7/18/24: Biden Media Attacks JD On Abortion, Trump Shooting No Effect On Polls, Pelosi War On Biden To Drop Out, Secret Service Blames Sloped Roof
01:37:44 Share

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And we're the hosts of Unpacking the Toolbox, the Scandal Rewatch podcast where we're talking about all the best moments of the show. Mesmerizing. But also we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes stories with Unpacking the Toolbox podcast.

Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life in marriage. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.

I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Breaking Points. Sagar is out for the best of possible reasons. He is getting married this weekend, but we have a jam-packed show. We got Ryan in the studio. We got Emily on the ground at the RNC. We're gonna have Dave Weigel in the show later to break down a

A lot that is happening in Biden world. J.D. Vance made his debut last night. We've got polls showing actually interesting little post-assassination movement. So the very certain predictions that this would have a huge impact on, I should say, post-assassination attempt movement. Let's be clear here. But all those predictions seem not to have totally come to fruition. Biden has COVID-19.

He also was saying, hey, if he's diagnosed with a medical condition, he might get out of the race. So kind of changing his tune there. There's a huge flood of pressure coming to bear on him right now. So a lot of things moving there as well. We also have new revelations about what the hell happened with regards to that assassination attempt that really raised a lot of stunning questions. Secret Service very much under pressure right now. And Morning Joe, quite upset that they were pulled from the air on Monday. Great to see you guys. How are you both?

Doing great. Doing great. And glad you're back and glad everything's well with your family. We were worried for you, but we're excited that things seem to be going in a positive direction. Yeah. If I can take a moment of personal privilege, I just want to thank all of you guys out there who sent your thoughts and your kind words our way. It's been a very difficult week. But thankfully, my daughter, she had to be rushed in for emergency surgery. She's

She is doing much, much better now. She is recovering. Thank you so much to Emily Ryan, you guys, for stepping up. Sagar in particular, who I said, he's getting married this week. His own grandfather just passed. He has a hell of a lot going on personally. Really picked up the slack. Griffin, Mac, our entire team. And also, if I can, I really want to send a shout out to the whole pediatric surgery team at VCU.

They were incredible. And truly, I can never say enough about how amazing they were and how much they changed our family's lives. So thank you guys. And with that out of the way, let me go ahead and get to the show. Emily, you're on the ground there at the RNC. J.D. Vance made his sort of national debut there. Big primetime speech last night. Just give us a sense of what the energy is there. And then we've also got a little bit of a clip from him that we can throw to you.

Yeah, well, it was very, very, let's say, relatively boring given how crazy the news cycle is. But J.D. Vance did basically what you would expect to hear from J.D. Vance. He actually tore into NAFTA. He tore into the Iraq war and Iraq.

I went back and looked at the Republican National Convention in 2004, so 20 years ago. And of course, everybody knows who was on the ballot. It was Dick Cheney, vice president, and J.D. Vance's slot, and George W. Bush. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke at the 2004 Republican Convention and referred to people who were pessimistic about the American economy, especially as compared to the Chinese economy, as economic criminals.

girly men. He was championing the war in Iraq. And so I look back at that not to just say, wow, this is a new Republican Party because J.D. Vance obviously specifically tore into China and our sort of elites. He used the words ruling class. He actually described it as the ruling class, just like you would sort of at a

conservative movement, sort of organizational gathering. When he said that, he was talking about how a lot of our jobs have gone to China. And so that is a stark contrast with the economic girly man sentiment of Arnold Schwarzenegger 20 years ago. And I say that not to

you know, just be focused on the past. But also it made me wonder, what does the RNC look like in 2028? What does it look like in 2032? Would you have Sean O'Brien? Would you have the mayor of East Palestine? And would you have J.D. Vance being cheered like this for lines about the kind of decadence of America's ruling class? And I don't think that's a settled question because this was a new version of J.D. Vance in the extent that he's like,

talking about unity. He made a pitch on behalf of unity. He said that this is a party of a big tent and that everyone can debate and hash things out. I don't think he's ever said that to Mitch McConnell before, but now that he's the vice presidential nominee, he made that pitch from the stage. But otherwise, it's very polished. It's buttoned up.

And it's not, you know, like it doesn't feel like a reality television show except for one thing, which is nobody knows what Donald Trump is going to say. Really, nobody knows what Donald Trump is going to say. And that is a huge, outstanding factor in what happens at this convention. And we won't know until like 10 p.m.

Let me go ahead and cue up and then Ryan, I'll get you in on the other side. Let me go ahead and cue up the clip that we have of JD Vance speaking, talking about the opioid crisis and the impact it's had on communities like the one that he's from. Let's take a listen to that. My friends, things did not work out well for a lot of kids I grew up with. Every now and then I will get a call from a relative back home who asks, did you know so-and-so? And I'll remember a face from years ago and then I'll hear they died of an overdose.

As always, America's ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price. For decades, that divide between the few, with their power and comfort in Washington, and the rest of us only widened. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again.

Our movement is about single moms like mine who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up. And I'm proud to say that tonight my mom is here. Ten years clean and sober. I love you, Mom.

Ryan, you know, the speech came the same day, I believe, that we also heard Trump was considering Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary. So very different direction in terms of, you know, that potential move. And so, of course, this raises the key question. Is this different rhetoric just rhetoric?

Or does it symbolize some sort of actual shift in terms of policy? Because we all know, Ryan, what the first Trump term looked like in which his, there were some shifts, especially on China. That was a significant change in direction. There were others, but his main achievement was a giant tax cut for the rich. Yeah, and on some level, rhetoric is real in the sense that

You know, a lot of the things that he said on stage, you just wouldn't have heard on a Republican stage 20 years ago. And there's something real. There has to be something real underneath that. It can't just it can't just be talk is why.

Piss off all of your donors if you don't see at least some kind of cynical value value in it the the the the hostility to the war it like it's nice to see that now from You know that getting some actual purchase inside the Republican Party I I know I get nervous that they'll become like liberals that joke about liberals is that you know They're against every war except the current war and so here you've got

Republicans who were against the war from 20 years ago, which, okay, that's better. It's better to be against it in real time. But if it represents a kind of a going forward opposition to intervention, as it does for Vance, at least when it comes to Ukraine, then that does seem like progress. But yeah, Emily, I'm curious from your perspective, because Crystal's question is the key one.

The question has always been is this is this like a faint toward the working class? Is this is this kind of is this is this fake? Is this just a tiny rump group that is kind of funded by Peter Thiel with inside the Republican Party that doesn't actually represent a real faction or is this becoming kind of a a main a kind of mainstream through line of the new Republican Party and the fact that you've got, you know both members of the ticket and

at you know espousing some elements of this even as trump still right exactly says well jamie dimon might be my treasury secretary i still want to take corporate uh taxes down to 15 if if the oil companies will give me a billion dollars they can have whatever they want like you still have that whole thing at the same time you've got this so color me confused you're like what are you seeing out there in milwaukee

Yeah, I mean, color everyone confused, honestly, because this is clearly where the momentum is. If you're talking to people who are, you know, just delegates or if you're talking to the kind of movement, conservative movement people who are here in Milwaukee, they love the J.D. Vance pick. You know, everyone I've talked to is extremely excited about it, save for a couple folks.

that I would say are more members of the Republican establishment, but they're not being loud about it. They're not out there being loud about it, which I think raises one of the biggest points, which is, is it durable beyond Trump? Is it just something that Donald Trump can get away with because he didn't have those pre-existing sort of decades-long relationships with conservative donors in the way that a lot of people who come through the conservative machine or the

the Dem machine, have. So is this just something that people really love when it comes attached to Donald Trump? And that's why I'm thinking like, RNC 2028, are they really going to have Sean O'Brien? Is Sean O'Brien really going to want to be there if Donald Trump isn't at the top of the ticket, which sort of dictates all of those kind of

downstream trappings of what it means to be conservative in 2028. And what's clear is that conservatives, people who vote Republican in this country, a lot of them love what Donald Trump says about China. They love what J.D. Vance says about the border. They love all of this. And so can the Republican Party sustain it, I think is an interesting question because certainly the sort of infrastructure of the right is not sustainable.

set up to sustain it. That's changing a little bit, but it can only change, like that change has to last if they really want to be the party of the working class beyond just the rhetoric. So what Trump says tonight, I still think is like the huge outstanding variable here. - Yeah. - And on that question real quick on the billionaire infrastructure, I want to get your take on this. What has made the Democratic Party

So fun to cover for me for the last like 15 years is that the Democrats have their kind of values that they state and they've always claimed to be the party of the working class and of working people of FDR, LBJ. And then you can report on what they're actually doing.

the gap between their values and their rhetoric and what they're actually doing that's that's where they that's where the real good journalism lies so what i love is to hear the same stuff from trump and from jd vance because then you can set the marker all right this is what they say they're going to do on xyz here's what they're actually doing and the journalism can live within that but i'm curious on the billionaire infrastructure and this kind of fits into that jd vance's

career has been has has been adjacent to these billionaires the whole time, you know Peter Thiel dropping was a 10 or 20 million bill 10 or 20 million dollars into his Senate super PAC and then as soon as Trump picks JD Vance as His VP Elon Musk immediately is like I'm in 45 million dollars a month. It certainly seemed like a

Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance, the others in that world were arguing strongly for J.D. Vance. And when they got Vance, he's like, okay, now the checks are coming. How do you square that with the kind of working class values that they're professing, I guess? Like, how do they square that? Well, yeah, and...

And as we discussed on yesterday's show, right, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz immediately jumped on the bandwagon this week, too. And so, yeah, I remember about this this morning, actually. It's like there was this tug of war over the VP slot between the likes of Rupert Murdoch and then also sort of the VC Silicon Valley group. So are you replacing one group of billionaires with another group of billionaires and replacing one war with, you know, hawkishness in a

another war. There were a lot of cheers for a student who came out and railed against Harvard. He's suing Harvard over allegations of anti-Semitism. There were a lot of cheers for him. As I said, there have been some Israeli flags that have been in the audience being waved. Nothing huge, but there were a lot of cheers for that young man last night. So yeah, it's just an open-

And one thing that's clear is that they can tap into those populist sentiments and do that in directions that many of us might not agree are populist at the end of the day. So a lot of energy around this stuff here. People are really excited about J.D. Vance. Like I said, they're really, really excited about J.D. Vance. He feels young and fresh.

His wife gave an excellent speech that was very well received last night when she introduced him. Everybody's happy about it, except for a couple of kind of old GOP hands. But where it goes is a huge open question. Yeah, I'd love to see a Harvard student complaining about microaggressions at the RNC team.

Why not? Why not? You know, in terms of J.D. Vance on foreign policy, like he's very pro-Israel tied into his religious beliefs. He is a dissident on the Ukraine war, but he always frames it in terms of because we need to focus on, he doesn't say it exactly this way, but the next war with China. So I don't think you can say he's anti-intervention or anti-war. He's just against this particular war. He's looking forward to a different,

much larger war and is also in favor of the other war that we're currently, you know, proxy engaged in, in Israel. Yeah. I wanted to put up some slides from our friends, jail partners, that they asked voters what they think about JD Vance. We can put the first one up on the screen. So overall people just don't know, right? He,

He's not particularly well-defined nationally. Literally the biggest thing that people said about him is don't know. The next largest thing appears to be Republican. Then you have unknown. Senator Trump, the sort of highest rated positive signifier here. You've got good, you've got smart. Among people who do know who he is, which I have to guess skews more Republican at this point, we can put the next piece up on the screen.

Even within here, it's very vague. It's like Republican, okay, Senator, unknown, good, nothing, strong, smart. So he's very much undefined in the public view. And I can tell you, we can put this next reporting up on the screen from the lever. There's already been a lot of reporting about his views on abortion. Now, this...

A piece of reporting from the levers says J.D. Vance wants police to track people who have abortions. Basically, the Democrats tried to put into place a privacy rule that would bar law enforcement from having access to private information about whether people had an abortion or not. J.D. Vance was opposed to that privacy rule and attempting to block it. There was also new reporting from CNN about a 2022 interview from J.D. Vance saying he would certainly like abortion to be illegal nationally, was sympathetic about

to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. So Emily, the Democrats are certainly gonna try to fill in the blanks for people real quick about who J.D. Vance is. Talk to us about, do you have a sense that there was an electoral calculus

that went into this pick because in other areas, Trump seemed to be very wary of picking a vice presidential candidate who had baggage on an issue that he knows is a key vulnerability. And so what is your sense of this sort of strategy here? Or is it just the like, listen, I think we're going to win in a landslide, so I'm going to pick whoever the hell I want to pick.

Yeah, it's a great question. From what I've been able to tell just talking to folks and, you know, having covered Donald Trump, as we all have for a while now, is there are two things. He really liked J.D. Vance's personal story, that kind of arc. And I think that was vindicated, that take was vindicated yesterday because it's a huge element of what J.D. Vance talked about. We rolled that clip earlier of him celebrating his mom's 10 years of sobriety.

And talking as a lot of millennials who come from so-called flyover country know about seeing those names come up and seeing the fentanyl overdoses time after time, I think that is really resonant with a lot of folks. And I think Donald Trump knows that J.D. Vance's background, his...

honestly, just objectively impressive achievements, being a Marine and enlisting and then going to law school, basically coming from nothing and ending up where he is, is really resonant with people. It's a good story. Donald Trump loves a narrative. There's no question about that. On the other hand, he also, not only does J.D. Vance have that going for him, but he also is going to be loyal to Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump knows, has sensed with J.D. Vance that he's somebody who is a

a true believer, which was actually funny enough, one of the left's knocks against him. But J.D. Vance has become a true believer to all of this. And if you spend any time with him and talk to him, even though he used to be really anti-Trump, that is very clearly no longer the case. It's not

cynical with him. He's really thought through these things from that sort of intellectual point of view and buys that kind of Flight 93 election mentality that a lot of people in like Claremont circles on the right and those new right, national conservative circles absolutely buy into. So I think those are two critical factors for Donald Trump. I will say

abortion has been conspicuously absent from this RNC that started with the platform. Uh, but you are just not hearing a lot about, uh, the, the, the issue at all. And one thing that I have heard is people think that JD Vance's, uh,

Kind of his statement right before he was picked on Mipha Purstone, that is sincerely something that's concerned a couple of people that I've chatted with, that it signals that maybe J.D. Vance will be open to blowing along with the Trumpian winds kind of and will be easily sort of co-opted by Trump's inner circle, which a lot of people in new right circles don't trust. So there's just like a lot going on.

But we will see. Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for somebody who's not going to change his position on something, J.D. Vance is not your man, for sure. But I'm curious what the kind of talking point is going to be in response to what Crystal brought up, because that lever story is one of the few kind of independent news scoops that wound up on MSNBC. Like, Rachel Maddow is like,

I love Lever News, great scoop here from David Sirota's team. And she was waving it around and saying, look at this letter that J.D. Vance signed saying that he wants to surveil you as you're going out of state so that the Mississippi can catch you trying to get an abortion out of state. And then there was that unearthed

unearthed as in like the oppo team had it and like within an hour of him uh uh being named the oppo team dumps it on somebody and it's it's unearthed but it wasn't uh buried very long ago we're just talking 2022 so what is the republican response going to be you think you think you're dead on that the the uh projection out of milwaukee is just let's just not talk about it

because we've got all eyes on us, not a lot of normies, like don't talk about it. But when they have to actually do combat, hand-to-hand combat where Democrats are saying, this is what you've said, is there a line yet that Republicans are gonna have in response or is that still being fought over?

Yeah, I mean, I think, sadly, the kind of anti-abortion movement knows that the issue with, as long as Donald Trump is at the helm of the Republican Party, which feels indefinite, to be honest, the issue, they have lost.

You know, they won on Dobbs and Roe, but they've lost that sort of battle for what happens afterwards and how the Republican Party handles it. That's the sense that you pick up. And so, yeah, I think that read on things, basically, that they're just not going to talk about it because Donald Trump, people may remember a couple of months ago, Donald Trump sort of unveiled, rolled out his new kind of language.

the way that he thinks Republicans should talk about abortion and what sort of policies should be off the table, et cetera, et cetera. That very much has won the day. And that's very much going to be how J.D. Vance is talking about the issue, I would expect, for the next couple of months, unless, you know, someone...

gets him in a quiet moment talking about his Catholic beliefs on life or something like that. You know, he's going to be talking a lot in the next couple of months. I'm sure he'll have to answer these questions pretty often. My sense is that it'll be a pun.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch how it unfolds. My own sense of the choice for what it's worth, I have no inside knowledge here, but that, you know, Trump feels very confident. Apparently, the pitch was made from Tucker Carlson and others that this would make him, quote, assassination-proof president.

because maybe if it was Marco Rubio, people would want him out of the way. I mean, that's a pretty dark direction to go in. But, you know, I think there was a thought that basically he bought into that logic. He liked J.D. Vance personally. And J.D. has gone out of his way to say that he didn't think that Mike Pence should have gone forward with the electoral count vote.

And so to your point, Emily, I mean, it's strange from a guy who at one point said Trump may be America's Hitler and who not that long ago, and this was also quote unquote unearthed this morning, that Trump was a fraud. He said on a podcast a few years back

and, you know, made some very aggressively critical comments of this president. So it's odd that loyalty would be the thing that Trump was after in this pick. But I think because Vance has gone out of his way to say, you know, I even would have followed you into the breach in terms of stop the steal and throwing the whole country into chaos by not moving forward with the electoral count in the way that Mike Pence did. Mike Vance. My brain is so addled this week, guys. You got to bear with me. It's fair.

But I think that was a key part of this selection as well.

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance.

And it was Peak TV. This is new scandal content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to get to more Biden news in a bit, but I wonder if that calculus would have been different if they were staring down the possibility of a different candidate

candidate at the top than Joe Biden, which may in fact be the case. But I want to move on to just quickly hear some of the polling that we've gotten post-assassination attempt. Emily, I wanted to get some of your take on this. We can put this up on the screen. Now, listen, Joe Biden was losing before the assassination attempt, and he is still losing after the assassination attempt. But at least from the minimal polling that we've seen so far,

it didn't actually move the needle that much. And so there were a lot of confident predictions of like, oh, it's over and there's going to be this huge movement in Trump's direction. So far, that hasn't really shown up. And I wondered what you made of that, Emily, because

My own thinking was that you'd already had a lot of movement away from Biden in the wake of his disastrous debate performance. And I'm just not sure, given how polarized, like partisan polarized we are, how much more of a shift there can really be towards Trump among those who are on the fence, since a lot of that had already come right after the debate disaster for Biden.

Yeah, you know, I've always thought Donald Trump had a ceiling. And I think most people have made the same assumption that, you know, and their numbers, by the way, two on two, you know, nobody's really ever getting over 50%. I think Biden may have in his favorability at the beginning of his presidency. But obviously, polarization makes that such that it feels like anybody with the sort of R or D next to their name in the presidential ticket is going to have a ceiling. And does Donald Trump...

you know, sort of rising after taking a bullet to the ear changed that maybe a little, but I don't think significantly there's just any room for that in American politics now. But I will say the RNC, people here are projecting confidence. And I think J.D. Vance, the pick of J.D. Vance is a projection of confidence. Donald Trump didn't pick someone who would bring in a critical swing state, didn't bring someone who would shore up

support among a demographic. You know, maybe the logic was that Tim Scott could help continue to eat away at Democrats' margins with the black vote in an election where that will matter a whole lot. That's not what he did with J.D. Vance. And so I do think there's a sense of confidence in shifting priorities. But, you know, there's also a...

let's see, a pivot or attempted pivot to boringness. You know, that's kind of what I meant earlier about J.D. Vance, that it was just, it was very buttoned up and contained. And I think they want Biden now to be the chaos candidate. And that's what Republicans are going for. But I think even that in and of itself speaks to the fact that everyone has a ceiling with just a little bit of wiggle room where independents are involved and turnout is involved. And that's where the fight really is from now until November.

Ryan, I wanted to get your take on this poll, if we can put this next one up on the screen, because, you know, Republicans have been aggressively making the case, J.D. Vance in particular, that Democratic rhetoric is to blame, the root cause of Trump's shooting, the attempted assassination. And, uh...

I'm not sure that that was really a smart direction for them to go in because if you're fighting an election on the grounds of which party has more sort of inflammatory and divisive rhetoric, that's just not really the rep that Joe Biden has at this point. So the number one root cause that people point to is Doreen Shooter, which we have some new reporting we'll get to later about what he was searching for that I think very much matches that root cause determination. The next is...

highest, just barely behind that, was Trump and his own rhetoric. And then you get to the rhetoric of Biden and Democrats at just 13% of people who are putting the blame there. So, you know, it kind of reminded me in a bizarre way, Ryan, of

when Biden gave that disastrous debate answer about abortion, where Democrats were like, oh, this is easy, knock this out of the park. And then he turns the conversation immediately to an undocumented immigrant raping and murdering someone. You're like, why would you ever bring this up? Because this is the worst possible landscape for you to fight on. I sort of feel like that with Republicans and now wanting to fight on the ground of like, which party is more buttoned up and responsible with the nature of their rhetoric at this point? Yeah.

Yes, and that poll is done by Harris X, which is a terrible pollster, but leans very Trumpian. And so, you know, if those are the results that they get, you can pad them actually probably a little bit higher in that direction. I think it might have mattered if the shooter's motivations had been different. Like, let's say we turned out at some Antifa kid event.

You know, who was, you know, really out there to like stop Trump from becoming president again. Like for a second, that's what it's, you know, that's what the right thought they had with this. They started blaming this poor Italian guy who was asleep at the time. If that had proven to be the case, maybe the numbers changed.

Moved slightly in there and you get some kind of bump one, you know towards towards Trump but when it when it emerged that and it's also kind of a sad testament to American culture that we were so quickly able to code this shooter like we started hearing from the his fellow students and we started, you know understanding just the basics of him and seeing him and we're like, oh

This is a standard issue school shooter who we don't know a whole lot about because so many of them just die. But so many people have known them before they carried out the school shooting that it's a loner. It's somebody miserable and depressed going through a mental health crisis. And combined with some psychosis that leads them to want to kind of go out of this world in this like blaze of bizarre glory. And once I think...

American people were like, oh, that's what happened here, then it just doesn't have any political valence anymore. And the idea that that person is going to be inspired by Joe Biden, you know, saying the word bullseye in a private donor call is too absurd, I think, to latch on anywhere. The most thought-provoking comment that I saw from anybody on the day of the shooting was, I forget who posted at this point, but they said,

This might sound crazy, but in two weeks, we'll have metabolized this and completely forgotten about it. And I saw that and I was like, that's crazy. And then I started thinking, is that crazy? Like we're in such a fast moving, polarized, crazy world that it's quite possible two weeks from now, we haven't forgotten it. We'll know what happened, but it won't have kind of left a mark on our kind of culture the way that it would have, you know, 50 years ago, 40 years ago.

Yeah, to be honest, that's my sense of things as well. I mean, you can look at our own show and the fact that this is the latest details of the massive, astonishing security failures are towards the end of the show to show you how quick the news is moving at this point. But Emily, I wonder what you make of any or all of this.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this depends on a couple of moving parts right now. One, just in the last 24 hours, it has looked like we are getting signals from Joe Biden's camp, although they are still vehemently denying them publicly, that lay the groundwork for a potential dropout. So it started with, I think it was Jeff Zeleny, who said that a senior Democratic advisor said Biden may not be open to dropping out of the race, and then Biden himself said

was diagnosed with COVID and is looking rather feeble in some of the videos of him getting on and off a plane and into a car. So, I mean, was this entire RNC against a ghost, as my old editor Tim Carney put it at Washington Examiner, because Biden himself has figured heavily into it. They were chanting, constant chants last night of Joe must go from the delegates on the floor. Agreed. Co-sign. Yeah.

And a lot of Democrats would co-sign it too. And that may all be for, that may all be a moot point not so long in the future. So I think that depends, a lot of this depends really heavily on that because Trump with his fist in the air, juxtaposed with some of the memes of like Biden tripping up the Air Force One stairs, that I think does give

some power to what Donald Trump went through. And the second one, we keep coming back to this, but it's what Donald Trump says tonight. And we have basically no indication of what Donald Trump is going to say other than he swapped out what he called a real rip-roar for a new speech. But we don't know what that means. And we still don't fully know. Donald Trump has been

very consciously, stoic all week. You see him, I've been looking down at him during every speech, like focused on his reactions. He has not been giving a lot of reaction. And so how he handles

this personal trauma, honestly, and kind of a national trauma for everybody too, how he handles that, I think is still an open question and how it might affect numbers going forward, I think does kind of depend on both of those two things a lot. Yeah. I mean, again, let me be clear. Joe Biden is losing this race. He's losing every battleground state.

you know, we already had all the images of him being incredibly feeble. We've got a new one we can show you today of him like having to be helped into his car seat by his aides. And he was just diagnosed with COVID. All of that is already there. It's just, it's not that surprising to me that it

didn't move the numbers even more against Joe Biden. But Emily, thank you so much. You're doing a fantastic job on the ground there. We're so lucky to have you on the ground bringing us reporting from the RNC. And I'm sure we will be talking to you more about what Trump does have to say when he speaks primetime tonight.

Thanks, guys. Yeah, they actually brought the old Breaking Point set to Wisconsin. So it's nice to be back in the comfortable prison. No, I will never escape it. I will never escape it. All right. Love you, Emily. See you soon. Thanks, guys.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal KCBQ.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So a whole lot going on with Joe Biden this morning. He has now been diagnosed with COVID. There is a now very public effort to pressure him out coming from the top echelons of Democrats. We're talking Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries, etc. But Ryan, before we jump into that, just a reminder to all of you guys that Ryan just launched Dropsite News. I understand the launch has gone fantastic. There's been big support from the Breaking Points and Counterpoints universe. And you've got a discount going, right, Ryan? Yeah.

Yes, for breaking points and counterpoints of yours, you guys can get 20% off your subscriptions. That's what the journalism will remain free, but it's the subscriptions that make the investigative work possible. So it's dropsitenews.com slash counterpoints. We'll put the link down there. But just go to that URL and you'll get 20% off your subscription. And thanks, everybody, for the support the first week and a half. It's been really gratifying. I think we're in liftoff. I think

I think, I think we're going to make it. And I think we're going to be around for a long time to come doing a lot of, doing a lot of damage. Thanks. And Crystal, thanks to, thanks to you guys too. Um, the breaking points community has really come out for it. Um, which is, that's who you want to be beholden to. Like if you got to be beholden to somebody, if you got to serve somebody, that's who you want to serve. I could not, uh,

possibly disagree with that. So guys, go ahead and do that. Ryan and Jeremy have already broken some incredible stories just in the first, what are you, a week into this? A little more than a week into this and already have made some major news. So it's definitely worth you guys giving your support if you're able. Let's go ahead and get to the news with regards to Biden. We can put this tear sheet up on the screen. So he has tested positive

for COVID-19. He's having to cancel events because of this diagnosis. We can also put this video up on the screen just continuing to show how feeble he is at this point in his life. You can see there through the window him really having to be assisted, almost like lifted into the car. You can sort of make that out through the rain from the side here, see him being put in. And part of why this is

this is so significant is because, let's go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen. This diagnosis is significant because it came right after news leaked that Biden had privately said he might quit the presidential race.

if a medical condition emerged. Now, I don't know that COVID was the medical condition that he was referring to there, but this was in an interview with BET. He was asked, is there anything that you would look to you personally to say? If I see that, I will reevaluate. And Biden said, quote, if I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this

problem, that problem, Biden indicated that he would be receptive to getting out of the race. Ryan, this comes, we've got like a whole slew of Biden developments that we're going to get to. As I said, you've got now Pelosi and Schumer really making more public their desires to push him out. You have him seemingly more open to the conversation. Not that he's saying he's going to get out, but he's not just like out and out, ruling it out. What do you make of these most recent developments?

Well, he had also said that he would only take advice on this question from the Almighty. So you can read into that what you want about the timing of this. Right after he says medical condition. I looked it up the last time that he had COVID. He was in isolation for 16 days.

which is CDC recommendation is like five minutes at this point. So 16 days when you have just a few days left of the entire presidential campaign and this pushes you close to the

the Democratic National Convention does put I think you know extra pressure especially as Democrats are and we're gonna talk about this getting you know much more public and vocal about the pressure that they're putting on him and not just Democrats not just the two-thirds of Democratic voters who say they want him to step down but the most powerful Democrats aside from the president in the country are now telling him very directly and to his face that

exactly what the RNC crowd was chanting, you know, Joe must go.

Yeah, yeah, it could have been Nancy Pelosi in the crowd leading those chats. Well, I mean, the COVID diagnosis, it kind of cuts both ways, doesn't it? Because on the one hand, it's another indication of like, hey, the Almighty might be sending you those signals, buddy. And also, listen, everybody gets sick. But, you know, at his age, it once again raises the specter. OK, this is a much more serious illness for someone at his age and in his whatever his health condition is.

But the COVID diagnosis also gives him an excuse to stop doing the interviews and appearances he has been doing that have not been going particularly well. We have a little bit of a mashup of his appearance at the NAACP, and this was put together. And you can see even on a teleprompter, he's struggling to complete sentences, finish his thoughts.

and is completely oblivious to his own major policy announcement with regard to housing. He means to say at one point that he's going to cap rent increases at 5%. And he says he's going to cap rent at $55. So just, you know, a horrific blunder, which in other conditions, maybe you say, all right, well, he just screwed up once. But obviously this is not just a one-time screw-up. Let's take a listen to a little bit of how this appearance went. I knew it.

I know you say, Joe, you may not have a Congress. Well, guess what? You all told me I couldn't pass the Inflation Reduction Act. You all told me I couldn't face it. Anyway, we did it. We're going to bring rents down. As I said, we're going to build 2 million affordable homes. The cap rent increases by 5% a year, so corporate landlords can't. God. Anyway, I don't want to get going. I'm going to get very upset. But there's gouging in America. By the way.

Not only saves lives, it will save taxpayers just what I did on the first round dealing with Medicare. It saves the taxpayer $160 billion because they don't have to pay these exorbitant prices. The idea that corporate-owned housing is able to raise your rent $300, $400 a month or something, under what I'm about to announce, they can't raise it more than $1,000.

I mean, you can just see the confused look on his face in that last part as he leans in. This is off a teleprompter, Ryan. This is the one thing we thought maybe he could still sort of like, you know, stumble his way through. It's, you know, I just wanted to confirm this on my keyboard. The percentage sign is above the five. Like, did some intern write 55 and forget to hit the shift key? And so it says 55.

But if you're the president, you got to know your own policy. It makes no sense Like there's no democratic policy that's gonna say that rent can't go up by more than $55 like no matter what your rent already was like if your rent is $100 it can still go up by 55 or if it's 5,000 goes come on like you like it your mind has to be able to say even if it was a typo on the Teleprompt your mind has to be like oh I know what my policy is. It's 5%

Yeah. 5% increase. As people who read off teleprompters sometimes, sometimes, especially because we write our own stuff. So obviously there's typos all over the place. We gotta be aware enough when we're reading it to be like, wait a minute, that's not the shit that I meant to say. Yes, yes, exactly. You can't be like, oh, well, I guess the new policy is $55. I wish though that that was the rule that like whatever the president says goes. He said it and the crowd ratified it by cheering.

Done. That's the new law. Done. That's it. It's happening. You know, it's also interesting because just before the assassination attempt on Trump completely shifted the conversation and sort of put the Biden dropout conversation on hold, at least for a few days, you had reporting about this disastrous situation

Zoom call that he had with this group of moderate Democrats. I can put this up on the screen because we now have the leaked audio. I knew it was going to come out, the leaked audio of this video. And he in particular goes after this Democratic representative, Jason Crow, who is a military veteran.

And they say in this reporting, right before the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a group of moderate Hill Democrats had a tense Zoom call to express concern. According to one of the participants, they said the call was even worse than the debate. He was rambling. He'd start an answer and then lose his train of thought. Then would just say,

Whatever. Sort of like that clip we just showed you where when his mind wanders off, he just says anyway to get out of the fact that he has no idea where his sentence is going. He really couldn't complete an answer. They go on to say, I lost a ton of respect for him. Another participant in the call confirmed that characterization. The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy. Had a particularly troubling exchange with Jason Crow saying to him, quote,

Tell me something you've never done with your bronze star. Like my son, this member of Congress told me had the assassination attempt not occurred an hour later. I imagine 50 people on that Zoom were ready to come out publicly against him. And, you know, that comment to Jason Crow, to Congressman Crow, Ryan, it kind of has it all because it's got this like tone of disrespect and belligerence, but is also a completely incoherent sentence.

Right, and it has the, the public has finally gotten to see what his ex-staffers have been saying about him for 50 years, which is that he's not the happy Joe, the happy warrior internally with his staff. He's very short-tempered, and his ego and his arrogance get the better of him, and he lashes out at people in really cutting and nasty ways, and you could not have

a better example of that than incoherently attacking a guy over his bronze star. Like, exactly. Like you said, what are you even saying here? Are you criticizing him for it, but you're not because you're saying your son had it also, but...

And then that same answer is where he went on this like tirade about how he had brought together AUKUS and all of the foreign policy work that he had done in the Indo-Pacific and he's also the guy that brought together NATO. Nobody else can make that argument to the American public. AUKUS, AUKUS, AUKUS. And it's like what do you like you're you are supposed to be a good politician with your finger on the pulse.

Like, find me a single voter anywhere in the country who does not have as his job, like working for a foreign agent who's involved with this kind of security pact in the Indo-Pacific who cares about that. And Jason Crowe said that. Jason Crowe was like, that's not breaking through, Mr. President. And Biden, according to that audio, was like, well, I'm tired of this crap. This is not doing it, man.

Yeah, well, it is interesting. It goes back to the decision that his team made to have his big boy press conference be about NATO, because that's clearly the area where he's still most comfortable, most cogent. I mean, the borderline obsession. And that was smart because you don't have to be remotely smart on foreign policy to

to impress Western journalists. All you have to do is name the countries correctly half the time. Because he got them wrong the other half the time, but at least he got them, like he was able to name them. And it's like, oh, wow, okay, that's pretty good. Those are foreign countries, and he said their names, and he probably knows the capitals. That's impressive. Yeah.

The irony here is, listen, you know, before Joe Biden was, you know, complicit and involved in funding committing a genocide, I was making the case for his domestic policy because there are genuinely things there that are worth talking about and celebrating. And, you know, this is why I think Bernie and AOC and others foolishly and, you know, without any sort of moral character are his staunchest allies at this point. But if you look at antitrust, if you look at labor, it is a break and a major improvement from Obama's

But, you know, if you support those sorts of policies, it makes no sense to try to push them through such a damaged vessel that it's going to do nothing but undercut the power of that sort of politics because people will say, hey, Joe Biden ran on, you know, rent control and ran on antitrust in this program you guys won and he got absolutely wiped out across the country. So I think it's an incredibly foolish direction to go. And I have a couple of...

Polls I just want to put up too before we bring in Dave Weigel to talk about this sort of, you know, major Democratic elite push to get him out because I don't want people to have the impression that this is just an elite push to get him out. Let's put this up on the screen. 70% of the country in a new poll says they want Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. And oh, by the way, that includes 65% of Democrats and 77% Democrats.

of independence. By the way, 57% of the country also wants Donald Trump to withdraw in a sign of how not enamored the country is with having these two men engaged in a rematch here. And then let's put this next piece up on the screen from Politico because this is also interesting. Biden indicated that he

if he could be convinced that he couldn't win and someone else could, then maybe that would be a factor in consideration. Well, you've got new polling that looks at a range of alternative Democratic candidates. They all run ahead of Biden by an average of three points across battleground states. Now, what's interesting here, though, Ryan, is that, and this won't be really a surprise to us, but Vice President Kamala Harris still runs better than Biden, but is the weakest of the potential alternatives.

And effectively, the more closely tied you are to the Biden administration, the worse you perform. So the strongest potential candidates were Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. All four outpaced Biden by roughly five points across battleground states. So you can see this polling and it being, you know, leaked to Politico Playbook, which is the ultimate, you know, D.C. insider group.

You could see this also as a play against Kamala Harris of making the accurate case that, listen, if you really are prioritizing defeating Donald Trump and you're willing to push out Joe Biden to do it, why are you then going to go automatically for the next weakest possible candidate here in Kamala Harris? Yeah, and putting in the astronaut hero Mark Kelly feels a little bit too 1990s. But of course, yeah, all of them are going to outperform Kamala Harris automatically.

I feel terrible saying it to our coconut-pilled audience who has really rallied behind her. But yeah, she's not the most electable of that bunch, I don't think. Now, she might have it locked up anyway, just because of the nature of the Democratic Party establishment that they're only willing to kind of rock the boat so much.

On the other hand, if you're rocking the boat so much that you're ousting your presumptive nominee two months before the election, you're in revolutionary times. Just go all the way. Take the final step and open the process up and let these candidates compete and see who wins. And if Kamala Harris wins...

then great. She shouldn't just fall out of a coconut tree, right? That's right. Yeah, and I think there's a chance she would win in that open process, you know, quote unquote open process. Listen, we're at a place where the chance for a truly democratic process unfortunately has passed. And that is the fault of

Joe Biden, his aides and Democratic elites who closed down really a primary process. I mean, in some cases, literally, first of all, they had no debates. Second of all, in certain states, they literally did not have a primary, just pulled everybody off the ballot. So, you know, the chance to have a truly democratic process has unfortunately passed. But I

I agree with your assessment that even through an open convention process where you have the public watching these speeches and watching this all unfold sort of celebrity apprentice style, it could create a lot of energy and excitement and I think really could be a problem for the Trump-Vance ticket

who right now think that they are, you know, sailing free and clear and are on their way to a historic landslide in which they're very likely to take the, I mean, they're almost definitely going to take the Senate and very likely to take the House along with them.

- Yeah, you get a Bravo production crew and you put the cameras around each one of these, JB Pritzker, Shapiro, Whitmer, all of them. You have them follow them around just like they're reality TV stars. You edit that, you roll the episodes out, you have them each do confessionals

talking about how they were thinking about each scene, then you roll that through the convention, you will have a public, I'm half joking, but not really, like you will have a public that is actually connected to you as a political party. Like imagine that, a sense of legitimacy

between the public. The public feels like there is a sense of legitimacy between themselves and these reality TV empires that have grown up. They feel like their sentiments are democratically represented on the screen because the way that they feel, the way that they post on social media,

is then reflected back to them in the show as people respond to that and feel the heat. That is American culture now. And whichever political party recognizes that first is going to be the one that makes a real connection with the American public. And the current Republican Party is led by a reality TV star. Mm-hmm.

He happens to be a deranged one. So that's the only thing that gives the Democratic Party an opening. But it's right there for the taking if they would just open up their imaginations a little bit. Yeah, let's build some parasocial relationships with Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, Mark Kelly, Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, the whole lot of them. See who comes out on top. Gotta be first name with all of them. Andy. That's right. J.B., yeah. All right, Ryan, let's go ahead and get to Dave Weigel.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal content.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Joining us from her home is Crystal Ball and joining us from Milwaukee, Dave Weigel. Dave, welcome to the program. It's good to be back. I have all my lanyards today. I was prepared.

Excellent. I would love it if you were like one lanyard short and live during the interview. You just get dragged out. Drag you out. Kicking and screaming. And before I start real quickly, as I told all of you, Jeremy and I launched Dropsite News last week. Breaking Points viewers can get a discount code for that.

Dropsitenews.com/counterpoints for that code. I actually interviewed Dave Weigel last week about that. He got to see our little, like we had a whole, what do you call that thing where it's a giant banner that has the logo?

I call it the step and repeat. Yeah, the step and repeat. People usually step in front of it. That's right. They take the photos of what they're wearing and then they walk to the next thing. The red carpet situation. Dave and I did the red carpet in front of the Dropsite logo. We were both looking very good. So thanks for joining us from Milwaukee. Let's first roll Jonathan Karl from last night with some...

with some exclusive reporting here. Good, nice little get from Jonathan Karl about the pressure that Democratic Party leaders are putting directly on Biden. And I am told that the pressure from Democratic leaders for Biden to get out of the race is intensifying. In fact, one person who has been out there publicly

Defending Biden told me just a short while ago, Biden is going to see the whole house of cards come down soon. As for that meeting in Rehoboth, Delaware, I am told that this was a one on one meeting just the Senate leader and the president and the Chuck Schumer forcefully made the case that it would be better for Biden, better for the Democratic Party and better for the country if he were to bow out of the race and David.

When I went to Schumer's office to ask them about, to tell them I was gonna report this and tell you this tonight, absolutely no denial from Senator Schumer's office. They only said this, Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus. In other words, the views of Democratic senators. I am also told that Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, has expressed similar views directly to the president.

Now, Dave, the Democratic leaders would probably prefer to do this quietly. The fact that it's leaking out tells us what about how this situation is unfolding. Yes. And it was frozen for really maybe 48 hours and then gotten corked again over the week. I remember talking to people in the Trump campaign in Milwaukee on Monday evening. And one point they made was this is a good situation.

The current climate is good for us. It's horrible as it is what happened in Butler because Democrats are frozen and they're stuck with Biden. And they started thawing out hours later, really the next day. They're getting data all the time. A lot of us who are covering this are sent screenshots of data, recaps of conversations, polling. There has been nothing that suggests that Biden can recover his position. He's been doing poorly, generally, in interviews since then. And yes, the

The timing is interesting. It feels like, from what we know, Democrats were talking to Biden on Saturday. Had the shooting not happened, we might be 72 hours ahead of what's happening right now, with a lot of Democrats being willing to call on him to leave. Yeah, and it's not just Schumer in that reported conversation. We can put the next piece up on the screen, Adam Schiff.

came forward publicly and called on Biden to drop out, citing serious concerns he can't win. Schiff being a very close ally of Nancy Pelosi and this being seen sort of in the same way that Clooney was seen as like a proxy for Obama. Schiff is seen as being a proxy for Nancy Pelosi. But we also have news specifically with regard to Pelosi we can put up on the screen. Dems are calling her with concerns. She's taking detailed notes, they say, of district polls in one call. She gave a clear indication she wanted Biden off

the ticket. One Dem who spoke to her said she's the political voice of the Dem caucus. Right now, we also have reporting with regards to Hakeem Jeffries making these, having direct conversations as well, and also indicating the deep concerns of himself and his caucus. So, Dave, it seems like there's been sort of like a closing of the ranks.

And perhaps while the conversation was frozen in the wake of that assassination attempt, there was a lot happening behind the scenes that we weren't aware of.

Yes, there was Pelosi's a key figure in this publicly. She won a morning Joe. And the way the Democrats talk about the decision is, has been fascinating because Biden has made a public decision and they keep repeating this mantra that he has needs time to make, make a decision, meaning the other one, meaning that he needs to come, come around and leave and leave and leave the race. Uh,

Yes, the fact that she has been mobilizing people who are worried about saving their seats says everything. And it is a, it's not even a conspiracy, it's a little bit too messy for that. But here's another example of how it's working. The idea of this virtual vote to be held as early as possible before the convention because of state ballot deadlines, state ballot deadlines are not necessary anymore because they got changed. Even this week that was getting moved around and

Democrats were unable to keep a story straight on it. I was talking to them yesterday, or sorry, two days ago. Their argument was they needed, at a press conference in Milwaukee, even the chair of the Democratic Party of Milwaukee all saying we need to have a virtual vote early, probably in July, to get over these deadlines. A day later, the DNC's Rules Committee says, all right, we still wanna do a virtual vote, but we wanna do it in August.

That was another move. It was a much more wonky inside baseball move, but something the party was confidently talking about doing as early as next week, they're now saying they're going to do in August. And that is all to make space for Biden to make this other decision and not to run. They're really trying to foam the runway for Biden to

leave and for the party the delegates that are all almost all committed and 99 of them to get used to the idea that for the good of the country they had to dump them yeah and the reporting is that hakeem jeffries and and chuck schumer you know directly weighed in to push this deadline back

while the, you know, Jamie Harrison and Biden administration are trying to cling to it because they somehow keep thinking that something is going to save them and change the reality. We've got Chris Larson. Did you put up C3, this tweet on? No. Yeah, so you can put up C3, which is reporting showing

basically what I was just saying, that Schumer and Jeffries were responsible for this. If you move on then to C4, Dave, I want to get your take on the whole kind of Bernie and AOC world standing so firmly behind him.

Great Isaac Chotner interview with Bernie Sanders. His argument, it's worth reading this, it's C4, he says, responding to whether or not Biden is a good candidate, he said, "I'm not aware that anyone thinks," maybe Dave can do a better, Bernie, "I'm not aware that anyone thinks that Joe Biden is the best candidate in the history of the world or that he's an ideal candidate and nobody will argue with you that he has a," well, he admitted it. Sometimes he gets confused about names, you're right.

Sometimes he doesn't put three sentences together. It is true. But the reality of the moment is, in my view, he is the best candidate that Democrats have for a variety of reasons and trying in an unprecedented way to take him off the ticket would do a lot more harm than good. So Dave, just an incredible argument there. I would rather have a president. He doesn't put three sentences together, but he's still the man. What's going on here? Yeah.

Yeah, Bernie has been, as usual, consistent on this. I followed him in Wisconsin right after the debate, and his argument to me there was, Biden's not the best debater. He might not even be the best speaker, but he's the nominee, and he is worried about replacing him. There's something you hear, especially from older Democrats who have memories of the 60s and the 70s, that it would be so chaotic if they switched Biden that it wouldn't be worth it. And I've talked to a pollster who said the same thing. We look at the data, the incumbency in badge,

is so powerful that if you replace that with chaos, you're going to be worse off. I didn't read this as Biden worrying about Kamala Harris. I do know people on the left who are worried about that, who say that Biden has had incredibly strong pro-labor instincts, antitrust instincts, anti-monopoly instincts, getting out of Afghanistan consistently.

that she might bring in different people who are more friendly to Silicon Valley and to big tech. And that's not been the Sanders argument out loud. I don't think that's much from the left. You see what the left is doing right now, getting more concessions from Biden on what he's running on. That is the progressive game here. And again, Bernie's done this forever. Bernie's argument is 16 and 20.

when he had influence on the platform, was to excite people and to give them a positive reason to vote for you, you need to get off of Trump fashion and you need to talk about progressive things you can do for people that improve their lives. So he's been successful with his mediatory in doing that. Where he departs from a lot of the party, including a lot of senators, is thinking Biden is salvageable enough that he can deliver that. A lot of them think

They just don't disagree. All right, the party should be talking more about Medicare price caps, affordable housing, rent caps, et cetera. But Biden can't do it. Biden tried to do it at the end of the EECP event this week, you saw, in Las Vegas, and couldn't state properly the rent control policy. Right. That's the disagreement. Right. Whereas...

And on NATO, you know, we talked earlier about this leaked call with the moderate Democrats where when he's really forcefully trying to make his case, it's all about NATO and what he's done in the Asian Pacific and things that, you know, frankly, middle class Americans, the working class Americans really don't care about. But that's his...

that's what is ossified there. That's what remains in terms of what he can make the most forceful case on. I saw the Pod Save Bros saying, yeah, Project 2025, that's, you know, it's bad. It's too bad that the President of the United States and the Democratic nominee never brings it up or mentions it or talks about it or seems capable of, you know, articulating that argument against the Republican Party. Dave, I wonder

what you make of some of the sort of tea leaves reading and reporting that we're getting of Biden being a little more open to the conversation. He made these comments to BET about, hey, if I got a medical diagnosis, then maybe I'd change my mind. Of course, he got diagnosed with COVID, but I don't think that was necessarily the medical diagnosis he was talking about. You also had some of this behind the scenes reporting that now rather than just saying, you know, I'm in and that's it. He's saying, well, do you think Kamala can win? He's more open to seeing some of

the polling and the data in that direction, you know, do you... What are you hearing and what do you make of those indications? Well, if you listen to Biden's statements, especially interviewers who were pressing him on the polling and electability, he'd often just say the polls were wrong. He'd say that he was up in polls where every public piece of data said that he wasn't. And that was...

That was a result of him getting different feedback, different information from the close circle of advisors and Steve Ricchetti, from Valerie Biden, his sister. It became clear to Democrats that he was very cloistered in being told just different things that they were seeing. This is it is very data driven, this attempt to get him off the ticket, because what Pelosi and other Democrats were using was.

is their own polling that says, no, we are now underwater in districts that Biden won by 15 points and we can't possibly win the election. We're now underwater in Wisconsin. They still have polling that says their Senate candidates are running ahead, but they realize that was not what Biden was reading. Biden was just in disbelief. Biden would

go to Wisconsin, get a good crowd in Madison, which not to be too disparaging, but the Democrats should get a good crowd in Madison. It should be a place where you can get a Democratic crowd and came away saying, oh, I'm still popular in Wisconsin. But all of their data outside that that wasn't getting to him said, no, he's not. It is a winnable state where our message resonates and not with him because of the age question. So that's part of what they're doing here. He has been getting information from close friends and friends

Biden loyalists who were with him when he was losing 40 years ago, that was wrong. That was not what the data they were seeing. And when it comes to the Kamala stuff, they're trying to get him out. There's data all the time that says even though the vice president is not popular,

that she doesn't have the age problem and that she outperforms him by two, three points in polls. I mean, you really did see this, the importance of the New York Times-Siena poll, which we all got familiar with in 2020 when it came out saying Biden was more electable in swing states than Bernie, and especially than Warren. That was important. Democrats read that too. Democrat members read that too. Siena comes out and says,

Harris is in the scoring position and Biden isn't. And that's the kind of data they want him to see. Interesting. On the spectrum of whether it will be Harris or whether it will go to an open convention, if like 10 is like certainly it would be Harris if Biden...

steps aside, zero is like it would definitely go to an open convention. What's your sense of the conventional wisdom among kind of Democrats at this point of where we are on that spectrum?

Oh, it's like nine that it would be Harris and it'd be a different running mate, which if you saw yesterday, Republicans are sort of making fun of that and not agreeing to the VP debate because they said it's going to be they named J.B. Pritzker and a bunch of other Democrats is the likely person J.B. Vance is going to debate. No, Democrats are apart from.

outside strategists who just don't know the vice president's not that popular and they think Democrat X could do better, which isn't crazy. In

Inside the party, delegates, again, were bound to the Biden-Harris ticket, really liked Kamala Harris and liked the idea of mobilizing behind the first female president. In a high-stakes scenario where they're bigger underdogs than they were in 2016, but the idea of pushing her aside for a...

This has been the problem for six months, right? We're pushing her aside for somebody who is not a black female vice president. You'd also be saying the entire four-year Biden administration cannot be defended. To both members of it who got elected, sorry, she's not popular. There's not a reason to keep her off the ticket apart from polling.

there are two reasons to keep Biden off. Polling and age, which suggests that he can never recover from the polling. For her, it's that she is not popular now, but if she just gets there and articulates, even the message Biden is supposed to, it should be better. So I have not heard from people actually involved in Democratic politics closely, as opposed to people who just talk about it or donate. I've not heard, we need to dump Harris and replace somebody else. It would be, we need to stage manage this so that

Biden finds a way to say, I cannot continue this, but to pass the, literally pass the torch and the group that passed the torch, progressive group above all else in this, they want Harris. I will pass the torch to my vice president, defend our record.

remind voters of how great this record is and get past the Republican lies about it, which are fair. I mean, for example, I heard a Republican convention last night that wages are down and oil production is down, which are not true. You get to do that with Harris and then a governor. That's where the parties move to. So Dave, bottom line it for us, if you could, like, what

What are the odds at this point that Biden is going to drop when you've got Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries, most Democratic donors moving against him? Is that enough to push him out? Or can he just, you know, him and Hunter and Jill and Reschetti and Donilon just hang on for dear life and grind it out, as I think you said to us last time?

Yeah, I moved it to 50-50, which it feels a little cowardly. I mean, really just if Biden doesn't want to give this up and become a lame duck, if he cannot be convinced that he would be a great figure in the party if he was willing to give this up for a chance to win.

then no, no one can force him to. People always ask me, what about the Delegate Rules? Is there a way to force him out? If you hand him those rules, it is clear he's the only person who can say Joe Biden's not running for president anymore. But I think it's 50-50 because he is getting this data and the message they're trying to impart to him is...

You have the choice of a legacy of a term and passing the baton to vice president. And it was always very important to him that he was the vice president for the first black president. He said that. Or you can be the guy who handed the keys back to Donald Trump and a Republican majority or a Republican Supreme Court. If they impress that on him and he buys it, then that's why he goes. But I do think that's only 50-50. Imagine how pissed the Republicans would be if they've done a whole convention against the wrong candidate. Yeah.

I was talking to Charlie Kirk on the floor last night, and he was saying he was trying to get the word to Trump, please put more Kamala in your speech on Thursday, because he's very worried. I wouldn't say he's worried. He thinks they can beat Kamala, but he was a little bit worried. Yeah, as you said, the RNC was very Biden-focused, and a lot of that messaging would go out the door, and they need to reboot. So they definitely, the vibe I get in our Milwaukee is Republicans would still rather run against Biden. Gotcha. All right.

All right, Dave, thank you so much for your time and giving us some reporting there from on the ground in Milwaukee as well. It's great to see you. Thank you. Great to be here. Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but also

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal content.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up gladiators, grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to unpacking the toolbox on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

So we have a lot of updates about possible motivations of the shooter or lack thereof. We have lots of updates with regard to just what is an increasingly mind-blowing security failure, finger-pointing between the Secret Service and the local police who were involved in attempting to protect the president in Butler, Pennsylvania. But let's start with this. We had the FBI...

briefing members of Congress on what they were able to find on the shooter's phone and his electronic devices.

And apparently he had searched, along with things like major depressive disorder, he had also searched images of a variety of public figures, including Trump and Biden, along with dates of Trump appearances and the DNC in Chicago, according to a person who was on the call. Ryan, you had some interesting commentary earlier in the show about the profile that is emerging of the attempted assassin at this point.

Yeah, the people's first impressions I think of this of this guy once they started to get just a little bit of information was that it's as he is a standard-issue school shooter, which is the fact that such a thing exists and

maybe the fiercest indictment of contemporary American culture that you can come up with. So it appears that he had some depressive personality and was just searching around for locations of Biden and Trump. Biden, by

not really campaigning not going not really going out in the public uh may have saved himself here but imagine trump's like horrible luck that you've got this depressive uh intelligent you know uh 20 year old uh who is just looking to go out in a blaze of of glory he's searching around for you know you know famous figures and celebrities and it's like oh wow

Donald Trump is coming to Butler, Pennsylvania and then further Like there's a ladder just leading up to this low roof That is just 150 yards away from where he's going to be in it. Oh look at that Nobody's gonna be guarding it just Literally unbelievable actually

Yeah. No, it truly is. I mean, as far as we can tell at this point, everyone, of course, immediately parses through his any political background leanings. You had some reporting about this scam pack. Mm-hmm.

Democratic scam pack that he gave $15 to on Joe Biden's inauguration day. But then on the other hand, he's a registered Republican. And so based on this search history, yeah, portrait really starts to emerge of someone who I think, you know, the portrait of a school shooter is exactly correct. Just it's almost like suicide by cop wanted to be notorious for

wanted to be known in the history books and was looking for any opportunity to do so, whether it was Trump, Biden or some other famous political or other figure that he was going to try to take out. And then, you know, the mounting information about the stunning nature of this security failure really is mind-blowing. One of the latest comments from the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheadle, she was pressed,

on why no one was stationed on this roof, which seemed like a very basic, obvious, you don't want someone to have a clear line of sight at the former president's head from within very easy striking distance. Why wasn't there anyone on the roof? She says that it was a little sloped. So it may have been a security concern. Let's take a listen to that. When you saw the events unfold on Saturday... Shock. Shock.

and then concern, obviously, for the former president. Investigators now trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down. The shooter climbing up seemingly unimpeded, about 400 feet from the stage, with a direct line of sight on the former president. Should that roof have been secure, period?

That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so the decision was made to secure the building from inside.

This is, of course, being roundly mocked, as it should be, because even if, I mean, first of all, the safety concern, okay, the safety concern you're supposed to be concerned with is protecting the former president of the United States and the Republican presidential nominee. And second of all, Ryan, you look at that roof, and it's also barely sloped. So it's just an utterly mockable, preposterous dodge here from the Secret Service director. It would be like saying,

Why did you leave him exposed to the shooter for so long? It's like, well, bullets can kill people. And so if our agents would have covered the president while he was being shot, that's a real security concern because the agents could have been shot, which is true. But also that's the job of the Secret Service. And also that's like a two degree slope. Yeah.

it's okay. Like you're gonna, you're gonna be okay. And the inside versus outside is also, you know, completely preposterous. How do you secure the roof of a building from inside of it? I mean, you don't obviously, but like that, that, that this executive director or whatever title is, is still in her role. Is it self-shocking? It truly is. It truly is at this point because the,

the basics of the failures here, the more we learn about how long they had identified the shooter. And

flagged him as suspicious because he tried to bring a range finder into the secure area. So he was flagged and identified and then they just lost sight of him. You had local police, you had him identified 30 minutes before the shooting occurred. You had people, local residents on the ground saying, we see this guy bear crawling up the roof with a gun. You see people on the ground at the rally. There's videos of, we see him, he's got a gun and Trump is still allowed to go out

and give his rally speech and come within millimeters of this bullet completely taking him out. I mean, if you've looked at these animations, it's utterly insane. The Secret Service director was also grilled by a CNN reporter about how this rooftop was unsecured and how small the protection perimeter ultimately was. Let's take a listen to this as well. - The Secret Service increased security for former President Trump because of a credible threat from Iran.

You know, I've spoken with several people who look at the perimeter, hearing that news, look at the perimeter and say how knowing that there was a credible threat against the former president, how could that perimeter be so small that it excluded a building just 150 yards away from the podium? I can't get into the specifics of any threats, but obviously with all of our protectees, we're constantly monitoring the threats that are out there. And we design our security plan based on that, also depending on the venue and the environment that we're in.

And on that particular day, a full advance had been completed. But this is also why we are doing an internal review. And we look forward to the external review as well. And obviously, if there are things that we need to change about our policies or our procedures or our methods, we are certainly going to do so. Was that perimeter too small?

The perimeter encompassed the area that we needed to secure for the event that we had on that day. What happened is a terrible incident and should never happen. And we are obviously going to make sure that moving forward, we take whatever lessons that come out of this and adjust accordingly. Was every element, every part of his, from the intelligence to the counter-assault team,

to the detail agents, the shift agents. I mean, every element top to bottom of the advance in the operation was every element increased after you learned of this credible threat. What we increased was what we felt was appropriate for the former president and for that particular event on that day. We have been increasing the assets and the resources and the staffing that we have been providing to the former president since he was a presidential candidate and then the presumptive nominee. That's what I can tell you. That sounds like a no.

I am not saying a no at all. I'm saying that we have continued to increase the resources that we've been providing to the former president. So you've got the sloped roof excuse. You've got here a whole bunch of non-answers effectively. And then the other effort from the Secret Service has been to put the blame on the local police who were enlisted in the protection effort. And there may be some blame to be laid there, by the way. But let's put this up on the screen. New reporting.

Apparently, the local police had alerted the Secret Service before Trump's rally on Saturday that they lacked the resources to station a patrol car outside a key building where that gunman later positioned himself and shot at Trump. This was confirmed, by the way, by the Secret Service that the local police department did not have the manpower to assist in securing that building. So what it appears,

from this account is that the Secret Service asked them to secure it. They said, "No, we can't. We just literally don't have the resources." And then it wasn't secured. We also have more reporting in this article about the early warnings

with regard to this shooter being identified. Local media reported that before the shooting, a municipal counter sniper had called in with a report and a photograph of that man who turned out to be Crooks acting suspiciously. Another local news station reported that officer called in around 5.45 p.m. That is 26 minutes before Crooks opened fire from the

the roof and a local newspaper in Beaver County, Pennsylvania also reported similarly that that counter sniper Gregory Nickel made a warning of this kind. Just astonishing, right? Yeah, it really is. And my early speculation was that perhaps the local police that were supposed to secure this building got lazy and it was just too hot in the parking lot and went inside of the building.

But it sounds like no, can't even blame them for that. They said, look, we don't have the manpower to do this. And the Secret Service did not respond by then filling the gap, which is their job. The answers from the Secret Service chief, just utterly ridiculous. Was the perimeter too small? She responds by saying, well, the perimeter was the area that we were defending. Like, what?

Stop just giving us definitions of things like we know that but you know you were a hundred and fifty yards away there's a guy scampering up a roof and Squeezing off like eight shots or whatever at the president of the United former president United States and

Just complete and utter failure. And it's really impossible to blame Trump supporters who look at that and think they didn't care. Either they were actively involved in this or they wanted it to succeed. And so they didn't give him the resources that he needed. And that was the question that the CNN reporter asked there. It's like, okay, the reporting here is that you're claiming, I think this is...

I don't believe the reporting on this, but they're saying that Iran, you know, there's recent threats that that, you know, that Iran wants to take out Donald Trump in response for him killing Qasem Soleimani. You know, who knows if that intel is remotely accurate or not. But if that's the case,

that the Secret Service was told there's a heightened risk on President Trump. And as you can tell from her answer there, they did not up the resources that were going to him in every capacity. She used this kind of present tense, like we were increasing the resources that we were offering, which suggested maybe they were pretending that they were going to do it in the future. You can't really blame Republicans for being paranoid and asking questions about

how firm the Secret Service's commitment was to this. Now, I still think that incompetence, but is there some malicious incompetence here? It's impossible to say.

Yeah, I agree with you. There's plenty here too. If you're inclined to think that there is some sort of conspiracy or as you put it, very aptly malicious incompetence, there's plenty of fuel for that narrative. There's no doubt about it. And we also have an interview with local police talking about, because one of the things we've also learned is that local police had responded to these indications from normal citizens on the ground. Hey, there's a guy up on that roof.

They went and attempted to climb up on the roof. Then the shooter points at the local police officer. He drops to the ground, and then the shooter takes aim at the former president at that point. So, you know, learning this was part of like, well, what the hell? You just let him take shots at the former president? What the hell happened here? We have their side of the story of how this all unfolded. Let's take a listen to that.

In fact, see an individual on the roof with a weapon. He saw the shooter? He did. Your officers are on patrol. They hear that there is a suspicious person on the rooftop. What did your officers do?

So our officers in the area started to converge on the building. My understanding is they did a full perimeter walk of the building. Weren't able to see up on the roof. Two of the officers went to what appeared to be the lowest point from ground to roof. One of the officers actually boosted the second officer up high enough for him to grab hold of the roof. When he was able to pull his head up over the roof, he did in fact see an individual on the roof with a weapon. He saw the shooter? He did. And what did the shooter do?

Turned towards him, had the barrel of his weapon pointed at the officer. At that point, the officer's hanging on to the side of the roof? Yes. Unable to pull a gun out? Unable to... Unable to defend himself? Unable to reach his radio? Any of that, yeah, yeah. Strictly defensive movement for him to lower his head, duck, lost his own grip, right? Fell approximately eight feet to the ground.

That's a steep drop. That's a good drop, yes. Did he get hurt? He did. In that moment, did they realize there's a threat right now to the former president? They did. So both the boosting officer and the officer that fell were both on the radio.

indicating that there was an individual on the roof that did, in fact, have a weapon. Who did they radio? So there was a blanket tactical channel being used. Everyone heard it. Everyone who was on that tactical channel heard it, yes. How much time between that radio communication and the gun being fired at the former president?

I don't have that information. I mean, it really is like a Keystone Cops type of situation that he's spelling out here where they're getting these reports or someone on the roof boosting each other on their shoulders to get up there, dropping to the ground, completely failing to prevent the threat. And then that key question at the end of, okay, well, when you put

put this notice out to the blanket tactical channel that everyone had access to? How long between then and when shots are fired? And he doesn't have an answer to that one. That's the key question. The reporting is that it's just kind of seconds, but that is a key question. If there's anything more than seconds involved there,

Then because at the same time, the counter sniper for the Secret Service had had identified and was in communication with leaders at that moment. And they're saying, no, you don't have authorization to to take this to take this shot. And that's why the counter was able to take take the shooter out within seconds of him starting. But then it raises the question of just why not get Trump down? Right. OK, let's you don't have to necessarily blow the guy's brains out.

If you're not 100% certain of what's going on here. But what's so eerie about all of these videos of the crowd yelling, you know, gun on the roof, is you can hear Trump speaking in the background. It's like, just tackle the guy, take him down. And then if you screwed up and it's a false alarm, it's okay. Like the old man will have a couple bruises.

But then he can get back up and continue delivering his speech so that that is really the the moment where kind of their their refusal to kind of act Leave so much responsibility on them it's because we're not expecting them to be like Tom Cruise or Jason Bourne and like hold on to the roof with one hand and like duck down and grab their weapon and like shoot behind their back or whatever like that

This is not Hollywood. But you can surround the president and protect him. Right. Well, you also, I mean, you would think as a layperson, they would have some ability to get on the roof in a way that if there is, you're being told there's a credible threat out there. But he got up there. This 20-year-old kid got up there. Right. And you're not able to approach this in any sort of manner other than getting boosted on someone's shoulders and then falling to the ground. I mean, it's just...

that's insane. And then the fact that we know that there were reports of, um, the shooter being suspicious and trying to come in with a range finder, and then they lose sight of him 26 minutes before Trump goes on. It also raised the question, why was he allowed to go on stage at all when there were, uh,

such questions being raised and such concerns being raised. So I agree with you. It is absolutely insane. The Secret Service director is still in place. I cannot imagine how that is the case. The sloped roof thing is utterly preposterous. Her non-answers and obvious failures, utterly preposterous. Like I said, I don't think the local police are off the hook here, but if they told the Secret Service...

we can't, we don't have the manpower to secure this roof. And the Secret Service was just like, I'm sure it's fine. We'll just deal with it. It's no big deal. Just go inside and, you know, stay cool inside the building that is supposed to be secured. It truly is astonishing. Yeah, very much.

But also...

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old Scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal content.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up gladiators, grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to unpacking the toolbox on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, let's get on to the least important story of the morning. The crew over at Morning Joe, very incensed at being taken off the air on Monday because of concerns that they may say something inappropriate, inflammatory, etc. Either them or their large panel of guests. They responded to this on the air. Let's take a listen. I wanted to briefly talk to our friends and viewers that watch us every day.

And talk about what happened yesterday. We were told in no uncertain terms on Sunday evening that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC News channels yesterday.

The Today Show would be Lester Holt, other people that you worked with on Sunday, and that that was going to be one news feed across all NBC News channels, that we were going to stay as a network in breaking news mode throughout the

All day yesterday. That did not happen. We don't know why that didn't happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn't happen, but it didn't happen. We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day. And I guess after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans. And so those plans changed as well. So it didn't.

And, you know, we've talked about it off the air. We'll talk about it on the air because we talk about everything on the air. We were very surprised. We were very disappointed. And if we had known that there wasn't going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels, Willie, we obviously would have been in yesterday morning. Yeah, we all wish we would have been here yesterday. We still are.

or would like to figure out exactly why there wasn't that one news feed. And I think the reason why is this show began and continues 17 years later on being the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way. And so it seemed like now more than ever is a day, a time that we would like to be on. And I think our viewers agree with that.

So we continue. We are five minutes past the top of the hour. And let me just say, next time we're told there's going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs. We'll be sitting here. Yeah, and the news feed will be us or they can get somebody else. We'll still be sitting here. So their audience of one, Joe Biden, is very upset. I'm sure that they were taken off there for the statement. Ryan, what did you make of this whole situation? And so what happens if they show up in their chairs but nobody turns the cameras on? Yeah.

Because I think you have to do more than just sit in the chairs, but that would be amazing if they sat in their chairs and kind of set up a tripod with their phones and just went live on, is Periscope still a thing? It'd be whatever they are comfortable with at that moment. I'm trying to think what kind of event could make it so that we're like, oh man, we can't have Crystal on tomorrow morning. And God knows what she's going to say. Yeah.

or me or Emily or Sagar, but it certainly is not a sign of confidence in your report, in your team of quote unquote journalists. If when things are sensitive, you can't actually trust them to not embarrass you or, you know, the other thing that is possible here that's going on, MSNBC is part of a gigantic corporate conglomerate, which is susceptible to government

action and government inaction. And it doesn't necessarily mean congressional. There are a lot of administrative actions that a vengeful government could take that would influence all the different tentacles, corporate tentacles that the parent company of MSNBC has. And maybe they're looking at the polls and seeing, oh man, it looks like Trump is coming back. Trump is known to be a man that has a long memory when it comes to slights.

And so we needed to start cozying up to him now. That is probably more likely than them being concerned about them saying something that would anger like viewers. So I don't think this was about a viewership. I think this was a kind of straight up kind of political lack of power play.

I'm seriously asking, what is it that they thought that they would say that would be so unacceptable? Because, I mean, we put the polls up. You think that's what they were worried about? Yeah, like just speculating about, or even just like openly talking about, well, what if he had been hit and how would that play? Like, yeah, what else could they be afraid of? That's...

Because you're right, this doesn't seem like a particularly difficult news environment to broadcast into. Right. It's not hard to say political violence is wrong, even if it's someone I don't support as a candidate. You would think that they could be trusted just to handle the basics of that. You would think, but apparently not, because I can't think of anything else that they would say that would get them in trouble.

That kind of hot water. Yeah, and just to take people like a little bit behind the scenes from my now dated cable news experience, but it's not unusual to have a show that's more of an opinion show be preempted by like, you know, what's considered sort of the hard news reporters. You stick a Lester Holt or whoever their go-to now is in these breaking news situations.

And so it's not like that's that crazy or unusual, but it sure seems like they lied to the Morning Joe people and were like, yeah, we're just doing rolling coverage. And so we're preempting everyone when really they just were preempting them because they had specific concerns about this group. And so, you know, the last comments there from Joe basically like, we're not doing that again. And they're going to have to, you know, pry this camera off my face with their cold dead hands or whatever. It's kind of,

a shot at the NBC bosses and also an indication of

them feeling like, especially because of their cozy relationship with this president and being his official mouthpieces at this point, that they actually have more power in this situation than the NBC bosses do. Yeah. And in fact, specifically in this situation, my dropside colleague, Jeremy Scahill, was scheduled to be interviewed by Eamon at, I think, 740 that evening because Eamon has his opinion show basically on the weekend. He was going to talk about this new interview he'd done with the

Palestinian Islamic Jihad second in command and as soon as the shooting happened

I told him, you know use the MSNBC term you're off the hook Like that's what they always tell you when you're cancelled you're off the hook like and sure enough like about 15 minutes later He got an email from the producer like yeah, we're obviously not gonna be talking about To Jeremy scale about this interview that that he did. It's just wall-to-wall news now about the assassination So that is that is a normal thing but your your main show

you know, ought to be able to handle news. Like that's the weirdest part. And also two days later, we're talking Monday morning. It's not as if, it's not as if it happened like an hour before they went on air and they're like, oh, they don't have time to get their heads right and they're going to say something crazy. They had two days to cool down. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great point, too. That's amazing that Amon was even going to have Jeremy on, to be honest with you. Amon's great. Yeah, full disclosure, Amon's one of the few people that still runs on NBC days and has shown a lot of courage, especially in the face of many being let go, clearly, for his views on Israel-Palestine and his willingness to conduct difficult interviews. So Amon being willing to host Jeremy for this conversation he had with

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders is good on him for that one. And hopefully he'll be able to get Jeremy back on to have some of those conversations. Actually, it might have been about the Hamas officials. I don't think his PIJ interview was out yet. But either way, I hope that our kind words about Amon are not used against him internally. Yeah, we hate him. He's terrible. He's the worst.

All right, Ryan, thank you so much for helping me out with the show this morning. It's always great to hear your thoughts and insights on all of these issues. So I'm really grateful to you for that. Yeah, it's just a pleasure to be here. And we don't get to do this enough because it's what I'm filling in for you. Yeah.

- Yeah, that's right. - So, chance for the left-wing dominance of the show today. - That's right, we did get Emily in there at the top. - We did have Emily in there, yeah. - So people got their dose of right-wingness into the show as well. - Yes. - Canvass out on that. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching and bearing with us in what has been a very tumultuous personal week, both for myself and for Sagar. We're gonna continue to have breaking news updates for you as things unfold with Trump's speech tonight, and God knows what's going on with the Biden campaign. So be watching that as we all also head to Sagar's wedding, so that'll be interesting.

And we will see you back here next week.

I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez, and on my podcast, I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life.

I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.