Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - The Aftermath of Trump's Third Assassination Attempt

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov examine the incident that took place this weekend at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where an armed suspect was apprehended after breaching a security perimeter. The incident, described by authorities as a potential assassination attempt, has renewed questions about the safety of high-profile political figures and the persistence of political violence in the United States. They discuss what is known about the suspect, how the breach occurred, and what the continued threats against Trump tell us about the state of the country. Is “violent rhetoric” to blame — or are we seeing a country roused to anger by cable news and social media? Would Trump’s ballroom have made those in the administration safer? And, how do the threats that Trump has faced compare to what past presidents have gone through? Plus, Scott and Jessica check in on the latest developments in the Middle East, where Iran has floated a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a prolonged ceasefire. With global energy markets already under strain, Scott and Jess consider what the offer signals about Iran’s position — and whether a resolution is any closer. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway  Follow Raging Moderates, @RagingModeratesPod  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarliff. If you aren't already, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page and stay up to date on all news politics. All right, let's get into it. President Trump is once again at the center of a major security scare. What's now being described as his third public assassination attempt. This time, it unfolded at the White House Correspondents dinner where a 31-year-old suspect allegedly stormed a security perimeter armed with multiple weapons before exchanging gunfire with police. Investigators say he left behind writings, possibly a manifesto, along with the same.

message is sent to family members attacking Trump administration policies and hinting at violent intent. Authorities believe top officials, including the president himself, may have been targets. The suspect traveled cross-country, checked into the same hotel as the event was being held, and managed to get alarmingly close, raising fresh questions about security, political violence, and how this keeps happening. All of this comes as Trump remains one of the most targeted political figures in modern U.S. history following two other close calls. Let's listen to Trump addressing the situation after he was evacuated from the event. It comes with the territory.

And if you want to do a great job, I really believe that. And you take a look at what's happened to some of our greatest presidents. And it doesn't happen to people that don't do anything. Yes. What a surreal night in general. I had a lot of friends who were there, obviously, you know, a huge amount of colleagues from Fox who were in the room. Thank God everybody is safe.

It could have been absolutely disastrous if he had been able to get onto the same floor as the event, the security checkpoint that Cole Allen got to was a floor away. But you have obviously such intense questions about security at the event and how this was allowed to happen, even if that checkpoint worked as it should have, which according to everything that I've read,

that is the case. Big questions about why the White House Correspondent Center once Trump was going to be attending was not deemed a national special security event because you had the first three in line for the presidency that were all there. That happens like at inauguration or state of the unions, for instance. And that would mean then that security for the event was transferred over to the Secret Service in totality instead of them. covering various checkpoints and the people who they are assigned to, you know, whoever's

detail they're on. But it felt, you know, to me, I was just home and we were watching, you know, the second half of Bill Maher from Friday night. And suddenly floods of text coming in, alerts coming in. And I didn't think it was real, right? I thought someone was just joking around with me, the first text that I read, like, how could there be a shooter at the White House Correspondence dinner? and, you know, overwhelmed by thankfulness that everyone is okay, but it seems like there are more questions than answers at this point. And the way that Trump pivoted so quickly to, I've got to have my ballroom, I left a bad taste in my mouth, I would say, to say the least. And I want to get your initial reactions before we kind of talk about the brass tax of what really happened and political violence in this country and all that other stuff.

But, you know, what did you feel when you heard this? My first reaction was this is just another terrible ad that takes down in a row, further erodes, the brand America. And that is, you know, we talk about she and Putin being the enemy. And yet you don't see them ducking for cover and being rushed out of public events. It just reflects so poorly on the U.S. that we're now in an environment of such chaos and violence. And it's not, you could argue, the third attempt is a lot, one out of three U.S. presidents have been shot at. So this isn't unusual. It's unusual now that this is the third attempt. The politicization, you knew what was going to happen. Some Democrats say that this is because this individual has turned up the heat so much and is such a bad person that this is what happens when you were this coarse and cruel, which I don't think that is fair. At the same time, blaming the Democrats, or calling him a bad president, claiming that incites this type of violence is also bullshit.

This comes down to something just much more mundane than nobody wants to address, and that is we don't have a monopoly on political divisiveness. We don't have a monopoly on mentally ill young men. What we do have a monopoly on is political divisiveness and mentally ill young men who have access to weapons everywhere. This guy was able to cross the country. You wouldn't have been able to if you'd been on a plane. You're not allowed to bring weapons to cross border on a plane.

and this is just, we have a culture of too many handguns. What's interesting is, and also I just felt shitty, you read the guy's manifesto? Okay, you graduate from Caltech. He is now teaching essentially like an SAT prep course. Right. It's not at Caltech. He's not at Caltech. He is not.

No, and I think that's a major misconception that's kind of floating around there about this kid. He also got a computer science master's, which I think indicates that something in his life actually, I don't mean to demean it, but something went wrong from the path he was on, potentially. That's what's unsupposedly, it'll all, you know, much of this will come out, but supposedly they were notified by the family. I read his manifesto, and it's just so sad, it reminded me at Ted Kaczynski's memorandum or manifesto,

but, like, I don't, I don't walk away from this with any sort of conclusions or statements on anything other in too many guns and it feels like there needs to be a better job connecting the dots. Like how, he was on a watch list, but he checked into the same hotel as the event. How did that happen? I don't, it strikes me that it would be a pretty easy, with AI and Palantir's ability to target or surveil citizens, but they couldn't surveil someone on a watch list checking into the same hotel as the event. And the other thing is generally, I hate that event.

I was invited last year and I didn't go. It strikes me as just so strange that people show up to listen to as flight attendants to, you know, hear a hijacker talk. All he does is get up there and shitpost the media and tell them what fucking idiots they are. And they sit there in tuxitos as if it's some sort of badge of honor to be at this event. I think the event is just so strange to begin with in the Trump era. So how did I feel? My initial reaction was where I just felt a little bit shittier. and I thought it was just a real shame for America.

The fact that our administrations don't, you know, can correctly not feel very secure. But I don't have any like inside or wisdom calling away from. Sometimes things are just shitty. And I felt that way about this. Any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I certainly second the shittiness of it. Thinks of the White House correspondence dinner is markedly different when Trump shows up himself versus, you know, doing this not behind his back.

because he's always watching and commenting, but the tone and the mood was going to be very different. He was going to do his five minutes of jokes. You know, I know he had hired a few comedy writers to help him out with that. But, you know, this only came together in the last few weeks that he was even going to attend. It was going to be a celebration of the correspondence,

you know, free from his watchful gaze, which I think is worthwhile. Some of it can get very sanctimony. for sure. But in general, you know, these are people who work really hard, you know, doggedly covering a completely nuts administration. And to have a night where you do celebrate the best of the best, I think is a good thing. And it's important for morale, especially at a time where you have a president that's calling you, you know, the enemy every single day. And that's what Trump does. I understand that there's an argument for how transparent and

open he is compared to other presidents because he will pick up the phone, right? Anyone with his number can call any time of the day or night and he'll sit there and talk to you. But it doesn't speak to the quality of what he's saying or certainly the veracity of what he's saying. I mean, how many people did he tell over the phone that Iran had capitulated that we already won the war or any other version of the truth that he might be spewing at that moment? I am concerned for the implications of what happens Saturday night vis-a-vis the divisiveness in this country. I mean, everybody immediately to their corners, right? The right wing got their marching orders. And Ashley St. Clair, who is one of Elon Musk's baby mamas, actually did a video a while ago talking about how the marching orders get sent out to the right-wing influencers.

And suddenly there was a flood of, we need the ballroom, we need the ballroom, we need the ballroom. we need the ballroom. That was clearly the talking point. And then, you know, you had the left in a defensive crouch saying all the stuff that, frankly, I say, and if I were going to be on the five today, that I would be bringing up, that there is nobody out there who is more rhetorically dangerous than President Trump, right? That's just the way it is, and he does it from the most important perch in the world, right? He has the bully pulpit, and all he does is bully. I'm curious as to see what actually happens on the ballroom front. It's interesting just on April 16. So, you know, 10 days ago, the judge who had stopped the construction of the ballroom had ruled that it could

continue for the aspects that were needed for national security. And now the DOJ, Todd Blanche, is out there pressuring this judge to accept that the entirety of the ballroom is for national security purposes. And what does that mean then that anything Donald Trump wants to go to becomes an event that has to be done at the ballroom. I mean, that has enormous implications for society. And I'm curious to get your thoughts about the conspiracy theorist side of this because it's floating around,

certainly on the left, that this was staged. And even some factions of the right who have started to question things like what happened at Butler. Obviously, Cole Allen, the alleged shooter, or almost shooter, I guess he didn't get the shot off, obviously,

you know, had a manifesto, and it's very clear what he thought it's laid out there in plain English. But it does sit with people and it makes them think, like, how is it possible that we still don't know anything about Thomas Crooks, the kid that shot Trump in Butler and killed the fireman behind him and injured two more? I mean, that kid who had allegedly no social media footprint, even though he was, what, 20 years old, he was cremated two days later.

We've never spoken to his parents, never heard from them. They had a high-end lawyer that helped them out. and suddenly it's a closed case. And Donald Trump, when he was talking on 60 minutes with Nora O'Donnell, all he said is, you know, and Thomas Crook's really smart guy. He had a 1600 on his SATs. And he likes to talk about how smart he was. Same thing he said about Tyler Robinson, who killed Charlie Kirk, said always, you know, smart people, they don't like me very much. I was at an event where he actually said that.

And I'm like, I can understand how people go insane, wondering how it's possible that there are security failures like this, that a guy can even get onto Donald Trump's golf course, right? in Florida, that was the Ryan Ruth case. And how do we not know anything about Thomas Crooks and how frustrating that is for people? Yeah, the conspiracy theory stuff, I think it's novel and I think it's entertaining, but I just can't imagine a rationale that the administration would,

that it would have to touch so many people that it would just get out, that they were putting people's lives in danger. I don't, I started to shut that stuff down. I think it's a bit of a distraction. I think, quite frankly, I think the White House ballroom is a distraction. Really? It's the way he's gone about it, like everything else, has been shown a lack of respect for norms.

But I just don't, I think there are much bigger issues that we should be focusing on whether it gets his fucking ballroom or not. I don't, I don't know. I just think, again, the ballroom's another distraction, though. I was finding comfort. I really didn't like the media this weekend on a lot of dimensions. So I always take a break and I try and look at data to understand stuff. and try to like, you know, ignore your emotions or forget what you know, as Yoda said. And effectively what you have is you have most of these assassination attempts are a young man

who's had a psychotic break or an emotional break, mental break, access to guns, and things and historic act of violence is going to restore their social capital. When people have these breaks, they go after public figures. Donald Trump is on the front of everyone's mind all the fucking time. I think the most accretive tax cut in history would be if in the next presidential election, we elected a technocrat that once a month said something, and that's it. Just focused on governance behind the scenes. I am so sick of talking about this guy.

The greatest, arguably the greatest downside from Donald Trump other than the corruption, turning our backs on our allies, nonsensical economic theory, a general coarseness and cruelty and a total lack of respect for women. Other than that, I think the biggest tax is that every fucking night in near every goddamn dining table

around America, they're arguing about Donald Trump. And the reality is when you're on the front of everyone's brain, you're going to be on the front of every mentally ill person's brain. You know, so when you're this presence every day in everyone's life, and you are so addicted to it, attention that you'll do things even knowing they're wrong or they're a distraction from one

issue versus the other. It somewhat explains, I think, the multiple why he is on the front of everyone's brain, including some very violent deranged people's brains. The thing that gives me comfort, Jess, is that America's homicide rate fell by the largest amount ever recorded in 2025. As a matter of fact, preliminary data so far in 2025 or 2026, if it continues, we will have the lowest murder rate in the United States since 1900, since they began tracking the data. And while we see this in our feed and we feel terrible out of America and we have all these TikToks saying people are worried about being unalived, the reality is murder rates are at their lowest ever. Yeah. And also, I also went down in rabbit hole drug drug overdoses have declined two

years in a row, which is wonderful news. So my point is this stuff is upsetting, especially it should be because it's the president. It does say something terrible about our society. But when it comes to actual homicides, the nation's safer than it's ever been. Now, mass shootings are up. School deaths are up, unfortunately. And that was another reaction.

My first reaction was, oh, they know what it's like to be in a high school in the United States right now. One of the things I love about living in London right now is my sons have never had an active shooter drill at their schools. Yeah. And I like that.

I think that is really a symbol. of those things, it's a real symbol of a society and decay. But where I pull away from this and find some comfort is actually looking at the actual data here. Yeah. We certainly talk about that data on Fox because that's a bright spot. We should note that the trend started under Joe Biden, and it has increased, obviously, under Trump. Same thing with the fentanyl overdoses. But I'm all for giving flowers when flowers are deserved. And I think that the data does matter. As for the kids in the school shootings, you know, where is there a proverbial ballroom, right? Like, what are we doing to make sure that they are safer? And that would mean that people have less access to guns. And the right is

completely immovable on that, even though there's over 90% support for stricter background checks, you know, increased red flag laws and all the things that Democrats have been pushing and that, you can in rare moments like under Biden get some bipartisan support for. I do just want to say something, one more thing about what happened with Trump, because the narrative is this only happens to Donald Trump. And that's just not true. So there were 11 serious plots or attempts on Barack Obama's life, including a guy who fired 25 rifle rounds at the White House.

Joe Biden had five, including a guy who was arrested four miles away from his house with an AR-15 and a checklist ending with execute, you know, Hillary Clinton, there was a pipe bomb sent to her house. Actually, the pipe bomber, Cesar Asiak, I think I might be mispronouncing his name, was inspired by Donald Trump and testified to that. So, you know, maybe I'm just preparing myself for when I have to go have this conversation with conservatives. And there has been an uptick in left wing violence. Cato has a really great chart, which we'll make sure to put into the episode about political violence and the main perpetrator. of it. The chart doesn't have 9-11 on it because it's just too big, obviously. But you see a steady

rise in left-wing violence during the Trump era. And that has to do with all the stuff that we talk about, you know, with Trump and how polarizing he is. But, you know, I think you'd be thankful that nothing happened, that everyone is safe. You always go back and rely on the data where you can. if Susie Wiles is going to convene a big security meeting this week to think about how President Trump should behave and what he should be doing when he's in public. Should he be wearing a bulletproof vest? I want him to stay alive. I know that's probably something that he doesn't want to do wearing a vest, but maybe it is the right thing to do. But there are a lot of important strands that I guess are connected to this incident that I don't want to lose sight of and just immediately.

capitulate to a particular partisan narrative about what's going on. If you were to really try and have an honest conversation and look at the data around what is the cause of this, it's not fucking ballroom or Democrats saying things or Trump being a bad president, I think we're going to look back in 20 or 30 years and we're going to say, how on earth did we let the cyanide of social media into our water supply? Because every day, people are hit with hundreds of notifications convincing them of one thing that the enemy is within. The enemy is in Russian soldiers pouring over the border.

It's not climate change. It's not income inequality or the CCP at the GRU. The enemy is your neighbor across the street who has a sign of a candidate from a different party. And every day, social media has an economic incentive and getting you to find a clip or Jess Tarloff makes mincemeat of the other four, or if you're conservative, the other four making mincemeat of some progressive, such that we just start to hate each other. And the majority of people can modulate that, but some people are crazy, and we'll take that to an extreme, but the real damage to America is beneath the surface, and that is Americans don't like

each other anymore. And we can't agree on anything. And we don't, we want to, you know, It's a total page out of the fascist playbook. Get them to stop thinking about Ukraine and the fact I'm invading Ukraine and get them to hate each other. Convince them that it's the enemy within. And while a lot of it starts on broadcast cable news, it's really social media that monetizes it. And then it's obviously weaponized with firearms against very famous people. But I almost reversed almost everything, engineer, almost everything to one or two things.

Income inequality or social media coarsening our discourse. I would add also, you know, the monopoly is buying up local stations also has a lot to do with this. And you remember the unearthing of the Sinclair scripts, right, that people who were on Sinclair stations all across the country were coming out every night with exactly the same thing to say. That makes people insane. and it is certainly not informing them.

And you're so right that the things also being debated at a lot of tables about Donald Trump are just not the things that actually matter. And you will see, you know, come election day, people show up and they vote their pocketbooks. And that's where you see it come to life. But in the in-between time, we are having far too few conversations about the realities of the average American. I mean, there's an interesting parallel because, you know, on Sundays also lots of of new polling comes out, right, at the same time that everyone's discussing what happened at the White House correspondence dinner.

But we got average inflation for food and beverages up 8 percent. Tomatoes, 102 percent, vegetables, 90 percent, diesel, 88 percent. U.S. farm bankruptcies are up 46 percent year over year. 70 percent of them are in the Midwest. And the current economic conditions index is at its lowest point in 75 years. So all of this is incredibly important. and we need to be talking about keeping the president safe and gun violence and mental health and social media.

But our farmers have no fertilizer. They're not going to be able to get their crops out. People are going bankrupt. They can't afford their regular cost of living. That is the biggest story of now of the Trump era, I would say. Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Support for the show comes from Stamps.com.

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Listen now at Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Before we go, in the latest on the conflict in the Middle East, Iran has offered a deal to the U.S., reopening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the end of the U.S. blockade as well as the end of the war with no nuclear. component to the deal inside. The proposal relayed through Pakistan fails to resolve issues that initiated the war in February, and President Trump is unlikely to accept the terms. Here's Joe Scarborough speaking about the parallels between Trump and other presidents who oversaw conflicts in the Middle East. This president, who, you know, I've had the ability to speak with over the past 20, 25 years. This president, you know, there seem to be two presidents

that he brought up. the most. One with contempt, George W. Bush, for some reason, really, just all in against George W. Bush, and mainly he'll bring up the Iraq war. He was stupid. He made the mistake after 9-11, and we didn't keep the oil. That's what he said. Then the second was Jimmy Carter, who, you know, he liked enough as a man, but just thought he was so weak in the Iranian-Azsche's crisis. And so he we have these two presidents that have sort of been fixed in Donald Trump's mind through the decades on the type of president he would not want to be and him being talked into a conflict by Benjamin, the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham, and finding himself where he's

sort of this combination of both right now. That's some harsh stuff. I imagine if Trump has seen it, there will be a post-con. or he's not going to be taking Joe's call. But that, you know, cuts right at the heart of this, that there were lessons or, you know, doctrines that Donald Trump preached, and he's gone against all of them, essentially. And I was really kind of stopped in my tracks. I saw that Chancellor Murs was talking to some school kids and said that the U.S. doesn't have an exit strategy for the Iran war and an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership. I was just openly saying something like that. And if we are at a point now where they are not willing to negotiate about their nuclear program at all, and this is all just us trying to get the Strait of Hormuz back open, what a colossal failure.

Yeah. And contrasting with Carter's sort of interesting with respect to Iran, I would argue that Carter was strategic confidence. I think the rescue mission did make sense, an operational failure. the helicopters malfunctioning outside of Tehran, whereas I would describe this war as operational excellence and strategic incompetence, total lack of planning objectives, ability to garner partners, articulate the objectives. This has made no sense in terms of their ability to outline objectives, apply the resources against those objectives, declare victory, you know, anyways, we've been here, coordinating with our allies,

As Lincoln said, you can't lose a war with the public support. You can't win a war without it, and such that at this point, it's impossible for us to win this war or very difficult because the public doesn't support it because he's done such a poor job of communicating to key constituencies and allies. Anyways, let's leave it there, Jess. Before we go, a reminder that Raging Moderates is now on Substack. Subscribers get ad-free episodes, a place to connect with Jess and me and the rest of the community, and access to the Raging Moderates newsletter, the Monday Rage, out now. Plus, we're going to be doing some live streams

that will only be viewable to our substack subscribers. We're doing them almost every other day. So get joined up. Find us at ragingmoderates. Dotprofgeemedia.com. That's all for this episode. Thanks for joining us today.

Just have a great rest of the week. You too. I'll see you tomorrow. There you go.