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Episode One Hundred Seventy Three: By The Hand Of God · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and seventy three of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zickler. I'm your host on today's show. We
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have learned some important new details about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but
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still very little about the shooter himself. Trump picks jd Vance as his vice
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presidential candidate. Biden has an awful time in his interview with NBC News,
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and a major witness in the Penn State Jerry Sandusky case, has died.
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We have learned quite a bit, although not nearly as much as we need
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to or probably should have at this point about the circumstances surrounding the assassination attempt
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against Donald Trump. This past weekend, perhaps the biggest revelation came from CNN
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and their report that US authorities obtained intelligence from a human source in recent weeks
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on a plot by Aroan to try to assassinate Donald Trump, development that,
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according to CNN, led to the Secret Service increasing security around the former president
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in recent weeks. Now that confused a lot of people, including myself.
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First of all, there's the stunning revelation of an apparent possible plot by Iran,
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a foreign adversary to take out the leading candidate to be president that in
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normal times would be a massive, massive story. It really hasn't gotten nearly
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as much play as I expected when I heard about it. But then there's
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the part about this causing an increase in security around Trump, And as a
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lot of people have said, it's quite obvious if what we saw this past
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Saturday was increased security, what would have been lacks security because the security failures
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are obvious and they were literally catastrophic. Now we're going to get into some
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of those, but I also believe that we're learning a bit more about the
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context of the events that transpired, why they happened, how they happened,
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why the conspiracy theories are nuts. But they are not going away anytime soon,
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that's for sure. Probably ever, given the unique circumstances of this situation.
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And there's two interview clips or sound bites if you will, that I
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want to play because I think they're going to give you a lot of information
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about what really transpired here. And obviously, on the Death of Journalism podcast,
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I do a lot of criticism of the news media. Most reporters do
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not have my respect. There's a lot of media malpractice. There's a lot
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of incompetence, there's a lot of stupidity, there's a lot of people weighing
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over their heads when big, big things like this happen. But I do
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still have respect for a few people in the mainstream news media. One of
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those is a god the name of John Miller. John Miller currently is an
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ANAM list for CNN, and he's the guy who became famous now seems like
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a very very long time ago, because it was, but it's hard to
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believe how long a time ago it was. He was the last American journalist,
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maybe the only American journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in person, and
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after nine to eleven. You may recall that he was basically almost literally sitting
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at the right hand of Peter Jennings during ABC's NonStop coverage in the aftermath of
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nine to eleven, and he did a great job when it comes to intelligence
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and security law enforcement issues. In my opinion, there's nobody better than John
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Miller. His sources are impeccable, and he's very very good at explaining things.
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So here is a way to kind of update you on what we know
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as well as you know, allowing John Miller to tell his version of events
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based on what he's hearing via his intelligence sources, and I think this will
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give you some context for where we currently are with regard to the factual record.
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So here's John Miller on CNN describing what he's being told about what transpired
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leading up to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Aaron, There's been some
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developments as the investigation has progressed. You know, what the investigators are telling
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us is as far as a motive, a manifesto, the reasoning behind this.
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The suspect is still a blank slate, but what they have developed is
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a lot of the background about what happened that day. They know that he
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went to his employer at the nursing home where he works as a dietary specialist
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before this, and said I need Saturday off. I have something important to
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do. But he told his co workers, I'll see you on Sunday,
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so he changed his days off, presumably for this. We also understand that
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when he got to the fairgrounds where this rally was being held for Donald Trump,
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the first thing that puts him on the radar of security people is near
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the magnetometer area where they're screening people in he's carrying in his hand a rangefinder.
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It's a device that looks like a small pair of binoculars, but it's
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used by shooters to measure the distance when they're setting up a long distance shot.
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Because he didn't have a weapon, that would not have prevented him to
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go through security, but they did flag what does he have this in his
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hand for? At that point they told people keep an eye on this guy.
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But then he leaves the secure area, the staging area, and he
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doesn't turn up again for some time until the crowd says there's a guy crawling
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up the roof and it appears he has a rifle. There is an eerie
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moment in here aaron where he's taking the rangefinder and he's looking through it at
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the counter sniper positions, and one of the counter sniper positions is looking at
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him through the At this point there's not a gun in the picture as I
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understand it, but they're saying he's looking at us, looking at him.
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Then when people alert the police and they try to come up the ladder to
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get him, and he confronts them with the AR fifteen gun. They die
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for cover and then a moment later he opens fire. But a lot of
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this sounds very spread out. The end of it happens very quickly. The
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last piece is the search of the car. As we reported last night,
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two remote controlled IEDs, remote controlled bombs in the car, the remote control
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for those devices found on his person on the roof, according to sources,
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three fully loaded magazines with nearly one hundred rounds, a bulletproof vest. So
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it raises the question did he expect to escape from this, and if so,
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what was all that intended for what was to happen next? Questions that
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are still open in the minds of these investigators. Now, a lot of
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that information is pretty startling, but it's also very very consistent with the one
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loan nut theory, and I'm a big believer that that's where we are on
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this. I think that we've basically seen a repeat of the JFK assassination,
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only this time the key shot missed, and I think that all the evidence
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so far points that way. However, I am completely understanding of the millions
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and millions of people who are enraged and have deep questions, and unfortunately,
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because of those questions, have already started to come to what I believe are
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very likely erroneous conclusions that include some sort of government conspiracy. And there's no
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question that the level of incompetence and the number of mistakes that were made are
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numerous and lickable. I mean, that's one hundred percent true as to how
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this shooter was allowed to get to where they got and to get off the
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shots that they did, and to be in a place that was an obvious
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vulnerability without having been taken out. And there was a lot of attention on
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a report that indicated that a local law enforcement official had actually confronted the shooter
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just before the assassination attempt and had basically stood down. Now, in the
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last episode of the podcast, I expressed outrage about that, like everyone else
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did, but I also put forward the idea that, you know, maybe
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there's some explanation for this. I did theorize that maybe, just maybe there
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was some theoretical explanation for how or why a the you know, seemingly armed
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law enforcement official would back down when confronting a shooter with a rifle pointed at
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them. And it appears as if we have now a fairly decent explanation.
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Now we don't have an explanation that I think is remotely coherent for what happened
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next or the timing of the events after that, which is key to all
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this. But NBC News did an interview with a local law enforcement official who
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seemed to me to be trying to tell as straight a story as possible,
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and they described in detail why and how the local police confronted the shooter just
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before the assassination attempt. And it makes sense now as to why they did
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not confront the shooter because they could not get to a weapon and were in
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a very vulnerable position when they saw the shooter and had the shooter aim a
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rifle right at them. And then that person, according to this official,
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injured themselves falling from where they were in the position to actually see the shooter
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moments before the assassination attempt. And here's what that sounded like on NBC.
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He did, in fact see an individual off the roof with a weapon.
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He saw a shooter. He did Your officers are on patrol, they hear
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that there is a suspicious person on the rooftop. What did your officers do?
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So our officers in the area started to converge on the building. By
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I understanding as they did a full perimeter walk of the building, weren't able
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to see up on the roof. Two of the officers went to what appeared
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to be the lowest point from ground to roof. One of the officers actually
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boosted the second officer up high enough for him to grab hold of the roof.
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When he was able to pull his head up over the roof, he
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did, in fact see an individual off the roof with a weapon. He
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saw a shooter, he did, and what did the shooter do? Turned
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towards him, had the barrel of his weapon pointed at the officer at that
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point. The officers hanging on to the side of the roof, Yes,
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unable to pull a gun out, unable to unable to defend himself, unable
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to reach his radio, any of that. Yeah, Yeah, strictly defensive
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movement for him to lower his head. Duck lost his own grip right,
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fell approximately eight feet to the ground. It's a steep drop, it's a
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good drop. Yes. Did he get hurt? He did? In that
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moment. Did they realize there's a threat right now to the former president?
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They did so. Both the boosting officer and the officer that fell were both
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on the radio indicating that there was an individual on the roof that did in
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fact have a weapon. Who did they radio? So there was a blanket
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tactical channel. Everyone, everyone that was on that tackle channel heard it.
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Yes, how much time between that radio communication and the gun being fired at
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the former president that I don't I don't have that information. Now. I
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want to break that interview down into two parts. The first part is the
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story about what happened with the confrontation and why the police officer was not in
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a position to seriously confront the shooter potentially fire a shot. You know,
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who knows how that would have gone down. Obviously they would have been risking
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their life, but that's theoretically what they're supposed to do, especially in an
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extreme situation like that. But I can understand, based upon the way that
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was described, if you're hanging onto the roof being pushed up from behind by
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another police officer, it's really easy to see how you can't get to your
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weapon. You've got a rifle pointed at you, You're going to retreat.
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That makes total sense to me. What doesn't make sense, and what I
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find to be completely inexplicable several days later, is the fact that this local
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law enforcement official could not answer the last question, which is a very very
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key question, and that question is is okay, so, how long between
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the time that you had one of your police officers have a rifle pointed at
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them by a highly suspicious person, meaning we now know we have beyond a
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five alarm fire on our hands. There's no more ambiguity. I'm completely willing
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and able to buy the idea that there could be confusion, there could be
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uncertainty. You know, it's a lot of this has been twenty twenty hindsight
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as people seeing this guy with a rifle, and you know what it's really
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to me, Okay, what did people know at the time. Well,
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there's no more ambiguity. There's no more way to rationalize this or to come
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to any other conclusion. When you've got someone pointing a rifle at a police
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officer from the top of a roof where there are one hundred and thirty yards
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away from the leading presidential candidate speaking, that's as rave as it gets.
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So at that point, okay, they got to do everything they possibly can.
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Now the interview indicates that they communicated this, But how much time was
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there between that moment and the moment of the shots. The fact that that
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question wasn't answered, I just don't buy. There's no possible way. Now.
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I'm not even suggesting one hundred percent that this person is lying, because
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if you watch the video. To me, it's possible the person doesn't know,
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which is almost more bizarre to me than if they're lying. How could
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you not know that at this point? That would be seemingly very easy information
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to get and obviously very very key information, because if it's a couple of
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seconds, then okay, there's not much you can do. However, if
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it's a little bit longer than that, anything longer than that, then something
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should have been done. And you know, does it seem as if there
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was a catastrophic miscommunication or inability to communicate, or how many channels it had
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to go through to get to the people that were the you know, for
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instance, the two different sniper teams that were in play here. I would
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like to believe we're eventually gonna know. I would like to believe that,
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but the fact that we don't yet is remarkable and disturbing, you know,
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because to me, again, I'm not a law enforcement expert in any stretch
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of the imagination. But if you're one of those two police officers, and
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the fact that the one that saw the shooter aim a rifle at them got
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injured probably played a theoretical role in all this, because you know, depending
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on how badly you're injured, that's gonna delay your ability to react. But
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just human nature, you would think you would literally start screaming, bloody murder.
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You might fire your weapon into the air as an alarm to make sure
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everybody knows that we've got a major emergency on our hands. And as far
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as we can tell, nothing like that happened. And so we're learning a
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lot more about the details and the background and the context, and at least
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some explanations for why some of the screw ups occurred, but we're certainly nowhere
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near learning everything or finding explanations for everything. And one explanation that has been
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mocked more so than any other comes from the head of the Secret Service,
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a woman by the name of Kim Cheetle, who has refused to resign.
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And right there, that's amazing to me, just amazing to me. I
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mean, we used to live in a world and this is one of the
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things I've always respected about the British culture because and I don't know if this
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is still a case today, it seems to be the case, but they
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still have a culture there where if you screw up, where there's a screw
17:07
up of epic proportions on your watch, it doesn't matter whether or not you're
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really to blame. You resign and that's respected, that's understood, that's what
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happens. In fact, if you don't, that's actually a greater ignominy,
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a greater disgrace than whatever you may have done to cause people to want to
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resign in the first place. Well, if we ever had that culture,
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we don't have it anymore. I mean, to me, I think that
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culture left America for good when Bill Clinton didn't resign in the wake of the
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Monica Lewinsky Paula Jones scandal. But that's another story for another day. But
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we don't have that culture here. And the idea that President Biden has not
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forced the resignation of this woman, Kim Cheadle, who he apparently thinks is
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a man based upon his interview with Lester Holt we'll get to that later on
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in this episode, is astonishing. I mean, this is a classic case
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where resignation should be demanded. But one of her explanations for why it is
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that the Secret Service didn't have all the bases covered is that that roof from
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where the shooter fired the shots that killed at least one person and Gray's Donald
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Trump was listed as a vulnerability, but they did not put any sort of
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Secret Service agent there, in her words, because the roof was too sloped.
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The roof was too sloped. Now, this has been roundly and completely
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mocked on social media, and understandably so. All right, I get why
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that has been mocked, because the roof was not too sloped for there to
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be a person put position there to make sure that that vulnerability was not taken
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advantage of. That's obvious. However, this is the zig the contrarian.
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However, I think that mostly conservatives are going too far when it comes to
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mocking this whole idea that the roof was too sloped, because I have seen
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three D animation. I've even posted three D animation of this event that indicates
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very clearly that the roof was indeed sloped. Now, I'm not in any
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way, shape or form suggesting that that gets the Secret Service off the hook.
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I think it's a ridiculous excuse. Okay, I want to make that
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clear, But the reason to me that the roof being sloped is in fact
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relevant is not because it prevented the Secret Service or law enforcement from putting somebody
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up there. It's because it's an explanation for how it is that the shooter
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was in visible to those who were at the rally itself, including the two
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sniper teams. It's very obvious that the slope was used by the shooter as
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cover, because there's no possible way unless you got a drone overhead with Some
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people have questioned why that wasn't a factor here, but there's no possible way
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to see the shooter from where those sniper teams were located because they were hidden
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by the slope, and then it was only when they took the shot that
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they had to emerge over that slope where they were seen by the sniper teams
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and they were taken out by the way. We still don't know. We
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still don't know so much, but one of the things we don't know is
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which sniper team actually took out the shooter. There's been some controversy over that,
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and I'm no longer certain that it was the sniper team that's gotten so
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much visibility from the video where you can actually see Trump and you can see
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what I referred to in the last episode of the podcast as a very dramatic
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physical reaction by one of the Secret Service snipers once they hear the shots.
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I referred to it's something along the lines of an oh my God, holy
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shit moment, which to me was is contradictory to the idea that they had
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this shooter in their scope for an extended period of time. I saw clear
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surprise from the Secret Service sniper that was shown on video seemingly responding to the
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assassination attempt. But we don't know for sure because there was another sniper team
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that was not in that video that may have actually been in a better position
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to take the kill shot on the shooter. By the way I referenced in
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the last episode there being three shots from the attempted assassin or the would be
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assassin, we don't even know that for sure yet. The reason I referenced
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three shots, and I even compared that to the Lee Harvey Oswell JFK situation.
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The remarkable similarities there is because you hear three shots and then you hear
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a clear pause, and then you hear a return volley of about five or
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six shots, which I had presumed was at least one, maybe two,
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maybe more than that Secret Service snipers returning fire and ending the threat. That's
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still possible, but I don't think we know that for sure as of yet.
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And you know, the fact is that there was one person killed,
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there were two other people seriously injured, and former President Trump was obviously grazed
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in the ear. And so that's at least three bullets. That's presuming that
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the bullet that hit Trump ended up then hitting a bystander. So it's possible
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that the would be assassin fired more than three shots. We just don't know
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that. It's one of the many, many things at this point we don't
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know. You would like to believe we're eventually going to know. You would
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think that would be pretty easily discernible in a fairly short period of time,
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especially in this day and age. But those are two of the key facts
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that we don't have an answer to yet. How many shots for sure are
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fired by there would be assassin, how many by the Secret Service snipers in
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which sniper team actually took the shooter out. Now, the other part of
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that three D animation that I referenced is not just the slope of the roof,
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which clearly provided cover for the shooter until the last second, is the
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idea that, once again, eerily like the JFK assassination, there's a tree
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that plays a key role in this. Because it's not been clear to me
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in any of the television coverage that there was a tree blocking at least one
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of the secret Secret Service sniper teams from getting a clear visual lock on the
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shooter. Now, I realize that you know these guys are good, but
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the fact that your vision is blocked in a significant way by a tree,
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I do think is relevant, and that seems to be pretty obvious from the
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three D animation of this situation that I have seen. So the whole thing
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is, as is usually the case in life, in real life, as
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opposed to these twenty twenty hindsight people, is a lot more complicated and a
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lot more difficult than we would like it to be. But I can certainly
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see, and I thought this in the last episode of the podcast, and
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I'm even more certain now that there are good reasons as to why the Secret
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Service snipers were not able to take out that shooter before he got off the
24:57
shots. There's the confusion issue, the possibility that whatever disturbance there was may
25:04
actually be one of the good guys, and you don't want to take out
25:07
a good guy on a misunderstanding. By the way, with regard to that
25:12
element of this, there's been a lot made of the fact that that this
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shooter had a rangefinder that was brought in with him, and you know that
25:22
that put him kind of on the watch list, even though it's not illegal
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to bring in a range finder. They look exactly like binoculars. You know,
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you basically use them on the golf course a lot. You know,
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that's to me one of those classic situations where that's twenty twenty hindsight. I
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guarantee you that that shooter was not the only person at that rally that had
25:45
something that either was a range finder or looked like a rangefinder, right,
25:48
So, you know, just because somebody as a range fighter doesn't mean you're
25:52
going to take him out as a secret service sniper or something like that.
25:56
That would be a ridiculous standard. But there's also the issue of him being
26:02
hidden by the slope, hidden by the tree and so I don't think that
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there's any merit to this idea that somehow there was purposeful delay on the part
26:14
of the Secret Service to respond to this shooter, that they knew this person
26:21
was a shooter, was a would be shooter, and they just stood down
26:23
and allowed them to take the shot, either out of beyond massive catastrophic incompetence
26:30
or some sort of inside bizarre conspiracy job by the government to allow Donald Trump
26:37
to be taken out by a twenty year old loan nut job. So I
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do think there are a lot of explanations for why this was allowed to happen.
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As is almost always the case in catastrophic situations where there's a complete meltdown,
26:52
there's a perfect storm of situations, and it does feel like this is
26:56
a bit of a perfect storm circumstance. That doesn't mean that there aren't people
27:00
that are to blame, that there shouldn't be people who should lose their jobs,
27:04
specifically the head of the Secret Service, especially since they pinned their entire
27:11
reputation on the idea of them being the dei head of the Secret Service,
27:17
and that's their main agenda is increasing female participation in the Secret Service and We've
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seen video after video showing that the women involved here really had no idea what
27:29
they were doing. I did find it to be very very interesting that when
27:33
Trump showed up at the Republican Convention and he made his grand entrance to Lee
27:38
Greenwood's I believe botched version of God Bless the USA. I think Greenwich should
27:45
have just sung the song instead of getting all political and making it about himself.
27:49
That would have been far more impactful. But when Trump came out,
27:53
he was surrounded by the A team. There was no more BC or D
27:59
team. There were no women surrounding him. They were all six foot three,
28:03
two hundred and twenty five pound guys, and it was clear DEI had
28:07
nothing to do with how or why those men were selected to be around Donald
28:11
Trump. So you know, I'm one hundred percent in the camp of people
28:15
who believes that the Secret Service had Kim Cheatle should resign, And there's a
28:22
lot of blame to go around, And I had a lot of questions to
28:23
be answered, but I don't think any of them point in the direction of
28:29
some sort of a conspiracy. Massive incompetence and bad luck and a remarkable amount
28:36
of good luck on the part of the shooter until obviously he was taken out,
28:41
you know, And I am understanding if people have questions, how the
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hell did this twenty year old know exactly where to go and how to pull
28:49
this off with seemingly no help. I get that that is that's a head
28:56
scratcher. I don't have an answer for that. I would like an answer
28:59
to that, but I don't believe that the answer at this point is some
29:03
sort of bizarre, vast government related conspiracy. However, I'm fully aware that
29:11
those conspiracies are going with nowhere, especially when there's a vacuum of information about
29:17
the shooter himself. We still know very little about this shooter and basically nothing
29:25
about their motivation. In fact, the only thing we really know for sure
29:30
from the shooter south is a video I think TMZ obtained where he's claiming to
29:37
have a very large penis. That's literally a short clip of this guy claiming
29:45
to have a very large penis. That's at this point, that's all we
29:48
really know about this person himself, which is amazing, remarkable, frustrating,
29:56
and bizarre. But when you have a vacuum, when you have a lack
29:59
of inf especially information that fits any sensible narrative where you've got a registered republic
30:07
and who gave a little money to progressive causes but didn't have a social media
30:11
footprint and is only twenty years old. And you know is is you know,
30:15
by going back to the John Miller clip, I mean, is planning
30:21
on doing this basically that morning. He gets the ammunition that morning and the
30:25
ladder that morning, and and he has this plan with explosive explosives in his
30:30
car. I mean this, I mean, it is just amazing. It's
30:33
the whole thing is remarkable. And unfortunately, at this point, it looks
30:38
like we're never going to know any of these details because there's no sign as
30:42
of right now of some sort of a suicide note or a manifesto or you
30:48
know, anything within his phone that indicates exactly what was going on, why
30:55
he did this, what the motivation was. And that's very, very frustrating,
31:00
but it also causes a big problem. And the big problem it causes
31:04
is that people are going to fill in the blanks themselves. And there was
31:07
an interesting episode that got a lot of attention on CNN where Florida Congressman Corey
31:15
Mills, who's also a combat veteran went on CNN from the Republican Convention and
31:23
very calmly and sensibly, in and I think a sincere fashion, started to
31:30
make the argument that this could have been a setup, and the CNN anchor
31:37
woman, you know, had almost a meltdown. The interview ended okay,
31:42
but it almost ended very very badly because the ancher woman didn't know what to
31:48
do with this. And this got a ton of attention online, one because
31:53
of the reaction from the CNN anchor woman, but mostly because you have a
31:59
congress person and who is not a raving lunatic theorizing on CNN that this assassination
32:07
attempt against Donald Trump could have been a setup. That is a remarkable thing,
32:15
and you know, in my view, was irresponsible on the part of
32:19
Corey Mills. You can and this is a very very fine line. This
32:23
is a very very fine line, but I think it's a line that Mills
32:28
should have been able to walk, which is, Look, there are a
32:31
lot of questions that need to be answered here, and if we don't answer
32:36
them, they're going to be a lot of people to come to conclusions that
32:39
seem at this point to be erroneous. They are going to be people who
32:43
come to the conclusion that our government had something to do with us, and
32:45
that is not healthy for our democracy. That is a message that makes sense.
32:52
I think that's a message that's productive. But I don't think that's what
32:57
Mills did. And I'm not going to play the clip because it's too long
33:00
and it gets convoluted and confused. You can find it yourself on social media.
33:06
But I think I'm fairly describing it and accurately describing it. But Mills
33:12
goes, in my opinion, too far by saying that it at least created
33:17
any impression that he thinks this could have been a setup, meaning if you
33:23
think about this logically, that the government may have been behind this, or
33:28
played a role in this, or purposely allowed it to happen, which if
33:30
any of that is remotely true, which I don't believe it is, that
33:37
would be a massive, massive problem. And as I've been saying since day
33:43
one of this situation, if there was any credible evidence at all that the
33:50
government had anything to do with this, that this was an inside job,
33:53
that this was a setup, you can't get out of the batter's box.
33:59
And I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face, because there's
34:01
no way to get around this if you cannot get out of the batter's box
34:06
on this theory, unless and until Donald Trump himself, who believes everything's a
34:12
conspiracy against him, who believes that there's a deep state against him, who
34:16
believes that there was an entire presidential election rigged against him, Unless and until
34:22
Donald Trump himself gives an indication that he thinks this might have been part of
34:27
a setup or a government plot against him, which he is not in any
34:30
way, shape or form even remotely done. Unless and until that happens,
34:35
I'm sorry, you cannot get out of the batter's box without a massive factual
34:40
record to justify that accusation. And the second part of my two tiered attack
34:49
against the conspiracies is Okay, yeah, this whole thing is weird. This
34:54
whole thing happened in a way that should never have been allowed to occur.
34:59
We know very li about the shooter, but are you telling me that the
35:04
government put this entire plot in the hands of a twenty year old with no
35:10
experience, who was not a good shooter, with no you know, nothing
35:19
that's remotely close to a profile that would have indicated that this is a person
35:24
that could be chosen for such a mission. Really, I mean, that's
35:30
always been one of the biggest problems with the jfk assassination theory, that the
35:35
CIA killed Kennedy by using Oswald. I mean, and it's why I go
35:39
to a great lens to try to show that Oswald was the loan shooter,
35:44
because if Oswald's the loan shooter, you can't make any sensible argument this is
35:49
the guy that the CIA or the government would have chosen. Well, this
35:52
guy was even more nonsensical than Oswald, younger than Oswald, less experience than
35:59
I what Oswald was at least a marie. This guy was Oswell was a
36:05
marksman in the Marine Corps. This guy had no experience at all in and
36:08
it is got kicked out of his own gun club. So it makes absolutely
36:13
no sense whatsoever. So unless and until we find out something anything about the
36:19
shooter that is consistent with the idea that they could be part of a larger
36:24
plot, and unless th until Trump indicates that he thinks that there's something the
36:30
farious or more nefarious than just incompetence going on here, I'm sorry, you
36:35
cannot get out of the batter's box on this. You just can't. But
36:39
that doesn't mean that millions and millions of people don't think they've already basically reached
36:45
home plate, gone through the basis. They think they've hit a home run
36:50
here, and that's never going to change because at this point, it doesn't
36:53
look like we're going to get it enough information to be able to quell the
36:58
conspiracy theory. And that's very, very frustrating. And basically what we've seen
37:04
here is the JFK assassination theories on steroids sped up ten thousand times. It
37:13
took a long time. Obviously, after Ruby killed Oswald, that's when the
37:16
conspiracy theories really started to get some traction, but in the mainstream because there
37:22
was no social media back then. In the mainstream, it took quite a
37:27
long time before there were any sort of remotely you know, public conspiracy theories
37:35
surrounding the assassination of JFK. Now we live in an instant information age,
37:42
and social media is gasoline on conspiracy fires, and we're seeing it play out
37:47
in real time. When it comes to the reaction to the assassination attempt against
37:52
Donald Trump, I will say that it's noteworthy that Eric Trump went on Fox
37:58
News Channel with j See Waters last night from the Republican Convention and ripped into
38:06
the Secret Service in competence and specifically the head of the Secret Service, Kim
38:12
Cheadle, and I found out to be a little bit surprising and significant because
38:17
obviously Eric Trump is going to be seen as representing the views of Donald Trump,
38:23
or at least a view that Donald Trump is not objecting to being voiced
38:30
into the public, you know, on Fox News Channel in primetime from the
38:35
Republican Convention. And you know, obviously Trump, I'm sure has a lot
38:39
of personal affinity for the Secret Service detail that he deals with on a regular
38:45
basis and those that were trying to save his life on that day. And
38:50
so I was wondering, Okay, from the Trump team, what's going to
38:53
be the stance on this, and Eric Trump made it very very clear that
38:59
they are are not, at least those around Trump are not going to allow
39:04
this issue of incompetence to fall and fade away into the to the ether and
39:10
never be talked about again. However, Eric Trump made no implication whatsoever that
39:19
this could have been something more nefarious than that that this could have been some
39:23
sort of a plot, a setup, a conspiracy. Nothing even close to
39:29
that ever left Eric Trump's lips, and so I found that to be significant
39:34
on a couple of different levels. There are two other things that I want
39:37
to talk about before I get under the other news of the day that I
39:40
forgot to mention in the last episode of the podcast, related to the original
39:47
reaction to what happened at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. If you
39:53
listen to episode one seventy two, you know that I was somewhat defensive of
40:00
what has been mocked as with regard to the very earliest media reports of what
40:07
transpired. And the reason why I did that was because, look, there
40:10
was a lot of confusion early on. There was no knowledge of a shooter.
40:15
If you don't know you have a shooter that's been taken out, and
40:19
you should have that information instantaneously, then there's an open question as to whether
40:23
or not there was even a shooting, right. I mean, it's just
40:27
to me, it's very logical if there's a shooting of a presidential candidate in
40:31
that setting, there's a zero chance in this day and age, of that
40:36
person getting away without there being a ton of evidence that they exist, and
40:44
you know, the most likely scenario is they're either going to be apprehended and
40:46
or killed. All right, and we now know that that's what happened.
40:51
Well, for the first forty minutes or so, there was no report whatsoever
40:54
is to what happened to the shooter, which I'm still baffled by since obviously
40:59
the shoot was killed instantaneously and you've got tons of media, tons of people
41:04
there, tons of law enforcement, secret service, and that somehow never got
41:08
reported at least until forty minutes later. And because they did not have knowledge
41:15
of a shooter, then there was at least some question as to whether or
41:19
not there was a shooting, because there were other things that could have theoretically
41:23
caused Trump to get a cut on his ear. Now, in retrospect,
41:29
that all seems silly and absurd, But I understand the media being conservative in
41:36
their original reports because you don't want to get something wrong here, and so
41:42
that's the nature of modern breaking news. They have to be instantaneous, and
41:45
instantaneous reports in the fog of war are always going to be wrong. So
41:50
I actually applaud the media for being much more conservative when it comes to making
41:57
sure what we know and what we don't know. I should have met in
42:00
that context. The last time there was an assassination attempt on an American president
42:06
was Ronald Reagan, and in that circumstance, ABC News infamously reported that Press
42:13
Secretary James Brady had been killed. Frank Reynolds famously had a temper tantrum on
42:22
the air when he had to retract that report, slamming his fist I think
42:27
into the phone or at least into his desk, saying something to the effect
42:30
of let's nail this thing down. I mean, it was a very very
42:35
dramatic moment. But they had had reported that James Brady was dead. Well,
42:40
that didn't happen. James Brady was in fact hitting ahead and very very
42:45
badly injured. But he did survive that and lived for many years afterwards.
42:51
So you know, you don't want to do that. It's very easy to
42:54
report things that are not true, and you know that was me something you
43:00
want to avoid. And so I don't have a problem with those very early
43:05
reports, except for that CNN report with indicator that Trump fell down and was
43:09
taken away and that you know, that was a headline that deserved to be
43:14
mocked on CNN, and so I'm you know, I'm perfectly fine with that.
43:20
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