Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/27/26: WHCD Shooting Conspiracies, Joe Kent On Secret Service Failures & Iran

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss conspiracy theories after WHCD shooting, Joe Kent on secret service and Iran.   Joe Kent: https://x.com/joekent16jan19?s=20    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So Sager did a good job breaking down all of the details we know about the shooting that occurred at the White. House correspondent sooner, the attempted assassination attempt, we can now say that with some confidence because we do have a manifesto from Cole Allen. We're going to talk to Joe Kent more about that and, you know, the failures that led there, what he's seen from inside the administration about the investigation or lack of curiosity about previous assassination attempts. Let's go ahead and start here with Trump being asked on 60 minutes about his experience of what went down. And interestingly, I'm sure you guys all have seen the video probably 100 times by this point. There's a moment when he appears to fall down, but he will assure you that, no, he did not fall down. It's just the

Secret Service told him to get to the ground. And so that's what he did. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. You see the security moving quickly within seconds grabbing the vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out. Then the counter assault comes in, took 10 seconds for them to flank you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic at one point. were down, what was happening? Well, what happened is it was a little bit me. I wanted to see what was happening. And I wasn't making it that easy for him.

I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time, we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one, and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. And I was surrounded by great people. and I probably made them act a little bit more slower. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, let me see, wait a minute. So, you know, I'm telling guys.

Just at that moment where it looks like you go sort of down with the service, you were telling them to wait. Well, I know what happened is then I started walking with him. I turned, I started walking. And then said, please go down, please go down on the floor. So I went down and First Lady went down also. But we were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking. They wanted you almost to crawl out.

I was standing up, pretty much. I was standing up and then turn around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall, a little bent over because, you know, I'm not looking to be standing too tall. But I was walking out. It was pretty about halfway there. And they said, please go down to the floor.

Please go down to the floor. So I dropped to the floor, so to the First Lady. You can see the gunmen running through the me. detectors and he fired off one or two rounds. His speed was rather incredible, actually. It was like a blur. How did he get that close with the place swarming with security? I will say, look, I say it because I'm a big fan of the people of law enforcement.

And, you know, some of these people, they may be crazy, but they're not stupid, and they figure things out. He ran 45 yards, they say, and he just went to it, and then, boom, he popped. throw it. I mean, he ran like, I think the NFL should sign him up. He was fast. When you look at it and tape, it's almost like a blur. Right. But it was amazing because as soon as they saw that, you could see them draw their guns. They were so professional, aimed their guns, and then they took them down immediately. So the president, they're impressed apparently with the shooter's athletic prowess. In any case, you know, what appears to have happened. I'll talk to Joe Ken about this a bit more,

is that there was basically no security to get into the hotel lobby. Cole Allen had booked a hotel room there. He took the stairs down to the mezzanine level where he's able to exit at a point that was close to the magnetometers there. And then he just tried to make a mad dash for it through the metal detectors. And that's when Secret Service is able to detain him. But, you know, Sagar, I feel like back in the old days with these shootings, everybody would be waiting with baited breath for like, what's the name of the shooter,

what sort of ethnic or political affiliation can we find here so we can make it either the fault of one side or the other? There's still a lot of that goes on. You know, is he Muslim? Is he black? Is he white? What's the overarching frame where we can have here? But more of what people do now is to figure out what's going to be the conspiracy theory to run with. And I do have to say, they have some things to work with here. They definitely have some things to work with here, some weird details. So go ahead. Before we get started, I just want to say, guys, I get it. I get where you're all coming from. I really do. I'm a UFO guy, which is probably the biggest conspiracy in the world. I believe in the JFK assassination theory, not theory. I mean, at this point,

basically a fact. That's just a fact. Yeah, that's just established fact. I think Vegas, still a lot of questions about that. I've talked about it here. I do not believe the official story on the Vegas shooting on Stephen Paddock whatsoever. I'm, I'm, I'm, with you. We were one of the first people to call out Yuvalde. I think our credentials here are well established whenever it comes to conspiracy theory, to giving them light. Seven years ago, covering Epstein, okay, right, whenever it was allegedly a conspiracy. The idea that they would stage a shooting to construct a ballroom, which was already being built, is ridiculous. I'm sorry. Look, I truly, I love everybody.

I understand that this is a societal reflection of where we are. I talk to you guys on the phone, Crystal, to our team. I said this is very much like the 1970s. There's been all these attempts on Trump's life about political violence, about the rising tide. It's very much like the 1968 to 1975 period with the weather underground and political consternation and deep levels of distrust and conspiracy theories explode. So I understand it as societal level. But the knee-jerk idea that they would stage a shooting, which, again, it's not like Trump came out looking good from this.

You know, the idea behind Butler was that he would help his, what was it, his help his reelection campaign and fight, fight, fight. Like, he either fell or was pushed down on the ground. It didn't look that good. They also took the vice president out first. I'm sure he's seething about that. It didn't make the Secret Service look good, really at all. So I just, I don't see it. Like, you got to ask the quibona.

like who benefits here. We'll show you all the stuff. I just want to put that out there because I'm like, I don't see it. All right? I mean, I can usually get there in terms of the path. But yeah, I mean, Caltech grad, high IQ guy who went schizo just seems a lot more reasonable explanation. I just want to put that out there.

Yeah, well, I mean, you say the staging some sort of false flag to push for a ballroom is ridiculous. But people look at this administration. They're like, these are ridiculous people. You never know. I get it. You know, even with the new framework. You know, I'm with you.

I agree. Like, I don't see enough evidence to be like, you know, this is a false flag or to buy into any of the particular conspiracies that are floating around. There's a variety of them. This also ties in. We'll get to all of this, but also ties into the like the scientists dying and disappearing thing as well. So you've got sort of a unified spectrum of conspiracies coming together in this one.

But one of the craziest things that happened here is prior to the event, there was all this leaking to the press that, oh, Trump's really going to go after the media. And so Caroline Levitt got asked about this before the event. And she said, yes, there will be, quote, shots fired. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. It'll be funny. It'll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the road.

So everyone should tune in. It's going to be really great. I'm looking forward to hearing it. So very unfortunate in retrospect wording choice there that I'm sure she probably strongly regrets. Yeah. But there was another weird moment involving Caroline Levitt's actually husband where right after this happens, you know, Fox News, all the networks are trying to get somebody on the phone. The reception in this ballroom, which I remember from back, you know, years ago when I went to this thing, the reception in the ballroom is complete trash, very hard to get any sort of a cell signal. In any case, Fox News was talking to a reporter that they had there.

And she was telling the story about how Caroline Levitt's husband was warning her that she needed to be really careful tonight. And in the middle of telling the story, oh, the line cuts and she's unable to finish her thought there. Let's take a listen to that. I want to just quickly tell you, I was sitting next to Caroline Levitt, the press secretary's husband. He was one of our guests. He was seated right next to me. And, you know, right as the dinner was starting, you know, the national anthem happened. and then he kind of leaned over and said, you know, I watched you on TV, you do a great job.

You need to be very safe. And he was very serious when he said that to me. And he kind of looked around the room and he said, you know, there are some. Sounds like we lost Aisha's phone there. And this happens, by the way, especially when you have so many people attempting to utilize the same cell service at the same time. So, after Caroline Levitt saying there will be shots fired, then her husband was apparently issuing some sort of a dire warning to this woman that gets cut off midstream soccer while she's trying to explain this to Fox News.

Look, I'm enjoying a segment. All right. I mean, I get, I could see it. If I was sitting at home and, you know, and I was just checking in and I already was predisposed to distrust, I totally get it. And, you know, in this, in that way, I mean, what's the innocent explanation? It's weird. Okay?

Let's at the same time. Yeah, that's a weird thing. Why is he telling her to be careful? What? Like, careful with what? In Washington, D.C. because of crime? And then the phone cuts out. that's nuts. Shots fired. Shots fired is actually one where I could see that's much more of a

like, you know, a turn of phrase that very obviously they would say the DMA or sorry, the Caroline husband one is much stranger. We also have which what we're pointing to D4, let's put this up there on the screen about how immediately afterwards all of the biggest MAGA accounts on Twitter, we're saying now you know why the left is suing to block Trump's privately funded ballroom. need a ballroom. I don't want to hear any more criticism of Trump's ballroom. Let me again, though, just go into this a little bit, both to defense straight the MAGA retards that are pushing this and the people who think they're doing this to push the ballroom. Guys, is the idea that the president would just never speak at any event that's not in a ballroom or at the White

House ballroom? This is not a White House event. It is a White House correspondence dinner. So would the White House Correspondents Association pay rental space to the government because the president is going to come? And then what about all these other events which the president is going to come speak to? Is that the idea? Is the idea that every private organization in the nation can only host events with the president at the White House ballroom? Because by the way, if so, that's a real argument against the ballroom, that the president has absolute veto power and hosting authority over any future event. Just so everybody knows, this is. is the first White House Correspondent Center Trump has ever attended while in office, ever.

So the whole first four years, I was there. He never attended any of them. So if he's not going to attend, does that mean the White House correspondent center can't happen? I mean, people who cover the White House, it's already a grotesque event, right? Do you agree with that? Like the whole nerd prom and all of that, like taking selfies with the people you cover? It's gross, all right? And that's already, like baseline. We all know what happens and then they do it out in the open. But then it's a whole other thing. actually hosts the event on the White House grounds. Like, that's nuts. So, yeah, like, and I don't actually think, no matter what, who is in office, and I think very little of the

White House Correspondents Association, I was a member, is even any somewhat self-respective person. Like, you cannot hold events, all events at the White House ballroom. So that's just the one thing. And also, the ballroom is going to cost $400 million. How much would it have cost to just have a competent barricade put up by the U.S. Secret Service. Probably what? 20 grand? A barricade with a couple of agents? Maybe 30? I mean, it's a lot cheaper to just have a good Secret Service. And honestly, that's the part I want to talk about to Joe Kent the most that I just don't get. Why is the administration so united and how great the Secret Service of a job here is done? I don't get it. It's bizarre. If anything, that is.

the conspiracy. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone?

I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day.

And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through. And I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you. Which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test once.

It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Gregalespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young.

This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me go ahead and indulge the conspiratorial thinking. Okay.

So you just said something that's important. Trump has never been to one of these before. And he decides to go this year. And this is just crazy. The number of cabinet officials that were there, we were looking through it. Okay, not only is Trump there. J.D. Vance is there after he gets pulled from Islamabad. Mike Johnson, who would be next in the line of succession, is there.

If the worst of the worst, you know, worst thing imaginable happens and like the whole place goes up and smoke and everybody that's there is taken out, which given that the hotel lobby was apparently, you know, totally open and available is not like that crazy to imagine something like that having happened at this event. We would have ended up with Chuck Grassley as president. He was the next in the line of succession who was not there at the dinner. He's like 180 years old. It is so ridiculous to imagine that that was like a real possibility.

But anyway, to go back to sort of like the conspiracy brain. Okay. So Trump has never gone to this thing. He decides to go to this one. Not only that, I don't know if you guys can pull E3 from the next block, E3. So they decided to use, like this came from the White House. They just decided to use the lower level of security in spite of the fact that the like, entire cabinet was there. I mean, Rubio was there, Cash Patel was there, Hegsteth was there.

Like, they were all basically advanced in the president, obviously. They were all there. And yet they opted to have this lower level of security. Okay. So here's, then immediately afterwards, immediately afterwards, everybody's on the same page of like, this is why we need a ballroom. Okay. Then put D5 up on the screen. So a judge had just recently said that, you know, that had temporarily blocked the construction of the ballroom. And one of the things they said was basically like, you know, to not get authorization from Congress, there would have to be some national security rationale.

Well, the DOJ has already sent a letter now using this attack at the White House correspondence to further push the ballroom. So you're like, what is going on here? Why are we like using this whole thing to try to push forward? a ballroom that had been at least temporarily blocked by some judge. So that's kind of the, that's the ballroom direction of like this was a false flag to create a ballroom, which I agree with you sounds ridiculous, but I guess I don't know. I think to your point earlier about like the 70s, people just don't believe anything anymore.

And I don't blame them. I don't believe anything anymore. You know, at the time of the Butler assassination attempt, you and I were both like, you know, I don't see any indications that there's more here than some deranged loser who, climbed up on a roof and the Secret Service was incompetent. That appears to be the thing. I am no longer so confident that it is as cut and dry as I thought it was at the time, simply because of the weird way that the government has acted afterwards and the fact that

we know so little about this shooter that Trump talks so little about it. And there are some things about that that I'm like, I don't know, maybe people were on to more than I really thought at the time. So anyway, with all of that as backdrop and with the Epstein files and just a total collapse of trust, I don't. don't blame people for looking at these events and going, whatever the official story is, I don't think that's all that's going on here. There must be something else going on here. And I'm going to dig into this to try to figure out what that thing is.

100%. And I think, if anything, that's my takeaway. The fact is, is that the vast majority of people, let's see who are online and in politics, my age, they're all like, oh, it's big. And I was like, well, I mean, here's a thing. Can you blame people for not being trustful of official information? It is very 1970s. People like my bookwrecks. I've recommended. it many times over the years, days of rage. I highly recommend people go and read about the entire like underground violence movement that was a huge part of, you know, like the anti-institutional rage of the post like new left era at the very same time that conspiracy theories and everything exploded across the nation. And it was all happening in a post-Watergate, post-Nixon,

post-LBJ, Vietnam War environment. Oh, and yes, humans were going to the moon. There's always a, you know, like a NASA connection. Like, there is an eerie rhyming, I think, that happens with this. We're tons of assassination attempts, bombings, riots even, remember? And so, look, not everything is the same, but the same forces are very similar, except this time around we have algorithms. And we also have something unique.

What do we actually know about Cole Allen? The hard fact that we know about this guy is that he went to Caltech University. He was also an intern at JPL. In fact, there's a connection to that. Can we put D6 up here on the screen? This is actually crazy. This is very strange, yeah. According to his LinkedIn, he interned at NASA in 2014, and in 2014, they published a paper,

and the quote, Henry Martinez was an author. An ex-user named Henry Martinez made in 2023, made only a single post on December 21st, 2023, and the post simply said Cole Allen. So yeah, that's weird. All right, I'm not going to say it's not weird. Maybe he's a, you know, Patsy name and all of that we could get to. Here's what's a more likely story. Let's take a look at two our most high profile assassins or attempted assassins that we have in, what, the last couple of years. We have Luigi Mangione and we have here Cole Allen. What do these two gentlemen have in common? They are reasonably well educated. They from either a rich or a privileged or middle class background. They went to, you know, decent

enough schools and our university. Everything seemed to be normal. And then something happened, right? And that seems very clear in this guy's story. He's basically been not up to the snuff of the employment status that a normal Caltech graduate. He is working as a tutor. Didn't seem to be really like ascending to some great heights. It's pretty obvious usually in that. case that something happened in the personal life increasingly went down an algorithmic rabbit hole. There's been a lot of jokes going on. This is our first like blue sky terrorist. You can see his, like many of his retweets and other things on the platform over at blue sky. Like he was a through and through shit lib. And I know people think I overuse that term.

I think even you would agree with that. Like he hated Hassan Piker because he thought he was too radical. And he's the guy who literally went out and tried to shoot a bunch of people, which is a whole other side story in this entire thing. I mean, I do want to just pause on that for a moment because I think it's worth thinking about the ideological content, to the extent we know, right? And all of this is very, you know, we're trying to figure out something that really is unknowable, right? But it does look like he was a kind of dyed in the wool like blue sky liberal. And I saw Edentermintam making this point on Twitter, I think it's a good one, which is that, you know, if you are a standard issue liberal, and that's kind of your worldview, so you have this very, like, individualistic worldview,

and you're steeped in all this very, very radical rhetoric, but you don't have a broader, like, for example, class-based lens and a broader political project that you feel like can change the situation and you have it more personalized, that it's these individual evil actors who are the source of all the problems, then, you know, you know, you know, you know, you can't you can see how someone who, you know, has this mentality would see themselves, and you get this from his manifesto, see themselves as doing something genuinely like noble and good to try to conduct these assassinations. And so I do think that there, it does kind of make sense to me that he would have come out of like a blue sky radical centristism versus a sort of like Marxist analysis. It does have a logic. And again, I don't want to read too much into his posting history and what his mentality is because, again, some of these things are ultimately unknowable.

Though Ken Clippinstein had a good piece about him. And he talked to people who knew him. He looked at his resume. It's like, on the surface, there were no warning signs here. You know, he wasn't known to the FBI. He wasn't on their radar. He was just, you know, this very intelligent guy going about his life. People said he was nice and he was gentle and he was very thoughtful.

He was actually very Christian involved in Christian life and his own church and in other capacities. but in any case, to get back to the conspiracies here, because we got to tie in the jet propulsion lab and the missing scientists and all of this. So if you could go back to the element that we just had up, which includes that this part, it really is really weird. I mean, this is just really weird. So he has this connection to NASA.

He has this connection to the jet propulsion lab, which a number of the other scientists who either died or ended up missing or whatever also had connects there. Okay, so you've got that tie in. And then you've got this account. that has one post created in December 2023, and on that day, December 21st, 20203,

he tweets out Cole Allen. Okay, not only that, but you see it's a, it's the avatar for this account is the pepe meme, but it's not just any pepe. It's pepe in the tux holding the wine glass. What were people wearing at the White House Correspondents dinner when this, you know, attempted assassination occurred? They were wearing tuxes.

They were holding wine glasses. glasses, et cetera. Okay, then we go the Henry Martinez thing, you already laid out. Henry Martinez also was at NASA at same time over linking with the time that Cole Allen was interning there. Okay, that's really weird. Okay, then now we're really going down the rabbit hole here. Okay, you see this background with like the lines and all the colors and stuff. If you look at this and you superimpose over it, one of the most famous pictures of modern history, which is the Trump fight, fight, fight, after the original assassination attempt.

Okay, you say you don't see it, soccer, but I don't. I think you, I think, look, I've, it, there, there is not nothing there. You can see, go do it again, run it again. Do the thing again. You can see Trump's face. You can see the hand. Like, there, there is a resemblance here.

And this image comes from something called, like, the time machine project or something crazy like this. So anyway, now we're getting, like, totally down the rabbit hole. in terms of like, this will make you insane if you take it seriously and think about it too long. But it is really, the tweet is, I can't, I have no reasonable explanation for how this person

with this NASA Connect tweeted out this name with this particular picture and the pepe meme and what I, it is, I have no reasonable rational explanation. I just, I don't know, it feels like a total sci-fi black mirror episode, that aspect of it. We've got our guest standing by, I can't go too deep into it. I think you could see anything

and you want to see whenever it comes to the image. It's also, you know, in terms of that slide, I'm like, you know, I don't know. I just think I've seen enough of this over the years. The Pepe-Tucks thing, that's a meme. It's been around for 10 years. The only weird thing is Henry Martinez tweeting out Cole Allen. That one, you're like, okay, I mean, yeah, there's something. Look, if you want to get big-brained with it and you want to go back all the way back in the day,

Caltech high-IQ grad, who went semi-schizo, is textbook Ted Kaczynski? MK Ultra or any of these others. So maybe he's a failed experiment, like a Charlie Manson or any of that. I think Blue Sky Lib, who semi-schizo, who, you know, look, he did more of a planning job than most. Very similar, I think, to, you know, to allegedly what Thomas Matthew Crooks or these people type did.

And he did, you know, eventually evade the security barrier and all that. And in fact, bragged about it. So I don't know. Maybe there is something more there. And we have a good guest to speak to that. Joe Kent, the former National Counterterrorism Director, who's standing by, let's get to him. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I got you. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wadam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot.

He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah. It would not be... Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.

I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alespie and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap.

Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Joe Kent, the former National Counterterrorism Director, who has long-sounded alarms about the president's security or barriers and is asking a lot of questions about this shooting. Joe, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time.

Great, to meet you. Nice for having me. So let's start off with this. This was perhaps the most noteworthy part of the manifesto. Let's put it up here on the screen, which was released by Cole Allen, allegedly sent to his family. He says, okay, now all that sappy stuff is done. What the hell is the Secret Service doing? Sorry, going to rant a bit here and drop the formal tone.

I expected security cameras at every bend. Hubugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got, who knows, maybe they're pranking me, is nothing. No damn security, not in transport, not in the hotel, not in the event. He even muses at one point that he could have been an Iranian trying to attack Trump with some full-on weapon. This highlights a breach of the president's security perimeter, something that you highlighted after you left the administration. How are you assessing this news right now, Joe? You know, this is just obviously a third breach that we've had. since President Trump was back on the campaign trail, where an assailant got within the president's perimeter with a long gun.

So he got in there with a shotgun. I think you're right. The most interesting part of that manifesto is when he even comments himself, which I guess he was updating somewhat before the event, almost in real time, where he is even amazed that he made it that far. We had obvious breaches that led up to Butler, West Palm Beach, and these issues haven't been addressed. And then since then, we had multiple breaches of President Trump's perimeter at the U.N. We had the incident at the restaurant in Washington, D.C., the incident where the police officer armed came up and shook the president's hand. So these have been noted while I was in the administration.

We had members of the Secret Service that had mentioned that they had very big concerns about the president's security. The DHS inspector general who was looking into Butler, he has been blocked by the top leadership in DHS and potentially even higher. So this just speaks to the fact that we have a clear problem here that is not being addressed. I mean, they can go and say that the guys on the inside perimeter near the president did a good job. It appears that they did. But these issues have not been addressed now for several years.

And the fact that they haven't been addressed leads to more and more questions. Yeah. Well, let's put this real clear politics article up on the screen because this is getting a lot more attention now in the wake of this latest attempted assassination. So the headline here is exclusive. is from Susan Crabtree. Gunman near White House alluded Secret Service two weeks before the dinner shooting for two weeks before an intruder broke through security at the White House Correspondents Association dinner in D.C. The Secret Service had been investigating a mystery shooting near the White House but had come up empty-handed

to the frustration of both President Trump and top DHS officials. Multiple Secret Service sources told Real Clear Politics just after midnight early in the morning after Easter Sunday. Secret Service uniformed division officers responded to a shooting near the White House in D.C.'s Lafayette Park, which is right there by the White House for people who don't know. But the Secret Service could not pinpoint exactly where the shot landed. They investigated and found rifle shell casings at 16th and I streets. A video located the shooter's vehicle, but no images of the gunmen. So, you know, what does this incident also tell you? And, you know, obviously every president faces significant threats on their life.

You know, between the three of us in this segment, I think we all have variety of views about President Trump, I think we would all agree that he's a fairly divisive figure. So I guess, unfortunately, it's not a surprise that there would be, you know, attempts of violence against him. But have we seen these types of failures in previous administrations? Not that I know of. And like you said, there's, there's been more threats against President Trump. He is a divisive figure. And we had, we had Butler. We had West Palm Beach. We had people getting shots off at the president. He's alive, you know, just by by the grace of God. And so for there to continue to be these issues, again, that screams that we have a systemic failure here. And why is the failure being

tolerated? I think that that's one of the questions that the American people deserve the answers to. And President Trump, frankly, deserves those answers as well. And so does his family. I just have a hard time believing that we continue to have these breaches in a security perimeter. The incident that you just pointed out, that's a very heavily surveilled area of Washington, D.C. Any one of these incidents, like in isolation, you could say general incompetence, you know, circumstances just led to this event unfolding this way, but this continues to happen. And if we don't step in and take drastic action right now, I'm afraid a tragedy will strike. But Joe, it's connected bigger. This is why I want to talk to you. You have long connected the breaches and Trump's security to the decision to go to war with

Iran. And, you know, I know that you speak and you choose your words very carefully, but you've got to lay that out for people because in the ad, in the, now in the aftermath of this and this more recent attack, does that more confirm what you're trying to say and make very specific like what you're alleging whenever it comes to those breaches and his security? I really don't want to come to this conclusion. However, if you look at the breaches and the security, the attempts on President Trump's life and you put that on the timeline of how we've made key decisions, you can't help but ignore it. I'm not saying it's 100% driving all the decisions that are being made, but President

Trump is facing very critical choices right now in the war in Iran and you have an incident like this. something else that really, I think, can't be overlooked. There is a lot of radical political violence right now. There is a pool of very radicalized folks on the left who have been told for years that President Trump is a Nazi. That rhetoric cranks things up and it radicalizes individuals. But that also gives intelligence agencies or other organizations a very ripe pool from which to recruit from. So I just think we have a combination of factors right now that can't be overlooked. And it's time for someone to step in.

I think the DHS IG and others within the government would be a good place to start and just to take a look at everything that's taking place right now and why these failures continue to happen. But again, for those of us that are trying to assess why President Trump's making the decisions that he's making, I think it would be foolish for us to not take a look at everything that's taking place that could be providing some leverage on him driving his decisions. Okay. So another thing that is odd to me is that we can put this Washington Post piece up on the screen. So first of all, just the number of cabinet officials that were at this dinner was pretty wild. I said earlier if, you know, somebody had bombed the whole thing and everybody there, you know, if you had the worst situation, you can imagine everybody there dies. You would have had Chuck Grassley as president of the United States.

And yet it says in this article that the Trump administration provided a lower-level, level of security for the White House Correspondents' Dinner than it has for other gatherings of high-ranking officials, even though the president and many cabinet members were in attendance. They go on to say, you know, that Trump and Vance were both evacuated quickly to safety when a gunman charged the security perimeter. But it seems like the decision is just very strange here. And then you add to that, the thing that I've always, you know, found, I was very persuaded that the official story that we got about the Butler assassination attempt was more or less

correct. I didn't see any other indications otherwise. And to be honest, we see some of the things that you've said have given me pause there just because it seems like you would want to really investigate, know, who this guy was, know what motivated him, see if there's any, you know, other people who he was connected to that we need to have our eye on, et cetera. And according to what you've said, that just there just wasn't that level of interest. And in fact, further investigation there was blocked. Exactly. When we looked into Butler from the intelligence community perspective, of we came across some things in terms of the confidential human source, the origin of the intelligence that gave us other questions that came to mind that we raised and were blocked by the FBI from

looking into further. And then the DHS IG, who was not working with us, who was not coordinating with us, working a separate track to look at what took place on the ground in Butler specifically, like asking the most obvious question, how did Crooks breach the security perimeter and get up on the roof? He was blocked from that very aggressively by internally by the DHS. and didn't get anything back from the FBI. We were told by the FBI that there was nothing in Thomas Crooks' digital devices on his cell phone, computer, et cetera. And then Tucker Carlson's investigative journalist actually dug up Thomas Crooks' online profile.

So there was obviously a lot more work that needed to be done in terms of Butler. Those questions still haven't been answered. The issues with the security perimeter still haven't been addressed, obviously, because West Palm Beach happened right after that. And then we had the other breaches of President Trump's security to include this one. So there's obviously a systemic issue. and these questions just simply aren't being answered. And again, if we don't look into this quickly and if there isn't someone who steps in and says, why were these decisions being made, you rose a great point that I think most people were asking when they saw the,

you know, even the vice president and the president in the same spot, basically on the same stage, was who authorized all the cabinet, essentially, for the most part, to be in this one location. And I don't think that was a conscientious decision made by President Trump or by the vice president. I think it just happened that way, but we should have people that. are in charge that are looking at the security situation and the posture to make sure something like this doesn't happen. Yeah, Joe, I was talking about it. You know, you and I, we've all, all three of us have been to multiple high-level VIP style events where you have lots of members of the line of succession. You don't get several thousand yards in front of that building

without different magnet, you know, you go through the, you go through the metal detectors, there's multiple barricades, there's really layers of security. And if you're going to a DNC or R&C, you're walking a mile without even being able to drive up. And yet, I'm looking at stories about people being able to take pictures of the beast. Again, the only time I've seen the beast is when I was in the motorcade as a member of the press. I've never been able to take a picture of the beast just casually, even whenever I was cleared by Secret Service on the White House grounds or whenever it was parked, let's say, at one of Trump's properties, which he was accompanying on. The shakedown here, in terms of the level of security, is not even for a normal potist-style event,

and yet you have 80% of the line of succession. So this is obvious to you. It's obvious to me. Probably more important for you. You're the former national counterterrorism director. But help us square this. Trump is out here on 60 minutes saying that Secret Service did a great job. He doesn't seem to be shaken.

I'm going to take that genuinely in terms of his public messaging. The Deputy Attorney General, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said this was not a security failure. It was a security success story. Why is it top to bottom? Every member of the admin is consistently defending the Secret Service when people like you and many others are like, hey, there are serious problems here. I wish I knew the exact answer, but what I can point at it from being in the administration is a culture that's almost zero fail or this constant quest for good vibes and good news stories.

There's not a lot of tolerance right now in the administration for saying, hey, we're on the wrong course. hey, there was a screw up here, we need to correct it, which I think is part of any healthy organization. We do after-action reviews in the military. It's almost a religious requirement in the military to do an after-action review. And then in after-action reviews, we're usually very critical and very hard on ourselves. That is not the culture coming from the White House, and that is a leadership issue. And I think that folks below President Trump, Chief of Staff, Deputy Chiefs of Staff, those levels, they could be looking much more critically at this. And look, the American people aren't dumb. You don't need to be a security expert or have done protective details before

to understand that things went very wrong two nights ago and that have gone wrong in the past of Butler and all the other assassination attempts that we talked about. So I think just being honest with the American people would help in terms of credibility. But then they've got to break this culture within the White House of we can't ever bring bad news to the boss. We can't ever bring any friction. President Trump is a pretty forward-facing individual. I have no doubt that he wants to get out there all the time. But I do think he needs someone to say, hey, sir, we're not going to do that. You cannot do that today. You can't have this massive event. Or if you're going to have it, we're going to have to scale back. We're going to have to put in more security restrictions.

Unfortunately, that's just not the culture that's been created in the White House. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games. You get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess. with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserved. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings, I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come, look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent,

I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.

If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.

The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring ink. inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Lusbian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues,

Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's a good pivot.

actually, to the Iran War while we have you, I figure we could ask you a few things about, you know, where you believe this conflict is right now. You've been floating the idea that perhaps the U.S. could just kind of walk away. I mean, we are in this kind of limbo state right now. I'm concerned we had Robert Pape on the show as well, who's also concerned that that wouldn't be a stable outcome, that it's almost very difficult to avoid the idea

that because the economic damage would persist so long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, so long as you have Israel very much eager to get back into a hot war that it would be a very unstable outcome. But how are you assessing where we are right now? Yeah, I still think the best thing that President Trump can do right now is look at what Ronald Reagan did in 1984. Ronald Reagan was smart enough to say, hey, I got into this. I didn't calculate all the risks. Something came. It hit us. And now this simply is not worth the continued risk. And he made the political calculation. And I think the morally right calculation, he pulled our troops

out to save more lives. But then politically, he knew that he could take some slings and some arrows and through the strength of his personality that politically he could get through it. And he did. And I think President Trump can do the exact same thing. If President Trump were to basically just do kind of what he does in most of his press conferences and interviews about the Iran war, if he just listed off all of the leaders that we've killed, all of the things that we've bombed in Iran and just say we won and then just bring our guys home, pull the vast majority of our forces out of that region. Because our, our, our best, bases and our continued presence in that region has proven to be more of a strategic liability

than an asset. If he pulls them out and says that we've won, that buys us time. Now, ultimately, I can't disagree with what the professor laid out. I think he has a very good view of how things have strategically changed. However, we will avoid the most catastrophic outcome, which would be us getting sucked into a further escalation cycle, because if we double down militarily, the Iranians are going to hit us back, then we're going to take losses. And we're going to be in this cycle that takes, you know, around 20 years for us to be able to break if we just look at recent history. So I think the most pragmatic thing he can do is just declare victory, declare it loud in a very Trumpian style, and pull everybody out.

But the problem, Joe, is right now, literally today, this is part of what I wanted to have you on. You had this shooting. And now Monday, there's a situation room meeting, literally, that's going to happen where they're going to discuss whether they should resume bombing or not by basically leaving us in this quasi, you know, like semi-ceasefire, but with the blockade. and yet the still closure of the streets of Hormuz, we have this impending energy crisis.

Considering where and how you've seen a president act and considering your own experience, you've literally resigned, tried to plead, basically elevate the profile enough to try and change decision-making, where do you think, and I'm sure you talk to a lot of people still who are around, where is Trump's head at, and are people willing to speak a little bit more truth to power,

now that war has gone so poorly? How do you think things are going to go in that situation or meeting today? I'm concerned that, he is just going to have people around him that are going to tell him that the blockade is working and that this idea that we can somehow get a backlog in Iranian oil and that's going to make the Iranians basically tap and say that they'll do whatever we want and they'll give up their nuclear enrichment red line. They'll give up their proxies, et cetera.

They'll give up their ballistic missile capabilities. I just don't see that as happening. The Iranians have shown over the course of, you know, 47 years that economic pressure really doesn't move the needle very much with them. And again, we've killed a lot of the moderates there. So our trade space for negotiations is limited. This is why I'm also more skeptical of us getting a deal with the Iranians than I was just three, four weeks ago, or even at the beginning of the conflict, because we've continued to kill the moderates. Every time there's a ceasefire, the Israelis do everything they can to break the ceasefire. And the Iranians are squeezing international energy, and they know that gives them leverage. So I think the president is going to be told, hey, sir,

the blockade is working, just give it more time. The problem there is that the Iranians can endure much more pain than we can. They then there's a major risk then of the Iranians taking a shot at one of our ships in the region, which again starts that cycle all over again. The hard lighters in Iran, the IRGC, I think that they almost prefer that outcome because the more that we fight, the more emboldened they are, the more of the population rallies around them. So us staying there in that region, I think is just a massive mistake. I, I, I truly hope that the president also understands that if he wants the blockade to work, even if the status quo is to work, he's got to do more to restrain the Israelis.

The Israelis are doing everything they can to light Lebanon back on fire, which, you know, the Iranians didn't have a lot of control over before this war, but now they do, and they're playing that card. So this is a situation that we've created, but now we have to restrain Israel. And it's got to be more than just like we put out a truth social post. We actually have to take away features of their military, the military aid that we give them. they know that we are serious and we're not going to let them dictate terms or drive the direction that our country is taking. Yeah. Let's say, Joe, that Trump pursues your, you know,

your advice or goes in that direction. We stay in this kind of limbo state where we are right now. We all know Trump can spin a victory narrative and that there's a significant chunk of the country that will be like, yes, you're right. This was great. How would you, though, looking at this independently at this point, how would you assess, even if we were able to walk away and extricate ourselves now. How would you assess the long-term impact and cost of this war? Clearly, it hasn't been worth it. I mean, we've lost 13 American service members. They did not need to die for this. But also, just in terms of our alliances in the Gulf, there has been this illusion for decades now that the Gulf states can be our partners and partner with us, and they don't need

to have much of a defense system because we will be there, their security guarantees. We'll provide all their defenses. That has been shattered. The Iranians have shown that they can reach in and they can penetrate all the defenses that we, in theory, had the idea of us having a basing presence in the region. Again, those are bases that have proven to be more of a liability than an asset. So we're going to have to relook at our security arrangements. I'm also concerned that a lot of these Gulf states, they're not going to come out and completely reject us. They're going to want to keep us as their friends, but they're going to start moving away from the petro dollar. That's going to harm our economy. That's going to harm our status as the World Reserve currency holder.

But then also, I think a reality that we're just going to have to deal with is if we do pull our troops out and we do look to have a more pragmatic solution to getting the Straits of Hormuz open back up again, we're going to have to just deal with the Iranians as they are. There's no military solution there. So at some point, whether it's after we fight a bloody 20-year war, or it's relatively soon, we're going to have to just deal with the Iranians. And I think to assume that we can get over that and realize that Iran is not going to be exactly as we want it to be. However, Iran has proven to be pragmatic. They are not the insane jihadis. They're not the new, you know, ISIS, the Persian version of ISIS, they can be dealt with.

So I think the sooner that we realize that and just realize if we're going to maintain any standing in the region, any kind of relationships, the faster that we can start having realistic diplomacy with them, the better off will be. And again, like, I think if President Trump starts thinking bigger picture, this is something he's uniquely postured to do. He's a strong leader. The Iranians still, even though they don't trust him, they view him as a strong leader. I think he has a potential of resetting our relationship with Iran, even in the wake of all this. I think you need to take the tensions down first. That's why I'm recommending for us to get out of there. But I do think there's a potential for us saying, hey, a strong Persian government. I mean, right now we're dealing with the former leader of al-Qaeda

in Syria. It's not a far cry for us to deal with a group of Iranian leaders that maybe we don't like, but we're going to deal with because they're an energy superpower. Geographically, they're a superpower. It's much better to be friends with them than having them shut down the streets of Hormuz every time we get into a dispute with them. So I think if we just recognize the world as it is and move past our own pride, I think we'll be in a much better spot. Totally agree. Joe, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your analysis, sir. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

What's up, I got you? I'm Ako Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot in life.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Mancini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.