The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | September 16th, 2024: Who is Trump’s Would-Be Assassin? & Afghanistan's Invisible Women

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin:   We’ll start with the latest developments on the second attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, including fresh details about the suspected would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh. Then we’ll turn to Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s harsh new laws are crushing any remaining hopes Afghan women had for freedom. The latest restrictions include bans on public Quran recitation, speaking out, and even looking at men outside their families. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail].  Patriot Gold: Call 1-888-870-5457 for a free investor guide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Go to Patriot Gold Group.com or call 1-88621-3856 for a free investor guide. It's Monday, 16th September. Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. As you might imagine, we'll start things off with the latest developments on the second attempted assassination of former President Trump, including details about the suspected would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Ralph. Then, we'll turn to Afghanistan.

Where the Taliban's harsh new laws are crushing any remaining hopes, if there were, in fact, any remaining hopes that Afghan women had for freedom. The latest restrictions include bans on public Koran recitation, speaking out, laughing in public, and looking at men outside their families. But first, our afternoon spotlight. It's been a little over 24 hours since a second attempt on former President Trump's life was foiled by the Secret Service and just nine weeks since the previous attempt. And here's what we know so far. According to Secret Service accounts, agents were accompanying Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course when one agent, traveling on the golf course ahead of Trump's group, spotted a gun barrel in some bushes near

the property line. Multiple agents then engaged the gunman, who at the time was approximately 400 yards from the former president, and they fired at least four rounds at him. The gunman left behind his AK-47-style rifle, two backpacks, a GoPro camera, and other items before fleeing in a black Nissan. Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw said a witness managed to take a photo of the suspected gunman's car and license plate, which they gave to authorities. And then shortly after, Sheriff's deputies in neighboring Martin County stopped the suspect on Interstate 95 and took him into custody.

The suspect, again identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Ralph, is most recently listed as a resident of Hawaii. Now, one thing that is worth noting is that Trump's golf game on Sunday was a last-minute addition to his schedule and was not public. So at this point, it's still unclear just how the suspect knew he would even be there. According to cell phone data, it appears that the gunman was loitering in the golf course area for approximately 12 hours prior to the encounter. As for the suspect himself, Ralph was pretty active on social media, so we've been able to look at it. learn quite a bit about him. When he comes to his politics, we're getting a pretty clear indication of where his sympathies lie. Although Ralph claims he supported President Trump in 2016, he appears to have

grown disillusioned with the former president in subsequent years and expressed support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As recently as April, he posted a message to X that seemed to echo common left-wing rhetoric, writing, quote, democracy is on the ballot and we cannot lose, end quote. Federal campaign finance records show that Ralph made 19 small political donations totaling approximately $140 since 2019 using his Hawaii address, and he made those donations to Act Blue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates. There are also pro-Palestinian, pro-Taiwan, and anti-China messages on his profile, including allegations about Chinese, quote, biological warfare and references to the COVID-19 virus as an attack.

Ralph also expressed strong support for Ukraine. Now, he frequently posted on social media about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he sought to raise money and recruit volunteers to go to Kiev to join the fight against the Russian invasion. And as a matter of fact, well, this is interesting. The New York Times interviewed him for a feature on pro-Ukrainian foreign fighters last year. In that story, the Times said Ralph traveled to Ukraine in 2022 to recruit ex-Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in the country's International Legion. Given Ralph's past felony convictions years before they interviewed him,

it appears that the New York Times didn't bother with any due diligence before including Ralph in their article. I know, that's shocking. As an aside, it shouldn't be shocking. to reasonable people, that if politicians and pundits spend years calling Trump a threat to democracy, referring to him as Hitler, as a dictator, as a danger to democracy who must be stopped, well, you run the risk of influencing disturbed individuals who may take you up on your rhetoric. So save me the after-the-fact lamenting from the White House and others

who self-righteously say that political violence has no place in America. Their constant hyperbolic grandstanding for political purposes, well, that helped to create this current mess. Coming up, the Taliban's latest crackdown is extinguishing the last glimmers of hope for Afghan women. I'll have the details when we come back. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance.

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Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Welcome back to the afternoon bulletin. As the Taliban consolidates power, Afghan women are watching their already fragile rights disappear under increasingly oppressive laws. Since the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has faced a sharp rollback in women's rights. Now, before their takeover,

women had access, although we don't want to overag the pudding, but they did have some access to education, jobs in public life. However, the Taliban swiftly reinstated many, many restrictions from their 1990s reign. Despite initial claims that these were temporary, they've now been codified into law, cementing a repressive environment for women. So wait, wait, you mean the Taliban broke their agreement to protect what few rights that women had when the U.S. withdrew? My God. I mean, frankly, what's this world coming to when you can't trust the word of a repressive extremist Islamic despotic regime like the Taliban. Next, you'll be telling me that the Iranian regime and the IRGC shouldn't be trusted.

And that would be very disappointing to the current U.S. administration. But I digress. In August, the Taliban enacted a new religious code, enforced with unprecedented zeal by the morality police. That's never a good sign when the government has something called the morality police. a continuation of the regime's most hard-lined factions, which now appear to have increased power across the country. This new code bans women from raising their voices in public, reciting the Quran, interacting with men outside their immediate families, and even laughing in public. Women are now required to cover the lower half of their faces as well as wearing a headscarf,

and they face heightened scrutiny in public spaces. Fridays, the Muslim Holy Day, have become particularly fraught with the morality police roaming the streets, forcing women out of public areas, and accusing them of obstructing men on their way to prayer. The consequences for violating these rules are severe. Women who fail to comply with a new dress or behavior codes, risk arrest, disappearance, sore physical punishment, including flogging or stoning. As a result, women are rapidly vanishing from public life, and many no longer feel safe even leaving their homes. the increasing pressure to conform has essentially suffocated any sense of autonomy. The situation for girls' education, as you may guess, is grim.

Though banned from school beyond sixth grade, some families had sent daughters to secret classes. Now, with increased enforcement by the morality police, many families fearing punishment have withdrawn their daughters even from those classes. Initially, some Afghan women believed that there were divisions within the Taliban of moderate and hardline factions. That hope has clearly since faded. A 48-year-old women's rights activist who lived through the Taliban's 90s reign described the new laws as even more suffocating,

calling Afghanistan, quote, a graveyard for women's dreams. Now, the ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice, good God, what a name for a ministry, has remained mostly silent. Still, Justice Ministry spokesman Barakatula Rasuli defended the regulations, claiming they, quote, emphasize respect for human dignity, end quote. Where did he come up with that? The Taliban insists that these laws improve women's lives, a claim disputed by Afghan women's rights advocates, and anyone

possessing a shred of common sense and decency. There's widespread speculation that the Taliban is using women's rights as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with international organizations hoping to secure financial aid or formal recognition of their government. And despite these oppressive efforts, no country has officially recognized the Taliban regime. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Monday, 16 September. Now, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. And, as you may have heard, the scuttlebut on the street, is that to listen to the show ad-free, you just need to become a premium member

of the president's daily brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. It could not be any easier. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.

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