense. But he literally almost got shot in the brain two months ago.

We were talking about this, and you were one of the first on AMEG, and it was literally a couple of hours afterwards before the press, as I call them, tried to suppress the real information. What you're seeing here is overall lethargy. I think the Secret Service needs a total audit from the top down, bottom up,

and they have to get squared away correctly. My understanding, when that report comes out, it's going to show glaring mistakes and just, I guess, complacency and lethargy in how they act and react. The fact that they didn't get this guy, that he got that close, is a prime example of how desperately the Secret Service, while they're individually, I think they're willing to put their lives on the line,

as an institution, as an agency, they really need an overhaul. It is unbelievable to me that they wouldn't have beefed up his Secret Service protection to the point where it equaled, yes, equaled that of the sitting president of the United States, speaking of whom, no statement from him. We've gotten a statement from Kamala Harris. We've gotten one from JD Vance. So far, absolutely nothing from the sitting president of the United States.

Is he there? Does he know that this has happened? We have no idea. Guys, stand by. Okay, just stand by five minutes. Carol's here. I want to bring her on. I don't want to lose you two, but I want to hear from her because she's got more information than anybody else does on this, at least so far. Okay, Carol Markowitz, thank you for joining us. You've got this picture of

of what you say is the shooter. Do we have a name? Cause I'm now seeing one reported online. We do. His name is Ryan Ruth. Um, that name is the name that I have. And, uh, that is a R O U T H R O U T H. Okay. So, so this is Carol breaking this picture of him. Um,

Ryan Ruth, just for the listening audience, it is a man in what appears to be a peach or a pink shirt, which looks like it's being pulled up over his head. He's got sunglasses on the top of his head. He looks skinny. He's got some sort of blue pants or jeans worn low. And he looks like his age of about late 50s. They said 58. Go ahead, Carol. So tell us what you know.

So I know that he somehow managed to escape from West Palm Beach from the golf course, and they got him nearby. His social media is largely about foreign affairs. He talks a lot about recruiting people to go fight in Ukraine. He has some anti-Israel posts about how Jews were not native to the land. And-

That's basically the story with him. He doesn't have anything about Donald Trump, nothing about Kamala Harris that I've seen. Although, of course, this is all very early and maybe he has multiple accounts and we're going to find out more as the story progresses.

It's really interesting to me that this guy is 58 and not 22, right? How many times have we seen in these mass shootings that it's a young man between the ages of 18 and 25 who we later find out snapped in some way, had schizophrenia, had a mental break. 58 is different. I'm sure they know by this point in local law enforcement or the FBI whether this guy's got a history of mental health issues. But in scouring the social media or what you know of the social media, there's a lot of

Does he sound like a lunatic? What does he or does he just sound like a politically charged guy? He he definitely sounds I'm not a medical health professional. This is completely my opinion, but he sounds off. He's recruiting people to go to war in Ukraine. He's saying he needs Afghan soldiers to go. It's sort of all over the place.

So you got this picture from law enforcement or from somebody close to law enforcement, I assume. And did you get any other details about what's likely to happen to this guy now or what is happening to him? I don't have any other details other than the photo and the social media account that I posted some information about. That's it. That's all that I have.

Have they pulled it yet? Carol, I haven't had the chance to go look at it since we got his name. It just broke. His name just came out just as we were going on, so I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. It's crazy the amount of information that's coming at us, but we're glad. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for tweeting out the photo. It may be the only look we get at this guy for some time. You're the best, Carol Markowitz. What a remarkable get. Good for her. It just goes to show you, you know, you

You develop your sources, you work your sources, you develop trust with your sources, and ideally your sources will trust you in a time like this. And that's exactly what just happened to Carol. Back to Bill and Buck now. From the presser that they had moments ago, they said, yes, there's an agent who goes one hole ahead of the president.

At a time. In this case, it was a couple of holes ahead. And this guy was able to spot the man with the rifle sticking out of the fence, the rifle sticking out of the fence. And that suggests to me, Bill Stanton, that.

He might not have been on the course. I don't know what the course looks like, but if there's a fence and the rifle sticking out of it, it sounds like this guy might have been on the other side of the fence. I'm really not clear because it looks like he ran and he successfully ran. He did escape capture from the cops initially.

Yeah, I actually live out in Palm Beach part time and I'm supposed to leave today. I'm going to go check that area out. And to your point, he obviously wanted to take a shot at the president. This now seems to be in vogue. And understand the volatile rhetoric. When you say if you're a politician and you're saying that President Trump is an existential threat, they call him Hitler.

These people view themselves, every bad guy doesn't view themselves as a bad guy. He's looking at himself, I'm guessing, as a savior. And they essentially, all these people that are calling President Trump Hitler, he needs to, he cannot get elected. You are, in effect, putting a target on his chest. And this needs to be addressed both by the politicians and by the Secret Service by enhancing security many times over.

But before I go back to Buck, can you tell me, Bill, how does a guy in the United States get his hands on an AK-47? I mean, if that's in fact what this guy had, that is a true weapon of war that would be illegal in all 50 states. Nowhere is that a lawful weapon for an American citizen to have.

Well, if it's a full auto, they make AK-47 semi-auto light. They make ARs that are semi-auto. You know, they make ARs that are 9mm. I own one of them. So we don't know the true make and model. But if it is a true AK-47 that can go from single to semi-auto to full auto, you know, unless he has some specific licenses that allow him, unless he has a federal firearms license, then he's committed suicide.

you know, got it on the black market, you know, under the table. He shouldn't have it at all to be walking around with an AK 47, if this is accurate and that no one's seen him until that rifle was spotted through the fencing, you know, that's a big glaring faux pas in my opinion.

My God, because Buck, it's like this guy, it seems like he drove up to the hole. This is my speculation. Again, just based on they said that the gun was coming through the fence and the Secret Service spotted it. Drove up to the hole, whipped out an AK-47 and was lying in wait for the former president of the United States to walk by. By some miracle, these Secret Service agents actually saw the gun coming through the fence, which probably wasn't that easy to spot because they said it was through the bushes. And

chased the guy at some point, opened fire on the guy. And yet the guy nonetheless made it away. I mean, just like, this is, it's too easy. Here's, here's the, the, I think the, the recognition Megan that is dawning upon everybody right now.

Did we really learn anything from the first assassination attempt? Have they taken security much more seriously for President Trump in the aftermath of him taking a bullet through the ear that was an inch away from killing him?

You see this, and I know they're going to say that this is a movement that I think the reports are that it was off schedule, so the public wouldn't know about this. But in West Palm, this guy's on this golf course. Trump is on this golf course all the time. And everybody who lives in this area, and Bill knows this, you know where the president is because there's a bunch of Secret Service guys around, and it's not hard to figure out.

that there's pattern analysis at work here for this bad guy to understand when President, it's a Sunday, President Trump probably gonna be golfing and this is where he's gonna be golfing. And you can even see that Trump Force One is parked at the Palm Beach Airport and you know that he's around, right? So it's not hard to figure out where he's going to be, that they would treat this as meeting the golf course in this area as somehow not worthy of the absolute highest level of security as though he were having a public event

is crazy. And I think that that's what we're going to find out happened here. It sounds like the guy went up the fence with an AK-47, and if he had been able to get shots off on the president, we could be facing the same tragedy that was unthinkable two months ago could have happened today. Look, Secret Service got four to six shots off, according to the press conference.

I'm wondering if it was with a sidearm or a long gun, four to six shots not hitting the target from the advance team. That's not particularly precise work. Curious to know what happened there. They're also firing in an urban area. You generally want to actually hit your target. But I do think that there was probably a sense from these Secret Service officers who were out at the hole in advance of President Trump, you know, we're not going to wait and call this in and call it back in. And, you know, there's a guy with a gun trying to kill the president. We're going to fire.

That is progress compared to what we saw in Pennsylvania. It's limited progress, but it's progress to be sure. And now I think you're going to see more and more people asking, how can the president feel safe doing anything at this point? If he can't golf on a Sunday in what is effectively his backyard on a course that he owns,

After he was, you know, we already got the warning, right? We already got the wake up call the first time around. Did we heed that? Who's in charge of the resources at DHS for the Secret Service detail? Have they dramatically ramped up? How could this be a dramatically ramped up? Megan, one of the problems from the first assassination attempt was that it told every lunatic across the world, but certainly across America, that it's not that hard to get a shot off on President Trump. In fact, it's not hard at all.

And now you have other people who are thinking, gee, I could probably do the same thing. And that's what happened with this individual. Not to mention that we now have a second guy who has very limited, it seems, social media presence online. Not going to be talked about that much. I mean, maybe we'll find out a lot more information. I know it's early in that whole part of the process. But we certainly didn't find out very much at all about the first shooter other than, you know, he was able to get multiple aimed shots off at President Trump. So this is another failure of security.

To be sure, I mean, the guy got a loaded gun with a scope on it at the golf course when President Trump is there and had to be fired upon in order to stop him from taking shots at the president. You know, there's this term just real quick. I mean, Bill, you're very patient with me. I'm sorry. I'm very fired up about this. But there's this term stochastic terrorism that the left often uses, Democrats often use, which is borrowed from mathematics, and it's effectively –

statistically likely, but uncertain, right? As in, it's going to happen. You don't know who's going to do it. You don't know when it's going to happen. But if you have enough in the air, if you have enough numbers, so to speak, it's going to... They say this whenever something bad happens to somebody that they can pin on Donald Trump. They'll say, oh, a person somewhere did a hate crime. It's stochastic terrorism from Trump. Megan, they've been telling half the country that President Trump is going to end the republic. And I don't mean they as in crazy people in internet chat rooms saying,

CBS News, CNN, The New York Times, they are saying President Trump is, Bill said it, Hitler, a fascist, going to end the country. If they really believe that, how is that not directly encouraging exactly what we are seeing again? No one's taken a shot at a president in 40 years since Reagan. Now we've had two in two months.

I think, sorry, but you know, I think we're all recognizing what's going on here. Yeah, that's perfect with that. But we're recognizing that this is not going to stop.

For the listening audience, when Buck did the tune number, it caused the balloons to go off. Balloons went off. Sorry about that, everybody. His YouTube feed, his Zoom feed, that happens sometimes, the weirdness of technology. I do want to underscore something about this man's name. Carol reported it with her source, who we are presuming is someone in law enforcement. That's the only person who would have had that shot of his body with his arms going up.

And it's all over online now, but to be clear, we have not yet had official law enforcement officers or sources come out and confirm that that is the picture or the name as we reported a moment ago. So we'll see that they'll, they will, they'll come and they'll tell us who it is. If it is that man, as reported, he does have bizarre tweets. There's one complaining, uh, that Trump would never go and do anything for the injured people, uh,

at his first assassination attempt and urging Kamala Harris to go. I'm not going to get into the specifics until we know whether this is him and read specific tweets word for word. But the irony, of course, is that Trump got hit this week for letting it slip that he had given a million dollars to the family of the fallen firefighter who got shot at his first, at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when they took a shot at Trump. It's okay. So

I haven't looked into that. I don't know whether that's true. But my point is simply, Trump did do something for the family. Trump is always said to be some sort of a demon by people who don't know or understand the man. He's controversial. That's true. But

At least half of that is because of the way the media chooses to cover him so irresponsibly, right? Suggesting for an example that he's this far right extremist on abortion, which he's the most moderate Republican president on abortion, I think in US history.

Yes, he appointed these three judges. Find me a Republican who appointed a judge who is not pro-life to the US Supreme Court. It didn't happen. My point is simply, they're always irresponsible when it comes to Trump rhetoric, and it makes its way into the bloodstream of the populace. And that's not to say that anybody who said one specific thing is directly responsible for this nut case, whether he's clinically nuts or not is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. But of

Of course, it makes its way into this guy's bloodstream and social media feed and so on. And the next thing we know, as Buck just said, two, not one, but two in two months. Bill, I want to bring it back down to you for one second, because one of the things law enforcement is going to be looking at right now is whether he was working with anyone, whether he had any sort of an accomplice. How do they even begin to start figuring that out?

Well, they're going to do a full scrub of his telephonic, you know, texts and phone calls. They'll have they're probably already in his social media, his cell phone. They're going to do that. What my first inclination, my knee jerk reaction here is what the far left is doing is they're making people become self-radicalized.

just like the terrorists are doing out in the Middle East where they hope to self-radicalize acts of terrorism. That's what we kind of sort of see going on here. Buck would know a lot more of that than I, where you give enough, as you put into the bloodstream of these people, some of them that obviously have mental illness—

And they take it upon themselves to save the republic because we will lose the republic if this person ever gets reelected as president. That's what's being put out in the zeitgeist. And they are taking all that hate and rhetoric from the cyber world and they're transposing it into the real one. They get their hands on a weapon. And unfortunately, based on history, it's not going to stop with two. And that's what's really scary.

what Bill's saying. Just real quick, Bill, I think you're making a really key point. But the people that are being radicalized, they're being radicalized by watching CBS Evening News or CNN or reading the New York Times. That's the right. This isn't Anwar al-Awlaki videos that you have to go into some special chat room and know the password and get asked Quranic verses so that they know you're not a Fed. Right. This is the most mainstream of mainstream. Trump is a threat to the republic. Trump is an autocrat. Trump needs to be stopped.

That's what they're saying, right? I mean, this is the problem is that it's not coming from the fringe at all. And how long did it pause after assassination attempt number one, Buck? About one week? It got him through his convention? That was it? It resumed immediately thereafter.

Yeah, well, this is the narrative they have sold to Democrats. And I think it's the only way that they can create this delusion of a moral high ground as they shove aside old man Biden without actually having Kamala Harris win a primary vote, a single primary vote, and then have her lie about

every position she's taken for the last, oh, I don't know, two decades and present herself as some kind of an enigma that we can figure out the reality of who she is after the election. It's because Donald Trump, all these phrases, existential threat, you know, end of the republic, undermining our institutions, an autocrat, a fascist. We've all seen this. And these are on the covers of magazines from supposedly intellectual and

uh, and serious publications. They're neither intellectual nor serious, but that's at least the reputation among, among Democrats. And, and I, I don't think that it's, it's a coincidence at all that, uh, that they all of a sudden, um, are, are changing, you know, that, that changed their tune for a few days. They go back to this. I mean, I think this has kind of been the strategy quite honestly, uh, is that they're going to continue to demonize him and they're going to continue to push that he is awful because, um,

Otherwise, they'd have to turn around and look the Democrats in the eye and say, we've been lying to you, not just for four years, but really from the beginning of the Trump presidency. I think it's reckless, Megan. And I think that there should be a backlash against this kind of stuff. I would never go on the air. You would never go on the air. Bill would never go on the air and say, you know, Kamala Harris wins and the republic is over and she's a fascist who's going to destroy all of America.

But that is absolutely mainstream to the Democrat side of things. Nothing is too far. They've brought criminal prosecutions against him. They say that he's a rapist. They say that he's a traitor. They say that he's a Russian asset. They've really run out of epithets for Donald Trump at this point. And they wonder that there are lunatics who are going to try to act on this. I mean, the problem the Democrats face is they've created a construct where people who believe what the New York Times is saying believe that force against Trump is moral.

This is what's happening. This is what you're, this is now twice in two months. These aren't just people that have some random bone to pick with the president. They think they are acting to stop because they're a little crazy, but they're watching the New York Times. They're reading, they're reading the New York Times, they're watching CNN and they're acting on it. And, and this is, this is a rare event, right? We've talked about this. No one's been shot since Reagan in 40 years. Trump has now been shot and shot at again, twice in two months, right before the election.

that we're supposed to think that nothing is particular about this situation. Okay, but here, but all right, look, I've got to play this for you. Here's where the media is going to go with this. Look at this woman, Alex Witt on MSNBC, who is an anchor

Look at her reaction and spin after she knew. This is after we learned about today's assassination attempt. Watch this. Do you expect to hear anything from the Trump campaign about toning down the rhetoric, toning down the violence? Or would that be atypical of the former president?

Well, Alex, remember back to the assassination attempt on President Trump's life and how, you know, there was talk of a new tone. And then the Republican convention was, by Trumpian standards, muted. And it did seem like he was, you know, just trying to take it down a few notches. But then by the end of his convention speech, you know, we were kind of back to where we started. That was Elise Jordan of Time magazine as the guest.

Unbelievable. So what this is about is Trump's unwillingness to tone down his, the most controversial thing Trump has said in the past several weeks is that he hates Taylor Swift. That does not get you a bullet or create cable news segments about how you need to lower the rhetoric, right? But calling someone Hitler is

That might warrant that kind of a discussion, but we didn't see that. In fact, they're the ones doing that. That's exactly the kind of magazine that was doing that, right? We saw that on the New Republic, that Trump was Hitler. And so really, even in response to this, once again, the response bill is maybe Trump really needs to tone down his rhetoric.

Yeah, it's essentially victim shaming. It's like you're blaming the target, not the perpetrators, not the people that are calling him Hitler, telling the country that if he gets elected, we lose our country. Not, you know, like they're self-radicalizing these people through their words.

But they're saying, you know, President Trump, stop speaking up for yourself. Stop running for president. Just lay down and let Kamala Harris win. And that's insane to me. That's the sin. They'll perpetuate this. They'll put a tweet out. There is no room for violence. The same way Kamala said, you know, don't come across the border.

I mean, you can almost imagine. Just FYI, NBC News is now also reporting the name of the attempted shooter is Ryan Wesley Ruth, R-O-U-T-H. More and more pictures of him are coming out online. I mean, I'll just describe for you that he's got very spiky blonde hair that looks like it's overly gelled or

has a lot of product in it. He's rather stylishly dressed in some of these photos that are appearing in social media. He does not look anything like some sort of vagabond. We don't know his story. I'm sure we'll know much more though. How much more, right? That's one of the questions, Buck, like how much, because we don't, we know precious little about the first shooter from Butler, Pennsylvania.

And I don't know how much we're going to learn about this guy either, since the new approach seems to be not full accountability, but keeps everything under wraps. We never got an explanation for the oh, well, it's unsafe to stand on a slanted roof. And that's why we weren't up there. We've just been lied to at every turn about the first one. And why should we expect anything different about the second?

No, and in fact, I think it's likelier this time that they will – or rather, they will even more easily bury this story and put it in the memory hole and move past this as fast as – first of all, the president didn't, thank God, didn't actually take a bullet this time, wasn't covered in blood.

Right. So so the the bar, in essence, on this is such that they'll just say, yeah, well, you know, Secret Service, they fired this guy. They did their job. You know, nothing really to see here, folks, because I mean, ultimately, this plays into exactly what we're talking about. You're saying it, Bill's saying it, I'm saying it, which is that the Democrat Party should be absolutely ashamed of.

of how they have positioned Donald Trump, who is the duly elected former president and obviously the Republican candidate in this 2024 election cycle. You know, I can tell you, Megan,

It was always interesting to sit down and read both the interrogation transcripts in particular of some of the worst Al-Qaeda terrorists because they had this rationalization for their action, but a lot of it would be things that people would say, well, that's crazy or that doesn't make sense or that's unfair.

Imagine you were to sit down with this individual, who, by the way, I'm sure we'll never hear from publicly. They'll just, you know, this guy will end up taking a plea in 12 months and, you know, you'll never hear from or see him again. Imagine you sat down with him and said, why did you do this? Yeah.

Why did you do this? It would be interesting, and I think it would be very instructive to the environment that the Democrats have created, because he would say, I've been told, and he could list all the different, he could say that there was an insurrection, the worst attack, Megan, the worst attack since the Civil War, therefore worse than 9-11. This has been said-

At the debate, right? So this individual, Donald Trump, according to Democrats, is responsible for an attack that's worse than the jihadist massacre of innocents that killed almost 3,000 people in one day and started a global war on terror. He's worse than that. Federal prosecutors apparently have agreed with that because they're trying to push this crazy case that Donald Trump said things that they don't like and therefore the insurrection is his fault.

Right. You could line up if you sat down and you were the individual who wants to explain why he would think, why he would act differently.

the way that he has here with this attempted assassination, he would be able to point to the most powerful and trusted Democrats in office, in media, in corporate America, and say, I agree with them. I just decided to do something about it. That is the mentality that has been that that is being fostered here by the way Democrats are.

Otherwise, someone explain to me, I mean, a threat to democracy, the worst attack since Pearl Harbor. If I could stop somebody who was trying to commit another Pearl Harbor, right? I mean, you start to go down this rabbit hole. They just say it because it's useful political rhetoric. That's how they'll explain it, right? That's how the CNN is. You know, we just made a reference to it just earlier this week at the presidential debate. One of the things that we reacted to was how personal she got.

the ad hominem attacks against Donald Trump. It wasn't normal rhetoric from a debate stage. She got very personally nasty with him. Yes, always like praised by the left as, oh, she just knew how to press his buttons. She just knew exactly which trigger would set him off.

Without any thought for, is this responsible talk from the woman who's asking us to make her leader of the free world? You understand that this man already had his life almost taken by an assassin? My point is simply, I'm gonna play the soundbite. If Trump had been speaking this way about Kamala Harris, and God forbid she had two attacks on her life,

Every single mainstream media outlet would be in full meltdown right now. Full meltdown over him and his words. But she can insult as long as she wants, as grossly as she wants. No one will say anything about her. You can have the Hitler-esque magazine covers. You can have, we'll get to what the Lincoln Project just did. You can have every representative on the Democratic side come out and say the worst possible things about him. And they'll just say, hmm.

No, it's absolutely irresponsible. Here's Kamala Harris just as a refresher from Tuesday night at the debate. Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So let's be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that. During the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump.

I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you're a disgrace. It is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy, consistently over the course of his career.

Attempted to use race to divide the American people. These dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they're so clear. They can manipulate you with flattery and favors. I mean, I'm sorry, Bill, but you know if the shoe were on the other foot, that stuff would be a nonstop loop on every single cable channel.

You hit it right on the head. And if the if the script was flipped, I guarantee you, you would find some D.A. looking to bring charges of being complicit in this crime. They would look to charge President Trump if this if they made an incitement on Kamala's second time. They would look to charge him with incitement.

Exactly. And this is where and this is where things are getting really, really scary. And to bring up a point that you brought up before about the Secret Service, no one loses their job. We saw that at the IRS. We saw with the feds that were texting each other how they have a backup plan. They just got like one point five million as severance, you know, until our civil servants are held accountable and being able to be fired.

We're going to see them dropping the ball time and time again. And I apologize. I'm a former civil servant and I've seen it and I still see it. Yeah, that's exactly right. No one's gotten fired. I do want to say this. They didn't even raise at that debate, Buck, the assassination attempt.

They didn't raise anything about Joe Biden's mental acuity and they didn't raise one question about Trump almost losing his life at the hands of this man two months ago. But they let her get up there and talk about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. He's the threat to democracy. So once again, it's a complete inability to digest that Trump could actually be the victim

He not in the left sense of that term, but in this case, an actual shooting victim. And in both cases, an actual victim of an attempted assassination. This one will be memory hole just like the first one. Absolutely. And if anything, I think they'll feel even less guilty.

uh, gross, uh, if they think that they're journalists, which they're not in just moving past this as fast as they can, because we're so close to the election that they view this as, as, as a necessary. There were one of the, one of the challenges are really one of the, um,

unfortunate truths that we've learned about journalists. And I mean, the biggest journalistic entities that are legacy media is they made a decision with Donald Trump that the old ethics and the old guidelines for how to do your job with integrity and decency are gone because decency and truth are anti-Trump.

And explicitly, the Washington Post and other places said that. I mean, whether it was on a group editorial or just from the day-to-day of their coverage, they decided that all the old rules have to go when it comes to their coverage of Trump. They have to be openly anti-Trump, even though they had played this game of, oh, we're neutral for a long time and we all knew there were Democrats. But the point is,

Now they have the same thing with overheated political rhetoric, with dangerous, with violent political rhetoric. I remember when they tried to blame Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords because Sarah Palin had had like targets on a congressional map or something like that, as in we're targeting this district, right? And they tried to do this whole thing and she ended up suing the New York Times for that. But there really has been a one-way street for a while now

of this kind of, I mean, let's just do a quick review, this level of extremely serious and in this case, very, you know, again, close to coming to fruition, even close to the first time around assassination attempts.

And they tried to kill a Democrat, a avowed Bernie Sanders supporter. By the way, I don't blame Bernie Sanders for this, but I'm just saying he was an avowed Bernie Sanders supporter who was screaming, this is for health care. I think that's noteworthy. While he was shooting at conservative members of Congress in 2018 on a baseball field in Alexandria.

That's never talked about when we look at political rhetoric. And, you know, when you have and I'm sorry, I mean, those people on MSNBC, they are both dishonest and very stupid. I know one of them, not smart people that they're talking about politically overheated rhetoric as though this comes from the right. It's as though they've been asleep for quite a while now. I know they'll always point to January 6th. And one of the big problems that Trump supporters have had with the maniacal focus on January 6th is

We had an election in 2020 under duress. BLM rioted for months. They rioted on my block, Megan. I mean, it sounded like I was in the background of a Vietnam movie or something with all the police helicopters and the sirens and everything going on as they were trashing my street. And businesses had to board up their windows for that 2020 election in anticipation of a Trump win because the Democrats were going to lose their minds.

So the one riot they can point to that's Trump-affiliated is the only riot that somehow is bad. Now, two assassination attempts against President Trump, a mass assassination attempt that shot Steve Scalise, almost killed Senator Rand Paul, could have killed a dozen members of Congress if the guy hadn't been taken out by a Capitol Hill police officer. We're seeing a trend here. Oh, and also the attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh by some lunatic. Democrats have taken—

rhetoric to a place where people are increasingly going to be violent and think that they are moral in doing so. And that is a very dangerous place for the country. And the lawfare that they're doing against President Trump ties directly into this as well, because the court system is being used as a tool of political violence now, locking people up because they like Trump, including maybe Trump himself.

And you know what else on the lawfare front, Buck, as it falls apart, as it should, right, even in these corrupt courts, as you know, the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in or a higher authority weighs in, like down in the Fannie Willis case, it's going up an appeal. She's going to get DQ'd.

people get angry, right? People get frustrated because they've been told by Democrats and by the media that these cases are a slam dunk, that the Mar-a-Lago case is a lock. It's a lock. And this is a corrupt judge who was appointed by Trump. And she's trying to manipulate the system.

And then when it doesn't go the way they want it to go, it inflames passions further. Not saying any of this caused this guy to do this today, but I'm sick and tired of the leftists doing this, blaming people like Tucker for any mass shooting we see. And then when the shoe is on the other foot, that's Trump's fault too. That's also the fault of Donald. He's the one who needs to control his rhetoric.

Just sick and tired of it. You guys, thank you both. Thank you both so much for being here. Bill Stanton. Bill, good to see you. Buck Saxton. See you guys. You know what? See you again soon. That's how I feel. See you on the next one. That's where this feels like it's going. Do you guys remember at that Tuesday night debate, Donald Trump saying this?

This is the one that weaponized, not me. She weaponized. I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I'm a threat to democracy. They're the threat to democracy with a fake Russia, Russia, Russia investigation. That went nowhere. We have a lot to get to. Lindsay? A lot to get to. And they moved right on. Wanted to ask about climate change.

Wanted to talk to him about J6. Wanted to talk to him about the fact that he said to a podcaster, I lost by a whisker. Did not want to hear about the assassination attempt. Did not want to hear about how they are the threat to democracy. That was of no interest to ABC News. You think it is today?

I mean, I just wonder whether David Muir is sitting there thinking, man, from a self-serving perspective, it sure would be great to have Trump on camera this week talking about threats to democracy and what the assassination meant to him, what it says about political rhetoric in the United States. What is his perspective? Do you think they wouldn't have asked that question of Kamala Harris if she had been the one who, God forbid, took a bullet?

Think again. There's a reason they didn't go back over that with Donald Trump. Okay, old news. Sure, it happened two months ago. But it's one of those moments that everybody in the world would have stopped to listen to. What has it taught you, if anything, about political rhetoric in the United States? Why wouldn't you ask that? Okay.

Maybe it went down the rabbit hole with why did you cover up Joe Biden's mental problems? Kamala Harris. Joining me now is Charles Marino. He's former Secret Service. He was an agent there and author of Terrorists on the Border and in Our Country. And John Spears, special forces sniper and sniper trainer for law enforcement and military and author of Warlord of the Unraveling. Guys, welcome back to the show.

We had you on two months ago to talk about the first assassination attempt, and here we are yet again. I'll start with you on it, Charles. This is former Secret Service guy. What do you make of the news today? Well, we got very lucky that the two agents in the golf cart, two holes ahead of the former president, spotted that muzzle coming through the fence line right along the golf cart path. There's going to be a lot of questions here.

regarding how this individual was able to get so close. And it comes down to one simple question, and that is, is the Secret Service providing the necessary resources and protocols to match the threat level against the former president? And I don't think they're there yet. They are still stuck in this world of he's a former president, here's what typically former presidents get with respect to protection. And they're not taking into account the uniqueness

of him being a former president and now Republican nominee and the increased political rhetoric coming from the left that is in no doubt, in my mind and experience, leading to this increased threat level against the former president. So the Secret Service- Why? Explain that. Why do you think that?

Well, because you never know who you're speaking to. You never know who you're going to radicalize. And what you have is you have these nutcases that are going to come out of the woodwork. They're going to interpret what you're saying as indicating that they must take action to mitigate this threat being former President Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, which is not true, which should not be said. And again, you're radicalizing our

a lot of different people, whether it's the shooter we saw in Butler or now this individual today in Palm Springs. You're bringing these people out of the woodwork that are just, one, they want notoriety for themselves. Two, they feel like they're being tasked based on this rhetoric from the left to undertake these operations in an attempted assassination.

And it's not good. It's not good for the country. It's certainly dangerous and irresponsible when it comes to the safety of the former president. And I think you were all right based on your previous discussions that had this been occurring the other way,

Most certainly we'd be hearing about it from the mainstream media saying that the former president and his campaign were responsible for these actions of these lunatics. So, I mean, to me, it's just it was just for the record, it was Palm Beach, Florida. I know you said Palm Springs. I know, you know, it's Palm Beach. Oh, Palm Beach. Sorry. The.

What we see after every single one of these mass shootings is the Democrats running to find a Republican to blame or a conservative to blame. And typically, we in the space that I broadcast in will be quick to say this is ridiculous. Stop doing that. You can't take a madman and his crazy deteriorating mind and ascribe something somebody said on cable as the as the reason behind this madman's decision to kill. It's a crazy person's decision.

But I have to tell you, Charles, even I now looking at this, like, how can you not pause to say there's something happening here that's stirring up the crazies at a minimum? And we do need to pay attention here. I mean, it's fine. Like we tried not to go down that road the last time.

It's it's staring us in the face and it would be irresponsible at this point to not at least entertain the notion that the over the top rhetoric about this man in particular has gotten to the point of true danger on it. John, what do you think?

We have passed stochastic terrorism and we have now entered deterministic terrorism. So I'll explain. In the early 2000s, the left developed the term stochastic terrorism.

Stochasm is the mathematical and epidemiological condition where there is no known threshold from acts to which there is an end effect. The other way of saying stochastic is to say non-deterministic. I'll explain and it'll all come together.

We use those terms most frequently in radiation biology when we're talking about what level of radiation exposure produces an injury like a kind of cancer. So to get radiation-induced cataracts from exposure to radiation, there is a set threshold

below which you won't get radiation cataracts, above which you will absolutely get radiation cataracts. For thyroid cancer, it's stochastic or non-deterministic. You really don't know what radiation exposure or how many exposures could lead to you getting thyroid cancer. So in the early 2000s, the left aimed...

against conservative talk radio and people like yourself to say all these crazy right-wing people are saying all these things in the media and it's going to encourage some crazy right-winger to commit some act of violence or terrorism against somebody in the left. Well,

20 years later, we know what the threshold is. The left has crossed that threshold deterministically, and we now have two episodes back to back where

where rhetoric from the left has ignited someone on the left to try and assassinate the leader of the conservative movement. So you'll be the leader in this, Megan. We don't know that for a fact. We don't have causation. This is speculation. Out of frustration at the man continuing to get...

shot at. I mean, the fact that this guy had an AK-47, that's what they're saying at least now, within 300 yards of the president. I mean, I'm not a gun expert, John, you are, but you tell me that that could easily take out the former president. If these Secret Service agents hadn't seen that rifle coming through the fence, he'd be dead. What they're saying right now, and this will be solved easily with one picture, is they're saying an AK-style weapon with a scope

It is very difficult, takes a lot of modification and aftermarket parts to put any kind of optic, a scope, on an AK-47. What this is initially hinting to me that it's by AK style, that it's actually a weapon called an SVD, a Dragunov, a Soviet-style sniper rifle.

which is the AK-style weapon that you can put a scope on. So if that does, in fact, end up being the case, what that tells us is something far more complex about these shooters' preparation to carry out this act against President Trump. Oh, interesting. Why? Go on. I mean, what would he have had to do? Could any normal citizen get their hands on those things?

Certainly, it's easily done. They're completely legal, semi-automatic weapons, but it's the difference between...

working at these distances, someone planning in advance enough to say, I need a scope, a magnified optical sighting system to be able to engage my target. And it's going to say a lot about the person's planning and preparation and knowledge. And it's, you know, the last shooter

in Butler County, likely planned this for a long time, but used the tools at hand, an AR-style rifle,

which is widely available. If this pans out that the shooter actually had a Dragunov, an AK-style weapon that is an actual sniper weapon, it's going to tell us a lot about their preparation, their intention, and maybe even about potential support that the suspect received in preparation for this act.

Charles, right now, and the days to come will bring the full story. This guy looks like a nut if you see some of the social media accounts, postings that are breaking. He's very focused on Ukraine, very focused on the war in Ukraine, offering to pay people something like $1,200 to go fight for Ukraine. But here's one

That sounds also confusing. This is from January 8th, 2024. Again, cautioning the audience, assuming this is the guy's account. It's an unusual name, Ryan Ruth, R-O-U-T-H. And oftentimes the media runs with the name. The name's been confirmed by law enforcement now, but is this exactly him? They haven't exactly said this account is linked to him. Okay, so there's a little wiggle room in here. But he posted on that date,

Thank you.

to change the course of this election, break norms and give us an option. Now, I mean, just that's nuts because, of course, Nikki Haley is a hawk on Ukraine and Vivek Ramaswamy is exactly the opposite. And this was one month after the Republican primary debate

with yours truly at which that was really clear, really clear. So I'm just saying this doesn't seem like ordered thinking by somebody. And there are posts on the others. I mean, there's some anti-Semitic posts. I mean, my lay person's opinion so far is having seen a lot of these, the guy had a screw loose and I don't know what to make of that. Like, I think that's part of the reason the media moved on from the first Trump assassination because they were like, uh,

He's a nutcase and we can't find one clear ideology, says the FBI. So we've got to just chalk it up to free country. Secret Service needs some reforms. And if this is the case with this guy, they're going to do the same thing. Is there any merit to that? Well, there's merit to the fact that they've definitely moved on and written off the mental health aspect of the Butler, Pennsylvania shooter. But what I can tell you is these are some of the most dangerous people. And here's why.

When you have significant mental health issues, but you're still able to formulate a plan of attack, that makes you a very, very dangerous person. That becomes the biggest concern for the U.S. Secret Service. And that's what we had here. There is no doubt, just like we did in Butler, that we are going to find at this incident in Palm Beach that

There was pre-planning that went into this attack. There was some type of surveillance that was being conducted. There was some type of site familiarity. Why did he choose that specific location, that specific fence line? He knew the proximity to the street.

that aids in not only getting to the target quickly, but also fleeing the area quickly to get back to a vehicle. So we're dealing with people that are conducting operations well in advance to the act that they're carrying out. That's a concern. And for the Secret Service, the issue becomes, how are they able to get better at detecting and disrupting in the planning stages? Now, there's no doubt that this individual

from today, this suspect is going to be of record with somebody. He's either come to the attention of the FBI, local law enforcement, or even the Secret Service before. There will be some named familiarity based on the type of postings, if those are confirmed, Megan, that he has risen to the level of a federal agency, especially when you're talking about trying to facilitate

getting human beings to a war zone to fight like the Ukraine. So I expect to hear more about previous encounters of this individual with law enforcement in the United States, as well as what the federal agencies have to say about their encounters with him. Before you came on, Charles, we talked about the fact that the West Palm Beach law enforcement

came at the press conference and said, you know, he's a former president. If you were the current president, he'd have more Secret Service. And in a vacuum, you can understand that comment. But our former president, who's now the Republican nominee for president and could be president again in a matter of five months, almost had his head blown off 60 days ago, 62 to be exact.

And there was I'm not blaming it on this guy. This guy was honest about I mean, he does the guy the sheriff West Palm Beach is not in charge of Donald Trump's Secret Service. But he's calling out a reality and admitting what the situation was. I don't understand. Tell me how Secret Service could do anything other than go full bore on Donald Trump's protection after assassination attempt number one.

Yeah, it should have been implemented even prior to Butler, Pennsylvania. Remember, we've got a foreign adversary in Iran who would like nothing more than to assassinate the former president based on his role in killing Soleimani earlier in his administration.

Not only do you have the foreign threat, but you also have the domestic threat environment. I mean, how many times do we have to listen to the FBI director testify before Congress to say that the threat environment is the highest that he's ever seen on record, even higher than pre 9-11, you know, 23 years after those horrific attacks and look at where we are as a country in terms of threat level.

Plus, we've got the open southwest borders, 180 different countries coming across our borders from special interest locations. Who's to say that one of those individuals hasn't been tasked by a country like Iran to come in here and carry out an attack against the former president? So there's just too many unknown unknowns right now in the system, which has the threat level unresolved.

off the charts and the Secret Service needs to get away from assigning resources based on title. When the Secret Service takes on protective responsibilities for an individual, it doesn't say, look, when you become a former president, this is all you're going to get. And if it doesn't work out, tough luck.

No, they own the totality of the problem. They own the totality of the threats that come not with the title, but with the specific individual. And we have a lot of uniqueness in former President Trump. I mean, he's the Republican nominee. He is highly sought after target by the left.

with vitriol that is a major causation to the increased threat level against him. And the Secret Service needs to be dynamic in the way that they're providing resources at a level that addresses the threat adequately. Okay, so that leads me to, John, what actually happened today, because what we saw was

This attempted assassin, first of all, we have the picture of his two backpacks posted on the fence right on the perimeter of the golf course. We believe this is the exact area. This is from law enforcement from which he planned on taking the shot. You can see the gun left behind and also a GoPro. So apparently he wanted to film it. That's the assumption. He wanted some glory on his mission.

But the thing that is equally stunning, John, is that Secret Service found him

and chased him. And he got away initially. He got into his car and it was thanks to an alert eyewitness, a citizen who saw the guy. I mean, he didn't, I presume, know what had just happened. Saw him, got into his black Nissan, saw him drive away. And the citizen, God bless him, took a picture of the car and the license plate and told Secret Service. And then they got him and then they arrested him. And

I realize over here in my safe desk, I have 20-20 vision, right? I've never fired a gun at anybody. But doesn't it seem like the kind of thing where he should not have gotten away and we should not have had to depend on this quick resolve of the citizen eyewitness?

It is a boots on the ground issue, an issue of resources and manpower. When last we sadly came together, Charles and I both discussed that it was obvious that the agents seen with President Trump in Butler County were not

Secret Service. And of course, that was true. The reason they looked like people pantomiming what Secret Service agents would do is because we now know, in fact, they were DHSI agents who were detailed from other field offices who received some Zoom training on dignitary protection. So clearly,

President Trump has been assigned more protection, but still not up to the level that he deserves given the proven threats going against him.

So remember in 2017 with the congressional baseball shooting where six people, including Congressman Steve Scalise, was wounded. That was 2017. It wasn't until 2021 that the FBI actually called that act domestic violence.

terrorism. Up until that point, the FBI had maintained that the shooter's motivation was death by cop. Four years later, they admitted it was domestic terrorism. The reason I'm bringing that up is at this point,

House Homeland Security Committee and the House Oversight Committee should be involved to make sure that government is doing its job to protect President Trump. But I think until that happens, there is a very viable stopgap measure that the Trump campaign should put into place immediately.

They should put the call out nationwide to our sheriffs.

and call them to send their tactical teams to support the detail who is taking care of President Trump's public appearances. And sheriffs nationwide will answer that call now. It is no different than what happens after a major storm hits a city in the U.S.,

Power goes out, power cooperatives around the country send power linemen to restore vital services for public safety and the preservation of life. In much the same way, instead of still relying on

on local limited resources to augment the Secret Service to protect President Trump, the Trump campaign should make a nationwide call to all sheriff's offices to supply sheriff's SWAT teams to augment on-the-ground security detail response

Because if we're waiting for DHS or house oversight or house homeland security to be able to have an effect, we're going to have a dead presidential candidate. Oh, my God. I mean, I think is Charles Dan Bongino. He worked for the same agency you did. He was on personal protective detail for President Obama. He testified before Congress in the wake of the first assassination attempt. And listen to what he said.

Fair point.

Fair point. And I've known Dan almost 30 years now. So it doesn't surprise me that he called this right. And look, when something is made to look easy, more people want to do it.

And that's the problem, is Butler PA let a lot of people into the secret that it was going to appear to be easy to take out the former president. And that's a scary, scary place to be for the Secret Service. And they know this. And for Donald Trump. This is...

That's right. And look, I got to tell you, this definitely keeps me up at night because there's a lot of people that are studying the way these things are done. Now, two separate incidents to study, see what went wrong, what went right. And, you know, we're going to have some people out there that want to do the former president harm that are going to be studying these two case studies together.

of how to attempt to assassinate the former president. And so, you know, we always worry about copycats after these shootings of the mass shootings. We always worry about copycats. And why wouldn't the same rule apply here? Keep going. Sorry, Charles. That's right. No, that's that's exactly right. The copycats are going to going to come out. And the Secret Service also needs to work with the FBI and others to get better at

at starting to monitor all this chatter because there is a significant increase in chatter amongst people that want to get out and act out against the former president in one way or another. The other question I have for you, though, is explain to me, Charles, as a former Secret Service guy, how, I mean, I feel like if they said, Megyn Kelly, you're in charge of protecting Donald Trump today,

I'd say, okay, what's he doing? He's golfing. Okay. Well, we're going to need to make sure that the entire golf course is secure, both on the course and right immediately over that little fence, which is right by the fifth hole where someone could easily drive away super quick. I just, maybe I'm nuts, but I feel like I could have anticipated that. Is it

just a lack of manpower, a lack of imagination. We heard reports now that it was a young Pittsburgh female agent who didn't plan correctly for what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania. I don't know whether they've made any, I don't know whether that woman's still employed there. I think she is. She's in Pittsburgh. Is there somebody else who might be responsible for Mar-a-Lago? Like,

Because the planning piece of it is equally important to the guys on the ground who actually have to pull the guns and take out the bad guy. When we see the agents react...

the way they had to, those two elements that were in that golf cart going ahead of the former president. And you see that the detail that's assigned to the former president, that they have to react. That means something went significantly wrong, as we saw in Butler and as we saw today with the overall security plan.

And once again, just like the conversations we were having after Butler, we're also going to be talking about today's incident and asking what was up with the perimeters.

Why wasn't that street closed along the fifth hole, the fifth putting green where he was? So why did it remain open? And again, you don't need to keep these streets closed the entirety of his visit there. But as he's playing the holes that are closest to these streets and these roadways, you can have requests that the local police do spontaneous shutdowns of these traffic. I've carried out protection on hundreds of golf courses.

with the president, the vice president, all the way down to foreign dignitaries. And you've got to put the security plan in place that makes the most sense to the threat level assigned to the protectee. So if they're not assigning the proper threat level to the former president after what happened in Butler, then they're in much worse shape than what I thought.

But I think they know it, and I think they know it, and for some reason, they're having a hard time getting there with the overall security plans that are being implemented to keep him safe. And yes, is it going to be a problem for some of the people in Palm Beach when streets get closed down? Yes, but look, this is what happens. Go ahead, John.

The last time we were together discussing the tragedy in Butler County, one of the main issues was talking about was there a conspiracy at some level? And my point continues to be that it's not a conspiracy at the ground level between the people on the ground or withholding Secret Service snipers from returning fire. I guarantee nothing like that happened. If there is conspiracy.

And there is, it is at the level of DHS to deny President Donald Trump the proper resources.

So again, stochastic terrorism no longer applies. This is deterministic terrorism. The threshold has been reached and left behind. The hateful rhetoric of the left from the corporate media and including our own government against Donald Trump has factually inspired terrorism.

assassination attempts. And I'm certain that's what's going to come about with this second shooter. Knowing these things, the time for scaled and half-stepped measures to increase President Trump's security, that time needs to be over now.

Full measures must be taken. And if they're not forthcoming from the level of DHS, I've made the best recommendation I know how that is supported by the Constitution to call on U.S. sheriffs and law enforcement agencies to provide adequate, trained,

technical operator response to help protect Donald Trump now. Well, here's the other question, John. Here's the other question, John, because you've got Eric Prince of Blackwater. You know, he knows a thing or two about security situations and military tactics. And he he tweeted out the following.

At Governor Ron DeSantis, he's tagging the governor. Please assume direct control of the investigation into this attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump. Tell the feds to wait in line until Florida resources have done a thorough and transparent look into all the evidence. The feds have dropped the ball thoroughly on Butler PA. Time for Florida to save the day, especially since this attempt happened only 300 meters from the state forensics lab. I

I think that means I think the crime scene was scrubbed. The crime scene where the shooter took his shots at President Trump was scrubbed. The body of the shooter who was turned over to the local corner, which is normal. The body was sent for cremation.

When in the history of law enforcement where there has been a national incident of this characteristic, has anything like that ever happened?

How can those acts alone not cause a pang of confidence in every law-abiding citizen that there is, in fact, some level of conspiracy going on at the federal level? It is a shame. It should never have happened.

Oh, boy. I mean, that's a big charge. But there is reason to doubt their competence at the least, Charles. And I don't is Eric Prince onto something that this should not be just turned over to the feds, which, by the way, I believe it already has been.

Yeah, well, look, a lot of great points here, starting with is DHS giving the Secret Service everything that they need to protect the former president? Again, in Ali Mayorkas, the secretary, we're also talking about the same person that repeatedly denied protection for RFK Jr., not because he didn't meet the criteria, not because the threat level wasn't there, because he just didn't want to give it to him.

So we know that he's already politicized, the secretary, that is, has politicized the Secret Service in conducting their mission in the way that they need. And there is no doubt I've been calling, look, 22 years after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, there is no way that the Bush administration got it right on day one in how they built that department.

and it's time to take a look. And that's up to and including removing the Secret Service from the Department of Homeland Security and putting them someplace back in Treasury, for example, where they're going to get the attention, the resources, and the budgeting that they need to do the mission the way that it needs to be done. You never heard about these issues with the Secret Service until they went into the Department of Homeland Security.

And all of a sudden they start having all of these issues. They don't have the right amount of manpower. The budgeting has been slow to catch up and the list goes on and on. So that needs to be looked at. But, you know, the Secret Service has also hurt themselves in a lot of different ways. I was I was happy to see that they sent the Secret Service representative to the press conference today.

That was different than what they chose to do in Butler. And I was critical of that. I thought that was a huge strategic error. You've got to instill confidence and transparency to the American people on this. And with five ongoing investigations still underway with respect to what happened in Butler, the confidence has not been restored and rightfully so. So let's see. The congressional report should be coming out tomorrow.

Any day now. And I understand that according to Senator Blumenthal, a lot of people are going to be shocked by just how badly the misses were in the lead up to Butler, Pennsylvania. So what are we going to learn about today?

Oh my gosh, it's overwhelming. It's deeply alarming. I mean, poor Trump. All you can think is poor Trump and the poor Trump family that has to keep going through this. I mean, there's a wife here. There are children here. I know the children are absolutely flabbergasted. They're angry. They're angry that this keeps happening to their father. Who wouldn't be? This is not okay in the United States of America. This is third world banana republic shit.

And we sorry, guys, I just it's so infuriating. It is you are a credit to us all. And it's wonderful to have you. Thank you for your expertise tonight. Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Megan. Isn't it? I mean, all right. I'm sure you're feeling it, too. You can't believe it. You like when they first said that there was some sort of shootout or

Down in Florida, it was between two civilians and it was just near the Trump golf course. It was like, okay, well, that can happen. The media gets things wrong all the time. So maybe it didn't involve Trump. And then you hear AK-47 style rifle and it's like, okay, I think we all know what this was.

And here we are again. And how many more times will we be in this exact spot if something doesn't change? Joining me now is Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review. And Rich, like most of our guests line up right now, we were together last time. How many times are you and I going to get together about breaking news that President Trump was almost assassinated? But yet here we are.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. I was talking to some folks last night at an event. We're talking about the campaign. And someone was saying it's like a TV show. And I was kind of joking. Well, if the writers are in the TV show trying to do the next twist, they're probably going to say we can't do an attempted assassination again. That was yesterday. And here it is. I mean the only thing like it in American history, Gerald Ford, two very serious attempts within I think about 17 days.

In the 70s, one of them came within five inches, which used to be a high standard for closeness. Donald Trump obviously exceeded that in the first assassination attempt. But after that, you have to go to Lincoln. I mean, they're just they're very serious, continuous threats against his life. And we was asked about this once. He said there's nothing like getting used to it.

And that's the way Donald Trump might feel now. But he shouldn't. There's no way, given the seriousness of the first one, that anyone should be within any miles of him a potential threat. And the idea that someone could just hang out at a golf course and be within 400 yards

of the former president with a rifle is just shocking and totally unacceptable. And once again, we have ordinary Americans stepping up and pointing out these threats. They were saying it the first time around. They've been heated initially.

And in a decent time, the first one never would have happened. And we've had the spectator alive and we wouldn't have the former president nearly killed this, this thing too, where we have to be extremely grateful as you've, you've pointed out earlier to, to this guy who tracked them and, and gave the license plate to the cops and the description of the car, the cops. But this is just so wrong. You can, you know, we could be inches away from a tragedy. They'll change American history, obviously be, you know, uh,

A man would be killed and his family would be devastated forevermore, and it would derange American politics. We still talk – we talked about this the first time around. We talk about these assassinations decades and decades later and still litigating them and arguing about them. So this cannot happen. It cannot happen. And so finally now they'll get the message. But what's the excuse for not getting it the first time around?

Yeah, they already had a warning as if they needed one, that there are dangerous lunatics in this country and they're really focused on Donald Trump. They already had the warning. They got their mulligan. A man was killed during their first mulligan and Donald Trump got shot in the head. Thank God, just an ear. So he was fine. But here we are again, two months later. I mean, the amount of

that would be required in order for this to happen again. It's just stunning. They got complacent again. Maybe you could even understand, oh, 10 years later, they got complacent about protecting Trump, 10 years post-presidency at the golf course. Two months later, when every day we get another warning about how the Iranians want to kill him. I mean, it's inexcusable. So I want to shift, though, because there's a lot of politics to talk to you about around this, Rich. We have yet to hear anything

from the sitting president of the United States. My team will check me on this, but as of half an hour ago, we hadn't. The sitting president of the United States, Joe Biden, has said nothing, nothing. Vice President Kamala Harris issued a statement that reads as follows. I have been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former President Donald Trump and his property in Florida, and I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America. That is perfectly on brand.

Yeah, it's just boilerplate. And it's outrageous we haven't heard from President Biden. And this will be, I fear, by noon tomorrow, this will be old news, right? The first one that nearly killed him, a millimeter or two, was absorbed and kind of forgotten within two weeks or so. And this will go away even faster because he wasn't hit. That's the standard now. If he's nearly hit in the head, okay, maybe it's news. But if the guy was just –

hundreds of yards away, and if it weren't for an alert Secret Service agent seeing the muzzle poking through a chain link fence and this bystander pointing him out, that's just not up to the standards of the first attempted assassination. So I just fear it won't be a big deal. I mean, can you imagine? People have pointed this out on Twitter. Barack Obama had a very serious assassination attempt twice within two months, once getting hit.

You know, or Kamala Harris. Everyone's hair would be on fire. And it's just it's not going to happen this time. They're going to ignore it. You know, they'll cover it a little bit here and in the morning. And I think it goes away. Now, the one the one caveat I would say to that is they can't black box the motivation. Right.

whether they're hiding it or whether we just can't know, like they did with the first guy, immediately got neutralized too late, but got neutralized very quickly. This guy they have. So we will learn more about him, his background and his motives.

Yeah, I mean, whatever the tweets show, he showed up at the golf course ready to shoot Donald Trump. So I think we're pretty clear he was not a Donald Trump supporter. This is the kind of conversation we had to have after the first shooter took shots at Donald Trump. I should...

say that J.D. Vance has issued a statement as well. I am awash in texts from my producer, so stand by and I will get it for you. But all we've heard from, for example, former President Barack Obama, who's tweeting out about other stuff now. I mean, he's like casually tweeting about nonsense. Was he retweeted? He retweeted that benign, anodyne Kamala Harris tweet.

That's it. So we have nothing from Joe Biden and we have a retweet from Barack Obama. And now here we have J.D. Vance saying, I'm glad President Trump is safe. I spoke to him before the news was public and he was amazingly in good spirits. Still much we don't know, but I'll be hugging my kids extra tight tonight and saying a prayer of gratitude. Rich, stand by just a couple of minutes, please. Dave Ehrenberg, who is the Palm Beach County D.A.,

is with us now. He's a frequent guest of the program and you saw him if you watch that presser of the law enforcement officials. He's here with us now and able to speak about this. Dave, are you with me? Megan. Hi. So good to see you. Thank you for making time. I know you're very busy. We really appreciate it. State attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida. What can you tell us that we need to know?

Well, it's amazing how fast the media got the details of this matter. I think you've got the information. You know who it is. It was a guy who, while former president was golfing at his golf course, put a AK-47 style rifle through. He was through the bushes to the fence area. And you can get a look to see who's golfing there. But Secret Service was on top of it. They saw the gun and they fired.

and he had pointed the gun at Secret Service, and that's where we at the state level

We're going to file state charges. You could file, based on those facts, for aggravated assault with a firearm, which especially if you pointed at a Secret Service member would be a second-degree felony punishable about 15 years in prison. And at the press conference today, I said that we were probably going to move first because the feds at that point had not

announced that they were going to file the charges. They were still working on it. And we didn't want him to just be released. And so we were going to file the charges, or at least we were working on the warrants and to do pretrial detention. But then afterwards, the federal officials came in and they said they will be taking over the case. They will be filing the charges. So this is now entirely a federal matter, not a state matter.

I'll bet. I'm sure they want jurisdiction over this one. Do we know anything about the guy? Has he spoken and has he been appointed counsel? We don't know. There are videos of him on the Internet. You see he was obsessed with Ukraine. He is someone who apparently lives in Hawaii. It was the last time I checked. But he's not someone that I was familiar with. He's not a frequent flyer with our office. I was not familiar with him. So I don't have any other information about the guy.

But, yeah, it's gotten more serious now because the feds are involved. They are going to be filing the charges. They're going to keep him in pretrial detention. And the state, we're going to hold off on our warrants and our pretrial detention. We're going to defer to the feds. Will he be appointed counsel, Dave, if he doesn't bring in one of his own?

If he can't afford a lawyer, yes, he'll be appointed counsel. It depends whether he can afford it. Of course, he lives in Hawaii. Generally, it's not a state where you're indigent, especially if you wonder how he was able to fly from Hawaii to South Florida. It usually takes a lot of scratch to fly from Hawaii to South Florida. So there are a lot of open questions. He will be afforded a lawyer only if he can't pay for one. Do we know if he had a job? Was this a working man? No, I don't know that.

I don't know that much about him other than he just has a lot of obsession on Ukraine and just had a lot of bizarre comments on social media. And I just don't know beyond that. There was some back and forth among smart people who are informed and connected to the Secret Service online about who shot first. Do we know? Do we know for a fact who shot first?

According to reports, it was Secret Service who shot. Unless there's something out there that I'm not aware of. I'm not aware that he actually fired his weapon. It looks like Secret Service saw that he had it. Okay, so that's your latest. Well, yeah, that's what I know. Unless you have some other information.

No, no. I just it was speculation. So I was trying to figure out whether there was something more we needed to know. Can you just explain? Is there is it the case that you can drive up in your car and there's a chain link fence right there and you can go up to it? And if you wanted to stick a gun through it and potentially shoot somebody on the golf course, you could.

Yeah, so you have to realize the golf course, Trump International Golf Course, it's a beautiful course, but it is not next to Mar-a-Lago. It is in West Palm Beach. It's near a strip club and the jail. In fact, the jail overlooks the golf course. You have inmates there sometimes making noise while you're teeing off. And it's guarded by a fence all around it, and then there's a big hedge, a bush, where you can't see in it.

But could someone walk through the bush and then in the fence point a gun? Yes. In fact, you've seen pictures of former President Trump golfing from people who did just that. They just didn't point a gun or anything, but they pointed a camera. So it's happened before. But the Secret Service, to their credit, was on this one. They were able to see

someone with a rifle sticking out. And, you know, that could be hard to do because it's a large area around the golf course. And so they obviously did a really good job noticing this. Did you talk to the cops who were involved in this guy's apprehension at all?

I did not. I spoke to the sheriff and we had that press conference. But no, the sheriff was pretty forthcoming with what happened, how there was a good Samaritan who saw it and then gave information to the Secret Service. And then the chase was on. The guy apparently drove all the way to Martin County. Martin County is about –

40 minutes north of Palm Beach County. So he got up there and then was apprehended without incident. Yeah, by the sheriff's deputies up there in Martin County and then is on the way back here to Palm Beach County. How did they find him in Martin County? Just regular traffic stop. They were on the lookout for that car. I don't know if they had the license plate, but they had the description of the car and they're able to define him and pull him over.

Was he on the same? He was on 95 North, Dave. Is that where he got pulled over? You know, I don't know exactly where he's pulled over, but he did take 95 North. I don't know exactly where the pullover spot was. Is that remarkable to you that he just kind of went north as opposed to pulling off on one of the exits and, you know, lying low in some smaller neighborhood? Yeah.

You know, Megan, it's my experience when you're dealing with people who are not of total sound mind that they do crazy things like just drive north thinking they're going to get out of the state of Florida. That's like another eight hour drive. So it's so it it doesn't make sense to you or me. But, you know, we don't go around pointing AK-47s at prominent individuals because we disagree with their politics. And in fact, his he made a statement on Twitter that said about how

you know, the Russia's actions against Ukraine was totally evil and this was good versus evil. But yet he couldn't decipher that trying to assassinate someone would also be evil. I just, you know, it doesn't make any sense. Oh, not understanding exactly what charges he'll face. I mean, I don't know if attempted murder will be one of them since he late he lay in wait, but he didn't actually pull the trigger. But what do you what would you guess he's looking at in terms of charges at the federal level?

You know, it's hard to say at the federal level. They have a whole different system. They have laws to protect presidents and former presidents. But I can tell you at the state level, it would have been based on the facts, likely the aggravated assault with a firearm, which –

It's normally a third-degree felony, but it goes up to a second-degree felony when the target is a member of the Secret Service. So what the feds do, I don't know. They're pretty opaque, but they did talk to us during this whole thing. And when they told us they were going to take it over, you say, okay, at the state level, you defer to them when they want to take over a case. Well –

I personally would have been more comfortable with it in Dave Ehrenberg's hands. I'm not that confident in them, but I am confident in you, Dave. Thank you for making the time for us on a very busy day. Thank you, Megan. Appreciate the nice words.

All the best to you. Oh, wow. I mean, quite a quite a bit of information in there. So the guy went, it appears he drove 40 minutes north. Then they finally apprehended him. I mean, kind of crazy. And they got him in a regular traffic stop. It was doesn't sound like it was any more sophisticated than that. I'm thinking of the Idaho quadruple murder suspect, Brian Kohlberger, and how they managed to get him when he remember reportedly allegedly.

according to Howard Bloom, was on the radar of the feds. But then they lost him and they ran his easy pass. I think it was his easy pass through to see whether it had hit in various locations. And they did. I don't know whether they did any of that, but he's in custody. It does not appear that he resisted arrest when they pulled him over in that 40 minutes after that 40 mile drive.

And he did, according to the officials, fire between four and six shots at Secret Service. Right now they're saying Secret Service did not fire back and did not initiate fire. We'll see whether any of that changes. Rich Lowry is back with me now, editor-in-chief of National Review. So-

You've got Democrats all over the place, Rich, amping up the rhetoric around Donald Trump. I said to the last panel, would it take one week, one week for them to get back on the Trump is a true threat to democracy? Kamala Harris saying he unleashed the worst threat to democracy on this country since the Civil War, worse than 9/11, right? The rhetoric, whatever you think it is, it can go up even higher.

when the Democrats think about Donald Trump. And within, what, half an hour of this news hitting, and I realize these guys are absolutely just awful, but within a half an hour of this assassination attempt hitting the news or so, the Lincoln Project, these, I mean, truly, deeply Trump-loathing, Trump derangement syndrome guys, release this, I think we have it,

I'll never forget that feeling, waking up that November day in 2016 and learning that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. I remember the overwhelming grief. I remember the women's marches across the country. I didn't know that on that November day that he would be responsible for the death of more than a million Americans through the mismanagement of a pandemic.

I didn't imagine on that morning that he would incite so much hate and division in this nation that white nationalists would proudly march in the streets and his followers would try to overthrow my government. I couldn't know he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would end my rights to my own health care decisions, thus ensuring my daughters have less rights than their grandmothers had. I didn't know what he was capable of on that day. You get it. You get the picture.

It goes on from there. These guys are absolutely just gross. Yeah, they're grifters on top of everything else. So look, clearly a common sense says that the level of rhetoric and heat they've created around Donald Trump has played some role in this murderous enmity we've seen on the part of these two would-be assassins. Although it's very difficult to connect any one thing anyone says to

to these acts. The reason why I think they shouldn't say he's an existential threat to democracy is it's not true. It's just, it's not true. If he loses, he'll complain about it. He'll say it's stolen, but he's not president of the United States. He'll have fewer buttons to push than he did last time. Nothing's going to happen. And if he's elected, he might complain he should have been elected by Biden.

a bigger margin, but it's not as though he's going to try to overthrow the election he won. Actually, the other side will be the one potentially trying to block his ascension to the presidency, and they'll come up with some other Russiagate way to try to undermine his legitimacy. And there may be unrest in the streets. And this is the thing, is even if they're not responsible directly, any one person who's saying this stuff about Donald Trump, they all tell us how important norms are. And this is the...

Worst norm possibly you can trespass against, right? Attempting to assassinate a political candidate for – a candidate for president of the United States of America. And the level of outrage is like nothing. They're more outraged by the cats and dogs thing he said about Springfield, Ohio than they are about people trying to kill him.

Exactly right. And now, so you've got other lunatics on the left. I mean, I'll give you the, you remember Alexander Vindman? He testified at the first Trump. Yeah. So his wife comes out moments after this news broadcast.

breaks, Rachel Vindman, and tweets, no ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon. And then when she got all sorts of blowback, she tweeted, sorry, you're triggered. A bunch of laughing emojis. I mean, no, I'm not. I don't care a little bit. Hand heart emoji. She couldn't care less. Yeah, we can tell. That's quite obvious. And then, all right, that's fine. That's some no name nobody's ever heard of. But would you listen to NBC Nightly News?

where on a Sunday they brought in Lester Holt to handle the special coverage. And this was his framing of today's news. Today's apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself. Mr. Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. This weekend, there were new bomb threats in that town. Our Maggie Vespa is in Columbus, Ohio, with more.

It comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric from Trump and Vance. We just saw this happen on MSNBC. Now it happens on NBC with Lester Holt.

Yeah, it's blaming the victim. And I was actually just an hour or two talking to a Republican operative. He's like, Rich, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 24 hours someone on MSNBC blames Trump. And then I checked by Twitter. I was driving in the car when I talked to him. And when I got to the spot where I checked Twitter, there it was. It already happened on MSNBC. So it's just perverse. And it's fine if you want to say...

Obviously, her hands are still dirty from Tuesday night's debacle of a debate. She brought in to cover ABC's nightly news in the wake of her huge debate victory, which I guarantee you is how ABC sees last Tuesday. And listen to her coverage of what just happened.

Details just coming in from West Palm Beach, the Secret Service, treating this as a threat against the former president. Agents have detained a suspect and have recovered a weapon. This comes two months after the former president survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Pierre Thomas and Mary Alice Parks lead tonight's coverage. Also tonight, Springfield, Ohio, on edge. Local schools are being threatened with violence and a college shuts down activities after threats were made following the baseless rumors that Haitian immigrants have been eating pets.

Okay. Got to move on to the pet story, you know, as our number two, that's going to, that's going to, we'll do two minutes on Trump. And by the way, they're treating this as a threat, treating it. The guy with an AK-47 style rifle, 300 feet away, pointing it at Donald. Yeah, it's a threat. Then he fired it for Secret Service. Yeah. You can go ahead and remove the qualifying language.

Yeah. So I'm sure it pained them to not have the Springfield thing, the top story. And that's the other thing, going back to racial Vindman, an innocent man was killed, right? It wasn't just that a presidential candidate was grazed in the ear and –

a couple millimeters away from having his brain blown out on live television, someone was killed, right? So just to have an offhand attitude about that, it's appalling. And look, if they want to say that Trump and J.D. Vance are responsible for some psychopath making threats against Americans,

government authorities in Springfield, Ohio, then they have to blame their own side for this too. Be consistent about which is it? Is it just heated rhetoric caused violence or doesn't it? But you see in those segments, they'll have entirely different attitudes within minutes

about the effect of rhetoric. And she, you know, if the rules were at all fair, as we discussed the night after the debate, she would have at least asked Kamala Harris, well, you know what, the man standing five feet from you was almost killed. And some people think, you know, your rhetoric, your side's rhetoric was responsible. What do you make of that? Right. But wouldn't it occur to her to ask that? And when Trump brought up the assassination attempt, of course, it just dropped like a lead balloon and everyone moved on.

They moved on. They had no interest in discussing it. Just this week, just this week, Melania Trump, who's coming out with a book and is doing minimal promo on it, released a video statement in which she said the following, Rich, listen to this. The attempt to end my husband's life was a horrible, distressing experience. Now the silence around it feels heavy. I can't help but wonder why.

Why didn't law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story, and we need to uncover the truth. Very fair question. She's the wife of the attempted victim. And let me just give you one example of the media's reaction to the former first lady saying that, which is extraordinary. It's valid. Look at this. Here's Don Lemon.

who posts a video of her saying the same thing. And he's, for the listening audience, rubbing his head, shaking his head no, putting his hand on his cheek and his chin, rolling his eyes, smirking, throwing his hand up in the air like, what an idiot. We're going to recut this with her actual sound so you can hear it. But he later deleted the tweet because he got so much blowback from fair-minded people saying, oh,

What the hell do you think you're doing? She's entitled to have fear and concern around this issue. But that's how clueless and heartless they are, Rich, that he felt fine making fun of the first lady, former first lady on this, and what happens within days. I mean, it could be counted in hours. It's so close. It happens again.

Yeah. So and I don't read her statement necessarily implying a conspiracy. There certainly is more to learn about this. My instinct always is to go to ineptitude and incompetence before conspiracies. I think a lot of these people wouldn't be capable of carrying out a conspiracy even if they wanted to. But I have to say, Megan, I've not met one person in Republican circles from donors to grassroots activists who thinks the Secret Service is in the up and up.

that the first assassination, I can't believe we're saying it, but the first assassination attempt because it was so glaring. It was so awful. It's the exact thing that undermines faith in our institutions, which they say they want and we should all want, but you can't have faith. One, when initially the director of the Secret Service tries to stay and says she's going to reform this institution when she was responsible for the failure. And then when just serially just

more and more stories come out, each of which make it seem worse than it was at the beginning. Again, I think it's ineptitude, criminal ineptitude, but people, of course, are going to have questions. If it happened on the other side, they'd have questions too. I mean, Rachel Maddow would be doing nothing except for floating conspiracy theories if Kamala Harris had been present and the Secret Service had been so lax in protecting her. Absolutely, absolutely right. We did re-cue it with Melania's sound. Let's just watch it.

The attempt to end my husband's life was a horrible, distressing experience. Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can't help but wonder, why didn't law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story, and we need to uncover the truth. It ends with his head in his palm.

Yeah, wondering why they didn't arrest this guy sooner, the guy they identified, what, 90 minutes earlier as a threat that they lost track of that ordinary people there at the event were pointing out. Of course you should wonder. And the idea that that's something you have – Just the infamity. That sentiment you have contempt for is crazy.

The inhumanity of the press corps when it has anything to do with Donald Trump or his wife or his kids, they couldn't care less. How many tweets and posts did we see after assassination attempt number one? This is insane that we're having to talk like this, as you say.

Who said they're sorry he missed that he would they wish he had better aim. People like Keith Olbermann, but beyond Keith Olbermann. I mean, it's just gotten to the level you heard the maybe we can pull this. You guys, the Joy Reid segment with Ellie Mistal, literally the two most racist people on television. Truly, you couldn't find two more racist people on television.

It happened, I think, on Friday where he said the reason his disgusting, deplorable fans don't abandon him is because they're equally disgusting. So it goes beyond Donald Trump. It's everyone. It's all Republicans. And that's why they have no empathy for Melania, the kids, or anyone who tonight are probably feeling really scared about what's next.

Yeah, so once you've accepted the idea that he is the equivalent of an American Adolf Hitler, then the implication is, one, all his supporters are equally morally blameworthy. They're the equivalent of brown shirts, and violence is acceptable or understandable at least to try to stop him, right? So but –

The premise is flawed and wrong and perverse, but then you work out the logic and you get this cruelty and heartlessness. I don't know what the solution to this is, I mean, other than independent media. I just like the fact that NBC and Lester Holt chose to –

style the story in the way they did on the night of the attempted assassination speaks volumes, not to mention the trouble that ABC is in following that debate. I don't think there's any saving them. I think they reaffirm that to us every day. And I think it's sad. I think it's

It is part of the problem because they've become the open messengers for this crap, cutting off Trump when he did try to talk about his assassination attempt, not raising the assassination attempt and what it means for this country and about rhetoric. And in the first instance, not to mention not asking about Joe Biden's mental deficiencies, but when we could go on for an hour about what how they fell down in the job.

They're part of it. They're actively working now, Rich, to get her elected and to coalesce around the narrative about how dangerous he is. And having worked inside that organization, NBC News, I can tell you that's exactly what they believe.

Yeah. They're all basically at the end of the day, the same people, democratic elites and media elites. They go to the same party. They go to the same places in the Hamptons. They share the same assumptions. They have the same attitudes, especially about social and cultural issues. They are the same people. And it's just a fundamentally corrupt institution. Maybe decades ago, I used to think maybe if we bird dog them enough and call them out enough and counter their narratives with alternative reporting enough, they'll improve. But that

They haven't in the least. They've only gotten worse. And it's just that there's no sense even hoping for something better at this point. I just I can't get over the fact that our president hasn't said anything. The former president retweeted and didn't individually say anything, not even a generic statement about political violence.

Michelle Obama, who was so upset about the term black jobs. She said nothing by the way, Biden used that term too. She didn't tweet a thing, nothing. She was only outraged when Donald Trump does it. And she has absolutely no empathy in her heart for Donald Trump when he almost gets shot and his family. How about a word from her to Melania Trump? You're not gonna get it. These are the people who wanna paint themselves as our moral betters, as the nice ones, as the kind ones. That was actually Kamala Harris's pitch.

Right. That was her pitch in the debate. And when she sat down with that local Philadelphia anchor, you know, like she's the nice one and people are ready for unity. But they can't muster any genuine statements of empathy for the Trumps when once again, his life was almost taken. It's just such a facade, Rich.

Yeah, totally. And if the progression goes the way it has with this one, if there's a third assassination attempt, they'll take it even less seriously, right? When obviously you should take it more seriously, but the standard is apparently it has to be hit by the bullet for it to be big news. Yes. So, and, you know, never would have I thought there'd be some rule, you know, they've

They've created Trump rules for everything with their new standards. But I never would have expected that assassination attempts would fall under Trump rules, where if it happens to him, it's not a big deal and it's not a big news story. But that's the way they're handling it. And again, basic decency, basic respect for our institutions and people's faith in our politics says you should be outraged by this such that if you're the sitting president of the United States,

even if you don't want to win, even if you hate him, you tweet or you go out and make a statement or you give a speech in the Oval Office about how wrong this is. And they kind of mustered that briefly the first time around, but apparently it can't be bothered this time. And maybe come up with a kind word for Donald Trump this time. Maybe say he's a dad, he's a husband, he's a grandpa.

And we really need to lower the temperature, not just in general, but on our side about this man. That's what he should say. But he's nowhere to be found. We have no idea where Joe Biden even is. He's probably asleep at 730. We haven't seen him publicly in really more than a ceremonial role recently. He's been on vacation for almost all of the past 10 weeks.

And I have no idea whether he's even competent to come out and do it. I did. We did find the elements doll, Ellie Miss doll appearance on Joy Reid. Here it is.

The way he desecrated Arlington National Cemetery would be career ending for a normal politician. But his constant lies. But even this piece about saying, well, my building was the tallest until, you know, they brought down the World Trade Center. Now it's the second. I mean, everything he does is despicable. The reason why it doesn't end his career is because his supporters are just as despicable. His supporters are just as ungenerous.

and have just as little compassion and empathy for others. It never hurts Trump when he takes these crass and classless actions. It's because his supporters think that being crass and classless is actually kind of cool. Yeah, and they also, he hates the people they hate. Yeah, this guy's talking about crass being cool for the

obviously zero self-awareness. And this is the key thing to, after the first assassination attempt, they said, we need to bring down our rhetoric. And Biden, you know, he seemed committed to that to himself for like 36 hours or so at least. But if you want to bring down the temperature, you got to do it yourself. You know, policing your own side is more important than anything you say about the

other side's rhetoric, right? Because you could be, some people actually take him seriously. That's why he's on MSNBC. And if you actually told progressives, you know what, they're human beings too. They're Americans too. We should have respect for them and we should be outraged if someone tries to commit physical violence against them. Maybe, you know, it makes a little bit of a difference, but they can't bring themselves to do it. Um,

By the way, regarding that Trump saying that his tower was the smallest in New York City after the World Trade Center fell, if you listen to the interview from that day, he wasn't bragging. He was kind of stating it to give context about the World Trade Center history during a 10-minute interview that day. A total misrepresentation.

Yeah, of course. Yet again. I mean, they're doing it to J.D. Vance right now. You saw he gave an interview to Dana Bash today and they had this long 17 minute exchange about what's happening in Springfield, Ohio. And at the end of it, you know, after saying he'd heard from his constituents, yes, dogs and whatever, cats, pets, whatever, the whole thing. He's saying this is what they're telling me. She refused to accept that. Ba ba ba ba ba.

Finally, he said something to the effect of, look, if we have to create stories in order to bring attention to what's happening, the media, he admits they made it up, right? As opposed to, and if you listen to the full clip, he says, by drawing attention to what's happening on the ground, it's just, as the line goes online, you don't hate the media enough. Go ahead. You remember Alternative Facts with Kellyanne? They did the same thing. She wasn't saying you make up fictions and pretend they're facts. You bring other facts to bear in the debate that are being ignored.

And that's what he was saying. And I loved, I think it was in that interview where Dana Bash says, you know, the police have gone through 11 months of recordings of calls and they've only found two Springfield residents calling to complain about Haitian migrants taking geese from ponds. Only two calls. And I think one lesson in this whole story, people don't care about geese. People really hate geese. All things considered, I think people would prefer Haitian migrants to come and take the geese off the golf course, right? Yeah.

So it's pets, the cats and dogs has become the standard. Geese clearly don't matter.

I mean, I read online they're protected in Ohio. So you kind of should care about whatever. By the way, there are firsthand testimonials from many people. All we keep hearing is they're not verified. I mean, what do you do? Do you call the cops? I don't know if you call the cops, if you see ducks being beheaded or if a neighborhood cat that's not yours goes missing. And this is not just happening in Ohio, by the way. There are now reports about this happening in other states.

and disgusting pictures all over the internet about what the accusation is that migrants from these other countries are doing, whatever. I mean, to me, it's like the Babylon Bee got it right. Democrats deny that pets are being killed.

would like us to focus more on the women and children, right? Being killed. That's the truth. It's like, okay, whatever. I mean, you can get your panties in a bunch about the fact that you haven't seen a Haitian eating a cat on camera, although you might have. You ignore the real issue, the little girls, the women, the men, the children who've died. Anyway, okay. This is the question I've most wanted to talk to you about since we asked you to come on. You said you would.

Now what? Not not security. I'm not asking about that. Now, what does the left do over the next week or month? Because they do have to be careful about this guy. They they have to two attempts to kill him.

And there's got to be some fear in the back of their heads that something they say is actually going to get him killed. So do they take their foot off the gas a little on this incendiary rhetoric? Or is it we have weeks to go? Democracy is on the ballot and it's pedal to the metal in making him out to be just as horrid as they've already told us he is.

It's the latter. I think this will have zero effect. The first assassination attempt did have some effect. Biden gave that Oval Office address about how we all need to be more civil to one another. The coverage of the Republican convention was more favorable than the media coverage I can remember of any Republicans.

Republican convention, and it was because it was in the aftermath of this event where everyone agreed pretty much that Trump handled it in an amazing and courageous way by immediately standing up and rallying his supporters with that fist pump. Mark Zuckerberg even called it

I don't think this will have any effect like that. This will be a relative ripple. Again, as a major story, maybe gone tomorrow, and they will continue attacking Trump the way they have. They've made Kamala into something more than I would have thought they could have, but the media adulation and the Democratic relief that she's not Joe Biden has bumped her up much more than I would have expected, but they still need to pull down Donald Trump. That's a huge

element of how they win this election. And there's no way that their conscience is going to be pricked such that they don't use the kind of rhetoric that they think they need to to beat them in November. I mean, if this is any indication, then you're right. Here's Bill Kristol, used to be a conservative, tweeting out this came out at 630 p.m., 631 p.m. I mean, that's long after these events broke at 2 p.m.

He tweets, Walz should consider canceling the debate with Vance. He posts this on Twitter. He very clearly knows about the assassination attempt.

Vance would use his time on the national stage to slander minorities, further poison the national discourse and incite potential violence with lies. Incite potential violence with lies. Walt could rebut Vance's falsehoods. But why risk the further incitement? Unbelievable to the point where Donald Trump Jr. had to respond and who could blame him?

tweeting, hours after a left-wing Ukraine-obsessed nutjob attempts to assassinate my father, neocon loser Bill Kristol accuses J.D. Vance of inciting violence. Does it get any more vile than this?

You can't make this up. It hasn't entered his consciousness that this happened, apparently at a certain level. Josh Marshall, less prominent, but he's edited a left-wing website forever that's pretty influential online. He was tweeting just about half an hour ago as well. Let's focus on the main story today.

The cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Right. So that's that's what they that's what they think. That's what they're going to do. That's what they're they're going to say. If I were Waltz, I might consider canceling the debate because I think he's got a real hard time handling J.D. Vance. But but it shouldn't be because J.D. is illegitimate and out of bounds.

Well, that's an astute point. That's probably Bill Kristol foreseeing what you and I both foresee, which is J.D. Vance doing incredibly well and Tim Walz not being able to hold his own and thinking here's a great excuse to get out of it. Let's use Donald Trump's latest near-death experience to our political benefit to try to get him out of what's likely to be a debacle because they think she had such a spike the ball in the end zone moment. But I will say this, Rich, they're so obsessed with the cats and dogs story. Keep going. I feel like great.

Has the country discussed the problem of illegal immigration and legal migration this much in two years? I don't think Lake and Riley got as much attention as this is now getting, which if you needed to design a news story that's good for Donald Trump, this is the one you'd pull.

Yeah, and there's some people around the campaign who think of it exactly that way. It focuses on an issue that's just not a strength of Kamala Harris's for understandable reasons and never will be. And I thought J.D. was very effective in the CNN interview, making the point that never penetrates, that they'll never pay attention to or acknowledge that the real story is you had a town of 58,000 people as of the 2020 census.

inundated by 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants. They didn't vote for this. It wasn't a public debate. No one said, let's bring them in. And so they had no choice in the matter. But the Biden administration, one, some of them are illegal. And then the Biden administration is making migrants who otherwise would be illegal, legal just as a technical matter through these various parole programs and temporary protected status. And they have to go somewhere.

And they've settled on Springfield, Ohio. The schools are obviously taxed by it. You have a community health center that's spending, I don't know, three times what it used to on translation services. And the wait times have increased drastically. And you have a housing crisis that the city manager was complaining about a couple months ago. So this all –

affects the lives of real people, whether cancer dogs are being eaten or not. Even if they're not being eaten, this is still a debacle that is on Joe Biden. So the extent that it focuses attention on that, it is a good thing. Mm-hmm. Oh, God, it's just... All of this is just so awful. It's so dark. And it's so frustrating to see them just not care. But, you know, back to the old Maya Angelou. When someone shows you who they are, leave them. There you go.

We believe in you, Rich Lowry. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I hope we don't do another one of these. Yeah, exactly. We'll be talking about benign political news next time. Great to see you. All right. Thanks so much. Next, we're going to bring on you two. We're going to bring on Susan Crabtree. You guys know that name, right? She's from Real Clear Politics. And

And she owned, owned the Secret Service story after the first assassination attempt. This is how we're going to have, you know how it's like first impeachment, second impeachment, and we have the first criminal trial. But then there were four more criminal or three more criminal trials waiting. It's just crazy.

about the amount of stuff that they tried to throw at Donald Trump, but you can't even keep track. How many impeachments? Okay, there's two, there's four criminal cases, but there were also three civil cases. I was trying to add it up, and now there's been two assassination attempts. I mean-

This is absolute madness. And you mark my words, these Democrats are gonna try to make it all Donald Trump's fault in that. Aren't you kind of over him? He's so controversial. It's like his own fault. He's so controversial, he keeps getting shot at. Aren't you ready to move on from that? A new way forward, as Kamala Harris is saying. He's controversial. It's not our rhetoric about him. It's not our messaging about him. Not saying he's controversial, but saying he's Hitler, right?

That has amped up the temperature. Anyway, Susan Crabtree is here and she's got the latest for us on today's assassination attempt of our former president, Donald Trump. Susan, thank you so much for joining us. What have you learned? What's interesting to you so far about the facts?

What's really interesting to me, Megan, and thanks so much for having me on, is that this guy we are hearing now and getting law enforcement confirmation, even though the FBI is not confirming that his name is Ryan Ruth, and they're leaving up all of his social media. He apparently used his daughter's car as a 58-year-old man who has a very public social media profile, and he seems very unsophisticated, unless it's a false flag.

And this is what I'm incredibly worried about after today. You've had two assassination attempts. The FBI says they work. It looks like the first one, Thomas Crooks, was acting alone, that there was no foreign influence that they can see so far in their investigation, even though they only had one briefing with the media since the day of Butler rally, the first assassination attempt.

But I am seriously concerned that this shows the Iranians, IRGC, that we know from what Grassley released last week, are plotting a very detailed, detailed assassination plots. They are current and granular plots.

against Donald Trump and this is showing them what kind of vulnerabilities the Secret Service has. Now, the Secret Service got a lot of plaudits today about the way they handled this. They shot first. They didn't wait to shoot. You had Thomas Crooks running across the roof and they weren't shooting at him yet. They didn't even know about him. They didn't know he had a gun.

until just minutes, seconds, minutes beforehand before when he popped his head up. That's when they finally found out that he was a real threat, not just a suspect.

But in this case, we had this detailed, detailed assassination proffer that the FBI, well, actually Grassley got a hold of it. But the FBI was incensed that Grassley put this out. And it was a basically the proffer is an interrogation that the FBI does with this man, this Pakistani citizen with deep ties to Iran.

He spent two weeks in Iran and he was arrested the day before the Butler rally for planning an assassination attempt against Donald Trump and actually trying to hire hit men in New York and pay them $5,000. So I mean, if you haven't read, I will say to your viewers, if you have not read what Grassley put out, I have tweeted about it. I tweeted about it again today.

It is basically the interview that the FBI conducted with this man named Asif Merchant, who they arrested on July 12th, the day before the Butler assassination attempt.

So you can see exactly the interview. He was in an Iranian safe house talking with a man they identified as Yusuf about whether they should target an outdoor rally or an indoor rally, whether they should use a pistol or whether they should use a rifle. They said they evaluated all the Secret Service assets that Donald Trump was using. And we know from the secret, we know now it's been...

We're all well aware that he was being treated as a former president, just like Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter. He was not being afforded. It was not threat-based. As the Secret Service claims, they always operate threat-based. But we know now that that was not the case with Donald Trump before Butler. So they were evaluating this Asif merchant, was evaluating within a Iranian safe house the assets that the Secret Service was using pre-Butler,

to protect Trump. And they assessed that was probably, they probably had a 50-50 chance of being successful in their assassination attempt. I mean, it was chilling. It was downright chilling. Do we know the percentage beef up in Secret Service from assassination attempt number one to today? Yeah, well, I just was getting into this on Twitter and people are taking issue with me.

I am told that it's far more than he had before, okay, obviously. He only got his counter sniper the day before the Butler rally. When they were arresting, the FBI was arresting the man I just mentioned, okay, for assassination attempt. But it's far more than what he had before.

It's almost what I'm hearing. It's almost what a sitting president gets minus the military assets. Of course, he doesn't have Marine One, doesn't have Air Force One, doesn't have the extra agents that carry the nuclear football with him, doesn't have a military aid. But the key question I think for today is whether he had the security perimeter. Does he have they didn't obviously they didn't have a security perimeter because this

this guy, Ryan Ruth got right up to the fence and was poking his rifle through the AK 47 right through. And that's the only thing the secret service saw that indicated that there was a threat. And it was, you know, he was on the, it was in between the five and six hole on the golf course. And thank goodness, the secret service, we had a good team around him. Was it secret service? Do we know Susan? What?

Was it Secret Service? Like proper? Yes, absolutely. The Secret Service. Yes, the sheriff, Bradshaw, the Palm Beach Sheriff Bradshaw did say it was Secret Service. And he said they acted in a fantastic manner today and was shooting, but did not shoot him. OK, one of my Secret Service sources in that community said, well, they didn't shoot him. Well, he was hiding in his bushes.

But the key question I would say- Is that confirmed? That confirmed that he definitely did not, he did not pull the trigger first because, you know, some online are saying, be careful. Okay, well, you know, that's what the law enforcement is saying. That's the official word. My Secret Service sources haven't said

said anything against that so far. They haven't, you know, they don't say, I mean, I have, is it, is it in any way a breach of protocol for them to shoot somebody who's got an AK 47 style rifle, 300 feet from the president and is obviously right. They can shoot first.

No, but they the whole issue for Butler that I was reporting early that people were taking issue with was there is in their culture. If they don't see a gun not to shoot, if they can't make out that it's an actual gun, if it's not a toy gun. But if they at this point, that's out the window. They're going to shoot. They're going to shoot if they see a gun. The suspect becomes a threat when you see the gun and pointed towards the president.

Yeah. Or the former president. What if anything do they say about the fact that, you know, we're grateful that these Secret Service agents noticed the gun and saw this guy hiding. But also there are questions about why...

He was relatively unprotected so close to the open road. This guy just came up to the chain link fence and shoved his gun in one of the links and almost took out Donald Trump. Like, to me, that does seem like a failure of imagination or planning.

Well, what I want to know is, does Joe Biden get a security perimeter when he plays golf? Is it the exact same security assets does Biden have? Good question. That Trump, did Trump get that same security assets today? Because we know they're available because Biden's not using them. Okay. So obviously that's the big question in my mind. And did, you know,

How many assets were there? Were the counter surveillance units, they were not there at Butler. Were they there today? Did Donald Trump say, well, you know, I really like to play golf, so I need to interact with, you know, he had his friend and donor with him, his good friend, Stephen Witkoff with him. You know, maybe they wanted to be able to be more accessible to the public and

I don't know. You've got to I'm asking the Trump campaign. Is that something there's a balance to be struck always with the candidate wants, you know, you can't put Trump now, you know, of course, they're going to reevaluate everything in terms of they instituted the bullet clue.

proof glass last time on outdoor rallies i'm wondering you know if they have designed some type of pope mobile that he has to be in now if he wants to go out it's a sad situation but there's always this balance to be struck the secret service would like him to stay indoors and operate like you know maybe like biden did during the 2020 election you know is that not trump

Yeah, it's not Trump. He wants to interact. So you have to strike a balance. But what I want to know is, obviously, this was a perimeter problem. We had a perimeter problem in Butler. They put the AGR building outside the perimeter. There's questions surrounding why that happened, in addition to why there was nobody on the roof. I'm told by my Secret Service sources as recently as yesterday that it happened.

I've gone back and forth. I've talked to the Butler law enforcement. They say one thing, the Secret Service sources say another, that it was law enforcement's fault that day. They were in charge. The Secret Service charged them with protecting that building, and they chose to go inside because it was hot. I believe that's the case. I've had multiple sources tell me that. And so, you know, please come forward and show me the plan that had the Secret Service saying,

say they have a post plan where they show where everybody's supposed to be. The one thing that I will say, it's still on the Secret Service because they did not go through their checks. I'm told, you know, long ago in the Secret Service, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you had after...

when everybody was ready, when there was five minutes, they call it Bravo, five minutes till Trump goes on, you do a security check. Everybody in their post that they were assigned to, yep, and they go through, their supervisor goes through. Everybody's at where they're supposed to be. That did not occur at Butler or the lead agent, when we know who she is, the lead agent from the Pittsburgh field office,

was not checking that that day and allowed them when they protested to go inside. So I'm still worried about this. They're still leaving these perimeters open. And, you know, Trump has got to reevaluate how he's going to operate from now on. I mean, he has to do some security. He needs private security. I just don't I don't.

It's sad because the Secret Service that he has now, I'm sure he has the best that the agency has to offer now because, you know, the gig is up, right? You didn't, I have been told by multiple sources that Cheadle did not like Trump. Okay. Because everyone asks me, was it political? Kim Cheadle, the woman forced out, but not fired. Okay, keep going, Susan.

Correct. And her deputy, her hand-selected deputy is Ronald Rowe. And Mayorkas chose him to move up to the acting position when she left.

So this is the same cabal. These are the same people that are responsible. But now he knows he's on notice that it's on him now. Is he going to be able to keep the position? He's going to be elevated. All of everything that you see him do right now is motivated by whether he keeps his job and whether he's elevated to the top position.

And I think he's really concerned about what the Donald Trump detail think of him now. All of a sudden, even though I am told he was directly, directly, and he says no at the hearings, even when the senators asked him about this question, about my reporting, he said, no, I didn't have anything to do with denying the security assets.

I'm told that is not the case that Ron Rowe has direct. He was Mike Platy who retired last week, who announced his retirement last week. He was the one who signed off on it. His director of protective operations for secret service signed up off and all the assets. So his signatures on everything, but that, you know, Rowe definitely comes in and there's a conversation. He even testified July 30th in front of the Senate that,

There is a conversation on all these assets. So he plays a role. You cannot tell me he did not. My sources tell me. I mean, your point is so valid. They had a perimeter. They had a catastrophic perimeter breakdown two months ago.

So the perimeter should be front of mind, as Karine Jean-Pierre likes to say. And it wasn't. Once again, it was a perimeter problem. This is what we played a bit of this earlier with Dan Bongino when he testified before Congress about this issue, former Secret Service agent. I actually asked my team to go back and cut the full two minute clip that's been circulating because it's very powerful. I'd love to get as somebody who knows the Secret Service better than anybody. I'd love to get your reaction to it. Let's listen to him. Sure.

Mr. Bongino, in your opinion, is the Secret Service in a better spot today with Director Rowe in charge? No, it's worse. And sadly, I'm glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens, and I hope it doesn't, I pray to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that I'm wrong. That you play this and go, look, that guy was crazy.

You think this is the last incident, you're out of your mind. We have seen these incidents over and over. We saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush. They overtook the magnetometers. The Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people. Can you imagine a C-suite at a company that makes widgets? We find out that there's a design defect. The widget explodes and kills 10 people.

and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO. You understand that's what happened here, correct? These are the same people. Kim Cheadle, the director, wasn't even fired.

She was allowed to resign. She'll go get some cushy jobs somewhere. And her deputy, who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail. This actually happened, by the way. These people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people. He was concerned about the tie color.

of the agents on the detail, because it seemed to imply he supported President Trump. Congressman Biggs is wearing a red tie. You're wearing a semi-red tie. It has nothing to do with anything. This is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on earth. If you can explain it, good luck, because that's not the agency I worked for.

Amazing job by Dan. He was so on point as he always is. And, you know, you hate to say I told you so or that he called it on something like this. He's much rather not have the I told you so moment. But man, he nailed it.

Oh, yeah. No, he's been saying that for weeks, and I completely, completely agree. It was Ron Rowe, my sources tell me, that had that issue with the red tie. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it was Ron Rowe, and he is the acting director. The other thing that I am completely concerned about right now, I was just working on a story about this today, trying to finish it up because it's more technical than some of my other stories.

But the fact that they are not using drones, they're starting to, they're really rushing into it. But if you looked at my, there's an email on the day of July 30th that I put out from a counter sniper, I kept him anonymous, a counter sniper in the Secret Service that was just completely fed up because the Secret Service has, as Dan likes to say, the Secret Service motto is yesterday's technology tomorrow.

So they're just not technologically advanced in any way, shape or form. And there's so much frustration about that. And they put out this new research and development right after the Butler rally and the counter sniper was taking issue with that. And he said, too little, too late. And he replied all to every member of the uniform division of the Secret Service.

And someone said, did you mean to reply all? And he said, absolutely. And he downloaded like...

Yes, absolutely. I am sick of the CYA culture, he called it, in the Secret Service leadership. They all need to go. He predicted another assassination attempt within 30 days. Well, you know, he was wrong only by 30 days. Yeah, he predicted this. This is, you know, this is a counter-sniper person who has a lot on the line, but people are rank and file members are just fed up.

by the leadership. And there has been this slow roll on lowering the standards in the secret service for the last 10 years, um, because of a lot of reasons, you know, you know, that Cheeto was very big on the 30 by 30 initiative, meaning 30% women, um, agents by 2030. And that there's also other lowering of standards. Um, they say they don't practice with their, um,

with their rifles as much anymore. There used to be much more practice in that. That would explain missing. Yeah. I mean, when they found out, right, last in Butler, I think the counter sniper did a really good job, but we don't even know if they were. No, but today, today, today, today they had the guy is one guy running away. You have two sniper, two, two secret service agents. They say between four and six rounds fired, not one hit him.

That's right. And, you know, we don't even know if there was a counter sniper at that event. And that's a key question to me, too. Was there counter surveillance unit? They had this bubble. You know, they had one some Secret Service agents going advancing on the next hole, some behind him. They call it the bubble. But they didn't have the perimeter secured. And so, you know, what are we going to what are we do going forward with this? But I'm concerned about the lack of drones because a drone could have spotted this guy.

If somebody was circulating the drone, did they have a drone? I doubt they did. And the resistance has been since 2016. And I would say, I'm going to have a story about this as soon as I can get it out with this new assassination, second assassination attempt. It's just unbelievable to me. But,

They have resisting leadership has resisted this since 2016. They have had information, very detailed information. Congress now has that detailed information about why they should have a drone program. They've had people wanting to do it and they've denied them the ability to participate in the drone program. They have tethered drones at permanent sites like Camp David and the White House, but they don't use regular drones. And

And there are people up in arms. And that was one of the issues that the counter sniper was taking. The anonymous one that sent that email was taking issue with that day. That's crazy. Basically, this is too little too late. A dollar too short, you know, a day short. It's just ridiculous. This guy, Ron Ruth, is the one who.

who made all these mistakes and was focused on the color of the ties. And once again, I didn't secure the perimeter. I mean, he's, he's got to go to who's going to get fired. I just asked this Trump said this the other day during the debate. He's like, they don't fire anybody. They didn't fire the people responsible for the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Nothing can get you fired by this administration. The first

assassination attempt did not result in Kim Cheeto being fired. She was forced out, but she was given the dignity of resigning, which she should not have been afforded. And now here we are again with another guy obsessed with Thai color, too focused on that apparently to keep the president safe. I'm sorry, hats off to the two Secret Service guys, or however many it was ultimately, who saw the shooter in the bushes. But there was obviously a perimeter problem. Even I can see that.

Absolutely. And the two people, OK, there's a lot of dissension going on between the Pittsburgh field office. They put four people on work from home leave and they only put one on from the Donald Trump detail. So there's a lot of people saying, well, that's not fair. We didn't even know. And I'm breaking this news on your show today. We didn't even know about the Iranian threat.

And the Donald Trump detail did know about the Iranian threat. The field offices are very resentful of that. But Mike Platy, who's the director, assistant director of operations, protective operations, he was encouraged to retire. Encouraged to retire. That's the direct quote.

That is the direct quote. Now, I'm told that people like him. He's a good guy, but he was too much of a yes man because he did sign off on all those denials that Roe and Cheadle were pressuring him to do. And we can also talk about, you know, Cheadle's role in the cocaine cover-up issue, if you would like. I mean, there's layers and layers of problems here. It's kind of this

It's an unbelievable place. So, you know, we have too much

When you have the director of the Secret Service being selected by a sitting president, there's a problem. You had Jill Biden very involved in Kimberly Cheadle's ability to get that Pepsi job at PepsiCo. For instance, that's where she came from. She was assigned to the vice president's detail. And that's how she got close to the Biden family and Jill Biden. And so when it came time to name someone, they named someone who was the closest to them. I'm told that this is not this was not a good hire opportunity.

that she did not have the right reputation. We saw. Yeah. And the fact is that...

You know, you have too much, too much that there was a blue ribbon commission that was I covered in 2015 that said the number one problem is that the secret service director should be appointed from the outside. It should not be someone who came from within the ranks because there's this sort of cabal. Well, what happened with the cocaine, I'm told, and I've written a story about this that you can see on my on Real Clear Politics website if you look under my my name.

that Kimberly Cheadle was pressuring the Forensic Services Division to destroy the cocaine. And it was, they'd only did, that they got a partial DNA hit. They sent it to the Department of Homeland Security. They sent it to the FBI. They got a partial DNA hit on the bag of cocaine

No fingerprints, but they got a partial DNA hit, meaning I had to have that explained to me, meaning that there was somebody that was a relative that they had some fingerprints on. They had some DNA already, sorry, the DNA already, and they had a partial match, a family member. Okay.

But they were not willing to go and interview all the people that was in the White House complex that weekend. It was a very slow weekend. But she was trying to get that cocaine destroyed. And I will have another supplement article about this. And she was forcing the Forensic Services Division chief named Glenn Dennis to.

to destroy it. And this other, other person in the uniform division who was the one who found it, they are the ones who found it. You know, those are the people that really protect the white house. You see them standing around the white house, the uniform division, not the special agents there found it. And so their boss said, no, no, no. I really, really don't want the week. We have a protocol here. It's a seven year protocol. We keep our evidence in the evidence vaults. Okay. And,

And he said, no, he was, he was acting at the time, head of the uniform division. He was a black guy and, you know, Chito really loves the diversity, equity and inclusion program. She was big on DEI, but he did not get, he wasn't elevated to the position of

They hired someone from the outside, a different person, a white man, to take that position ahead of him. And that raised a lot of eyebrows because they were, okay, so people know, people in the Secret Service community know that they were just trying to destroy that. And they did not do a good job with that investigation. As you know, Megan, they have these WAVES reports.

that everybody who comes into the White House complex on any given day, you have those records. So it was the Sunday before July 4th. So it was a very slow weekend. The president's family had gone to Camp David, and then they came back for July 4th, okay? It was a very limited number of people in the White House complex that weekend. They could have interviewed those people. They're the Secret Service. Are you telling me, one of my sources said, are you telling me

that as a Secret Service, we're projecting outward that we cannot find somebody within

all the workers, 500 workers at the White House complex, you're just broadcasting that we're not able to investigate that properly by saying that we didn't want to violate their civil rights. We didn't want to violate their civil rights was the excuse that Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman that I've had a contentious relationship with. He's the one who kept tweaking you. When you were reporting early on about Butler-

And all of your information turned out to be right. He was openly saying you're wrong, Susan. He was tweeting openly saying you're wrong. So it was pretty extraordinary because usually Secret Service will stay quiet or if they know that they that they're going to say a lie, they'll just they won't. They'll dodge or they'll say it, you know, without their name attached to it. He attached his name in openly trying to crap on all of your reporting. And did you ever get an apology from him when it all turned out to be correct?

I'm not sure I can say. I've had discussions with him about that and told him I'm extremely unhappy about that. They are working with me better, I will say. Not great. Oh, I'll bet. Better. But I will say that I've known and I put that out there. I said, okay, you want to do that? You didn't answer all of my questions. And I took a screenshot of the six very detailed questions I asked them the day after the assassination. I said, you don't want to answer me. You don't want to call me. You have my number.

I had just talked to him one month before because there was, you know, we had some warning signs about problems within the Secret Service just a month before. When we had that woman, her name is Michelle Herzig, unfortunately have a mental breakdown at Joint Base Andrews. She was attached to Kamala Harris's detail. Yeah, it was her female Secret Service agent who had like an emotional breakdown.

Correct. And she was, you know, tackling her supervisor and, you know, she had a gun in her holster. So they had to disarm her. It ended up being a security problem for them. It was scary for the agents around her that day. They tackled her, got her gun away from her.

And I'm told that this woman, again, layers and layers of problem that that woman, Michelle Herzig, was actually put through, went through training at the rally training center. And she did. People complained that she was kind of off mentally. And Kimberly Cheadle was the head of the rally training center at the time and pushed her through that. That I know for a fact that happened.

So, I mean, we're talking layers and layers. That woman also, she would never have been hired by the Secret Service because she sued the Dallas PD for sexual harassment and it was thrown out and then it was thrown out again on appeal. So that would have been a red flag for the Secret Service not to hire her to begin with. So, I mean, I had been in touch with-

is such a good one though, when you said that the director of the secret service should not be hired from within, because I understand Jill Biden was all buddy, buddy with Kim Cheadle and that close personal friendship almost got Donald Trump killed. And it did get

a poor individual man killed who had a wife who had two beautiful daughters. And that's on her. That's on her. And it's frankly, it's on Jill Biden for thinking that her buddy was qualified just because she knew this person would run cover for her. So you're putting... Because...

I don't care that the first family is comfortable with Kim Cheadle when they made the selection. What I care about is us. Rich Lowry was on half an hour ago saying, you know, can you imagine if this had been successful? Like how it would have divided the country. It would have torn us in two, especially in the wake of the first assassination attempt. I mean, they're

The volatility that would follow such an event, putting aside the severe trauma to the Trump family, would be unlike anything we've seen in modern history. And so it should not be up to the first family. This has to be somebody that anyone could agree is qualified above board, is not going to be the little errand girl for the Bidens, etc.,

And if we haven't learned that lesson by now, then shame on us. You know, I feel certain if Donald Trump gets in there, he will rectify this. Very certain. Kamala Harris, I don't think so. He was the first one, actually. He actually did, was the first one to name a director outside of the Secret Service. He named Tex Ailes is his name. He was a former Marine general. And yet, but the cabal got to him and they pushed him out.

I mean, he left when the Homeland Security Secretary left.

I think her name is Kirsten Nelson. I think that's right. Yeah. But yeah, Tex L's left at the same time she did. But he got pushed out by all of the people within the Secret Service that think that they control things. And it's really there's really a culture. And I hate to say this culture of corruption in the Secret Service. They they don't they have uneven discipline. We've seen that since Cartagena. You know, some people get a slap on the wrist, especially if they when everybody's running around with the prostitutes.

Right, exactly. Yeah, it was a problem. But people, there was uneven discipline in their remains today. Even during polygraphs, I already reported this. Some people, if they're connected to former members of Secret Service, former leadership, or if it's something like a daughter or maybe just somebody's friend,

They can redo their polygraph. And there's been whistleblowers about this that I cited in my stories. And Congress knows all about this. Oh, you can redo your polygraph if you failed it. And what does that say about the standards? No, I'm not kidding. Not really how it's supposed to work.

They, they even, okay, this is a deep concern. I reported this in a story about Iranian spying, whether it's helped hurting our ability, um, you know, the national security ability to protect Trump and others, you know, everyone, there's a lot of problems with Iranian spying in this administration, as we know with Rob Malley, the Iranian envoy, Biden's Iranian envoy. And so somebody, they actually put through somebody, um,

an applicant in the secret service. I have firsthand sources on this who failed the terrorist questions on their polygraph. I'm not kidding you. It's in my, it's in my story. And I also quote an Obama administration, senior former senior Obama administration, intelligence official who said he didn't say which one, but he said our protective services and he named secret service DHS and air marshals, um,

They are penetrated by Iranian assets, either wittingly or unwittingly. They have been penetrated. Oh, my Lord. I mean, this is this going from bad to worse here. Listen, I for one, I confess I didn't know you before the real clear politics beat for you. And I have since become such a fan of

God bless you. Thank God you're on this beat. I assume this will continue. And so let's get specific about how people can find you. Go to RealClearPolitics.com and then what? You just there we have our list of writers and then you could click on me and then you can get all of the right all of the stories I've done over years. But in the last two months has been focused on Secret Service.

And this Iranian spying issue. And I just really appreciate I've always been a fan of yours, Megan. And I just really appreciate your deep concern about this issue and how, you know, how much airtime you're giving it when people want to. Before the second assassination attempt, I was feeling like people were moving on, even though we had this very explosive, you know, report by Grassley last week with this Iranian attack.

I mean, it was detailed, but it wasn't getting that much play. And I think, unfortunately, the

We need to make sure that this is has about this is not just about Donald Trump. OK, it is about Donald Trump. This right now is about continuity of government. And it's about our democracy, our ability to participate in politics as we see fit as Americans. I mean, that's the worst thing we could have happen to our ability as Americans.

Yeah, the murdered dad murdered in front of his family members at a rally that he had every right to feel, to go to and feel secure at. And so I really appreciate your attention. Well, keep on keeping on. Go get them. And we'll be following and stay in touch, please. We'd love to have you back. Thank you so much, Megan. Wow. Extraordinary information there, right? Can you believe all that? I mean, this organization is a mess. It's just a mess.

It explains so much. No wonder they're dropping the ball. I mean, I realize that the person responsible for what almost happened to Trump today is this man who's now in custody. But let's face it, there was a perimeter problem today as well. And it's even more egregious because it's exactly what was happening at Butler, a perimeter problem. In essence, I mean, it's not the same exact circumstances, but that's what the problem was. That building from which the shooter shot Trump and Cory Cromitore is

was outside the perimeter. We did just get this in. A couple of things here. Okay. Let's see. We have sound from Ryan Ruth, the suspect. It was...

I don't know when this was, this Newsweek interview he gave, June of 2022. Okay, so this is just two years ago. For some reason, he gave an interview to Newsweek. I don't know what, Newsweek Romania. What? Bizarre. I don't know the circumstances, but this is going to be our first look at him talking and explaining some

some piece of his worldview in the not too distant past. Let's watch. More emotional for me is also is just talking to the guys that have come here. You know, when you talk to a 20 year old guy that sold everything he owns to come at your fight, that is heroism. You know, he's coming here to risk his life.

for humanity for the ukrainians you know guys that sell everything they own to come here and support the ukrainians while others sit at home and and and do nothing you know it's an indictment of our entire human society to say hey you know where do we stand do we do we stand for for good

Or do we just not care? I mean, does the world not care? That's the feeling I wrestle with every day. Every day in my interactions with everybody. You know, every one of us is responsible for the outcome of this war. Every one of us. It's really interesting. He's in that clip wearing a flag sweatshirt, American flag. And he's got...

On the right half of his head, gray hair. And on the left half of his head, blonde hair. He was definitely very, is, I mean, he's still alive, obsessed with Ukraine. That's an issue that Trump has been ambiguous on, to be honest. Others in the Republican Party, including J.D. Vance and RFKJ, who just endorsed Trump, have said it's, you know, enough is enough. Enough is enough is enough. And it's time to pull out. I don't know. It's very hard to respond rationally to such an irrational person.

But that's him talking about Ukraine, which was obviously a very big, very big issue for him. FYI, the New York Times once interviewed this guy, too, in 2023. So last year about his support for Ukraine's war against Russia. How? How did he make their radar? Why would they interview this guy? Well, we'll have to figure this out, including plans to conscript former Afghan troops into Kiev's military.

I mean, it's interesting. Mary Catherine Hamm just tweeted on all of his media interviews. So isolated Nutter is going to be a harder sell when the New York Times was happily quoting him as a sophisticated activist. She's not wrong. Semaphore interviewed him. How? Why? We're going to know all the answers to these. Those questions we will figure out. We will. The FBI can't hide that stuff. We're going to have to figure out all of that. Guys, this has been an extraordinary podcast.

day. I don't, I just feel sort of unsettled, right? It's like, I'm worried he's going to get killed, right? Aren't you? I'm worried he's going to get killed. How can they stop it unless they treat him like he is the current president and respond accordingly with Secret Service assets? Trump is going to get killed. And I have nothing but concern and love and empathy for his family having to deal with that fact right now.

Trump, for what it's worth, is typical Trump.

I read you at the top of the show, the statement he put out again, here it is. There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first. I am safe and well, nothing will slow me down. I will never surrender. I will always love you for supporting me. Sean Hannity over on Fox news reported that Trump said in a conversation to him, something to the effect of, I was doing pretty well on my golf round. And I kind of wanted to finish. He said to something like he was even, and he was about to shoot a birdie.

So good for him, right? Finding humor in this. And I think probably it takes a while to sink in that it almost happened again. I am kind of thinking about Melania right now. She didn't want him to run for president. They had a great life. People loved Trump. He was fun. The left loved him. The right loved him. He wasn't that controversial. He was a bon vivant type in New York. And I'm sure she was loving their wonderful life with their son, Barron, and her stepchildren, Trump's children.

And then he felt the need to do it. He'd always toyed with the idea of getting political. You can see that in a lot of the early Donald Trump interviews where he considered whether he might run for president one day. And they say that that Barack Obama White House dinner where he was just so disgusting and nasty toward Trump. I realize the birtherism. I get it. But, you know, really low blows.

That infuriated Trump sitting there that night. And they say that's when he determined he was going to do it. He was going to run and he was going to succeed Barack Obama. And he would undo the things that he didn't like about that presidency. And boy, did he ever. I mean, Barack Obama's pen and phone didn't prove to be very valuable once Donald Trump got in there. And look what they've done to him. Look what's been done to him ever since. They ruined his first term.

With the Russia, Russia, Russia nonsense. They impeached him. He had spent all his time devoted to that, trying to keep Don Jr. out of the clutches of the authorities, having people like Michael Flynn railroaded. There's no crime, but you lied to us. And so you're going to jail. And I mean, so many people around him in the crosshairs. And then I'm not going to defend his behavior around January 6th. They're losing the election. I never have.

But the second impeachment was unnecessary. They did it anyway. And Nancy Pelosi quickly ran around to all the TV stations saying twice impeached, twice impeached. They rubbed his nose in it. And that's why they did it twice impeached. And when they realized that because he wasn't convicted, he could still run again. They started with a lawfare. That was the before and after moment. We've managed never to do it in 250 years. And they crossed that line.

The raid at Mar-a-Lago, the Alvin Bragg indictment, 34 felonies over the same exact act. One piece of behavior, 34 felonies. That moron and her partner down in Atlanta, Jack Smith, thinking he's Elliot Ness. He's figuring out where all the crimes are and he's gonna be the one to hold Trump accountable. A partisan hack and it fell apart.

it fell apart because it was baseless and good judges for Trump or badges judges for Trump. The law is the law. The verdicts against Trump in the civil cases did not fall apart yet, unfortunately. So he's still facing some five or $600 million in civil judgments because Tish James in New York decided to try to close Trump Tower and Trump's business. EG and Carol got the law changed for her.

So she could bring a lawsuit funded by Democrat operatives against Donald Trump.

Same way Christine Blasey Ford found some Democrat operatives to bring her claims forward against Brett Kavanaugh, who Trump was, of course, that was Trump's pick, who Trump defended and stood behind something no other president would ever have done. He didn't fold. The same thing that makes him say fight after getting shot in the ear is the thing that made him stand behind Brett Kavanaugh. It's the thing that makes him tweet, I hate Taylor Swift. It's the thing that makes him bring up pets and the dogs. He doesn't give a shit that you question his strategy.

He's accomplished the unaccomplishable, notwithstanding the odds against him. But an assassin's bullet, if allowed access to him over and over and over again, won't miss every time. It's insane that we now have to use two hands to talk about the number of legal cases against him, and two fingers to talk about the impeachments, and two fingers to talk about the assassination attempts.

Let's pray it stops at that. We'll have full coverage for you tomorrow on the show, starting at noon East, live on Sirius XM, Triumph Channel 111. And as you know, we drop the show later as a podcast and then youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Thank you all so much for watching us and listening to us tonight. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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