Modern Wisdom - #812 - Mike Baker - Emergency Episode: Former CIA Agent On Trump Assassination Attempt

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

An emergency episode in the wake of this past weekend. No ads, no edits — just a raw, unfiltered conversation with former Central Intelligence Agency officer and security expert Mike Baker. 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

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Another emergency episode today in the wake of the events this past weekend with Trump's assassination attempt, this time with Mike Baker, who is a former CIA operative. And he has a great insight into domestic politics, international relations, how this will be changing the landscape of politics over the next few months up until the November election, what this means for the Trump campaign, the Biden campaign, how other countries are going to interpret this intelligence failures from a sort of more agency, systematic, systematic perspective for works. And again, same as yesterday's episode, no ads, no interruptions, no nothing.

I just wanted to get some information from people who have expertise out there. So I hope that you take something away from this one. Please welcome Mike Baker. Three, two, one. Mike Baker, welcome to the show. Thanks very much, man. Appreciate you. Emergency episodes, needed to have a chat with you. How big of an intelligence failure was this? Well, you have to think of it more as a logistical failure as opposed to an intelligence failure. This was a breakdown in what should be very standard security protocols. Look, the Secret Service does that very well, but clearly, right? You always have to...

I'd caveat this with one thing. You have to always wait for an investigation to finish, right? They're currently in the middle of their own investigation as to what the hell happened. And obviously, as soon as this happens, everybody on social media is an executive protection expert. So everybody's talking about exactly how this happened. Well, I think it's important not to get out over your skis, but in a situation like this, clearly, it would be insane to say that there weren't failures, there weren't breakdowns here. And even people with no experience can look at this and say,

I'm sorry, how did you not have somebody up on top of a roof that had line of sight to the stage, to the rally event? And so typically, look, when something like this happens, and I've done countless advanced plannings and security assessments and risk and threat assessments, and typically when something happens like this, it's not one thing. It's a series of mistakes or missteps that compound and then you end up with this goat rope that never should have happened. So they're doing an investigation. Congress, of course, has called for an investigation. I wouldn't expect anything to come from that because Washington DC is where all investigations

go to die. But the bureau is involved, Secret Service obviously doing their own hot wash, and they sit underneath the Department of Homeland Security. So if DHS does a review, fine. But there's so much video footage of this, right? And it happened in real time with so many people watching and so many different angles that I think in this case, unlike sometimes, sometimes you get investigations of an event and you don't get much transparency, right?

Because internally they're trying to figure out, okay, how do we improve this? Well, you don't want to necessarily talk about all that activities because you're informing people who might have nefarious intent. But here, it was clear for everyone to see that there were a significant number of issues and problems. Whose responsibility, who does the buck ultimately stop with when we're talking about this? Homeland security, secret service, local law enforcement? Well, I think what you're going to find likely is, first of all, in terms of who has primacy on the ground, it's a secret service.

They established a security perimeter. And then according to at least early reports and what Secret Service is saying is, then they designated local law enforcement as having control outside that designated security zone, which included the building where the shooter took up position. But ultimately, it's the Secret Service's responsibility. So they should have obviously said, okay, so what are you doing in relation to those buildings that have line of sight? And if local law enforcement said, well, we've got a couple of unarmed officers that are

patrolling the ground and interacting with the attendees, then you'd say, okay, well, how about you give me a state trooper or one of your local officers up on that rooftop and that went over there. Any building that's got line of sight and you post somebody up there, just cover it down. That Secret Service's ultimate responsibility, even if theoretically okay, on paper, this area over here is under the control of local authorities. So there is a procedural problem,

there's a command and control problem, there's a communications problem during the course of this rally. I think you'll also find there was some command and control issues in terms of the ability for the sniper or the counter sniper team on site and they had a couple of them up there to act. Right. And there was probably, I don't know this, I'm speculating, right. But I'm speculating based on experience from past events that, you know, there may have been a lag time in getting the, you know, the, the go-no-go figured out

in terms of taking a shot on the, on the target. Uh, there may have been problems at the top of Secret Service in terms of what did they allow for as a security package for former President Trump. When you say that, you mean the number and quality of the people that were on the ground? Yeah, you've got to kind of get a standard, you know, former president security package because they get coverage for life after they finish their time. And you could easily argue that perhaps the package for Trump given that he's now the presumptive nominee for

the November election that clearly he draws a lot of heat. Should have been beefed up. Should have been beefed up. He draws a lot of heat from a lot of people. Should have been beefed up. Should have been beefed up. And look, also, it was under the Trump administration when we tagged Soleimani. And the Iranians and their various proxies are still very upset about that.

And we know that they've been looking at various opportunities to try to target individuals they feel responsible. So there were a variety of reasons why you could look and go, yeah, the package for former President Trump needs to be more robust than say what we would normally allocate. And so that may be, I don't know, I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying that may be an issue where now you've got more of a procedural problem with management, right? And then you've got more of a procedural problem with management. And then you've got the whole other issue of just general discourse. If you demonize somebody on either side and call them Hitler, fascist, intent on destroying democracy, a threat to the nation, as President Biden's referred to him even the day before the shooting,

you're probably inciting some irrational person who may not be able to process all that as hyperbole. Right? And they're going to take it literally. This is a point that Tulsi Gabbard made where she said that how can you expect someone to not try and stop Hitler if you keep calling them Hitler? Would you not go back in time and try and kill Hitler? And if literally Hitler, there was a magazine that had him looking like the few, a number

of magazines that have had him basically in the same poster style that Adolf Hitler did in the past, you know, how many more analogies do you need to draw? And it's one of these things where until the repercussions and the consequences of doing that become kinetic, everyone thinks that it's just a lot. Well, Trump's bombastic. He's gregarious. He says crazy things. We need to push back with the same sort of technology that he uses, which is words and

imagery. And then someone takes it up a notch. Yeah. Look, I mean, it's clear and people always say, ah, it's what about isn't, but it's clear it's a problem on both sides, right? On the edges of both sides, there's all this rhetoric and hyperbole. So there's no doubt about that. But you're right. Look, if the New Republic, and that was one of the magazines that had the sort of this

propaganda poster of Trump as Hitler, they're throwing these things out there. And I think rational people look at that and go, OK, well, man, that's over the top. It's rhetoric. It's hyperbole. I get it. You guys are using this as a campaign strategy. But there are a lot of people out there who aren't going

to process it that way and disappear down these rabbit holes. So there's a lot of layers here. So when you say who's responsible, it depends on what altitude. Level of magnification you want to look at it from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why does the domino begin? One of the things that I did read was that there was a lot of homeland security contractors

on site as opposed to secret service agents, that there was a more heavy reliance on local law enforcement than you would have done typically. I'm going to guess that this is the package, the security detail package, as you mentioned, just being more diluted than it should be. You have some talent and some of the talent, I guess, is questionable based on the video footage. But then you also have this sort of the outer regions which are maybe not even more as competent and more of that was done by contractors and more of that was

done by local law enforcement than typical. Yeah, look, the election season, any election season, right? But particularly now when everything's so heated and both sides have been lobbing hand grenades at each other for quite some time. It's a difficult time for Secret Service, right? They're just, they're stretched thin because there's so much to do and their resources are working constantly. So yes, they draw on, but they typically draw on, even when it's not an election season,

they draw on local authorities. And there was a significant presence at the rally of Butler County police. And there's going to be some other issues about there was an encounter between one of those police officers who attempted to go up and interact with the shooter and then didn't when the shooter pointed a gun at him. And then the firing started shortly thereafter. But look, there's a real breakdown there, right? Because you've got a moment where obviously this guy has enough time to go to the building, try to get up to the top of the building to interact. Where are the

comms with the counter sniper team saying, I'm going up on the top of the building to interact with somebody who apparently has a weapon because lots of people on the ground saw him and alerted the authorities. So there's, again, as I mentioned, it's never just one thing. It's a series of problems usually that contribute to a security breakdown. It's interesting.

I get what you mean about during an election cycle, there's more people, more places, more checks need to be done. But it's not like you don't know this. You know reliably it's going to happen in four years time and four years after that and four years after that. So all of this could have been prepared for in advance, whether it's training, whether it's recruitment, whatever you need in terms of staffing.

I remember reading not so long ago as well after Trump's indictment, conviction, whatever it is, that there'd been some suggestion to completely rescind the security detail from him, or at the very least to dial it back as some kind of recompense that he needed to pay for now being a felon. Exactly. Yeah, that was a move in Congress by, I think it was Congressman Jeffries, maybe. I don't want to get caught with the wrong name, but one or a handful had, I think, kind of floated the idea that somebody who's been convicted shouldn't have Secret Service protection. It's an asinine idea.

I mean, it was a completely asinine idea because he's still a former president and he's still the presumptive nominee, but they were trying to score some political points, right? And that's been part of the problem. You're getting a lot of dysfunctional and irrational behavior because an element within the Democrat party has this, I don't even know how to describe the hatred for Trump. But then again, on the right side, on the extreme right, obviously you've got this same sort of rhetoric that goes and demonizes the Democrats and Biden and all this. It's not a good place for the nation to be, obviously, given what can happen and what we

saw happen on Saturday. It's, at least at the moment, a little bit asymmetric that only one side has control over how much protection an ex-president gets. And, you know, it's so, it just seems to me, it seems to me like the amount of protection should be proportionate to the potential threat. And regardless of whether you like or don't like Trump, he's a pretty big target. I mean, you don't need to do much to Biden to cause him to fall over, but Trump's a much larger target. Okay, I'm going to let that one go. But yeah, you're not wrong. And that's why you do risk and threat assessments on a constant basis, right? Because the risks, the threats, they change. They can increase, they can decrease,

and you're always doing that. Whether you're talking about executive protection, you know, for a political candidate, whether you're talking about, you know, what sort of level of protection you provide to a facility or it doesn't matter. So you're absolutely right. And they should have been looking at this. Now they did say that they there has been some comment that the Secret Service did heavy up the security package to some degree back in June, I believe for Trump. But it's only now that they've approved secret service protection for Robert F. Kennedy, right? And you know, that's an indication that really what the Democrats wanted was they just wanted him to go away. They almost didn't want to acknowledge that

Kennedy was a candidate out there. Mike, turn your phone under silent for me, please. Yeah, so it's not my phone, it's my irritating laptop. And I you know what, I have no idea if I turn that down. I think there might be is there a little button? Is there a little button at the top of your screen that looks like a half moon? Look at you with your it knowledge. Press that. There you go. All right. Maybe that works. Beautiful. All right, we'll see. Yeah, dude. So I've been to I went to I went to dinner with RFK at a friend's house, maybe about a year ago.

Then I went to a rally thing of his in Austin, about six months ago. And then I went to another meetup with him about two months ago. And each one of those, he's made it very, very plain. I have no security detail. I have no extra special care from the government, despite the fact that I come from the most assassinated family

in American political history. Yeah, it was insane. And it has been. But I do think it was essentially for a very political reason, which was we don't want to acknowledge that he's a candidate. We just wanted to go away. I mean, you know.

Giving him the detail is almost like a stamp of approval in some way. This is a legitimate person. Yeah. It's kind of that formalizing of his candidacy in a way. A lot of people process it that way. They see the Secret Service detail and they imagine, okay, he's a presidential candidate. And they were so afraid of him taking oxygen out of the room. But now as a result of what happened on Saturday, they've reviewed. I assume they're going to increase the package for President Trump. They've approved a package for Robert F. Kennedy. They've been looking at, I'm in Milwaukee where they have the Republican National Convention there. They immediately got on the ground here and started

reviewing security. Go figure. I mean, that should have been done. Look, there's a methodology here, right? And you can have little bits and pieces that change based on what the event is, but the standard practice, the standard protocols really don't change that much. And so, more than anything, there was a command and control and a communications breakdown between Secret Service and local authorities that I believe an investigation is going to prove contributed mightily to what happened on Saturday. What will the process from here internally be to investigate? I imagine it's just going to be a fucking nightmare to try and work out who's culpable, what happened, how's this going to occur, whilst also doing the investigation, which

requires resources from the very thing that you're trying to now beef up given the failure that just occurred during a time when you need them more than ever, but also their time is trying to be split working out what the fuck happened. Yeah. Well, yeah, and you raise a really good point. And that's where, that's where a congressional investigation can really kind of muck up the works, get in the way, because, you know, they, you know, they, they get out there and they start sucking up oxygen that really needs to be spent, you know, doing operations. But, uh, look, it's important, right after, after this go rope, uh, you know, internally, Secret Service was

doing a hot wash. What's this mean? Stop using these words. What do you mean? They're basically just doing an after action review of what happened immediately in the aftermath of this thing. But there's a lot of moving parts, as you pointed out. Look, of this thing. But there's a lot of moving parts, as you pointed out. Look, there's DHS personnel, there's the local law enforcement. It's not a good sign that so soon after this event, there's already some finger pointing going on, saying, well, that was their zone, not ours. Butler County saying, well, that doesn't matter. Secret Service has primacy, so they should be telling us what to do in a sense. So that's not necessarily a good indication.

Uh, but. You know, I think this thing has got to play out in, uh, in public. And in part, because, you know, government agencies, whether it's a secret service or the bureau, the CIA, whatever they, you know, whatever, they've lost a lot of credibility, which is kind of a painful thing to admit, but they've lost a lot of credibility over the recent past. And so, one of those things, one of those ways I think you build back some level of trust is to be more transparent. And again, they don't have anything to lose because everybody was watching. Starting at zero.

Yeah, they're starting. Well, I meant because everybody was watching, they can afford to be more transparent. But okay, I take your point. So going into the rest of this year, do you think these sorts of threats are over? Or are there more serious risks to come as we get toward the presidential election? Well, the threat's not over, for sure. That never goes away, right? You never get this down to zero. That's not how the game is played. So they have to approach every event, whether it's the RNC happening outside or whether it's any other campaign rally, the DNC, which will be taking place in Chicago, they've got to approach every event in the same fashion. And yes, they'll be more under the spotlight from the public and from their own agencies

and the various people involved. But that's a good thing. It kind of refocuses the mind. You know, I'm not saying that the event on Saturday was good. I'm just saying that it's going to one of the end results will be everyone's going to be a little bit more on their game because they're going to be reminded in a very terrible way what's at stake. You could argue they shouldn't have to be reminded. But, you know, you do these events and you do these events and the thing about executive protection is it can be a grind.

Mentally, it can be a real grind. Right? Why? Well, you're standing outside a door, secret service details, there's a lot of hurry up and wait. It can be kind of mind numbing in a way, right? There's, you know, then you got a movement, okay, fine, now I got to go do another advance and I'm doing the advance and there's a lot of routine, a lot of, you know, rote, which, you know, can be a bit, again, it can be a bit mind numbing. Which inevitably causes people to

pay less attention, which then allows small errors to, to kick up. Yeah. I was speaking to Tim Kennedy. I got him to break down the body language of the counter sniper from the secret service that was on the roof. And he's, you know, looking at, he's coming up off his glass, he's going back down, then he flinches and then he goes back down again. And, you know, he, Tim's assessment was he thought that was a person who'd never been in a firefight before. Um, that that was someone who potentially hadn't seen combat action. But another thing to consider is that this isn't training. You haven't just rocked up cat for caffeine, you know, on the range with your buddy, that's your spotter.

And I know when I'm going to need to shoot, you've been there for how many hours sat up there doing this thing, you know, that sort of endurance and as it continues to go on. But again, it seems to me that all of that can be fixed just by more volume and higher quality personnel. You know, if you've got someone that's doing the night shift, don't make them do the day shift. You know, have sufficient resources that you don't need to drain everyone like that.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You've got to have sufficient staffing and, you know, again, talking about how much of a grind it can be. It's not the sort of business where you can just, you know, just work through people until they're exhausted, right? You've got people that have to be at an optimum level all the time. And so that requires you to be able to work through a number of shifts of rotations. And so you have to have those resources. But look, and training, you've got to have constant training. And that costs money and time. And so sometimes those things get kicked aside.

I'm not saying they did. I'm just saying that sometimes in the world of government, you know, certain things can be pushed aside and in favor of other things that are really as operationally beneficial. So likely do you think it is that the heads of Homeland Security or the Secret Service are going to end up getting fired or disciplined for this? Well, I don't think DHS, my orcas, I don't think isn't going anywhere. He seems to be coded in Teflon because you could argue he should have been fired for the lack of management of the

US southern border for the past three years, but I don't think he's going anywhere. Kimberly Cheadle over at Secret Service. Look, she's been there, what, almost 30 years, maybe longer. She was an agent and a supervising agent for 27 years, finished up, then went to, I forget, Pepsi, I think, where she was global security director. And then she got called in. She had worked on Vice President Biden's detail years and years ago. And so who knows, maybe that was part of the connection. But she came back in to run the Secret Service. Is she going to be kicked out?

I don't think so. Washington, DC is not typically a place where people get fired. Why is that just nepotism and people know people and people know things and you scratch my back? Yeah, I think you know, look, you know, people, people get reassigned at lower levels, you know, if if there's if things go sideways. Typically, you know, that that shit rolls downhill. And so you may get, you know, mid level officers or agents, you

know, they get reassigned or put on ice. But typically people don't, at higher levels, they're not expected to pay the price. I don't know why, but it's a little bit like this problem with the civil discourse and people talking about how we have to turn the temperature down. Well, that requires self-awareness and it requires a willingness to accept some responsibility for where we got to now, right? Because they were part of the problem. But I don't think politicians necessarily or political appointees tend to be, you know, loaded for bear with self-awareness or willingness to accept responsibility.

What do you think happens to the political discourse moving forward from here? How do you think it changes or doesn't? I think give it another, I don't know, 15 minutes and we're going to be right back. We're going to revert to the mean. I have no doubt that there will be a short period of time, including, I think, including Trump's nominating speech at the RNC. I think that's going to be more dialed back than people would imagine coming from Trump. He said that he wrote a brand new one for it. Yeah, and I'm sure he did. Look, I don't think you can

go through that, an experience like that and not have some moment of reflection, right? Now, whether it lasts, whether he can change his stripes, I don't know whether the Democrats can change their stripes. Who knows? You know, look, they ran a campaign based on Trump is a fascist and he's going to destroy democracy. And it was working for them, right? It was energizing, at least, their base. And I think they felt like that's the narrative they were going to run with for the next few months. I don't think either side's really going to dial it back significantly for any period of time. So, yes, there'll be a moment, but then I think everyone's going to kind of revert back to the normal, jump back in their trenches and we'll be right back to that. Biden said, or at least the Dems said that they'd turned off their campaign ads for a

little while, sort of a show of a mark of respect. I imagine that if you'd kept running those, there'd be some in there that are absolutely tone deaf for a guy that just got shot. But yet there is a big question. Can you say that Trump is Hitler one day and then the next day, wish him well, given that he was just shot? Yeah. It does seem. Yeah, I know. I know. He's Hitler.

He's blowing with the wind. Thank God he was only grazed. Yeah, it's a really good question, but I think what they're counting on is the attention span of Americans maybe. Everybody's so busy just trying to get by and feed their families and do their work and whatever, and they're all staring at TikTok anyway. So I think they honestly think, yeah, sure, we can get away with this incredible pivot from he's going to terminate the Constitution and take away all your rights and he's the biggest

threat to the nation. And then turn around and go, well, we sure, I talked to Donald and I told him I was really... But I think they feel like they I was right. And they didn't get it off. So, but I think they feel like, you know, they can get away with it because they done it. So, yeah. Selective amnesia of the entire populace. So, I'm glad that you brought up TikTok, your favorite topic of discussion.

This is the first time that I've observed, actually, I didn't even do this with January 6th, because with January 6th, I actually watched mostly Fox News, CNN coverage. I was watching things be streamed live. But on Saturday, this happened just as I was going for dinner here in Montana. And I, for the first time, realized just how important X Twitter is as a social media. It was a genuine utility for everybody that wanted to know what was going on. And I wasn't, I'm not going to Facebook to find out this information. I'm not going to TikTok to find out this information. I'm

not going to Instagram to find out this information. I'm not going to the mainstream media to find out this information. Like mostly peaceful, but fiery assassination attempt from CNN or whatever the headline was. Yeah, there were some headlines. There were some headlines that he was pulled from the rally because he fell down. Secret service interrupts Trump rally. Yeah, yeah.

Or there was a New York Times article just today that said, you know, that referred to the assassination attempt as that somebody shot at the president during a rally. And you think, okay, so I agree with you. You know, I think X has kind of proven its usefulness in this great event over the weekend. Yeah, I spent probably more time monitoring what was happening there than I think pretty much anything else, although I was perfecting a new TikTok dance, so I had to.

That wasn't easy. But it's gonna be a hit. I'll tell you what else I didn't see much of. I didn't see much sort of crazy misinformation, wild accusations. I haven't seen much that people have really needed to row back. Now, is that the benefit of the platform or is that simply just because of what users were talking about? You can't promote a tweet which lies about something that somebody doesn't actually post.

You can only actually promulgate whatever messages people say. But yeah, I was really impressed. I was looking at X and going, holy fuck, like, we need this thing. And I've not had that sense really before. It's just like, oh, if you've got truth social on one side and you've got X kind of more toward the middle, and then you've got threads on the other side, it's just another one of these. But yeah, it made me think differently, I think.

Yeah. I think it takes a little while for the crazy to come out, right? So, I have seen some conspiracy theories that this was an inside job. And then of course all the armchair executive protection specialists talking about exactly what went wrong five minutes after the event. Are they OK? Well, at least let the dust settle a little bit before. Let's mop the blood up off the stage candles before you. Might be good.

But no, look, the imagery was amazing. The like them or hate them, right? And there's a lot of people on both sides of that for Trump. But you have to think, good God, right? The fact that he stood up, had the wherewithal to kind of face the crowd, give him that indication that he was fine and he was, you know, I mean, that's those instincts, right? You can't teach that, right? That's kind of in there somewhere.

And so I think that was amazing, right? Again, people who hate him are going to say it was terrible. He shouldn't have like shook his fist. I did hear CNN was upset with him because he shook his fist at the crowds and fight. And they were like, well, that seems inappropriate. Stoking. He's stoking a wartime rhetoric. He just got shot. He just got shot. They're upset because he's like shaking his fist and he's like, well, that's not appropriate. And inappropriate to get aggressive when you've just been shot. Yeah, dude, I said this to Tim. Look, I sort of respect Trump in that I find him an interesting orator and his sort of

staying power has been impressive, but I've never before said that I admired him. I don't know whether it's because he's kind of like a WWE character, which he actually also happened to be briefly for a little while. Oh, he's super gregarious and he's out there and he's all of these things and he's like older and he is from a different culture and all of these things, lots and lots and lots of things. Right. And I saw that video and then I saw that imagery and I was like, that is fucking badass. That is a, you, there is no amount of media training or sort of top down dictatorial rhetoric building and image sort of, um, promoting that you can do. To make being shot, then standing up and putting your fist in the air

and going fight, fight, fight, fight. That is him. That's his character. That is his character. We saw everything stripped back. Who is the guy? Like if you want to know who someone is, shoot them in the ear. Right? Well, let's say, okay, now for you, for those No, but I take your point. And also the striking thing is just the contrast between that and what we had been talking about nonstop, on Friday, and Thursday, and Wednesday before that, which was- Feebleness, fragility.

Feebleness, the mental acuity issues from Biden. And so that contrast, I think, is going to hit really hard for some time now, going through this election. And obviously, the Republicans will use that imagery. But I think they have to be careful. For the rest of time. They have to be, but they do have to be careful. There was a fatality there. People were ill-interested.

Maybe more. Yeah, maybe more. And so I'm hoping what this does is I hope it dials down the discourse. I hope it keeps things for a little bit of time. Again, I'm cynical, but you know, civil. And I hope it makes the Trump campaign more reflective, right, about their strategy and their tone and the way that they approach things. What does that mean, be most specific for me? Well, I think, look, everybody talks about how you got to win the moderates, right?

You got to win the independents, you know, if you're going to win it all in November. And I think if what we got was the Trump of old, right, he's not winning those people, right? Because they already left him in 2020. That's why he didn't win, right? Because they were like, I'm tired of the chaos. I'm tired of the noise. I'm tired of all of this.

So I think that if this makes him more or the campaign more reflective and they say, you know, let's continue to dial it back. Democrats are going to do whatever they're going to do. If they get back to throwing hand grenades, okay, fine, let them, but let's be the contrast. I think that's the way that you get, and then just focus on policies. Just talk about policies, nothing else. You already had a little bit more of a pivot to a slightly more statesman-like version of Trump during the debate and then after the debate, you know, there was no posting about Biden. There was

no silly tweet or what equivalent there was. There was none of that. Silence was his greatest weapon for the first time ever. Absolutely. Absolutely. When you when your enemies imploding, don't get in the way. Get in the way. Yeah, precisely. Talk to me about what you think this does to Trump's image among the American populace. How do you think that this incident changes it, if at all? Well I don't know that it... Look, I think it will make a difference with some who were undecided. Not necessarily, I'm not talking necessarily about independents and moderates who are focused

on politics, but I think those people who, you know, maybe don't spend a lot of time thinking about politics, but we're still kind of undecided. Maybe unregistered. I wasn't sure if I was going to vote at all. Yeah. I think that that, and then part of that will be that contrast between this guy standing up after he's shot and what they saw during that debate if they happen to see clips or they watch some of the debate. I think that contrast will influence a certain group. I think if he can, I don't know if statesman is the right word, but I think if he can be more moderate and speak to the issues and just stay there, then I think that can influence those

moderates and independents perhaps that are a little more focused on politics and did abandon the campaign the last time around. So I think it can have an impact. Look, the Democrats, they must be amazed right now, right? Because all that conversation about Biden, that's nowhere to be found, right? That's done, at least for now. People are not talking about Biden. They're not talking about his feebleness, his mental acuity, is he still fit to serve? And so I think the White House, if anything, is taking a breath and going, thank God. I'm not sure that. So I think that I get what you mean. It's a good day for bad news, or it's a good day to be senile, I suppose. Um, but the problem is that this recent shooting assassination attempt is

framed against the, uh, foundation that we already had. Everyone still already has that in the back of their mind. We know the fragility that we've seen of the existing president, the fact that he doesn't have that sort of gusto and that get up that we want to show from a leader up against China, up against Russia, et cetera. And then you have this, even if you're not looking at it anymore, it's like just being in a cold bath and getting into a hot one. You're like, holy fuck, this is different. So I do think that that's going to be there.

I also agree. I think the more mature and standoffish that the Republicans can be when it comes to messaging around this, I think that's going to benefit them more. For the first time ever, this is one of my, George, who I'm traveling with at the moment told me this yesterday, for the first time ever, Trump has a victim card. He's never had a victim card before. Trump has that, he has a fucking victim card. Yeah. Well, although I would argue that the base, right, his loyal, loyal supporters view him

as the supreme victim, right? Just being victimized by lawfare and the Biden administration. And so I think that group always looks at them in that regard, right? You know, look what they're doing to him again. And now he's been shot in the fucking ear. So another interesting thing is how much damage does this incident do to the left moral high ground around not being the violent ones? I don't think they care.

I've never seen any awareness on their part that that could be an issue, right? It's just sort of like that mostly peaceful Antifa riots and, you know, burnings and violence. I think that they just brushed that aside. And so, I don't know that they're worried about that idea. They all jumped on the notion. They were really wordsmithing, but they jumped on the notion in their statements about the assassination attempt that the shooter was a registered Republican. And by the way, why do all these guys look the same? I don't understand.

And I didn't say that. My oldest boy said that. You know, and I didn't, I didn't say that my oldest boy said that he said, what the hell is it with, with, with people like, what are they, what is the commonality? You know, his point was maybe they need to do a study of all these people and find that what was that thing that was super racist and done in the 19th, was it phrenology or physiognomy or whatever it was like that? Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like face shape as being indicative. What do we know about the shooter? You know, what, 20 years old from the area, Bethel Park in Pennsylvania. You know, I've only heard a few comments from people who claim that they knew him in high

school and those are typical comments, quiet, loner, bullied. You know, his dad purchased legally, legally, apparently the long gun that was used on Saturday by his kid some six months ago. And, you know, so there's not a lot of information out there. It's interesting, the Bureau's got his, obviously they got his electronic devices. They took his phone down to Quantico and once again, they're struggling according to reports. I don't know whether that's the case or not, but they say they're struggling to unlock it.

Phone of a 20 year old loner from Michael Green or whatever it is. So I think it's, we'll get more detail, but that's one of those areas, right? Well, you have to be, I always hate to see people speculating about motives because that's one of the things in terms of an investigation, regardless of what type of shooting event it is, that you really need to let the facts come to light before you start talking in earnest about, oh, you earnest about what the motivation of the shooter was.

So bizarre, man. There's definitely, I think, another discussion to be had around what is the training of local law enforcement. We've had it before. I was watching this documentary about, there's a name for them. What's the name for police officers that don't enter firefights even though they should do? It's like, it's not coward or whatever. It's like there's a specific name for it, you know, like a false valor or whatever.

There's like an equivalent sort of name for it. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just failing at duty. And you know, I saw in this same documentary I was talking about that a lot of the police officers were saying that they spend more time in diversity meetings than they do with their firearm in their hand. Yeah, and that is true. When you look at the consistency of training, that's why that, you know, one of the things that could drive you crazy during that sort of height of the defund the police was really, you're just fucking stupid because if you want a better police force,

a more responsive police force, a more responsible police force, you want to actually give them more funds for training. That's where it all starts, right? So part of the problem is again, going back to something we talked about earlier is that, you know, a lot of times when you hit budget cuts, training is one of the first things to go. And that can't be the case when you're talking about law enforcement. Especially not if you're going to be a guy who goes up a ladder and sees a dude with a long gun and... Yeah. And that, again, I'm fascinated by the comms portion of this and the line of communication

because there's a period of time there, right? Where the attendees alert the local authorities, local authorities decide someone, you know, Bob's got to go over there and investigate. Well, at the same time, all that communication should have been shared with the counter sniper teams and command and control from the secret service, right? They should have been making decisions in real time. So if that person was going up a ladder on that building, they should have had him in their sights at that point, right? Now maybe they didn't have line of sight on the shooter.

Maybe he was out of range, not out of range, but out of sight. And then he pops up and points his weapon at the, but that's the time to shoot him. So there's little steps here, but again, is it fair for me without the investigation being done to make all these statements? I don't know. I'm just speaking from past experience on other events, but they got to let the investigation play out. The event had such magnitude and such impact that it's natural. I get why people rush to make judgment or statements or talk about things. It makes sense. Do you think that this

stops Biden from stepping down because Trump now has a martyr vote? Well, I think, yeah, that's a really interesting point. But I think it goes back to what I was saying when I was trying to refer to the fact that the noise around Biden's situation has died down to no noise. So I think it does buy him significant time. And I think him coming out and saying, look, we need to be civil. We need to think about how we talk about each other. He's trying to be presidential.

He's trying to show, obviously, like with every event that he's had since the debate, that he's up to the job. But I think it's making it more difficult for the Democrats to continue to beat the drum. There were probably prior to Saturday, there were probably more Democrats in Congress or in the Senate who were going to step out and say, we think he needs to go. That was a building drumbeat. I think that it's more difficult now for them to do that because of the events of Saturday and because of the feeling like, okay, well, maybe, maybe we just gotta stick with Joe.

Dude, think about the last three weeks of fucking news. Yeah, well, think about the, I mean, really, think about this past year, right? Everything that's been going on. Yeah. Well, think about the, I mean, really think about this past year, right? Everything that's been going on. I mean, obviously, you know, Ukraine, fucking Gaza, right? You know, the discourse on around the election, this event on Saturday, I mean, good God. You know, all we need is a pandemic. Sorry. Sorry. That's terrible. But you know, not that we won't get one. We're going to get another pandemic, by the way. It'll happen. It'll happen. It'll

continue to happen. Talk to me about JD Vance. Yeah, interesting. I guess not an unexpected choice. They'd been banging on for a while saying it was either going to be Vance or, or Bergam or They'd been banging on for a while saying it was either going to be Vance or Burgum or Rubio. And look, JD Vance is close to Trump's son. They're very good friends. He's an interesting cat, right? Has almost- I don't know anything about him.

Explain to me who he is. Yeah. He's got almost no political experience. He wrote that book Hillbilly Elegy, which was a very interesting book. I mean, a very interesting book. And, you know, they made a movie out of it, I think, but he's a political newcomer. He's been a Ohio. And you know, of the candidates, I don't know that if what you were saying was I want to pick a candidate who can really help me win over, you know, groups that I need to win, I don't know that JD Vance is that person because he's already got his base,

right? And so I think JD Vance kind of shares the same supporters. Rubio could have shored up Florida, obviously, with a Hispanic vote as well would help. He's a much more seasoned politician. Burgum is a good friend of Trump's. He's got very good political instincts, business instincts. Nikki Haley was hanging out there. And I got to tell you, if you wanted the moderates or you wanted the independent voters, you could argue Nikki Haley could have been a terrific choice, except they were so sideways with each other during the primary. Do you think there's any chance that Trump changed his VP pick post-Saturday?

No, that's interesting. No, probably not. I think the- Wheels are in motion too much. Yeah. I think the factor that would have changed his decision possibly would have been if Biden had stepped out and it pulled himself out. That may have recalibrated the thinking perhaps over the VP pick, but I don't think Saturday, I think at that point, he just went with Vance and didn't change his mind. I was in a I'm in a group chat with a bunch of different people here, one of them saying Teal hired him at his VC fund. Mithral also endorsed his Senate campaign with the biggest individual donation

ever for a Senate campaign of 15 million dollars. Very happy with Vance, super smart, competent veteran, Rust Belt, blue collar orientation. Also, and sad that this is the case, he provides assassination insurance. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, Trump had been saying that, right? He said his decision over who to pick would be if something bad happens, are they ready to step in? But okay, to be fair, every presidential nominee says that. I want my VP pick to be ready on day one. And look, I like Vance in the sense that he's unique, right? He's not a 110-year politician, right? And that's not a bad thing at all. And I like the fact that he's a veteran. That's a very good thing.

So I'm just saying it's an interesting choice in the sense that I don't know that it expands the voting block necessarily for the campaign, because it's drawing from the same kind of block as opposed to maybe one of the other picks. But then again, you know, you want somebody that you can, you know, be simpatico with. And Vance has been a staunch supporter. Nikki Haley might have just been a fucking nightmare from behind the scenes from day one. Well, I think it would have been a very interesting dynamic. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the case.

And maybe Rubio, you know, was a bit of the same way. Maybe there was some concern over past punches they'd thrown at each other. So who knows? At the end of the day, does it matter all that much? I don't know that a VP pick matters all that much. Look, if Biden stays in, I think the key has got to be saying, look, you're not running against Biden, you're running against President Harris because I don't think anybody in their right mind believes that Biden makes it through four years if he wins.

So a vote for Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris and you're willing to say that Kamala Harris could be the leader of the free world. And I can't even say that with a straight face. I mean, that's more terrifying than the president getting shot or the presidential candidate being shot in the ear. I've seen this map, the election map of when Reagan got shot afterward, and you've got red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, and then this one blue dot that remained up at the top. How unlikely is that to be the case given the sort of never die, never Trump, etc. kind of, even after all of this? You've basically got the ultimate one-two punch, like jab in the face, Biden's completely incompetent, punch, the other guy is totally

competent and can literally get shot and stand up 15 seconds later. But that's just, surely there's no way that we can see a huge red sweep in the same way, because people are just so passionate about hating Trump. Yeah, yeah. It's a different situation. It's apples and oranges when you're talking about what happened with Reagan, I think. And so, look, there's no way he's going to run the table or get anywhere close.

It's going to be a close race still. And I think that, you know, the jury's still out. Maybe when the noise dies down, right, and, you know, the election really heats up again and the rhetoric, you know, comes back kind of the way it was, that the Democrats, you know, start reevaluating again Biden's, you know, suitability. And, you know, so that could be that could be the next big event in terms of the election season that we're in the middle of. Fucking hell. Okay, so one other thing that I really wanted to ask you, Okay. So one other thing that I really wanted to ask you, one of your expertise, international relations, first off, have any other world leaders of interest said anything that's interesting? And secondly, how do you think other countries, the Chinas, the Russians, the Iran's of the

world, how do you think they interpret the ease with which a 20 yearold bullied kid with bad hair was able to shoot the president's ear off. Yeah. Well, I think that jihadists are looking at it and going, what? That's it? That's all they are. What they have to do is climb up on a damn shed? Yeah.

So, I think that they're looking at it from a security breakdown and thinking, oh my God, maybe we've been overthinking this. Right? Gave them too much credit. Yeah. Look, the Chinese regime, as always, Xi Jinping and the foreign ministry, they were very muted in their response after the assassination attempt. They wished him well, but they tend to try to be seen as not waiting in because they don't want anybody stepping in their

business. European leaders said exactly what you would imagine. Everybody was condemning the political violence. There weren't really many... I'm trying to think Slovakia, Robert Fico, he made a couple of interesting comments because they tried to assassinate him not that long ago, shot him I think four times. So he alluded to the idea that the rhetoric from the opposition party probably played a role. But there was pretty much just what you would expect, condemnation of political violence from world leaders. UK, Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, he came in and weighed in very

quickly. And so that makes sense. You wouldn't expect anything different. I think Russian, I'm trying to remember what they, they didn't really say much. I think Peskov, the spokesperson for the Kremlin made an offhanded comment, but basically it was not that interesting. Another advertisement of America's in fighting operational poor management, the fact that one party that's kind of in charge of the protection detail for the other party isn't capable of stopping this. It's more sort of America falling flat on its face on the world stage only recently

after the guy that's in charge couldn't string a sentence together. Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, speaking of that, you know, the White House during the NATO summit, which was just concluded last week, John Kirby was asked and he said, look, nobody in NATO questions Biden's abilities, right? We don't have to justify Biden to anybody. They all firmly believe, well, what else are the NATO leaders going to say? But it was interesting that even at that point,

when it was clear that there were some issues, the White House was still trying to portray Biden as being on top of his game and sharp as a tack and all the other. Again, we're all getting older. You and me, everybody, we're all getting older. We all age differently. It's not age, it's mental acuity. And we've all got elderly parents. We've all got elderly grandparents. We all know what it looks like. So, um, I think the problem the White House has even during this moment when

that talk has died down is that people understand that process, right? And they know what it looks like because they've seen it or they've had to deal with it directly. So I don't know, ultimately, that they're going to be able to hold the line and keep him in there. But frankly, Kamala Harris and John Kirby and Kareem Jean-Pierre and everybody in his little circle and his family, they've kind of been lying to the American public for quite some time now and trying to cover up what's been happening, despite the fact that we've been seeing bits and pieces of it, but that's why he hasn't been out there. What was it called when you take videos out of context? What was that? There was a name for it.

Oh, Cheap Fake. Yeah, that's how they were referring to it. It was a cheap fake every time that there was a reference to it or that we were just, and the media for the most part were willing to cover it up as well. Fucking complicit, dude. Fucking complicit. Did you read, I think it was Ben Usher, he wrote an article called Common Knowledge. I didn't read that, no.

I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you afterwards. So basically the breakdown, it's fucking phenomenal. It's so good. And, uh, it basically says that it's not enough for you to know a thing. You need to know that other people know that thing too. So for instance, it's not enough for you to know that Biden, it's the emperor's new clothes, right? You can pick your favorite fairy tale of choice.

Um, and the problem being that until you have reliable insight that other people will agree with your position, nobody is prepared to take the position. So it's not enough for you to know that you know, you need to know that everybody else also knows. And what we saw on the debate night was common knowledge be distributed to the masses. There was nowhere else for anybody to hide. Therefore, when you come out as someone who previously has said Biden sharp as a tack or we pick New York Times, fucking like Washington Post, whoever it is, and then you pivot and say something else, well, it's a completely costless position to hold because everybody else knows it.

Like it's the same with the free speech position. You know, free speech doesn't matter for people who agree with you or who you agree with free speech only matters for the people who you disagree with, because it's a costly position in order to be able to hold that. And it's the same with this common knowledge thing. And it's so interesting to me because for those of us that exist terminally online in the heterodoxy sphere of sub-stackistan, we have all known this for forever. This is something, this is to me talking, like doing jokes about Biden's mental degradation

was hacky. It was so obvious that it felt low ball to say. And then you watch the debate and you go, Oh, this couple in the world who don't have access to my common knowledge. Now I'm sure that there's shit tons of stuff that I don't know about, but that was one of the things that I did so much so that I take it for granted. It's an accepted fact. And it's so much of an accepted fact that it would be hacky and low ball to make a joke about it.

And, Oh, the world thinks that this is fucking revolutionary. And it really broke my brain for a while when I realized, oh, my understanding and the way that I see certain parts of the world and the way that maybe the rest of the, a big chunk of the populace does is, is fucking miles apart. I'm no fucking clairvoyant political divinity guy. But fuck me, I knew that. And for it to be a revelation was just like, oh, wow, this really does show how echo bubbles and the still the power of legacy media to be able to filter what actually gets down to the sort of ocean floor of most people. Wild, wild.

And the and the and the ability to repeat a message, right? If you're, you know, if you just keep saying the same thing over and over again. Shop is attacked, shop is attacked, shop is attacked. And then it works. And then we find out that they, you know, had been basically complicit in hiding this. And, you know, that's why, and then of course, you know, people come out and pundits come out and people who had just been on their shows, you know, talking about how great he is, you know, saying, well, you know, we've kind of seen this for a while, I can't believe that they've hid it from us. And you think it's kind of like, it's kind of like, again, what we talked

about earlier calling Trump Hitler, and then the next day wishing him well, you know, it's that immediate turnaround that, to me is shocking. But people just move on, right? And they know that, right? They know they can do this. There's almost no shame because they're just like, okay, I'm going to pivot and completely reverse my position and I'll be fine in a day or two. It's shocking. But anyway. In the interim, just rounding out the conversation on security, does Tim Kennedy or Eric Prince need to be called in? Do you go private security to bolster Trump's security detail or maybe other people's security details?

No, no. I think, look, I was out and we had a large operation out in Iraq, early days of Iraq, right? I'm talking 03, 04, 05, 06. I mean, and, you know, we had a large private security operation out there and that's a war zone. So it's a little bit different. But when we're talking about augmenting secret service with, you know, private security, I don't think so. I think, look, Dave- What are the challenges that you face when you try to augment secret service with private security. I don't think so. I think, look, Dave. What are the challenges that you face when you try to augment secret service with private guys?

No, you're just layering on potential communications and command and control issues. And I just think it's, and it's also, I think, look, the secret service, their staff was some great people, right? We always have to be careful about, you know, there's this tendency to say, oh, they're all screwed, dismantle it. You know, that's what I cry about.

You got to get rid of the Bureau and get rid of the agency and do all these things. And I'm thinking, really? That's your take on this? How about just fixing problems. And so the Secret Service, augmented by local and state law enforcement, they can do the job. They've been doing the job, right? You know, part of this is they've got to be transparent again. They've got to come out and say, these are the steps that occurred. And some of them won't surprise us because we all watched. But they've got to be very clear about what those steps are.

And they've got to be very clear about how they intend to not have it happen again. That's going to require some people taking responsibility. And that's where I think that can be a problem. Because you have to make people at the top take responsibility and maybe suffer some consequences as opposed to just saying, you know, the officer on the ground who failed to communicate in real time what he was about to do by going up on that building. You know, that's the guy who's you can all blame. Yeah, I have had it in my head since Saturday. I wonder whether there is a level of negligence you reach where it almost becomes complicity.

Well, I don't think it's complicity. It could be, what's the word I'm looking for? Complacency, you know, maybe at times. Well, I don't know. The reason that I brought up the private security thing is I saw that trailer saying 30% of Secret Service staff are going to be female by 2030. I spoke to Tim and Tim explained to me that the mile time for guys versus girls to run is different. The weight load that you need to be able to lift is different. The height, all of the rest of the

stuff. You saw a woman who came up to Trump's nipple, maybe? You got this big guy, you got this big dude and this like little woman. That's where you decided to go as far as the height measurement was the nipple. That's precisely where she got to. I know what you mean. And then, you know, they would get an agent, you know, kind of fumble fucking with their weapon trying to reholster it.

That was the same one who used Trump, hid behind Trump like this, like sort of in that kind of like the fucking the guy, woman in the kitchen from Tom and Jerry, like, eee. That's a great cultural pull right there. Yeah, you haven't thought about that for a while, have you? Tom and Jerry. Look, I think there's no room for DEI in the world of operations and security, right? You just simply choose the... And it shouldn't be the way it is in everything, not just those sectors, but you choose the most qualified, capable people. And if they can't cut it,

then you move them out and you bring in somebody who's more capable and qualified. And you're right, there's a problem when you, because I think the Secret Service will say that, look, we didn't lower the standards, right? That's not what we did, right? But you hear that all the time. Problem is that belies the reality, right? Al-Narraq is a good example, right? For a while there, it was only bringing former spec ops guys out, right? Well, that's a small pool. There's not a lot of former guys there with that qualification. So then you started seeing squatties and everybody coming out there and claiming that they were

a spec ops former this and that. And so you've got a limited pool of capable people, I believe, right, that you can choose from for certain jobs. And you just have to take those people and say, fuck DEI, that's not what's important in this business. And again, I don't want to rush to judgment, right? I don't know the qualifications of these people. We have to kind of look and see, you always, let's be measured, that sort of thing. But I take your point and I don't disagree with it at all. Well the problem being the reason that I mentioned Eric or Tim or some other private contractor

is that, you know, Tim brought it up to me. He said the people that you see that are on Trump's detail, even though they may not have performed like the A-Team, they weren't hired yesterday. You don't get hired and then get put on a presidential candidate's detail. You have been in the agency for a while. You've been hired and trained long ago. You've been around for a long time. So in order to say, well, we're going to rectify it, we're going to train better, we're going to hire better, we're going to change the DEI initiative, we're going to do whatever it is that they say that they're going to do. Brilliant. You

know, the 2028 election may very well be way more secure than this one, but you know, when you're thinking what's going to happen over the next however long, RFK Junior has just been given a secret service detail that's going to take some of the resources away and how many people are going to have their time taken up going through fucking meeting after meeting after hearing after court case after investigation. As you said, sucking the oxygen out of the room and taking the attention away from the thing that it needs to be focused on. So yeah, I don't know, man.

America is not showering itself in glory and oddly the only person that is at the moment is Trump. That's a great way to put it. That's going to drive a lot of people crazy when they hear you say that. It's fucking true. It's fucking right, dude. People can go back and listen. I don't think I've ever been complimentary about Trump.

Not that I was particularly critical of him over Biden, but I'm like, he's just a fucking dude. He's a dude that's kind of a bit crazy. And I just think, tell me, tell me that you look at that photo and you don't think, fuck yeah. Like that's some late 80s, flag flying Americana, like legitimacy. It's crazy. It's almost like he's out there yelling, Wolverines. Yeah. No, I, again, and it's that imagery that's so important, right? Because people make

decisions quickly, people don't dig deep, you know, and they're gonna see that maybe they make up their mind. And you know what, again, you can't, we're gonna argue with that, you're gonna look at that. And then you're gonna look at President Biden from the debate, and you're gonna go, okay, who's more fit? Obviously, tell you what's an awesome, awesome video that you can get a hold of. So Evan, the guy that took the photo, he is a Brazilian jujitsu guy, looks an awful lot like a Navy SEAL, but massive, he looks like a young Jocker Willink, hard fucking dude.

And if you watch the video, there's a panned out version of the stage and those shots start firing. He doesn't stop and cower, he starts strafing across the version of the stage. And those shots start firing. He doesn't stop and cower. He starts strafing across the front of the stage to get those shots. There's two guys that get them. Really interesting video that you can find,

which was shot on a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. So I've got a pair of those too. So it's a pair of sunglasses that you wear and they've got two little lenses on either side and they can shoot up to about a minute of video in very high quality and the color representation is really good. And this guy, so Evan's the guy that took the photo,

the photos that are going around everywhere. There's another dude who presumably got very similarly good photos as that one. Yeah, I think he's from the New York Times, I think, yeah, Doug Mills maybe, yeah. So he, yeah, it is Doug Mills. He had the foresight when he's round the back, he's round the back of the stage and the video begins, but you can't remotely start those glasses.

So he's had his camera like this or whatever it is like this and he's shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. And he's taken his hand off, pressed the button, held it. You have to hold it if you want to take a video and then go back to that. And if you watch, I messaged Dean, the guy that led edit this episode, you met him in Miami, my video guy. I was asking him, what is that dude, Doug? What's that dude doing? Because you actually see from his glasses,

you can see both of his hands, right? So he's got his hands up like this and you're looking at this thing. And he's shooting a lot. This is during a fucking firefight. These guys, it's so fucking cool. I love seeing people who know their craft inside out doing something.

And what's coolest about this isn't the shots that he get, it's the seamlessness with which he does it. So you see that he's shooting and he can't frame up properly. So he takes his hand off the front of the camera, flips the screen down so that he can get a better look. And he's working on his, I think either exposure or focus, whatever Dean said. And then he's checking, he's checking the screen.

He's going like this. And Dean was like, he's working about every one to one and a half seconds. He's looking at the composition of his shot during this. So he's shooting, shooting, shooting, look, shooting, shooting, shooting, looks, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, and the burst, bus, bus, bus, bus. I'm like, that's one of the fucking coolest parts of it.

You know what else is amazing if you watch right behind Trump is some lady, right? As soon as the shooting starts, literally shooting starts, she puts up her phone. And she just, she just in the audience, right? She's like, first or second row behind Trump. So you got to watch, watch the videos that are out there and you'll see she's got a, I think she's got a white case on her phone and she's sitting there and wearing a white shirt I think. And she, and, and it literally, it starts off and she just puts her phone up.

And I'm like, God, that's fucking nails. So I don't know whether this is true. Tim is the only guy that's told me this. He said that the man who died, uh, comp, comp, compatory. Yeah, compatory. Yes. Um, he apparently, this is what Tim said, threw himself on top of his family and that he took the, the shot in his head.

Yeah. That's what the reports are saying. Using his body, which is the Aurora Colorado shooting all over again, right? That someone goes in and boyfriends throw themselves on top of girlfriends. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, you know, and I think that's another reason why, look, you know, if no one else had been hurt, maybe they would treat it a little bit differently, but you can't, you got to be very measured about how they talk about this from the Republican side, from the campaign side.

And I think their best thing to do is just let it go. Obviously, they'll probably reference it during the RNC speeches or whatever, but they got to let it go. Just go and then just let some of the imagery speak for itself, but move on and go to the issues. and go to the issues and it looks too callous to use it as a look at how awesome we are where hard it's exactly whilst a guy died and this one or two people still in intensive care. Exactly. Dude, I hate to say this, but I got a pop.

That's all right, dude. I appreciate you for doing this emergency episode. I needed to get you on. Mike Baker, ladies and gentlemen, MB Company Man. MB Company Man. Also, the President's Daily Brief podcast. Look at me marketing right now. Just before we finish up, I'm putting out, I don't know, just talk about that. But the President's Daily Brief podcast available on all podcast platforms. And we do a weekend TV show now called The Situation Report. Well, you'll have a lot to talk about next weekend. I really appreciate you. Stay safe at the RNC.