Modern Wisdom - #811 - Tim Kennedy - Emergency Episode: Special Forces Sniper Explains Trump Shooting
Episode Date: July 16, 2024An emergency episode in the wake of this past weekend. No ads, no edits — just a raw, unfiltered conversation with Special Forces Sniper and Green Beret Tim Kennedy. Sponsors: See discounts for all ...the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.
We have an emergency episode today in wake of the events this past weekend.
Tim Kennedy is a Green Beret special forces sniper.
He has worked on previous presidential details and has a lot of insight
into what went wrong this weekend.
And there's no ads, no edits, no nothing, just a raw unfiltered conversation.
So please welcome Tim Kennedy.
Three, two, one.
Tim Kennedy, welcome to the show.
Hello, my friend.
Busy weekend.
Wild times we're living in.
Busy, busy weekend.
Talk to me, how did this happen?
Man, I think it's the worst and scariest answer
possible. Wish which is like a balance of Occam's razor and
halons razor. The first is so obvious about you know,
basically looking for the most simplest solution and the
evidence supporting that and not looking for anything further than that, which leads us into Halen's razor,
which is never attribute something to malice when it can be explained with stupidity. And
if I go back, I don't want to start on Saturday because I think that grossly misrepresents the problem. We
have to go back three years and start looking at what has happened organizationally, what
has happened with personnel selection, what has happened with training, what has happened
with requirements, what's happened with authorities, with authorizations, what's happening with
the overall labor force within that specific organization? The government as a whole Department of Homeland Security as a whole who are the appointees?
Who did the appointees that appoint and then when you take that big huge picture and
You then look at the actions on Saturday, which clearly had
inept
negligent incompetent stupid people that did an abhorrent, dangerous job of doing
the one thing which is keeping their principle alive.
They did nothing.
There was the only reason that that man is not dead, that the former President Trump
is not dead, is because his head at the very
last second changed a few degrees and a bullet went past his ear instead of hitting his temple
and taking out the back portion of his brain, which is not survivable.
That is nothing that anyone else did.
That was divine intervention or president Trump's luck? Jesus Christ.
You've worked presidential details before as well, right?
So you know, for the people who don't know in what you might consider a more
golden era, one that was more competent, just how thorough is the process for
this stuff, bring that screen down for me a little bit as well, if you would just
lose a little bit of headroom.
Yes.
Thank you.
You see my big old neck.
You know, you've got a front neck.
So what's supposed to be is that this is the most premier security detail on the
planet.
This is, this is the standard that everybody looks to the competence, the
selection, the training, the personnel, um, they have to be because this is the
leader of the free world. That is who be because this is the leader of
the free world. That is who the American president is. And I'm
going to talk about the position, not about any specific
president, because this is not a partisan issue. You know, if you
look there, there have been a total of 10, Sue assassinations
or assassination attempts on former presidents, and 60% of
them were Republican for 40% of them were
Democrat so like it's not a partisan issue like or I had a whole bunch of
friends like yeah why is it always Republicans getting assassinated it's
like like I mean it's not always you know it's it's um it's it's a dangerous
rhetoric and it's in a dangerous idea and it's a social contagion this thing
that is hate when it moves into discourse
that is directed in a very unhealthy way. So if we created this like spectrum, this continuum
on this Halon's razor, on one side we have this complete negligent, stupid, incompetent, inept, ignorant,
just unable to do the job, which is being able to be capable to protect somebody. And
then on the opposite end of the spectrum, on the total other end from just being incompetent is complicit, which is in cohorts with, which
is enabling.
And using that Halen's razor, if somebody is so, and these are not stupid people that are running these organizations that assigned
the details to work for the former President Trump.
If they are knowingly, if they are aware about how dangerously inept they are, we then move
into the malice category.
Then we move into the complicit category.
And that gets like, does that mean that this is like a deep state? Like, were they allowing
this dude on a roof? I mean, well, kind of, like if they had, if they were so undermanned,
and they were so ill prepared, and they were so untrained. And the people that were there were following our hiring with DEI
practices. And they were too overweight to be able to get
their own weapon in their holster. They are the ones
that are cowering behind the stage or cowering behind the
president. Why other people that are not even part of that
organization are running up the staircase with their guns at the
high ready looking out into the audience and towards the
direction of the gunfire completely opposite reactions
It starts becoming very evident
About where how and how dangerous this situation not just was
but currently is because it's not fixed the same department of
This the same Homeland Security Director is in place the same
Secret Service Director is in place. The same Secret Service Director is in place. Every single one of
those people that have been hired and trained in the past three years are still part of that organization.
The group that
investigated January 6th and then raided the president's own home,
they're the ones that are doing the investigation around the assassination.
own home, they're the ones that are doing the investigation around the assassination. Think about that for a second.
And the people that are doing that are of the opposing party that's running for president
in November.
This is wild.
Let's go back to sort of what you know about the level of caliber of protection that happened
on the day.
I've heard that it was more Homeland Security contractors as opposed to secret service agents
than there should be. I've heard that outside of a hundred-ish meter fence, it actually is
local law enforcement officers as opposed to the actual secret service. What do you know about the
detail that was there on the day? Yeah, man, it is bad is what it is. So regardless of
day. Yeah, man, it is bad is what it is. So regardless of what personnel from which departments, whether it's state,
federal Department of Homeland Security Secret Service, which
is county, which is municipal city, ultimately under ICS, this
is this command system that all goes up to who's in charge,
which is the ground force commander, that person is then leveraging and identifying threats like most dangerous course of action,
most likely course of action.
They start from the site surveys that came in before the former president even got there.
They've identified which buildings have line of sight of the president, which ones are
in small arms fire, where a drone could be taken off from, which ones have vehicle access, what is an egress route, what is an exfil
route, what is their infill route, where is the medical band placed, where are they jamming all
frequencies from, all of that stuff is done well ahead of time. How long? How well is well?
How long, how well as well? I'm sure, like I was just in France with President Biden's secret service detail, like a month
ago.
Like this is, and they are so good.
They are the A-Team, to put it mildly. Like these, all of those men, all of those guys were the
best and the brightest. And, um, and I'm not disparaging the people that were on the ground,
uh, on Saturday because their heart, I bet you, you know, if we lined them up right here
and I started interrogating them, they're like, I did my best. And I believe
that like they truly are public servants. They are trying their hardest with the resources
they have, with the training that they have, with the God given gifts that they and the
current physical condition that they're in. And they were doing the best that they could
with what they had, which just wasn't enough. And so what I know about on Saturday was
President Trump's campaign has requested time and time again, and this is denied by Department of
Homeland Security for additional security. And it's been denied. I know, which is funny that they're denying it.
They're denying that Trump's team has requested it
because it's all gonna come out.
They have emails.
It's so dumb to be like, oh yeah,
they never said a request.
I mean, but they did, did they?
Here's an email about it, them requesting it.
And then you gave them a bunch of hacks
that don't know how to do their jobs. Um, so on Saturday, they had the
vast majority of the heavy lifting on the labor side was not secret service. Um, you
had municipal local plot law enforcement that this is what's wild.
Staging area for the local law enforcement was immediately adjacent from the building where the shooter climbed up.
Mind blown. So, you know, the security perimeter who is doing the met who is allowing people into the venue,
who is controlling that the area outside of that perimeter.
Normally that perimeter is set at least to the bare minimum of
explosion and small arms fire.
Like so about 1500 meters.
That's normally where that circle is.
Um, sometimes it's a little bit more, sometimes it's a little bit more,
sometimes it's a little bit less,
but generally that's well within the total protected area.
Not 130 meters.
That's right.
That is an impossibility.
Listen, zero chance.
There is zero chance that everyone on the ground
didn't know that that building with
the direct line of sight and a hundred and I think it was 151 yards from the not the
corner which was 131 yards but from the top where the guy the shooter took the shot to
where the president was standing at that moment was 151 meters but that every single person
on the ground didn't know how much of a liability
that building was. No way. How hard is that shot? My nine-year-old can do 10 out of 10.
I bet you, you could find every single Texas kid. So in the hunting blinds in Texas,
Texas kid. That's, so in the, the hunting blinds in Texas, you set up the deer feeders about 150 yards. I hate saying yards, but a hundred freedom units. Yeah. Um, 150 yards
from where the hunters climb up into their little hunting box and then shoot the animals
when they go up to, to eat the corn or pick up the feed at the end of the day.
Nine to 11 year olds, seven to 11 year olds, every single one of them
would be able to make that shot.
Have you got any idea what the weapon was that the shooter was using?
It looks like, it looks like an AR.
Um, and Chris, it's a, this is a really weird thing and I'm not putting on my It looks like an AR.
Chris, this is a really weird thing, and I'm not putting on my tinfoil hat here,
but photos are disappearing.
There were photos that were initially being released,
and both of the shooter, of him on top of the roof, clear pictures of the weapon.
And I can't, you know, there was so much happening. I just walking out of military
shooting range when somebody walked to their car and we were running like hammer drills, like
this blister is from the trigger guard of a rifle as I shooting a couple of thousand rounds this weekend and
one of the dudes walks to the car and
he's like somebody just Tried to assassinate president Trump and this is all special operations guys and all it's like alright
You know, whatever last time that happened was 1981 and like no no, I'm serious
So like we're out in the middle of nowhere on a military shooting range. And so, you know, we're trying to drive back.
I'm getting information.
I'm seeing pictures and I'm seeing posts.
And like you remember it was like just fog of wall.
Well, some of the stuff I saw, I can't find anymore.
Like it's, they've accounts that I know I saw it on.
No, that account doesn't even exist anymore.
And very interesting. Okay, so account doesn't even exist anymore. And, uh, very interesting. Okay.
So the thing that I'm most interested in learning from you, given that you are Green Beret special
forces sniper, a lot of time around firearms and have done this from a presidential detail,
the specifics around the shooter on top of the, uh, roof, how he gets up there, how he
isn't seen. and then the response specifically
from the secret service snipers.
Can you just game out sort of what you think happened, why they seem to hesitate, why they
seem to flinch, who shot first?
Have you been able to work out any of that?
Yeah, yeah, quite a bit of it.
I was actually taking some notes about it it trying to get my head wrapped around what seems like such an impossibility and
So
This is you see this
All right
I'll go the other way there again we go. Over here is where the president
form president was standing and this is the negative pitch roof. So he climbed up here.
There's a ladder right there and he climbed up on top and then clambered over to here.
Back behind that, that parking lot back there is the staging area for the local law enforcement.
So negative pitch roof, roof looks like this, right?
Dude gets up on a ladder, climbs up on top of the roof.
The fact that this building has a ladder
and has a negative slope roof,
hiding the person on the backside.
So a sector stack, a sketch, which would have a range card,
every counter sniper that is put in a position like that has this
this diagram. And on it has the buildings has distances, you
have target reference points, you have
distance. So like you have pre assigned distances, so you know
what adjustments to you need to make for every single shot from your left to right
limit within your sector of fire. And on that range card,
there is an gigantic X, which is that specific building, because
the security detail this that did the survey of the area would
have marked that this building has a ladder and that this building,
which is in small arms fire,
which this building has direct line of sight to the podium.
We know that that counter sniper would have had that
on his range guard in his sector sketch.
And this supposed 20 year old walks around the backside
of this building, goes to this
ladder, gets up on top of this roof.
Just to interject there, it seems like the ladder is already there.
He didn't carry it in.
It's like a fixed to the back of the building or whatever.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's two metal buildings and there's like this little valley between the two, which
is ominously protected from most observation angles besides really just one direction.
So like, and it's receded from the rest of the open space.
All of the people at the rally saw this 20-year-old walk up with a rifle,
start clambering up this building, And for four minutes, they're screaming
for law enforcement to come over.
And which one of them finally does,
goes up this ladder, gets on top of the slope roof.
And the sniper's on the opposite end.
He's over here.
And as this guy's climbing up this roof,
he cannot be seen until his head comes over
like the pre-longation, like the top
of the crest
of that roof. So it's actually a perfect location for an assassin to go in position, which is
why it's so insanely believable that everyone didn't know about that roof. Once he gets
up there and people have been screaming that there's a guy with a gun over there, a law enforcement officer goes up, he climbs up the ladder, he takes a peek,
the kid with the gun turns around, sees the cop, the cop jumps back down, gets scared
from the kid with the gun, the kid turns back around, comes back and starts slinging some
rounds towards the former president.
So you think that the impetus for the shooter to begin firing was that he was stumbled
upon by a local law enforcement officer? Yep. I think that's why the shots were rushed.
And he shot so fast. And that's why there was such confusion. So if you go back to that kind of like
instant command system, you do have one person in charge, but you have multiple organizations on a bunch of
different frequencies of radio. I was going to say that communication from law enforcement to homeland
specials. Right. Okay. Yeah. So department homeland security, you got like mall guards that are using
a little motor role or radios, or maybe they're like texting each other. You got local law
enforcement, then you have county law enforcement, then you have state law enforcement, all
of them, they're all in different frequencies, all of
them, usually you take like one person that is from the command
organization, and you embed them with the other organizations,
so that that person can be like the conduit and continuity
between that unit's communication back to the
incident commander.
That's normally what happens, but ultimately you end up with a game of telephone that takes
a few seconds for that information to get circulated around.
Obviously, now if we switch from where the Assassin's building is over to the counter
sniper team, you can see for a good 40 seconds, they have directed all of their attention towards
the shooter's building towards the would be assassin's building. They're looking at it
and he's doing the super amateur thing where he's coming off his glass.
So just before before you even do that, who is it that's going to be up there? Is that
the spotter and a shooter? Is that two snipers? What's the kit that they're using, et cetera. Yeah. So you're gonna have a sniper and a spotter,
but the spotter also is a sniper.
So you have two really competent shooters.
And I'm not gonna get like too really specific
into the equipment that they're using
because it's kind of sensitive. And people are going to try to kill the former president a whole bunch for the next four
months. And the last thing we want is people to understand the capabilities or the lack of
capabilities around the- Probably safe to say that it wasn't basic kit. It's something that allows
them to be very efficient very quickly. Yeah. yeah. Like every single shooter, every single PRS guy on the planet is like, that's
a nice setup right there. You know, like that's the good stuff. That's a, that's a great caliber
selection by the way, for a, for a person to include armor penetrating, you know, like,
Hey, that's a really great laser rangefinder you got on there, man. That's a really fantastic
optics you got on there. And that's a really great tool that assesses the wind and gives you a pretty accurate estimate.
Hey, that's a really good, like it was all primo stuff.
Okay. So talk me through what that sniper is doing. Why is his body language the way? Why
does he respond in that way? What do you think's going on?
Yeah. So he's being fed information, right? He's like, okay, building those numbers.
So you have this GRG and this GRG,
which is a grid reference guide that has you number all
the buildings left to right, one through 10, right?
So every single building on his whole entire sector sketch
is numbered.
So he knows, let's just say,
not that I've already done this,
but from his position, that's building number three,
that building from his position is 151 yards. So he's looking at building number three on his
GRG. He's talking to a sniper, his spotter, his spotter is getting hit, giving him estimations.
And they also set up that they're slightly offset. So he has a kind of different perspective,
but they're both looking in the same general area, and they're
supposed to be on different magnification areas. So they're
able to see different things, but same the same thing kind of
simultaneously. There's a lot of science around like how the
sniper and the spotter work together. And all the schools
ultimately, holy crap. President Trump just picked JD Vance for VP.
Oh yeah, that's been up a couple of hours, but yes, that'll be, I think that's a
show.
I've been freaking working all day.
Some operational excellence coming into the potential Republican white house.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah, it's smart move, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a smart move, I think. Yeah.
So that team and, and I'm not using the word team like lightly at all.
They are a very cohesive unit.
They spend a lot of time together.
Like they know how they smell.
They know how they breathe.
Like they, they know when they're anxious, they know how each other's brains work.
You know, like they, they spend lots of time together. And the time that they spend together is for them to be able to work in unison, or like they can almost almost like nothing, they're pre cogs, but they can anticipate what the other one's going to say and do. And as they're looking at the same area or the same thing, they're both like processing information. And when you have a really, really good team, this is what's so unique
about a with the right equipment, with the right
personnel with the right training. The the ability and
the capability of that two man sniper team is yes, they can
shoot something from a mile away. But they can also
anticipate what is going to be happening in a battle space
before anybody else on the planet can see it or understand it.
And that is why they're so crucial as a counter sniper element.
And it's a really difficult thing to like explain and put into words and unless you've
either experienced it as the shooter or counter counter sniper, or you've been on the
receiving end of that capability, which is a pretty simple thing.
Talk me through their actions, the flinching, the coming up off the glass, the standing
up, the stances, all that stuff.
This is the worst case scenario of all of the things that we've been seeing over the
past three years.
And I'm just gonna hypothetically paint an opposite picture here.
A young black kid in Butler climbs up on that roof
to get a view of former President Trump.
Dude, all he wants to see is the man
that his grandpa's
been talking about. And he loves the man that's gonna like, help
them not be poor anymore. And he picks to picks his head up,
looks over the top of that roof. And he gets his face caved in
canoed by a special operations sniper. That law enforcement for
the past, I mean, really bad for the past three years,
but since the defund, the police movement, since countless indictments, since the, the
gutting of the department of justice of every single good law enforcement officer, not every
single one of them, there's still a few left, but not very many because most of them have
had to leave because of the toxic policies and
the toxic hires and the toxic appointees.
So that guy behind the gun, man, he does not have the confidence that he can pull that
trigger.
And it's not until those rounds start going that he actually moves his finger to the trigger
and moves into hunt mode. Is he got the clearance to be able to unload rounds without getting the okay from somebody
on the radio? Yes. So he can make-
Confirm threat. What does that mean?
Yeah, that's- Specifically.
That is an intentionally vague and ambiguous thing. So a confirmed threat, bad guy with a gun,
pointing a rifle at the former president, smoke him,
eliminate that threat.
Um, a head crusting the top of a rooftop.
Nope.
That's a very fine line.
And this, just for clarity, this is the call is made by the sniper and spotter team.
That's right.
So they have like executive independent authority to be able
to pull the trigger or not.
On some things, on some things they don't.
On something they have to do.
Dig into that for me.
Um, so, uh, a clear threat to their principle, they have the
authority to protect rounds started being sent towards the former president.
Obviously, they have the authority without approval to pull that trigger.
Do they have the authority to send around towards a potential threat, a potential like
that let's define a potential threat and we're putting in a timeline on a negative slope
roof.
You know, maybe maybe they never saw a gun.
They might not have.
Do you think that they had been warned?
You said that they were already looking over at that building.
Does that suggest that maybe something had come through some of the Chinese whisper comms
and it was, there's someone up there, we maybe need to look in that direction?
Yeah, one, they already knew that that building was a threat.
Two, so they like of that whole entire area, they have the water tower slightly to their
right and they have that building slightly dead center.
And this is their area.
This is the area that they have been given those two dudes.
Yep.
And that water tower and those that little cluster of buildings, those are
by far the highest concerning things.
So like in their mind, in their subconscious, you know, yeah, they're scanning.
Yeah, they're looking out into the crowd.
Yeah, they're looking out into the parking lot, but they're also, they keep going
back to that 151 yard building with a line of sight to the podium.
What about the order of shots?
What do you think?
Have you been able to reverse engineer?
So presumably it looks like the shooter got at least one off.
Did he get?
Yeah, I think he got like four or five off.
So what, what happens?
Is that where we see the flinch where we see the, okay.
So talk me through that.
What's going on?
Yeah. Uh, the second part of that we see the, okay, so talk me through that. What's going on? Yeah.
The second part of that question,
your earlier question about,
so they know that that building's a threat.
And I think judging by both of their body language
that they're processing communication that's coming in
about that specific thing.
Cause both of them weren't just like scanning.
Both of them are zoned into that one building
for about 40, 45 seconds.
And they're coming off
and they're looking specifically at that building.
They're looking down their optics.
They're looking down their binos.
They're looking over their binos.
And this is what's really sad is that guy was close enough
that they didn't need any magnification to see him.
That's bad. Oh, because they can pop up and just look normally.
Yeah. He's 150. He's one and a half football fields away.
Dude, how close that is? So they're literally just coming off their optic and looking at
the top of the building and be like, yep, that's a dude. All right. That's a bummer.
Holy crap. He's shooting at us. And then he gets on the glass. So they're
observing, they're processing all that communication that's coming in, clearly like they're working
together trying to figure out what it is. Then, whether the shooter had to rush his
shots, he comes up and over the top and you see him immediately, the sniper, the counter
sniper immediately go down back onto his glass because I think
he knew he had to shoot. But then the shots started coming in. Then he jerked and had
to get back on the gun.
So what's that? Is that just the response to fuck this bullet's coming?
I don't think that dude's been in a gunfight. Yeah. Last night I was talking with a Canadian special operations guy that has the current
and longest confirmed kill or his team does, which is at like two miles.
And then I was talking with Rob O'Neill, who is a Navy SEAL sniper.
And the three of us were kind of like nerding about around like ballistics and wins and all those
things. And the three of us were in a grance in pretty much everything. But the thing that we just
were astounded by was the level of experience and combat experience, especially with those immediately around the
former president.
Just before we go on to kind of the tight detail, because there's a lot to talk about
there.
It seems to me, based on my total Muggle knowledge of how this works. Muggle knowledge, yeah, I know. Normie knowledge.
It seems like 150 yards-ish, 150 meters is kind of a bit of a unique distance that it's
very short for a sniper team, but it's also sort of too long. It seems like based on what
I'd seen that a lot of what the snipers were looking at is way out beyond that. Is that
150 meter or is the fact that it's such an obvious potential
assailant position that would have kind of overshadowed the fact that it's in this maybe
Goldilocks zone of too long to be short, too short to be long? in scanning, besides being great marksmen and being masters of lethality, snipers are
observers first. They spend so much time, like some of them are must pass events in
sniper school. They take these men, they drop them into the middle of nowhere area and out in front of them between 50 and
a thousand meters, there's a pair of binoculars, there's a scope, there's a guy in a ghillie
suit and they have to, on their sector sketch, mark every single one of those things.
Those are graded and must pass events.
If you can't find those things, so you have these swirl searches,
you have these grid pattern searches,
you have the book up to right or left to right,
top to bottom, you're using all of these search techniques,
you're changing focus from far away to up close.
In some of these static positions,
you're not seeing movement,
which is like one of the easiest thing to see,
but you're looking for shapes, you're looking for colors, you're looking for, um, non natural, you know, material,
uh, that's not ref that's reflecting and not, you know, most natural things kind of absorb
flight, not reflect light.
And uh, so there's no way that both of those trained snipers, um, 150 yards is outside of the realm. It's not too close.
It's not too long. Um, it's not too anything. They're professionals. They're perfect.
Okay. All right. So it looks like based on your assessment that, uh, maybe they've been
warned for some reason, they seem to have their attention very much on that building.
Uh, we'll call it building three.
And then they maybe see a guy, they come back up off the glass, they go back down onto it.
Then first shot hits, which is the one where Trump just turns his head a tiny little bit,
glances his ear.
Then they flinch, come back up a second time, then go back down and presumably, because
he gets hit very close between the eyes, I think, based on the photos
that I've seen.
You reckon it's those guys that delivered that shot?
There's no one else?
I don't think that there's no one else.
We know that it was a Secret Service sniper that engaged him.
The cat teams doing their work.
Within Secret Service, you have multiple teams from counter sniper. So you see, yeah, that within secret service,
you have multiple teams from counter sniper teams.
You had red cell teams that are like reverse engineering
and doing all the threats,
like lots of different really specialty teams.
The guys that run up onto rooftops
or ran up onto the stage wearing body armor
with machine guns, they fall into that category.
They're rad. And they're
like the direct action when you see the plain clothes people wearing like tacky,
poorly cut suits with weird holsters. They that's that's that's they're there
to protect the former president, the people that rush out with long rifles, they're there to kill people.
They're the hammers.
Yes.
Okay.
So let's talk about the sort of, what do you call it, immediate detail?
What's the thing that encircles the president?
What is that called?
How are they selected?
Where have they been drawn from? What do you make of the performance on Saturday?
Yeah. I mean, of all the bad stuff, this might be the worst, huh? And there's a lot bad here.
And we're not even scratching the surface. And listen, I'm not like Monday morning quarterbacking
this. You know, if you, everybody to include the guys on the ground who are going to be way,
the guys and gals on the ground are going to be by far the worst critics of this whole
entire situation.
I'm not saying anything that anyone else is going to disagree with, with maybe slight
differences of perspectives or opinions, but generally everybody in an AAR, an after action
review that does a sustains and improves of this operation is going to come to the general
generally the same conclusions and
And that's what we do after every single
Mission that we ever do is an AR an after-action review and then we break these things down by face
Indicate just like we are Chris and in these phases we say alright
This is what went right and this is what went right. And this is what went wrong, and improves
and sustain. So improves are things that went wrong. We have
to fix and improve on. And then these are the things that went
well. And let's continue to do those. I do not have very many
things in that ladder category. So and under this phase, which
is shots have just skipped off the president's ear.
And are you really understanding like how one mile an hour wind difference, one
degree head direction in either direction that boy was already in the air when he
turned his head to look at that graphic?
No way.
Well, I've seen the image where someone explained what a straight line does to the human head.
At 151 yards, what that bullet does, it speaks off the backside of the brain.
What's the caliber of round coming out of that, do you think?
I think it's going to be an AR.
I think it's going to be 5.56, 2.23.
So I think it's going to be a 55 grain to a 77 grain traveling
at 2900 feet per second.
How close does that need to be to someone's ear to draw blood? Because presumably it could
actually miss the ear and still just the pace going past.
Yeah, so 55 grains to 77 grain, that 556 and 22 six and two, two, three. That is a very small projectile that
is moving really, really fast. The danger of that bullet is the energy that it carries because of
its speed. So unlike a 50 cal, where like, you know, if a 50 cal gets near somebody's head,
you know, it's going to like jumble the brains. You're going to know about it. That's right.
You know, like you're, if a guy's waving and a 50 cal bullet goes through here, the air displacement
and energy of that bullet going by might blow that dude's arm off. That's not the same with a,
you know, 65 gram. Much smaller mass. Yeah. Okay. So, right. We're talking about this probably having nicked the skin then in order to have done this.
This isn't, it was just close.
This is actually 50 cent got shot.
That's right.
Yep.
Bro.
And then, okay.
So that happens.
Let's say that Gold Standard, you are the, what's it called? What's that immediate
team called around the president?
That's the principal security detail.
Right. And they're the close proximity people.
Usually bad haircuts, bad suits, they have all their weapons stashed up underneath them.
They're wearing body armor, not for themselves, but to throw themselves on top of the principal
to be able to protect him. So they're going to be their bullet magnets. Their job is to absorb any
threat that if that's over pressure, like if that's a drone being flat flown in with
C four, um, that's them to take and be like literally blood bags to cushion an explosion.
That's them being able to suck up all the bullets. You know, if you look, you talk about this a lot.
If we talk about the Aurora Colorado shooting, you know,
every time you tell that story, by the way, you make me cry.
Sorry.
That's right.
And it happened again on Saturday.
You know what that dad did?
The volunteer firefighter, the guy that died?
He threw himself on top of his family
Yeah, that's why he was hit that's right
Yeah, give me give me that masculinity by the way
Yeah, all right, let me rally again
All right
the god bless that family, by the way, the, uh,
so that detail, their job is to be looking out,
to anticipate, to prevent, and then in the worst case,
respond and react by protecting and,
and cushioning the literally becoming a human shield around
the principle. That's what they're supposed to be doing. They failed.
Some of them failed.
Some of them failed for the whole entire time, but when you have a bullet that hits your
principle, you have failed.
There's no moment in all of this where you can be like, all right, those guys did a great
job there.
So sniper, go ahead.
What do you make of the criticism around female Secret Service agents that aren't tall enough
for the principal, that their head
comes up to his chest line, that there's one that used him as a shield as she cowered behind.
Yeah.
I mean, just take gender out of that conversation, take sex out of that conversation.
I don't want to talk about male or female.
You're either capable of doing the job or you're not capable of doing the job.
You're either strong enough to pick up your principal and move him off the X or you're not capable of doing the job. You're either strong enough to pick up your principal
and move him off the X, you're either large enough
to block that person that you're trying to protect
or you're not.
You're either trained enough and equipped enough
and prepared enough to do the job or you're not.
They're not.
The women that were there, there's not just the one.
So as shots are still being fired and you see bodies being flung on top of the former president as he's down on the ground what an amazing photo what's dripping off of his face and there is a woman secret service agent that is hiding behind the president.
Not on top of.
the president. Not on top of. She's hiding behind him cowering, hoping to not get hurt when her one job is to put herself on top of the president. Go forward 10 seconds. The hammers start coming out. You see guys in body armor with helmets run out with guns. There's another photo of a secret service agent
that is, here we go.
So here's the guys running up, the other way, running up the stairs.
10 seconds later, and this is one of the photos
I was trying to find, 10 seconds later,
you see all three of these guys with their guns pointed out into the crowd. Guess where that girl is that girl right there.
She's still right there. She's hiding behind the stage. These guys do they're up guns in the high ready. They're on their optics. They are scanning they are hunting. I'm telling you if you farted weird, you're about to get around.
scanning, they are hunting, I'm telling you, if you farted weird, you're about to get around. And they were also
positioning themselves to prepare for an exfil. And while
they're doing that, there's a Secret Service agent hiding
behind her principal. And there's another Secret Service
agent that's higher hiding at the base of the stage fired,
they're fired. I like to say you're fired because it's such a Trump thing right now. But Department
of Homeland Security. New Yorkers, you're fired.
Department of Secret Service. What's your name? Kimberly,
you're fired. Every single one of those DEI hires in the past
three years, you're fired. You don't meet height and weight.
You're fired. You can't pass a shooting test. You're fired. You
can't do a site survey. You're fired. You can't pass a shooting test, you're fired. You can't do a site survey, you're fired. You
didn't know that building three at 151 yards wasn't the highest
risk possible and allowed a dude to clamber up and get on top and
take a shot at your principal. You're freaking fired, man.
Everyone's gone. Got that whole and then don't get me started an
FBI or the Department of Justice who are currently doing the
investigation around the opponent to the reigning the reigning government, the FBI that just raided
president Trump's home armed.
They're the ones that are doing the investigation on the assassination of
the organization under the dole.
Bureaucracy doesn't help when this bullet's flying.
Nope.
How big of a deal is this DEI initiative?
I'm always hesitant about taking, um, like accusations that it happens to be some
women there, therefore there has been this huge amount of hires.
I did see a video talking about how the secret service wanted 30% female recruits
by 2030, uh, that makes me think, okay, this isn't just talking points.
This isn't just a slightly oddly skewed sex ratio of the president's detail.
This is actually part of a broader narrative, a broader push to try and get more diversity
into the Secret Service.
Yeah. the Secret Service. Yeah, I have worked overseas with capable, competent, impressive women.
And again, this has nothing to do with sex. Male, female, you can either do the job or you can't.
But it's prioritizing diversity over competence. And that's where things get dangerous.
So we work from like mission
So the mission of the military the job the one job of the military is to be the most lethal fighting force on the planet
So with that we'll we'll brew that down into
Lethality we are gonna measure every single person's contribution to the government or to the Department of Defense
Into lethality you either make it
more lethal, or you don't. If you don't make it more lethal,
you can't have the job. So on special forces selection, you are
going to have a rucksack that weighs this amount, you'll have
to move over this distance at this speed. And you can either
do it or you can't. And then you're gonna have to be able to
pick up for the ACFT
for as an 18 Bravo, a special forces weapon sergeant, you're going to have to pick up this amount of weight this many times.
You have to run this distance at this like very clear can cannot.
And the reason of that is because you are going to be capable of doing the job.
You're going to be lethal or you won't.
That's black and white. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn the job, you're going to be lethal or you won't. That's black
and white.
It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter whether you're Asian. It doesn't matter
whether you're a woman. It doesn't matter.
Look at the NBA. Like I see a ton of young Asian women out on the on the basketball court
these days and I'm really, really, really celebrating the DEI of the NBA. You know,
congratulations. No, obviously not. Like there's not a single one out
there. Why? Because they can't do it. Right? There's not a little tiny white suburban mom
that's going out to the NFL offensive line and be like, Hey man, listen, quarterback, I got you.
Nobody's going to get past me. Right. And then Derek Wolf is like, I'm gonna take your face off.
Then we'll go kill that quarterback. Right. There's not seeing a one of them because they can't do the job. On the
firefighter side, on the law enforcement side, on the
military side, like these on the flying a plane side, I don't
care what color you are, I don't care who you have sex with. I
don't care about any of it, you can either fly the plane and you
can do the job or you can't. And what we're seeing right now is a
really, really, really dangerous
cross section of policies that have been implemented over the
past three years. And it's about to get really bad Chris.
Because all of these people that were hired over the this this
DEI phase are now moving into legitimate roles. Like we just
saw, like you're not going to get hired yesterday or on Friday and then be on the principal security
detail for a nationally presidential running election,
right? That person was probably hired about five years ago.
Here we go.
How different are the assessment criteria for men and women?
I've seen something about it's the like scaled version of the CrossFit workout for
Yeah, it's about 30% off everything.
And what are some of those assessments?
Running, push ups. Some events don't even exist. Like there's a requirement for a man.
But like we'll just, we'll just use running. So you have to run two miles in 13 minutes and 44 seconds. That's the man requirement to pass at 100%. The woman requirements is 15 minutes and 20 seconds. That's the man requirement to pass at 100%. The
woman requirements is 15 minutes and 20 seconds. This is how they
get tricky on the numbers game. They both still have to pass at
80% for them to qualify for the job. So I can say let's let's
say I'm Kimberly at the Secret Service. Thank you for the appointment.
I say, no, no, no, there's no change.
They still have the same requirement.
They have to pass at 80%.
The standard of what makes 80% is...
That's right.
Yep.
And they've been doing it to a few different selections, to a few different assessments,
and for a few different job selections.
What did you make of the exfil, the exfiltration when Trump finally gets stood up, he says,
I need to get my shoes. Apparently he's knocked to the floor so hard that his shoes come off.
I don't know how loosely you've tied your shoes. He's got giant feet too.
He's got a bruise on his arm, apparently from where he hit the ground so hard, obviously
from being tackled to the combination of falling, ducking and being tackled to the floor.
And then I hear like, what are we doing?
What are we doing?
Where are we going?
Where are we going?
A lot.
And then eventually he stood up, he says, hang on.
And then he gets taken out.
And that really seems to kind of be a, he doesn't get taken out.
Don't skip that.
Give it to him. What do you do?
He's running down his face.
Stick his face in here.
He pushes his chin to the side.
Gets a good photo op first.
That's the heart of that man, dude.
He's not a normal person.
Dude, I think it's the first time,
I can say this because I'm British,
it's the first time that I've looked at Trump as somebody who's genuinely admirable.
He's sort of gregarious and he's got this sort of strange way of speaking and he's not
from my country and he's all of these other things.
He's lots and lots and lots of things, many of which are kind of bombastic and out there
and all the rest of it.
And I kind of don't really fully understand him, although I respect him, but I wouldn't
have said, oh, that's like an admirable man.
You know, he's, it's very difficult to work out.
And I saw that and I was then in playing golf the next day, apparently sinking a 20 foot
putt with a like two foot of break and saying, unlike the sniper, I don't miss when he, when
he sank it.
That's true.
A lot of things have been debunked, but that seems to be an actual thing.
Do you remember the Reagan?
Do you remember the Reagan bit where the balloon pops
and he goes, miss me?
Yeah, fucking brilliant.
That was a dude I really have felt in me.
And again, I'm an independent.
I'm not gonna be able to vote in this country.
I find him significantly
more admirable than I did a few days ago. And maybe that's just unlocked a character
trait that I'd overlooked. Or maybe this is a genuine sort of pivot that many other people
are going to feel too. But yeah, that was fucking badass.
I don't know. I don't consume media. I have for the past three days, and I actually feel
really gross about having to get information from media because I think it's so toxic and it's
unhealthy.
Um, so I don't know the man that everybody knows as president Trump.
Uh, I know Don jr.
I know Laura.
Uh, I know a, from 2016, me going, and he's like,
I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He comes in during his campaign trail,
and he's like, I want you to do the Pledge of Allegiance
and the Prayer, and hey, you better do it good.
He grabs my arm, he pulls me in, like face to face.
He's like, I want the P of allegiance to be like, good.
You know, it's like, I'm a professional fighter, first of all.
Like, don't try intimidating me like that,
but that was pretty intimidating.
So like, I don't, and so I've never, and I get that,
and I really appreciate your kind of transparency
and perception of him, but I only know like this man that
when in Charlotte a few months ago, I sit down and he's like, kind of transparency and perception of him. But I only know like this man that when,
in Charlotte a few months ago,
I sit down and he's like,
hey Tim, I wanna know what's happening
with veterans and suicide.
We can talk about anything that he wants.
And the thing that he wants to talk to me about
is the border because he knew I'd spent time on the border
and he wanted to know about veterans,
their mental health and suicide prevention.
This is Trump or Trump Jr?
No, this is, this is Trump.
And I mean, don't get me started on Don.
Like Don's hilarious, not his persona.
I'm talking about the man, the hunter, the father, like,
the guy's epic.
And I judge a lot of people by their kids.
And I know his kids way better than I know him.
And I'm just, they're amazing people.
So I'm glad that people got a snapshot of the guy that I know.
Yeah, it's interesting.
There is no more costly signal than after you've just been shot, how you respond after that.
It's very difficult to deny that that guy is built different.
Yeah.
Um, and I'm not a sycophant dude, like this is, this will be the first time I
think I've ever complimented Trump because I was largely unsure and the way
that he behaves doesn't make it easier to kind of trust cause he seems so much
like the WWE character that he briefly has starred as, um, that it's
hard.
It's hard.
It's, but now this isn't to forgive things.
He's done whatever, like say he's a fucking saint.
I'm like, that guy's a badass.
He's an actual badass.
No, like how few people you're talking like less than a thousand people on the planet who, to whom that would have
happened and would have then stood up and said, wait, wait, wait.
And pumped the fist.
Just finish off the roundout, the getting him off the stage, getting him to the car
thing.
This is just a cluster. This is like as infuriating and sloppy as everything else
has been. This was like next level amateur. So there's no command. Who's actually in charge
of getting him off the stage? Clearly nobody knows. Where is he going? They had not rehearsed the exfil
of their principle, vehicle placement, weight. When I say weight, like his weight, their
ability to move him. They can't do it. They have not practiced and rehearsed. They haven't
gone and found a 365 pound guy and been like, all right, how did the five of us move this guy? They haven't done that. And then not knowing where
they're going to move him or how they're going to move him. And then what they're going to do with
him once they get him there, trying to get him in that car. And the cluster that happened around
that car girl has her gun out. She's trying to look around stripes, put her gun away. She can't
get her gun away. Can't even find her holster because her stomach is so large, her suspenders are holding up her pants.
And then finally, when she is like, I forget it, I'm not gonna get my gun away, I'm just gonna keep
it out. The fact that you're keeping your gun like the on the five o'clock of your hip.
What security person on the planet is like, you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take my gun, I'm gonna put it over my
right butt cheek. That's it. That's a good place to have a
gun. What's the problem with that? You can't get to it. It's
a slow draw. Like, we'll do this, Chris. I'm gonna give you
a paintball gun. And I'm gonna have you take that gun and I'll
put it on your hip. I'm going to take a gun and I'm going to have you take that gun and I'll put it on your hip. I'm going to take a gun and I'm going to put it on the natural line of my hands or I'm going to do it across carry if I'm
in a high position like this, which we call it interview position, which is how most of them
stand. They stand like this or they stand like this or they stand like this or they do things
like with their hands as they're talking. It's because they keep their guns like here so they can just go like this and they get a gun out. And then
we'll do a three count and we'll see who's going to shoot each other in the face with
a paintball.
Yeah, that sounds like a good afternoon for you. Not for me. So it's about a it's about
a half a second to three quarter second difference. And then like you add clothes, garments, it just gets hard.
Panic. Well, I mean, I've spent time around you and your guys and I've seen, you know,
people who are significantly less experienced than you handle weapons in Austin shooting.
And it feels like it might be hard for someone that's not been around elite shooters to understand,
especially the guys from Atomic Legion, some of the dudes
that are competitive shooters who have maybe put similar sorts of numbers of rounds as
like some soldiers would have done.
Their firearm is like an extension of their body.
Even it's so blind, do it in the dark, do it without looking.
It's an obscene level of competence.
What are you pointing your camera at?
What is this?
That's a gun right there.
Yeah, you came in when we did a...
That's another one right there.
Yeah.
You know, like this is, it's just part of our life.
It goes with us everywhere that we go.
I shot 2,800 rounds on Saturday and Sunday of this weekend. This right here, that
is a callous blister burst from the trigger guard of my rifle from shooting 1,500 rounds
out of my rifle in two days.
So anybody that is sufficiently competent and familiar with their firearm would not
have encountered the problem of not being able to holster their weapon?
No.
Every shooter on the planet watched everything that unfolded for about 25 seconds in disgust
and shame about how inadequate and inept that group of people were.
So to kind of go back to the high level stuff,
it seems like the pool from which the Secret Service
is able to draw has maybe been derogated a little bit
in terms of competence and quality,
prioritizing perhaps diversity
over just straight up capacity.
Then it seems like the volume, the number and the quality from this reduced
pool that was given to Trump, that was dropped.
And then there is also on top of that being probably a number of intelligence and sort
of operational failures.
So it's a poor pool, which is drawn from to a too
small task force with too few capacities, which has been deployed in a manner where
the intelligence and the awareness has not been done in an effective manner. Is that
kind of encapsulating the...
Yeah, in broad strokes and wave tops, you know, when you get into the minutiae and you
break down into those three gross categories, all of the different failures
that they make in both selection of the people, how they're trained, who is hired.
Then it starts getting wild because if you're faithful in the small things, you're going
to be faithful in the big things.
You can't be faithful in the small things unless you're diligent and disciplined in
the little things.
What you see here is millions of little decisions that lead up to a catastrophic failure. And not that
all decisions were made that were made were bad, but the vast majority of them now cumulatively,
clearly the byproduct of that is a broken organization.
What do you think happens from here going forward?
Nothing for four months.
What do you mean? Say more.
Like you think the government with the president that wants to win an election,
um, is going to be providing a bunch of like last night, President Biden did a live speech to the entire nation about the assassination attempt of the opposing
party's nominee. The first words out of his mouth were, I fired the my appointed Department of Homeland Security Director.
Nope, nope, those weren't, he never did that.
Did he fire the head of secret service?
No, didn't do that.
The FBI currently has this 20 year old's phone in Quantico
and they're going, like,
did you read all of the release about the motive?
And, um, no, like they didn't do that.
Why?
Because it negatively affects their position of power.
And there's no benefit for them to do anything better.
I think for President Trump to survive the next four months to the election and the next
six months to the inauguration is he has to bring in private
security. He calls up someone like you or Eric Prince. We're talking, those are good names,
and nobody's better than that man. Talking to him yesterday, he very wisely pointed out every single way that they, when I say they, the, when I say they, it's
just people in power that want to remain in power. And in either side, it's not, it's
still not like a partisan thing, you know, of the 10 people that, uh, there are assassination
attempts against of our present.
It's nearly 50-50.
Yeah, it was 60-40.
It's not a partisan thing.
They just want to stay in power.
The Raytheons, the Halberts, the Dynacors, the KBRs, the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins.
They want more war and they want to
stay in power.
What would you look out for over the next sort of week or couple of weeks?
There's going to be a lot of people who think, God, that was a lot of news and a lot of time.
I don't really know what to pay attention to.
What would be the things that you would say, Hey, you're a civilian.
You don't really understand too much about what's going on, but this is what I would
try and pay attention to over the coming weeks.
I think it's really important to, um, listen to.
So we, we, we got a very rare opportunity, which was to look past, um, the shtick
that is president Trump.
Now that you got a glimpse of what there is,
if you, one, register to vote,
I don't care what side of the party you're on,
I don't wanna hear your complaints,
I don't wanna see your TikTok,
I don't want you to like, I don't want any of it,
go and vote in November, go and vote,
go register, vote, and then go and vote.
But now that you've got a little peek
at the wizard behind the smoke and the mirrors,
look for that.
Go and look at a man and look at what he's going to do in Milwaukee.
And then go and vote November.
And then go and vote November.
Yeah.
Tim Kennedy, ladies and gentlemen, Tim, I appreciate it. Emergency episode needed to get this one done.
Uh, I'm sure that you're going to be all over the news over the next couple of
weeks as well, so I very much appreciate you finding time to speak to me.
Anytime.
Can't wait to work out with you, dude.
Soon.
Cheers, man.
All right.
Take care.