Advisory Opinions - The Assassination Attempt

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David French discuss the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump during a Pennsylvania rally over the weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We will be discussing the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump with Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and of course, special guest David French. All right. Let's talk about what we know what's been debunked at this point. We are recording late on Sunday night. The attempted assassination happened just over 24 hours ago. There was so much in the immediate aftermath, some of which turned out to be accurate. Of

course, the initial story was that Donald Trump had a bullet graze his ear. That turned into maybe he was hit by glass from the teleprompter. It's the second story that turned out to be false in that case. It was in fact a bullet that grazed Donald Trump's ear with an incredible photo captured by New York Times photographer that actually showed the bullet moving by his head in that instant. We also know the identity of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20 years old from nearby the area in Pennsylvania. He of course was killed by Secret Service at the time. We don't have a motive. We don't know much about this guy. It appears he wasn't on social media. Initial reports that he was

a registered Republican appear to be true. Initial reports that he had donated $15 to Joe Biden's inaugural committee through ActBlue appear to be false. So again, just a whole lot that we still don't know on motive or anything else like that. But boy, that hasn't stopped people from speculating. So I want to start with you, Steve. I think there's a lot for us to talk about in terms of responsible rhetoric, lowering the temperature. Donald Trump has said he's torn up his convention speech and is writing a whole new one on unity instead of attacking Joe Biden. But there's also just how we, in 2024, get and absorb news

in a moment that is shared trauma for the country, really. And as close to a terrorist attack, I think, as we've had on American soil in quite a while, what do you make of it? Well, let me start by saying something I think is obvious. And I'm confident that for once on this podcast, I speak for the three of you. And that I'm very glad that we didn't have a worse outcome. I'm very glad that the assassin was unsuccessful. And I think the what you described, Sarah is absolutely true. I think this is going to be an incredibly challenging moment for the country, but I think it could have been worse.

So I'm not optimistic or grateful or feeling good about much over the past 24 hours, but I'm grateful for that. If you spent time trying to follow the story last night as it was unfolding, whether you watching it on television, following it on social media, reading the updates from the major newspapers, it seemed to me there was a sort of a consistent pattern. You could find out what had happened. And I think as you suggest, Sarah, it was very difficult if you were keeping track of this in real time. You know, if you were just watching Twitter or watching other social media accounts, you would see something come

in like the teleprompter example that you mentioned and it would sort of change the way that you thought about the moment and then you would later find out that it wasn't true. That's common that happens in any kind of a big news event, but it's particularly challenging in a news event like this where, you know, all of the details really do matter. And when they're coming so fast, I think it's really hard to keep track of them. But what we saw, in addition to the eventual emergence of the actual story and facts and details, was just a tremendous amount of deeply irresponsible speculation about what had happened,

about the motives of the shooter, about the identity of the shooter, the kinds of things that we've grown accustomed to. We've seen this with school shootings. We've seen this in other moments. But it really matters. I mean, it matters in those moments too, but it really matters in a moment like this. And you had folks on the left who were immediately claiming that this was staged. Stage trended on Twitter for a while as I was following what was being posted on Twitter. It's ridiculous, idiotic claims that

had no basis in fact, but were being retweeted and reposted by very big accounts. You had similar speculation on the right with people saying, even some, normally somewhat responsible people, either saying outright or suggesting that the Biden administration had either deliberately allowed this or even authorized this shooting. So that was one of the reasons that the dispatch was slow. We were deliberately slow. We did one morning dispatch.

We worked overnight to make sure that it was as accurate as we could possibly be in the moment. What's the point, Steve, of the left saying that it's staged? And I guess what I mean by that is, is it a gut reaction that if it wasn't staged, that the left might be responsible for this somehow? Or is it that it goes to Donald Trump's evilness? Or I guess I'm sort of struggling with like, how is this different than saying Sandy Hook was crisis actors? And is this just another example of the far left mimicking the far

right in terms of extremism, lies, violent rhetoric, everything else? I mean, I don't think it was probably strategic. I think it was probably somebody who's so steeped in his own world. I mean, this came from a number of different sources. So I don't mean to attribute it to one, but there was a semaphore story today about a democratic strategist who had written a memo sort of outlining this and encouraging reporters to look carefully at the possibility that this was staged, kind of making the case for that. But this came from a number of different sources on the left. I think it was likely not strategic. I think this is somebody who's probably so caught up in his own partisanship, in his own world, in his own hatred of Donald Trump and fears about second term, that this

was where his mind went. I mean, QAnon is sincere, right? People who believe that are sincere. What's the difference? Yeah, I'm not sure there is much of a difference. That's what I'm saying. I think this is just sort of the poisoning of the partisan mind. David, I want to return to that, but let's take a moment to talk about where I think a lot of folks have centered their attention, which is on the Secret Service in the run up to and moments after the shooting. And we haven't heard from the Secret Service yet.

The Secret Service has certainly had some scandals and unfortunate news cycles in the last several years. This is not going to help. At the same time, I feel like there's this spectrum between obviously this was preventable in the sense that everything is always preventable if you know it after the fact, what could have been done to prevent it. To something I've said for a very, very long time, having worked in and around people in these types of jobs, there is nothing you can do to create a 100% bubble around a person

so that they're impenetrable at all times. That's not an option. All the way over to the Secret Service allowed this to happen. This is DEI run amok that there were female Secret Service agents who looked somewhere like this also has a range of some of them looked incompetent, or they were too short. Literally like we should have bigger people with a candidate who's that big, both for carrying him purposes and for blocking bullet purposes. I mean, just a whole spectrum of conversation around the Secret Service. I guess I've given away my position,

which is these guys fail when they don't stop 100% of every threat. It's the CIA, right? We only hear about the times they fail. In this case, you can never have enough Secret Service agents. We couldn't hire enough to protect everyone who needs Secret Service protection. I'm including in that, by the way, the US Supreme Court justices who get martial protection, the attorney general who has FBI protection, the secretary defense who has army protection.

There's never enough people to create an impenetrable barrier. So the Secret Service works with local law enforcement. That all being said, there's a roof with a line of sight. There's a guy on it. There's people on the ground who know he has a gun, who see him crawl up there. We have reporting at least that at least one local police officer did try to confront him. And of course, you have the counter sniper who does appear to see him in his sights in the second before the shooting.

What are we supposed to make of this, David? Well, number one, we're not supposed to make any definitive conclusions now for sure. So that's that's the top line. Number two, there needs to be an open book, transparent investigation here.

This needs to happen and the public needs to know, because if somebody gets a shot off with a rifle that close to the president, there has been a failure. Now we can pay tribute and should to the immediate response. We should pay tribute to the sniper who immediately put the shooter down but here's what we don't know. Who was responsible for that particular zone of security? So we've heard a lot of speculations that there's

sort of layers of security that the closest end might be the Secret Service, then you have sort of a tactical layer outside that, that is local police or state police, and then an area beyond that, this longer range that the Secret Service might be scanning or monitoring, we don't know about. So we don't know who is responsible. We don't know if there was immediate action in response to people pointing at the person and it just wasn't there in time. Here's what we also don't know. We don't know if there was immediate action in response to people pointing at the person and it just wasn't there in time. Here's what we also don't know. We don't know the rules of engagement for the sniper. I was just going to ask that question. It seems to me a very

human moment that you as the counter sniper see someone on a roof with a gun, an American citizen who has not at that point broken any laws, I would want to be very, very certain before I took that shot. You know, it could be, and again, so all of what I'm about to say is speculation alert. Okay, so because the one thing we definitely cannot do is draw any definitive conclusions. It could very well be the case that you have a situation where somebody spots a threat and is requesting permission to engage.

So that's- That's my assumption, but I'm with you. Like we don't know that for sure. We don't know. And if he emerges into view relatively quickly, and then it takes a minute to maybe when somebody's crawling on their belly, we don't know the line of sight from the sniper

where when the gun maybe became visible. And then, you know, it would shock me if the rules of engagement did not say that when a gun is pointing at the president, you can't open fire. But again, we don't know the specific. But you better be sure it's not a telescope. Got to be sure. Not a telescopic camera. Right. Someone who couldn't get into the event and who just wants to see the president. And you're the person who is going to take another life. There's some just very human elements of this that I think are

missing from the social media conversation. Yes. That's why the one thing I definitely can say is we have to do transparent investigation. Look Congress needs to do it for sure. This could be something of the consequence because let's just reflect a minute. We came about a third of an inch, maybe a quarter of an inch from one of the most horrific events in American history. Just played out in close up on live television. Just, I can't even imagine the horror show

that this country would be right now, much less the immense wave of national grief and mourning I can't even imagine the horror show that this country would be right now, much less the immense wave of national grief and mourning that would be washing over us, the shock, the horror. So the fact that somebody got a shot off and it came that close to killing the former president and the front runner to be the next president is a failure. I don't think anybody would dispute that.

But the question is, how did it happen? And it's just got to be an open book. We cannot do this. We're going to have a confidential inquiry kind of thing. We just need to open book this sucker because the conspiracies are out of control. They were very quickly out of control. And this has just got to be done in the full view of the American public. But David, a lot on the right are saying they don't trust Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice to do this investigation.

These are the very same people who are indicting, who have multiple indictments against Donald Trump. I was just about to say, this could be one of those circumstances where you do actually need one of these bipartisan commissions that have fallen out of favor, but where, you know, the Republicans get to pick who they want to be a part of it. And unlike with January 6th Commission and all of this, where there was veto authority and, and, you know, there, there were people not permitted to be on it

and we don't need to relitigate all of that. But this does not seem to be the situation where you can have a, there is so low trust, this cannot be handled in-house. I think that's the best way to say it. It cannot be an in-house investigation. It has to be transparent. I would prefer a kind of bipartisan commission type approach, but one where the Republicans,

including MAGA folks, felt comfortable they were represented. This is very important here. We need representation in this investigation, and we're not going to stop all the conspiracies. We're not. But to at least leave them with as little ground to stand on as we can possibly do. Jonah, I want to get to what I think is the hardest topic about all of this, which I think is why I've been one of the reasons why I've been feeling really angry for 24 hours. It's no surprise to you and you guys like, I didn't even want to do this podcast because I'm not in the mood and I'm in a bad mood.

And it's because not only do we not know the motive of this shooter, but I guess it's because I've lived through sort of the front row of we never knew the motive of the Las Vegas shooter who killed 60 people and shot hundreds of people that night. And this person so far, and again, speculation alert as David said, seems to fit the profile much more of a loner who was bullied, who was doing this either suicide by cop attention. He may not have a political motive at all. And in fact, if I were just to guess on the very little information we know, but the fact that we have so little information, I think is evidence for that being a strong possibility.

And yet, Jonah, boy, has there been a lot of finger pointing, just instant finger pointing. Your rhetoric caused this. No, your rhetoric caused this this it's Trump's fault that he got shot because of his rhetoric No, it's Joe Biden He ordered this when he said we need to put a bullseye on Donald Trump and I know you've written about The aftermath of Gabby Giffords horrific shooting, but I've even noticed it when people again like my friends on the right Again, like my friends on the right, with all sincerity, they're like, this always happens. It's always our people who are targeted for violence by the left. Look at the congressional baseball shooting, Brett Kavanaugh, now Donald Trump. But if you talk to someone on the left, I mean, look at Joe Biden's speech that he gave

Sunday night. He actually only mentions the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, the kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer. And then he says congressional members from both sides have been targeted. And then Donald Trump. I'm so frustrated that everyone sincerely believes that they have no responsibility in this and that the other side, whatever side you may be on, that the other side is 100% responsible for this. Again, without even knowing the motive and that this person may not have had a political motive at all,

I don't know how to combat that. I don't know how to fight it. You got on Twitter on Saturday night and said, I'm gonna get off Twitter because there will be no good to come of this. But a whole bunch of less responsible people felt just free to continue, Jonah. So what am I supposed to do?

Start cutting yourself. No, look, it's bad. It's infuriating. What am I supposed to do? Start cutting yourself. No, look, it's bad. It's infuriating. And I kind of feel like if hypocrisy were helium, pretty much everybody would have funny voices and some people would just float away. The right has, look at this way, in 20, whatever the Gabby Gifford shooting was that, 2011, I want to think, something like that.

The right, uniformly, was like, this is slander, this is outrage, we don't know this guy's motives. And besides political speech, you know, there was like all this stuff about Sarah Palin's bullseye on a map. You had, firstly, every New York Times columnist, sorry, David, this was before you were there and brought reason to the place, talking about how the Republicans used eliminationist rhetoric and how this was inevitable because of the way Republicans talk using all of these martial metaphors and this is just incredibly dangerous and yada yada yada.

And it turned out that Jared Loeffner killed or shot Gabby Giffords, didn't kill her, shot Gabby Giffords and a bunch of other people because he was a schizophrenic who was very worried about the integrity of grammar in the United States. He was a loon. And so there was all of this projection. But the argument that people are responsible for murder because of their rhetoric was one that the right uniformly denounced and has been denouncing for the last seven, eight years with Donald Trump saying, oh, you guys are just going way out ahead of yourselves saying that Trump's belligerent rhetoric actually is

dangerous. Take him seriously, not literally, and all this kind of stuff. And given this opportunity, the right is immediately leaping on this, the exact argument that they denounced and rejected from the left. And the left is embracing a sort of version of the exact argument that they rejected back then. And the simple fact is not only do we not know the motive, but there is nothing that anybody has said that I would argue justifies this, never mind that ascribes blame to people. But the other part that drives me crazy about all of this is Donald Trump, if the argument is about rhetoric, which I kind of reject to a certain degree,

I'm all for more responsible rhetoric and people need to turn things down and I agree with all of that. But if we're actually saying that dangerous rhetoric yields violence, then of course Donald Trump deserves some blame too. Probably deserves more blame than Joe Biden does. So if that's the case, people need to realize that irresponsible rhetoric elicits irresponsible

rhetoric in response. And you can't just say, oh, the response was insightful, but the stuff that elicited the response was just democratic rhetoric. And I don't know how you get out of this. People's passions are way out of their seats. The only other thing I would say, you know, going back to the earlier stuff that you were asking David and Steve about is I more and more think, you know, this meme quote of, when you don't know how things work,

everything looks like a conspiracy, is really sort of on display all over the place. I think there's a really credible evidence that the Secret Service screwed up. I think there is 0.0 evidence that there is some conspiracy to take out Donald Trump. And there's like negative 100% evidence

that Donald Trump somehow paid for this. Imagine the conversation with Donald Trump. Here's what we're going to do. We're just going to graze your ear with a bullet to make it seem believable. That mean, like that's not what happened. It's not possible. That's what happened. But that's where we are. It's we're just in crazy town. Every person who is writing on Twitter, on threads, on wherever, TikTok, wherever, that this was staged. I want you to right now, if you're listening to this podcast,

get out a piece of paper and I want you to start writing, if you're listening to this podcast, get out a piece of paper and I want you to start writing a letter of apology to every right-wing QAnon-er who you've judged because you're them. You are just like them. And this, because there was, as Jonah said, negative 100% evidence. The prevalence of that immediately was a sign of deep sickness on the far left, deep sickness. And so, you know, I don't want to keep saying horseshoe theory, but there's just so many similarities on both of these radical sides as they radicalize. And it shouldn't

have surprised any of us that that happened. But there needs to be a bunch of apology letters flinging over the aisle to the QAnon folks because you're the same guys, you're the same. I want to footnote David's footnote. One quick point on the horseshoe theory thing. It's not just that both sides have radicals. It's that both sides have a problem of being apologists and accommodationists for their radicals.

Amen. Right? So it's a tiny fraction of people who are truly nuts. But then there's a much larger fraction that says, yeah, but they don't really count. They're okay. We have to understand where they're coming from. That is much more infectious. Jen, I want to push back on one point you made on the rights jumping on rhetoric and

blaming Joe Biden or others because there's a more nuanced point which is, yeah, I don't think Joe Biden caused this, but if the situations were reversed, the media has spent a decade plus saying that every time Republicans say something that could be construed instead of being metaphorical, normal political language as being violent, that they get pounced on for causing a terrorist act that, again, actually was unrelated in any way to politics. So now the tables have been reversed, and of course the media is like, well, let's hold on,

and let's not speculate, and let's see what the motives were, and that basically only the left gets the benefit of that. Hey, now let's not jump to conclusions and the right doesn't. So it's not that for some people they're saying Joe Biden's rhetoric caused this, but rather where's the outrage over Joe Biden's rhetoric that we would have seen if it had been Donald Trump's rhetoric. Yeah, I'm more sympathetic to that anger. I share that anger, right?

There's a lot of hypocrisy. I mean, I used to say all the time in the Bush, you know, in the Obama years that, you know, what if this was Bush is the lowest form of punditry? Not because it's wrong, but because it's so easy, right? I mean, it's just so easy to say, look at this double standard. it's wrong, but because it's so easy, right? I mean, it's just so easy to say, look at this double standard.

And the double standard is a real thing. My problem with it, and this is why I feel like I've been taking crazy pills for the last nine years, is the degree to which people who become obsessed with the hypocrisy of the other side, it's like it creates a psychological cascade function in their brains where they start out criticizing the double standard and then decide, you know what?

I'm just going to internalize and own the other side's standard to beat them up more effectively with it. Right, so I don't, a lot of the stuff I see isn't people saying, oh, look, if this had happened to Biden or, you know, or if this was, you know, if, if that you guys are hypocrites, it's them literally picking up the standard that they used to condemn and internalizing it. If you can sustain the point about the hypocrisy, that's fine. I do think that hypocrisy hunting in our politics

is one of the things that causes people to go nuts because they just take it too far. It's like the obsession we get with the media right now where people think the media is simultaneously sort of all powerful and powerless at the same time. It's like, you know, pick an argument. We talked about this last week about the cover-up with, the quote unquote cover-up about Joe Biden's age. It wasn't that covered up,

but people get obsessed with these sort of meta arguments about hypocrisy and double standards and media bias, all of which I think have merit on the substance, but they become all consuming. And that's one of the reasons why we're in the mess that we're in. Steve, I wanna try out an argument on you. I'm not saying I believe it.

If you believe that Donald Trump is the next coming of Hitler and that if he is elected in November, it will be the last democratic election in America, isn't it cowardly to be upset when someone tries to fix that problem? Like, would you be sad if someone, this is the baby Hitler problem, I guess, but here it's like adult Hitler. Like you've been telling people this whole time about this existential threat that is facing America, that someone should do something. Wouldn't it be odd to not then cheer on someone

who tries to kill Hitler? So, no, I don't think so. And I don't think that one necessarily leads to the other because most of these arguments and most of the people making them are making them in the context of an election. We're talking about voting. There's something else to do.

You don't have to take that step. Yeah, but these people have also said that they're resigned to Donald Trump winning a second term. And these are the same people who said that if he wins a second term, there won't be any more American elections. You see the problem, right? Like the politics basically is over. We can't count on an election because he's going to win. So what's left? Do you have someone specific in mind? I mean, when I think about the people making that argument, for me, I think of people who are saying,

that's why it's so important to go vote. That's why it's so important to rally. That's why it's so important to make these arguments. I don't necessarily, I think it's a huge leap to say, because you are worried about Donald Trump running a quasi authoritarian campaign that you then have to sanction or approve of an attempted assassination. I just think there's a huge gap there. Something that we're hearing frequently is this will be used as an excuse to silence criticism of Donald Trump moving forward. So my question, my real question to you is, how are we supposed to judge the difference

between responsible criticism of Donald Trump, the candidate heading into an election versus irresponsible catastrophizing that could lead to political violence, whether this is an example of that or not. I mean, I think honestly, you have just asked what might be the most important question in this moment, right? I mean, that's what concerns me. That's what sort of keeps me up at night. I do.

I mean, let me answer the question this way. I think I am more troubled by the rhetoric, all around 360 degrees than it sounds like Jonah is. Precisely because of the framing that you just used. I don't think it necessarily follows that if you say, hey, Donald Trump is called to terminate the Constitution. Donald Trump tried to steal an election last time. Donald Trump either removed or forced out his top law enforcement official, his top

military official in order to remain in office after he lost an election. That's really bad. It makes me worry about the future of our Constitutional Republic. I think those are perfectly legitimate arguments. Of course, I think that because I've made them. But I find this abhorrent that somebody would try to kill Donald Trump. And I don't think it has, you have to go from one to the other. As I say, I think there's a huge gap there. But I am troubled. I mean, I think when you get to this kind of apocalyptic rhetoric, particularly when it's exaggerated or flat out made up, you

create the environment where these kinds of things can happen. And I go back to the reason, again, I'll just speak for myself, Jonah, jump in and agree or disagree. You know, the reason, the primary reason I ended up leaving Fox News was because of this film that Tucker Carlson did called Patriot Purge. We've talked about it here before, but the documentary included, I thought, a lot of misleading storytelling that suggested that the federal government was targeting

MAGA Republicans the way that the federal government had targeted Al-Qaeda, including sending them to Gitmo and all sorts of details about this, many of them either I think made up or exaggerated. My concern was if you are on the receiving end of this information and if you trust what you hear from Tucker Carlson as a general proposition, what is the natural consequence there? You think, well, I don't know, I'm a Trump supporter. People are coming at, federal government's coming after me.

They've come in after my neighbors for this reason. What should I do? And I think you do lead people to a certain conclusion. I think, you know, the speech that Trump gave in New Jersey earlier, where he sort of walked through all the particulars about Joe Biden, he's, you know, stealing the country. This is the final battle. 2024 is the final battle. We've had a lot of that, I think, from the right, from the MAGA right. Now, I will say, I remember hearing or reading, maybe it was reading the Politico article where Joe Biden said, I've got to, you know, I'm going to stay in this race because I can

defeat Donald Trump and I'm going to put him in the bullseye. And, you know, normally, it probably wouldn't be something that bothered me. I was where Jonah was on the blaming Sarah Palin for Gabby Giffords 10, 15 years ago. But I do think our leaders have an obligation to be more careful with the way that they talk about this stuff. The more you have people on both sides doing this and engaging in this kind of rhetoric, the worse I think things will get. I want each of you to weigh in on this. David, what's the line between responsible political rhetoric of someone you deeply, morally and ethically do not believe should be in the

White House? On either side, by the way, whichever candidate I'm talking about. And the rhetoric that we can draw a line to political violence or potential political violence. So I think of it like this. I think if you're saying things that are true, Donald Trump has been found responsible for sexual abuse. Donald Trump had sex with a porn star and covered up with hush money.

Donald Trump helped, you know, empowered what ultimately turned into a thoroughly fraudulent effort to steal an American election that culminated in violence. Like you, all of those things are true. You should say the truth. But what's, why is that different than, I am worried that Donald Trump would bring

in authoritarians into his administration like Hitler did, or that Donald Trump would cancel the next election. It's I'm genuinely concerned about that. I can't say that. But you know, you interrupted me before I got to my best in the second part, Sarah. So the thing that I have to say is that you can say and express your concerns, but that can't be all that you express.

So for example, if you have read The Dispatch over these years, if you've read any one of us. Never heard of it. We have constantly both criticized Donald Trump about things that are genuinely alarming that he's done. I'm genuinely concerned about some of the things that he will do as president. And also, you know what you'll find consistently from everyone on this podcast? We have also completely, totally, and utterly and relentlessly condemned political violence

on both sides. There has never been a moment where any one of this group has minimized, downgraded, what abouted any single act of political violence. So if you look at the holistic way in which a person engages, on the one hand you say violence is horrible, threats are terrible, we're on the verge of something awful.

And also at the same time you say, one of the reasons why we're on the verge of something awful. And also at the same time you say, one of the reasons why we're on the verge of something awful is because we're in the presence of destabilizing political figures who have done corrupt things, who have in some time, in many cases, empowered some of the worst voices in American life.

But it's got to be in a whole package that presents a vision that says, I can express deep alarm for another person based on factual reasons. And at the same time, I am asking us, and this whole, you know, this, you know, speaking sort of more broadly for the dispatch and asking people

to manage this conflict by turning the temperature down, relying on the rule of law, and using the rule of law to combat excesses. I mean, so if your whole argument is this person is dangerously lawless, therefore use the law, that's about the opposite of inciting violence. If you just leave it hanging out there, this guy's dangerous, dangerous, dangerous,

dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, then you reach a point where, like the critiques we were making in the run up to January 6th, we were saying, if you're saying America's over, America's over, America's over, this election is being stolen, there are consequences to that.

But it's incumbent on those of us who speak in public and have real genuine alarms is to say, here is the problem, make the argument for is to say, here is the problem, make the argument for the problem, and here is the solution, make the argument for the solution so that you have a holistic approach to this that leaves no room for any person

to look at your rhetoric in totality and say, oh, yeah, I need to grab a gun. To me, that's the thing. As you look at it in totality, man, the other thing you do not do ever, ever, ever is dehumanize. Don't call somebody demonic. Don't call somebody, as Jack Posobiec did in the NatCon, unhuman. Don't demonize, don't dehumanize people, because that again creates a real problem.

Treat people as people, can argue about ideas and actions, and then offer peaceful, constitutionally appropriate solutions like the ballot box and the rule of law, and you're not inciting violence, and you're still engaging in tough, necessary rhetoric.

Jonah, what's your line? Well, look, in terms of my line, you know, I've been saying, and I remember I am the author of liberal fascism here. So I have carte blanche to get deep into Hitler analogies. And I've been saying, you know, my standard line since the beginning has been Donald Trump is not Hitler. Hitler could have repealed Obamacare. You know, the idea that like, but this is a place where and I want to clarify something because Steve, I didn't mean to say that I'm blase about bad rhetoric, right? I mean, I think that I've been pretty consistent on how I thought how utterly intellectually and morally irresponsible,

you know, the flight 93 election stuff was, which is a catastrophizing argument. I've been beating up Kevin Roberts on that idiotic, the president to the Heritage Foundation that we're going to have an American second American revolution. And it'll be bloodless if the left doesn't, if the left allows it to be right. Steve Bannon is a friggin gargoyle. I think he has hooves. And all these cosplay people who talk about secession and civil war, how it needs to be an option. That's inciting too. I mean, look, all these people who are saying that you're that that that Biden's rhetoric, elicited violence have nothing to say about the fact that two weeks earlier, Donald Trump said that he wanted military tribunals

for his political opponents. It's not inciting rhetoric just when there is resulting violence. The rhetoric and whether it's okay or not should exist behind the veil. Like we should be able to judge whether something's okay or not okay before we know whether it results in violence. I agree with that.

And so like the point, because I subscribe to most of the stuff that Stephen David have already said, I'll use this opportunity to plug Yvall Levin's book, right? And one of the points that he makes in American Covenant, I keep wanting to say compact. Is it compact or covenant? I can't remember.

Anyway, his new book on the Constitution, which is really wonderful, despite my inability at this late hour to remember the exact name. Part of his point is, and this is something I've been banging my spoon on my high chair about for 25 years, our system is not set up for unity. It is not set up for people to all agree on pretty much anything except the basic rules. Democracy is about disagreement, not about agreement. Our system of government is about competition, checks and balances, faction against faction, separation of powers, divided government, right?

Federalism horizontally and vertically, competitive elections. What we need in this country is less hectoring about unity, which you get from Biden all the time, starting with his inaugural address, or nationalism, which is just a fancy fighting words version of unity, right? We're one nation, we all have the same blood of patriots in us. Let's invade Poland or whatever. What you need is a better way of disagreeing. We need to be better at disagreeing with each other, not try to impose agreement because

we've gotten to the point now where we're so obsessed with this concept of unity, whether it's nationalism or something else, you know, or climate change, you know, the time for argument is over. The time for argument in the democracy is never over. Because that's what democracy is about. It's a constant argument where you're constantly gut checking the will of the people in constant election after election. But we keep beating people up saying we're one election away from no more elections.

We're one election away from the end of America. If the other side gets in power, that's the end. And that gives you the permission structure to stop finding ways to disagree honorably, peaceably, responsibly, maturely, and instead says victory is everything. And that's the kind of rhetoric, that's the kind of permission structure, I keep using that word, that can lead to violence. Where I disagree about a lot of this stuff on this, which I think Steve rightly called

me on, is that I don't, we don't know why this guy did this. This guy could have just, I think his motives, and this is speculation, but it feels to me that his motives are indistinguishable from some loser mass shooter, who just wants to be famous, right? Someone who just wants to make his mark on the world and has less to do with some political motivation. And in fact, it is entirely possible to me that if Joe Biden had been speaking at that rally, he still would have climbed that thing and taken a shot at Joe Biden because he just, it feels blaze of glory.

Now I could be wrong, but no one knows if I'm wrong. And to immediately leap to this, you're responsible. You know, the number, so as you pointed out, I put on Twitter, you know, the night this happened, Hey, look, I condemn all of this. My sympathy goes out to the victims, I'm glad Donald Trump is okay. I'm not going to post anything more tonight, because I don't want to contribute to this frenzy of, you know, of irresponsible stuff. The number

of people who attack me saying, that's too bad, you're responsible for this, you owe an apology, you know, or worse, you know, that that that I should go to jail or whatever. That craziness is just dangerous and it's profoundly stupid. Okay. I want to spend our remaining time talking about where we go from here. You've heard Joe Biden give an address about unity,

about lowering the temperature. And we've also heard that Donald Trump actually takes what happened to him very seriously. We've seen statements from him to that effect. We've also seen sources that he's quote, ripping up his convention speech that was attacking Joe Biden and instead delivering a message about unity.

What do you wanna hear from the candidates at this point, Steve? Well, look, I mean, I think it's helpful when Joe Biden gives the short speech he gave tonight, calling for people to tone this down. I didn't love the speech, to be honest. And I thought as I watched it, it was another reminder to me why I think Joe Biden is a bad candidate to have as the Democratic nominee, because this called for a really inspiring speech that

brought us together. And it was very much not that. I thought it was very strange that he left out the assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh. Very strange, especially as charges are pending for attempted murder from his Department of Justice against a sitting Supreme Court justice and that wasn't included in the political violence that we've experienced? Yeah, recently, right? Like very recently.

Very recent. He's not a good messenger for unity. I mean, as Jonah, I think, mentioned earlier, he launched his presidency with an inaugural address that said that unity was in his soul. And then we've had stuff like Jim Crow 2.0 and the kinds of things that we've heard from the president himself. And he has a record of that kind of incendiary rhetoric going well, becoming well before he became president.

Put Joe back in chains, etc. Put him back. There are many, many examples from Joe Biden. So he's not a great messenger. I appreciate that he wanted to turn on the temperature. I just thought the speech fell flat. I'd much rather have somebody try and make the attempt and have it not work or have me not like it because I think that's what we need. I would love to have 535 members of Congress do and say the same kind of thing right now, and get to the point where they might mean it. But we're not seeing that. But when we talk about someone who maybe doesn't have the track record of unity rhetoric, that would be Donald Trump.

For sure. In a nutshell. But at the same time, Donald Trump, far more than Joe Biden, has the capacity to turn the Republican Party and right-wing rhetoric, I think on a dime, if he chose. Yeah, look, I mean, I've seen the same reports you have. This was sort of the, I would say this is in some ways the story of the day was that Donald Trump seems really affected by this as one would be.

Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post reported that Trump spoke to somebody and had an almost sort of spiritual take on this. There are these reports that he's going to redo his convention speech. Look, I'll believe it when he decides not to have Marjorie Taylor Greene speak at the convention and some of the other people that he's featuring at the Republican convention, they are saying the same kind of incendiary things right now. And I suspect that when they get on stage at the convention, they will say similar things then. So I would love to, I mean, I think it's really important that we have that kind of rhetorical leadership

from the heads of the parties, from the elected officials on both sides. I guess I'm skeptical that it will play out that way. You raise a great point, Sarah. He has enormous ability to change the tone. And also, let's just not forget, he's about to give a speech that may end up being one of the most watched political speeches

in a very long time, because it's the first speech after this assassination attempt with the eyes of the world on him. The stakes are gonna be incredibly high. And he's got a lot of power in that moment. He has a bully pulpit in many ways that might even be bigger than the president in that moment. He has a bully pulpit in many ways that might even be bigger than the president in that moment. And so you know, this is that sounds so cliche, you know, it sounds so

cliche to say pray for Trump. But I'm literally praying for Trump, he went through something horrible, that no human being should ever have to face, ever. It's gotta be, I mean, I can't even process how terrifying that would be, especially after you sit with it, after all the adrenaline is gone and after you've sort of calmed down for a moment

and you sort of sit with what just occurred. I don't know what could be going through his head and heart in that moment. So I'm praying for him, to be honest. And to circle back on the rhetoric and everything, the way I would think about this is I think about, and again, with the giant caveat, we don't know this guy's motivations,

but I've been worried about the 1968 scenario for some time. And the reason why I worry about it But I've been worried about the 1968 scenario for some time. And the reason why I worry about it is that when animosity and chaos reach a particular level, you can almost begin to say that things like assassination temps become predictable, not any given person or not any given moment, but in the same way that if you say, for example,

allow terrorists to have a safe haven for an extended period of time, and you won't know when a terrorist attack will occur or where, you just know they're coming. I think when it comes to, there's a certain level of animosity and hatred that can start to consume a society to where you don't know when or where who is going to face horrific

violence, but you know it's coming. And we've gotten very lucky. The person who tried to assassinate Kavanaugh was caught the, my gosh, the congressional baseball shooter. I mean, if he'd been more accurate, that would have been a world historic event in the worst way with multiple members of Congress killed. I mean, we have had, gosh, January 6th, there were a million moments

that it could have turned much more deadly. So as weird as this is to say, we've actually been kind of lucky so far. And yesterday we got very lucky, like one quarter of an inch lucky. And we just can't keep counting on that. And so yes, you pursue your policies that you should pursue and yes, you warn against somebody

who gives you real cause to concern that they would be a lawless president. But I'm gonna say it again, you never dehumanize and as you're giving the warnings, you give the solution and the solution is peaceful and the solution is about voting and the solution is about law, it is not about violence. And I feel like the sort of the big,

the moral center of America right now, not the moderate middle, but the moral center of America has to lead by example, has to. And I wrote something after this where it's like, I'm so tired of the thing that occurs right after there's an act of violence where hyper-partisans immediately say, yeah, but the other side was worse,

or yeah, but don't forget this, or yeah, but can't we just, could we have a 72 hour rule? Like after a series of acts of violence, just condemn it, period, period. And then adjudicate the partisan sides of it later. But can we have say 72 hours? It's all I ask to just say that was evil, that was wrong,

that was unacceptable, full stop. I'm not gonna what about it. I'm not gonna say that the right is worse or the left is worse. It was unacceptable, full stop. I'm not gonna what about it. I'm not gonna say that the right is worse or the left is worse. It was evil, full stop. We'll adjudicate other things later. But part of the problem, what happens, it feels like what's happening with each new incident

is we're planting the seeds of hatred for the next incident by in the way that we respond to each other. And I wrote this, I said, look, Democrats and independents, people who do not support Trump, I think if you have a Trump supporting friend or neighbor, you should reach out to them. You should say, I'm so grateful that President Trump is okay. I am so grateful that Assassin's Bullet missed.

I am sorry for the loss of life at that MAGA rally. You must be grieving. We are all grieving and guess what? You must be angry and I'm angry along with you that this happened. And I feel like if just that gesture of humanity to say this was evil, full stop, somebody that you admire was almost killed

in front of the whole nation. And a man who tried to protect his family was killed. Like just grieve with that, be angry that that happened and then save the politics for just a little bit later. But we're just constantly planting the seeds of the next round of hatred in the way that we respond to this. With that, Jonah, I am curious about the politics.

Do you think it'll make a difference? The assassination attempt? I think what will make a difference for the reasons that we've sort of discussed is how Trump responds to it. If Trump responds to it as a bloody shirt moment, I think we're gonna see more violence. If he lets major, significant numbers of people speaking at the convention be surrogates

for a bloody shirt kind of thing, I think we'll see more violence. If he gives into the temptation of an angry crowd, he likes egging on crowds, one could see if he does this speech, if he gets seduced into doing this speech, like it's a CPAC speech or a NatCon speech, then I very much worry about escalatory violence. I mean, I worry about escalatory violence regardless, but particularly in that situation. And so you asked before, what would you like to hear from, what would you like to have

heard from Biden? You know, one of the things I would have liked to have heard from Biden is a heartfelt talk that ended with, and therefore I shall not seek and shall not accept the nomination of my party for president of the United States. And I mean that quite sincerely. This could have been an LBJ moment for him, where this event changed the calculus. Because you know what?

Whether he realized it or not, it changed the calculus. I think the argument from a lot of people on the right is really bad faith and really illogical and really hypocritical and annoying, that criticizing Donald Trump's threat to democracy is inciting violence, but the fact is it's a politically effective argument. And it is half of Joe Biden's campaign rationale at this point, right? It's abortion and threat to democracy. And if he cannot effectively make that argument anymore, we really needs to get the hell out of the way. And I think that one of

the things that will come out of this, particularly if Trump gives into this bloody shirt stuff, which would reinforce the idea that he's scary to elect. He may think that this gives him permission to lean into that stuff and pick JD Vance and give speeches that would sound better than the original German and all that stuff. But if he does that, you could see that scaring away more voters than it attracts. Because the people that he needs to get above 48% don't want to hear that crap. The people who want, he needs to get above 48% want to turn down the temperature. They just think that Biden's insufficient to the task. And I think if Biden went out and said, Hey, look, we got these two old men,

to the task. And I think if Biden went out and said, Hey, look, we got these two old men. There's just a lot of pent up feelings about us both for the good of the party for the good of the country. I think we need to turn the page a fresh face someone from, you know, outside of Washington. I'm not saying he's going to do this. I'm not even saying it's even remotely plausible at this stage. But I think that would be a effective. And that's what I would love to hear from him and get some, you know, Beshear from Kentucky or some guy like that, you know, or Gretchen Whitmer, and someone who can offer Americans a reset.

I think that would be very effective given that I think it's very easy to say the grumpy old men election, despite the fact that someone took a shot at Donald Trump is not what most Americans want. And this would be a moment that you could underscore that. All right, Steve, last word to you. What is the role of the dispatch in the coming days?

That's a very good question. As you can imagine, I've given it a lot of thought. You know, we we started thing in a way to slow down the news cycle, to try to be more responsible in the way that we cover everything, not just moments like this. I think we mostly succeeded at doing that. I'm sure people could point out places where we've missed. I think in the coming days, what we can do is try to provide people with as much depth context and understanding about this moment in our political history without doing as little as we can to contribute to all of the things that we've been fretting about here tonight. So if that means going a little slower in the stuff that we're reporting, we'll go a little slower.

And if that means some double checking, rethinking something that we might want to say because we think it will add, we'll do that too. I can tell you with confidence that it won't keep us from making important arguments that need to be made. We're not going to shy away from saying the kinds of things that we believe because it might hurt somebody's feelings. But we'll be thoughtful about the way that we do it. And I hope we can at least avoid adding to the insanity that we've seen.

With that, thank you, Jana. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, special guest, David French. Good night, Moon. Good night. Good night, John Boy. Good night, Mary Ellen. I do. I feel better. I'm not saying I feel like, oh my God, I want to go like sing a happy song, but I went into this feeling pretty bad, pretty angry. I feel better because y'all make me feel better. So thank you. Dirtiness and basics.

Now watch it turning into like a 90 minute pod. Yeah, seriously. I'll be asleep under this table. That's right. You guys are Eastern times. You'll watch me carry my laptop down to the lobby bar while I answer questions if that happens. Start pounding shots.

Jonah is your central time now. So your day has just begun. Yeah, but I have to- Welcome to my world. Nope, Steve's muted. Great start. Did you mute me Adam? Only in our hearts.

That's quality, Sarah.