The Daily Signal - Security Expert: Trump Was ‘a Gust of Wind Away’ From Being Assassinated

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Security expert Brian Cavanaugh says former President Donald Trump was “a gust of wind away” from being assassinated on July 13th.  “To have a round pierce your ear, which is attached to your head, we're talking less than two millimeters away,” says Cavanaugh, a senior vice president at American Global Strategies.  For a bullet to come so close to taking the former president’s life, Cavanaugh said it causes one to think Trump was saved through “divine intervention.”  Cavanaugh formerly served as executive director for Strategic Planning and Integration for the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office. During a conversation with “The Daily Signal Podcast” at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, Cavanaugh assessed the security failures of the Secret Service following the attemp on the former president’s life during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 33 miles north of Pittsburgh.  The building that the shooter targeted Trump from was about 150 yards away from the stage where Trump was speaking, according to Cavanaugh, who called it “absolutely baffling” that the building was not part of the Secret Service’s inner security perimeter.  Kimberly Cheatle, director of the Secret Service, will testify before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, amid calls for her resignation following the attempt on Trump’s life.  On today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast,” Cavanaugh details what is known about the security breakdown at the rally and whether blame does fall on the head of the Secret Service for Trump’s near assassination.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, July 22nd. I'm Virginia Allen. On Thursday night, former president Donald Trump took to the stage at the Republican National Convention, and he recounted the details of the assassination attempt on his life at the rally in Pennsylvania just over a week ago. He explained that it was a story he would only tell once. We're still learning the details of what happened. What are the failures of the Secret Service to protect the president that day? what could have been done differently, what should have been done differently? Well, I had the chance to sit down with Brian Kavanaugh at the Republican National Convention.

Mr. Kavanaugh is a visiting fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation. He's a security expert, and we discuss what the failures were of the Secret Service during that rally, what could have gone differently, and what that investigation now into that situation should entail. Stay tuned for my conversation with Brian Kavanaugh after this. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. Bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics. But here's something I've come to understand. When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend.

If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work. Individual responsibility, strong local communities. communities and belief in the American dream. As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show, is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that plague our nation, having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you. And I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show, wherever you get your podcast. So pleased to be joined today at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Brian Kavanaugh. He's a security expert. He currently serves as a visiting fellow in Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation. Also currently serves as Senior Vice President and American Global Strategies.

And prior to joining American Global Strategies, he served as the executive director for strategic planning and integration for the Department of Homeland Securities. countering weapons of mass destruction office. Mr. Kavanaugh, thank you so much for being here. You have an impressive resume, and I'm really excited that we get to pull on your background in the field of security today as we talk about the assassination attempt former President Donald Trump. Well, thank you, Virginia, for having me.

It's a pleasure to join the show, and it's absolutely exciting to see so many great friends here at the Republican National Convention. There really is. Everyone's convened in one place, which is very convenient. If you would, explain a little bit further about your security background and your expertise in the field.

of security. Absolutely. So for a little over a decade, I worked in the Department of Homeland Security in various roles, whether at DHS headquarters, FEMA, CWMD, as you mentioned before, countering weapons of mass destruction. Sorry, a lot of acronym soup. But during that time, I was asked to go detailed at the National Security Council. So in 2018, I started the National Security Council and was the Senior Director for Resilience for there for almost three years and covered a wide range of critical infrastructure security and resilience. I ran election security from 2018 until 2021 when I left. And everything from domestic incident response.

So if the phone rings in the middle of night, I was usually getting calls about a shooting or a bombing. We all remember the Nashville bombing on Christmas morning in 2020. That was a typical day for me as managing those crises. So then what went wrong on Saturday, given your background, in that field of security. I've heard people say, well, the shooter was outside the security perimeter. That strikes me as odd because it's a rooftop, obviously within gunshot range of a former president and a presidential candidate. I would think that that would have been in the area that Secret Service would have swept. Absolutely. And so for context, in 2020, I traveled

extensively with President Trump, typically as the National Security Advisor serving. When Ambassador Robert O'Brien was not able to make the trip, and it was a domestic trip, the Senior Director for Resilience would be the National Security Advisor on the trip. And I've seen countless outdoor rallies during that time and plenty of indoor visits as well. I can tell you first things first, understanding he's a former president, the detail does get smaller. There are competing resource priorities acknowledging all those items. but at the end of the day, to have the inner perimeter not incorporate that building, which is less than 150 yards from the president with a direct line of sight over the crowd,

I'm really confused. It's baffling. To be honest, it's absolutely baffling. And then to put the next point with, okay, so yes, we always integrate the state and local law enforcement into these types of capacities, and we're seeing that here at the convention. We've got police officers from all over the country here helping support the, the national significant security event that is the RNC. I think it just demonstrates a lack of leadership to point the finger at your local officials instead of owning it. Because that's what they've done, right? They said, well, local law enforcement was supposed to be patrolling that building,

and the Secret Service has said, well, that was their jurisdiction, their jurisdiction, not ours. And last I checked, it's the jurisdiction of the Secret Service to protect former and current presidents and other protectees as designated. And that means have accountability, have culpability for the fact that you're integrating into your teams with state and local officials. 99% of the time is a very smooth, very well-coordinated event. And what we see here is just a calamity of coincidences

that came together. You have a backup agent team that's surrounding the president. It's not these normal day-to-day team. You've got an extremely small footprint of agents. only one supposed counter-sniper team supporting, and then to have such a wide-open field. And so part of me is like, what was the Pennsylvania State Police SWAT team doing? They usually form that next level of the perimeter.

Okay. Where were they? What was the security protocol for them that day? And then your local law enforcement are usually your furthest most out, just doing the basic checks or protecting traffic routes in and out. So interesting. Lots to be uncovered. A lot to be uncovered.

Well, and especially given that we have that video from the BBC reporter who spoke to a rally goer who said, myself and others, we saw the guy on top of the building climbing up with a rifle, and we started trying to alert law enforcement. And that does make the question, okay, was someone from the Secret Service alerted before shots were fired? Did that information? Was there a breakdown? Did it not make it back to them? raises a lot of questions.

I think we live in an era where it's amazing how much information you have at your fingertips. I think for everyone who witnessed what happened 72 hours ago on Saturday, most of your accurate reporting was coming on Twitter from people who are on the ground, experiencing it and just posting real-time live. So what you have today is we have more digital evidence for this attempted assassination than we do for almost anything else we've ever seen in this line. And so we're consuming so much, and it's in real time, the same time they're trying to do the investigation. I think that makes it a very challenging task for any third-party investigation team, the FBI,

the Secret Service is doing their own review. All of this is happening in real time as we're getting, I mean, I've seen, as of this morning, a timeline that strings together eight different cell phone footage with a running timeline. You get to see eight different perspectives in real time. And it's quite amazing. That is amazing. Again, like you mentioned, it calls the question with so much happening, was there a breakdown and a failure of communications?

After 9-11, one of the things we talked about in the 9-11 Commission was the need to have a clean terminology and interoperable radio communications between jurisdictions. So the local police, the sheriffs, the state police, secret service should all have had an ability to communicate in real time with one another. and we saw, I think when I watched the video this morning, it's a minute and 21 seconds from the time people are screaming, he's got a gun, and the shots being fired. That's a minute and 21 seconds is a long time.

It's a long time. What do we know about the type of gun the shooter used? To be honest, I've only seen reporting in AR-15, or AR-15 is what I'm hearing, but unsubstantiated, I haven't seen that from an official law enforcement outlet yet, so I don't want to speculate into that without knowing, But I think one of the things I did see released through the media, through law enforcement, was about 20 minutes before the president went on stage, he was standing out in the field with a rangefinder. Wow.

And the Secret Service spotted him and reported him to the local law enforcement that, hey, our sniper team saw somebody looking through a rangefinder. Wow. You need to go check that out. That race was, again, a lot of questions of, did someone check it out? Was there follow-through on that? Trump's response was very fascinating, and his statement afterwards, he said, God alone, prevented the unthinkable from happening. Walk us through this. How close of a call was that on Saturday? A gust of wind away from the president being assassinated.

To have a round pierce your ear, which is attached to your head, we're talking less than two millimeters away. that's something that wind could do it could have been a muscle reaction from the shooter it's and everyone's we've everyone has seen the video the head turn at the last second that's quite remarkable so you think divine intervention I've seen some comparisons to the attempted assassination on theater Roosevelt in 1912

are there some similarities there in these situations well I think the similarities are in the personality theater Roosevelt showed tremendous strength and character was forced to be reckoned with and I think President Trump carries that same type of personality that same type of leadership we saw it we saw it with President Reagan um President Reagan was making jokes right after uh he's going into surgery and he said I hope you're all I hope you're all Republicans as he staring at the doctors and they're ready to put him under and then two months later he hears a balloon pop all giving a speech and says missed me I feel like that's a very similar president we have with President Trump.

And he's been demonized for so many years by the media. And until you have those personal interactions, I recall my first time flying Marine 1 with President Trump and just how personal he made that experience and how a warm human being he can be, people don't get to see that side of him. And so I don't doubt that while it was terrifying, you saw his true character when he stood back up and put the fist up and said fight fight

I think that's not just a call for himself and telling you what he's going to do but he's asking all of America to stay strong and be that force that's going to combat the things that are evil in the world so for all of us I think we like to think that we would be the one standing up in that same position saying fight fight fight but hard to know what you would do until you're in that position I would venture to say that's small that's less than one percent of the crowd would have the ability and wherewithal to do what he did that day. Wow. So we've seen since incident, of course, that there have been calls for the head of Secret Service to resign. Does this fall on her? Should she step down? So I think one thing we really haven't seen is accountability in this current administration. You look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan. You look at a number of issues and incidents that have occurred over the last three and a half years

that are a leadership vacuum. It's a failure of leadership. And that's something we're, You can easily rectify that and set an example. At the end of the day, we're talking about lead by example. And when something happens like that and you own that, you can't delegate responsibility. You own that. Yeah. And she's not owning it right now. And in fact, in one sentence, in one breath, she's telling you the buck stops with me.

And in the next breath, she tells you, well, that was actually being guarded by the local law enforcement. Well. Which is it? Which is it? And so I think what we need is a return to accountability. Vivek, Ramaswamy, discussed this in his speech, accountability. And I think that's something that President Trump and what he's putting together for his administration, I think that's something would restore accountability for Americans. How do you think morale is right now within the Secret Service? Amongst the rank and file, first, let's start with this. Special agents in the Secret Service have a very, that is one of the most demanding jobs you can have in the security industry.

The hours they work without overtime, the hours they put in doing things that you and I, we're just, most people are not cut to do what they do. And so tremendous credit to the agents that have that job and do it every day, day and day out, and keep our protectees safe. I'd imagine morale is pretty low. And again, it goes back to leadership. For the last year and a half, you've had someone who's pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices.

And in fact, two months ago on an interview was bragging about what she's doing to overcome those hurdles. And my whole premise on this is the second you get into DEI and you get away from meritocracy is you're lowering the bar. And I think in the Secret Service, that's a field where you cannot afford to lower the bar. There needs to be standards. And it doesn't matter your race, your religion, your sex, your gender. You need to meet those basic standards. And we cannot make exception. So what's step one?

If you're advising the Secret Service and saying, okay, obviously there need to be some reforms made, how does that begin? So first thing you need to do, and I think this is a day one item for President Trump, is you need to cease and terminate all DEI practices for Secret Service for, frankly, government-wide. But specifically, you're looking at Secret Service. You need to go on record getting off the DEI and frame it just for what it is. is this is a line of work that cannot afford to create exemptions to the standards. Standards are there for a reason. The next thing you need to do, I think, is take the money that was going into all the DEI training, into the climate training, and the gender awareness training.

There's a lot of money that's going into these trainings. Take it out of that and put it back into just standard day-in-and-day-out training for the agents. These are agents that are working six, seven days a week. I think building some time in, hiring more staff, building in the bandwidth to give them time off to give them time to go train and you won't have somebody who's fumbling and put their gun in the holster. You'll have somebody who knows what they're doing and puts it in smooth and controlled. Mr. Kavanaugh, tell us how we can follow your work. You're constantly writing, TV appearances. How do we keep up with what you're doing? I am, you know, humbly, I'm just trying to get my name out there

and get some information on perspective in the homeland field. I've been writing. So this morning, I had a piece published in national interest on woke ideology corrupting DHS. So that was just posted this morning. And it's an interesting portfolio. I cover everything from DEI and Secret Service to lower Earth orbit and spectrum used for certain hypersonic satellite communications. There's really a given day. We're all over the map on what I'm covering. But that's the challenge.

And I think that's a – just put some color on that. DHS is not an attractive department or agency to go to. I'd say just like Secret Services morale is low, I would argue perhaps DHS as a whole morale is low. And it's going to be front and center in President Trump's policies when he takes over in January. We've got to close the border. That's a monumental task to go from what we've had the last three and a half years

to where he's envisioning it. We've got to deport illegal immigrants. But at the same time, that's the same department that handles critical infrastructure, cybersecurity. So it's a massive expanse of portfolio from a policy perspective. And I think you really are going to need leadership top down that has got the ability to not only manage the issues that are front and center for American people on TV, which is the border and immigration, fentanyl, but also to be able to handle these behind the nuanced efforts of securing critical infrastructure, the things that we take for granted every day, day in and day out. Excellent. Brian Kavanaugh, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Virginia.

With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Again, I hope that you all caught so much of our coverage at the Republican National Convention last week. All of those interviews are on YouTube. You can catch more conversations just like this one by visiting the Daily Signal YouTube channel. We'll be right back here with you around 5 p.m. for top news. Be sure you hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from the Daily Signal. And if you would, take a minute to leave us a five-star rating and review.

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