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Thank you for being with us here on the Monday edition of Balance of Power. A new weekend hand and we're live from Washington here on Bloomberg Radio, on the satellite radio, and on YouTube, where you can find us every day. And I know that you are finding us there. This is something pretty cool that we have going from Washington to New York. Live streams from our studios. Find
us on YouTube search Bloomberg Business News Live. We've got a lot to talk about here, a lot to talk about after a wild weekend on the campaign trail, certainly
on the golf course. And we have heard from Donald Trump this morning in an interview with Fox News Digital, the first comment from the former president since what is now being billed as a second attempted assassination attempt knowing the suspect, from what we understand from authorities, did not even fire his weapon, but was apparently getting to be in a position to do so, Donald Trump telling Fox News Digital quote, he accused gunman believed the rhetoric of
Biden and Harris, and he acted on it. Unquote. He wanted to say, their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country, both from the inside and out. He went on to say, they use highly inflammatory language. I can use it too, far better than they can, but I don't unquote. We heard from Joe Biden, of course,
the president that Donald Trump is talking about. He spoke with reporters in the driveway on his way out of the White House earlier. Let's listen with one thing.
I want to make clear. The Service needs more help, and I think that Congress should respond to their needs if they fact need more services. So that's what we're going to be talking about.
More personnel. They need more money.
What kind of helps me?
And I think they need some more person I think they may need. They made their deciding whether they need more personnel or not.
We'll see what the Secret Service needs. As Donald Trump today plans to meet with the acting Director of the Secret Service, and there is news that Joe Biden has directed his team. This is, according to a statement from the White House to continue to quote ensure that Secret Service has every resource, capability and protective measure necessary unquote
to ensure Donald Trump's safety. That's according to a statement from the President, knowing the trouble with which the Secret Service has had securing golf courses for Donald Trump, knowing as well that he does not get the same level of security protection that the sitting president of the United States gets. And this is where we start our conversation with Laura Davison, who had a working weekend Bloomberg Politics
editor pulled out of a Sunday slumber. I'm guessing, Laura, once again, with news like this at just the news cycle, if you can speak to this broadly that Americans have had to endure going back two months from Butler, Pennsylvania to now having spent the weekend talking about Springfield, Ohio and the madness the rhetoric is really something to consider here, Laura, What should voters do with this information? Does it actually impact the race itself?
I mean, I think that the broad takeaway here is that this race has been so calamitous, so disruptive. So you know, I hate to use the word, but unprecedented, and just all of the different inflection points there have been, just you know, going back to mid July when the first assassination attempt occurred. You know what's really interesting is how much this is now just becoming a political event versus a security event, versus you know, sort of viewed
as a tragedy. We saw this with the first assassination attempt. There was a couple days of morning reflection thinking about, you know, what does all this mean? But then it would quickly pivoted to Biden dropping out of the race. You know, in this situation because you know, the gunman didn't even get a chance to fire his weapon. You know,
it quickly became a political event. You saw both Democrats and Trump himself in his comments, both sides are you know, continuing with fundraising, continuing with sort of this heated rhetoric, you know, at each other.
Right the the statements from Donald Trump that I just brought to our viewers and listeners here from Fox News Digital. If he is going to be blaming Donald Trump or Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for this, this campaign is about to take on a whole new course, isn't it.
Yes, I mean this is you know, you kind of really see that the knives are out, you know, and that you know, after the first assassination at temp we saw Democrats pull their ads from the airwaves. We saw and you and you hear you know, both Harris and Biden and their statements saying, look, there is no room for political violence. But Trump is turning up the heat a little bit saying, look, I can be inflammatory too.
I'm not you know, that's not really true. Trump is you know, had multiple occasions of using inflammatory language, you know, most recently at the debate just last week.
Even at that debate, he did suggest that it was democratic rhetoric that led to the first shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. You might have seen the tweet from Elon Musk. I don't know your thoughts on this, Laura, but this has been since deleted. Elon Musk posting on his own platform X quote and no one is even trying to assassinate Biden and Kamala with an emoji of someone thinking here a thought balloon. What does this do to the national rhetoric around this campaign?
It doesn't turn it down, that's for sure. And you saw, you know, the White House respond to this statement. You know, there is a sort of a clear, uh you know, sort of concern that's building, you know, all around it. You know, what does political violence look like? You know, in twenty twenty four, you know, we've already seen two examples of this, and you know clearly this also raches questions about you know, Trump's protection himself. But there is
a lot of concern going into election day. After election day, you know that there will be more violence, which is a really, really scary thought.
It really is. We're not going to talk about this all day today, but obviously this is a major story and one that we're covering here from a hard news standpoint. Gun charges have been filed against this individual, and will of course let you know as we learn more. We'll get into it with our panel later. But I wanted to just start with Laura here on this and I appreciate your work and help on this matter. Laura. It's great to see you. Thank you for being with us.
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Remember it was nine weeks ago yesterday that Joe and I were in Milwaukee in the aftermath of the first attempted assassination against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, when, of course he actually was shot and the assailant was killed. Then yesterday on a golf course in Florida, just over nine weeks later, with a different opponent now Kamala Harris
running against Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden. Because yes, that much has changed in such a short period of time, there was a threat against Donald Trump's life again, although he escaped unscathed and the suspect was apprehended. It raises the same questions, though, how is it possible that the former president and Republican nominee to be president once more had a gunman within just a few hundred yards away from him? And the Secret Service, of course, is in
the spotlight here. Even President Biden today, when addressing this event, said they need more resources.
With one thing, I want to make clear, the Service needs more help, and I think that Congress should respond to their needs if they fact need more service. So I to what we're going to be talking about, the.
More personality, need more money, what kind of helped me?
I think Green needs some more person I think they made their deciding whether they need more personnel.
Or not, either money or personnel. Maybe it's both, Kayley. That's one of the big questions coming off of this second event, what resources the Secret Service needs to protect Donald Trump? Knowing that a golf course can be a very difficult setting to do this job to begin with, but also following word from Joe Biden that he would make every resource available, as he said, resource capability and
protective measure necessary to ensure Donald Trump's safety. It's where we start our conversation with Brian Gant, Assistant Professor of cybersecurity at Maryville University and importantly a former member of the Secret Service who helped to provide protection for Presidents Obama and Clinton. Brian, welcome back to Bloomberg. It's great
to see you here. Donald Trump was very quick to acknowledge the success the Secret Service had in foiling what they are calling a possible attempt to assassination but of course he still got within three to five hundred yards of the former president. Was this a success or a failure for the Secret Service?
Thanks for having me first of all, and I would say anytime you know you can walk away, you know, with your health and your safety, I view it as a success. Are there things to learn from it? I'm sure the investigation will will yield that out. But you know, absolutely as a president Joe Biden mentioned, you know resources, and this is something that I've harped on in previous interviews as well. The Secret Service is a relatively small agency in terms of agents, I believe maybe three thousand
or so worldwide. And so when you think of the mission that you have and you think of protecting sites like the first assassination attempt or sites like the golf course, these types of sites all have a lot of different areas where you can have a shooter's nests, as you say on this particular case, areas of egress and ingress. And so you have to make sure that you have the appropriate resources to provide that three sixty coverage around the sites that you saw yesterday.
But what scaling up of resources would actually provide coverage for say an eighteen whole open air golf course. Realistically, I just wonder if there is enough staff in personnel in the world to make this a completely fool proof scenario for the former president, who of course golfs a lot.
Yeah, nothing is full proof, but I think the sheriff mentioned this before in his press conference. He talked about how he felt his own or he knows that if the former president Trump doesn't have or he's not a sitting president, right, and so he doesn't have the the the cadre of resources that you might see Joe Biden have, and even with his threat level being high, you know he still doesn't. Everyone knows from the president in town. You see the big motor k, you see the number
of local resources, state and federal police. I'm not saying that it has to be to that degree, right, but there has to be some some middle ground. And with that middle ground there there's a lot of resources from the local and state level that are involved with that three sixty coverage. You're tapping into the county departments, the
sheriff's apartments, the local pds. You're asking for mark units to be at a different areas so you can kind of deter someone who could possibly hide in the bushes. But that takes a lot of resources, that takes a lot of financial responsibility, and it takes a lot of planning logistically, and I think that's kind of where we are in terms of copycatter artists and things of that nature that we see kind of coming up the woodworks.
Donald Trump today is blaming rhetoric from Democrats for what happened here. Brian, that's I realized something that you can't comment on because it's pretty difficult to connect the dots directly to an attack like this. But he's also suggested since the attack in Butler that President Biden has essentially slow walked this issue, that he hasn't been given the
resources that he needs despite requests. Can you just speak to the way the service works, how a request would be honored like that, and following what we saw in Butler, why he didn't have additional security.
You know, there are a lot of layers that go into getting different resources, and a lot of those layers, ironically, you know, fall on some of White House staff as well. You know, at the end of the day, President from President Trump is conducting the campaign and there's often a kind of a tug of war, if you will, between staff and security. You know, if the Secret Service had their way, President Trump wouldn't go into any open air areas.
He would always be in hard areas. He wouldn't do any rope lines, wouldn't do the things that as a security professional, you know, put him in danger. But staff, and understandably so, they want him to be seen. They
want him to be a man of the people. They want him to reach out and shake hands, and so you know that tug of war is a real thing, and so there may have to be a little bit more on the security side in terms of those negotiations as you go from site to site and stop to stop in the rest of his campaign.
Well, Brian, it's not just the slow walking allegations that Donald Trump is making about President Biden, but also rhetoric that he says both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been using that he said this particular would be shooter believed in that this is the reason for the attempts on his life, especially given your focus now
on cybersecurity. To what extent should we be factoring rhetoric into this and the kind of theories that can be propagated propagated online through social media, and how hard that could be if you're the Secret Service or another charge with protecting a candidate or former president to filter through when there's so much of it out there.
You know, this is where I think interagency plays a critical role. You know, I spent five of my federal government years with the FBI as an intel analysts before I became a Secret Service agent and combing you know, those sites, looking at looking for the rhetoric, you know, whether it be homegrown militias or international aspects. They enter agency communication and uh that that communication filtering to agents on the ground, agents on the shift, professional staff within
the organization, providing great intelligence, real time threat intelligence. I think will be very very important moving forward in terms of you know, conjecture or the walk in the back of whether or not President Biden is offering in those resources. I think the Service is focused and rightly so, on the facts that hand, and hopefully the different layers of government, hopefully they can get through some of this red tape and provide those agents on the ground with what they need.
Mister Khan, it's great to have you back, Assistant Professor of cyber Security, Maryville University of former Secret Service member Brian. Thank you for being with us again here on Bloomberg. We did not anticipate having a reason like this to call you again so quickly.
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I'm Joe Matthew alongside Kaylee Lions as we try to pick up the pieces and not only understand what happened yesterday, but where this investigation is headed, speaking to many of the issues we just discussed with Brian Gant Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw in a news briefing yesterday.
Let's listen, golf course is surrounded by shrubbery, so when somebody gets into the shrubbery, they're pretty much out of sight, all right. And at this level that he is at right now, he's not the sitting president. If he was, we would have had this hire golf course around it.
Well.
Because he's not. The security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible. The Secret Service did exactly what they should have done. They provided exactly what the protection should have been, and their agent did a fantastic job.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw and if you're joining us on Bloomberg Television or on YouTube, he saw standing just behind him in that news conference. Our next guest, Dave Arenberg, who is the Palm Beach County State Attorney, is joining us here on Bloomberg TV and radio. Dave, It's always good to have you, even despite circumstances like this.
We understand now that the would be assailant has been charged after appearing in federal court today with possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon, as well as possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. But are more charges possible here?
You know it's possible because these charges saw on. The firearm charges are the lowest hanging fruit in that I think they're the easiest to prove. You don't need to show intent. You just have to show that he's an ex fellon check and that he was in possession of a firearm. Check also for the second charge of obliterating the serial number. I mean it is what it is.
Those are good charges. They can catch up to ten years in prison per charge, and they'll keep him in lockdown in jail pending trial because the beds are making the argument to the magistrate that this guy is a threat to the community, is a danger, and so he's not going to get out before trial. And I do expect that there may be other charges forth coming, perhaps aggravated assault with a firearm against a federal law enforcement officer. According to reports, he pointed his ar Ak forty seven
style rifle at a Secret Service agent. That'll catch you up to twenty years if they decide to pursue that charge.
Wow, we heard from your governor, Ron DeSantis, who says, quote, we're going to do a state level investigation. Asked in a news conference a short time ago by reporters this morning, he says, quote, we do believe there were multiple violations of state law. Dave, what's the governor talking about in terms of a state run investigation, knowing the FBI is already at this how will it work? Well?
He knows how to capture headlines. I think he's referring to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement under his control, which is a very professional law enforcement agency. And I guess they're going to be doing a separate investigation that's in addition to the investigation by the Secret Service, and in addition to the investigation by Congress, by partisan investigation that incorporates the first attempted assassination. So this is just
yet another layer of investigations. And I'm sure you know it'll be a popular move in.
And does that make a case like this inherently more complicated if you have so many different players seeking similar answers, Dave? Or is it actually helpful to have state and federal and congressional officials all involved?
Well, Kayley, the investigation by DeSantis and by Congress is not as to whom shot or fired the gun. It's how did it get to that point, what breakdowns occurred within the Secret Service. They're trying to fix the issues within Secret Service, and that's why the Feds are better equip that then the state. Now, to my knowledge, DeSantis is not duplicating the federal investigation of this particular crime because there's not gonna be state charges here. This is
a federal case where there will be federal charges. So I think what Governor's stantus is talking about is to investigate how someone was able to breach the shrubbery the property of mar Lago without secrets, excuse me, the golf club without Secret Service knowing about it. So you know, some would call that political, others would call it smart politics. Whatever it is, I don't think it's necessarily important right now.
I think the most important thing is to fix the problems within the Secret Service and to also make sure you've got the right charges against this guy so he's held accountable to the full concent of the law.
Dave, how would this man? How would any American go about acquiring an AK forty seven, a foreign made semi automatic weapon, Joe.
With all the talk about we need more money for Secret Service to guard the president and the former president, with all the talk about the heated rhetoric in our political culture, why are we talking about the easy access to guns, especially weapons of war semi automatic weapons that are used in mass shootings. Perhaps it's a little too easy for a guy with a lengthy felony rap sheet to get access to this a K forty seven style rifle. Maybe we should discuss that but it doesn't seem like
the politicians want to have that conversation. They'd rather talk about the fact that Democrats are using overheated language and Trump's using overheated language.
Yeah.
Okay, well there's some of that on both sides. But if we're not going to talk about easy access to guns, then I think you're not really dealing with the problem.
Dave, just to have an understanding. Given one of the crimes he was charged with as possessing a firearm despite being a felon, it was illegal for him to have this weapon, right, This was this was not something obtained legally. He could have owned guns legally. As my understanding, that's correct.
But the fact is you see these weapons still on the streets so easily accessible. He used to have a assault weapons ban in this country, and I know that assault weapons ban was not perfect, but the fact is it made it harder to get access to these weapons. We won't even have that. I mean, it's like bare minimum. You don't even want to try at the federal level to make it harder to get access to these weapons
of war. So, yes, we're going to prosecute him after the fact for being a fellon in possession of an AK forty seven style rifle. But why was he able to get such easy access to this weapon to begin with? And until we talk about the easily accessiful weapons like in this case, like the case where the young man in Georgia got access to a similar weapon and then shot up a school, you know, then we're really doing a disservice because you're not dealing with a full problem.
I Meanwhile, we'll do these grandstanding investigations of how the guy got past secret service. Okay, that's fine, but you need to talk about the guns or else you're not talking about the whole problem.
As we spent time with Dave Ehrenberg, Palm Beach County State Attorney, can you bring us in the room for a moment yesterday, Dave, we just showed our viewers and listeners a snippet of the sheriff talking. And what was I'm sure a very stressful moment for law enforcement in Florida yesterday. What was it like behind the scenes. How did the sheriff do?
Sheriff was great, and he really led the coordinated effort among local, state, and federal officials. It was like you would imagine it. There were no turf wars. We met beforehand around a table and discuss who would go first, and we at the state level, we're going to go first with a motion for pre trial detention so this guy would not slip through the cracks and be released. We were going to go first with the warrants to
arrest him for state crimes. And then after the press conference, the federal officials told me that they had decided to move forward with charges, and so we then stood down. And that's the way it should be. There was no turf war. We are happy to defer to the Feds. They're the right agencies to deal with this. And so we've been working really well together. And there is a press conference again today at four pm. I won't be at this one, but it will be with the sheriff
and federal officials. That's a type of cooperation you want to see.
And finally, Dave, considering the investigations into the first attempt on Trump's life back in July are still ongoing. There's so many questions still unanswered, how quickly at least in terms of the legal aspect and the actual prosecution of the suspect in question. Do you expect this process will play out.
Well as compared to the first one. You have a live suspect and we want to know exactly what motivated him. It's important to notice we're gonna look thoroughly through his social media, through all his statements, all his posts, and what we're seeing right now is a guy who has a screw lowse who is very zealous about the war in Ukraine, and he's on the right side of that one, thinking that the Ukrainians are the good guys and the
Russians are the bad guys. In this one, yes, I would agree, but he seems to take everything a step too far. He's out there trying to recruit Afghanis to fight in the war, and he's so upset about what's happening that he's going to get a semi automatic weapon and try, apparently to assassinate a former president. He's lost his sense of morality. If able to see the good in Ukrainians and the bad in Putin, but unable to see how evil his alleged act would have been to
try to kill or President Trump. So yeah, clearly he's not all there. But then again, normal people don't try to commit crimes like this.
Dave we're out of time, but I have to ask you about something that just emerged from court earlier. This court filing about this individual finds that he apparently was camped out waiting for Donald Trump to appear for more than eleven hours, that he was in that so called shooter's nest that Brian Gant referred to for eleven hours according to cell phone location data obtained by the FBI. Does that in any way change the contours of this case in the way you're looking at it.
No, this has always been an investigation of an attempted assassination of the former president. The fact that he hid for eleven hours does help us understand how he got by Secret Service, which all over at mar A Lago. But it is a little too easy to sneak through the bushes and to look through that fence. But fortunately the Secret Service saw him before he could do anything, and the Secret Service so the only ones according to
my information, that fired shots. After shots were fired against him, he then ran and fled. But it does show you the lengths people will go to try to do bad things.
It's great to see you, David. I appreciate your joining us. I know that this is a very busy and wild moment for your office down there. Dave Arenberg, Palm Beach County State Attorney. We got it from the source there, Kaylee. Really interesting and important conversation with new information here from Dave who was in the middle of all that yesterday.
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Thirty Live in Washington, where, of course we are all still grappling with the aftermath of another attempt on Donald Trump's life yesterday, this of course the second in the span of just a few months. But in the aftermath, the language around it is a little bit different. Remember and the eve of the RNC when Donald Trump had just been shot in the ear, he talked about unity and it being a moment to bring the country together. What we're hearing instead from the former president this time
around is about rhetoric from his opponents. This just posted on his true social within the last hour. The rhetoric lies, as exemplified by the false statements made by Comrade Kamala Harris during the rigged and highly partisan ABC debate, goes on, has taken politics in our country to a whole new level of hatred, abuse, and distrust. Donald Trump says, this is a quote because of this communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying and it will only get worse.
Joe, Yeah, that post goes on quite a bit longer in all caps, talking about the border, but that's consistent with what Donald Trump said early to Fox News Digital. He said the accused gunman quote, believe the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it, going further to say, they use highly inflammatory language. I can use it too, far better than they can, but I don't. And it does feel a bit different than when we
showed up in Milwaukee a day after the first attempt. Kaylee, I think to your point, when there was a call free unity and a presumption that Donald Trump would be a changed man.
Yeah, So let's play this to our political panel now. Rick Davis Stone Court Capital Partner, and Jeanie Shanzino, Senior Democracy Fellow with the Center for the Study of the
presidency in Congress are both joining us. Now, Rick, if I could come to you first, is this is not just former President Trump saying this having just had his life threatened once again, but Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is trying to win an election against Kamala Harris, is this kind of blame casting helping him do that in the aftermath and event of an event like this.
I think this is what his base would expect from him. You know, he you know, levels grievances on a daily basis that are targeted to everything issues related to the border, the economy, and personal slights about his crowds. I mean, you name it. He doesn't really discern between what is a priority issue to voters and what is a priority issue.
To Donald Trump.
And so he's just feeding the beast. I think, you know, he has to declare this country a broken model for his model to be implemented. And so, you know, it's it's all part of this overall cast of the United States is in decay.
It's unruly, it's.
Lawless, and and so I think it fits into his narrative. It's just his narrative is a very dark and and and determined narrative to you know, basically broadcast the kind of chaos that he would like to solve for the American public.
Well, I'll tell you it was not just the rhetoric that was different after the first attempt here, Genie. The polls were too. The reaction was significant. There was empathy for the former president. People seemed to look at him a bit differently. As I just mentioned, we were told that he was a changed man. And I wonder now that we've seen this entire race up ended and there's been so much rhetoric under the bridge since the RNC, if there is any impact politically speaking on the horse race.
Yeah, it's really hard to tell. I mean, what we do know is to your earlier point, the rhetoric has shifted very very quickly this time from concerns and empathy to the political realm. And we've seen that on both sides, not just from the former president. So it's hard to tell if it will have this impact. There's also another factor, as Kaylee was mentioning, last time he came within hours to the RNC and had a hero's welcome. He doesn't
have that. Although he is going to be back on the campaign trail this week, I understand tomorrow, so you know, we'll see if that shifts anything. And if I could just go back to your interviews, which were excellent. I thought it was so interesting to hear about that eleven or twelve hours that this shooter sat there. And this raises so many questions about the Secret Service. And again we were supposed to get the report on Butler today,
which even Democrats like Blumenthal said would shock us. So to the President's earlier point and to so much of the discussion, we really need to take a look at
the Secret Service. They may be underfunded, they may need more personnel, but something has got a shift when you have these two attempts within just a few weeks, and you have an attempted assassin sitting for eleven hours on the side of the president's golf course within what four or five hundred feet yards, rather, it's shocking to think that could have happened again.
Well, and of course it has resulted already in a change of Secret Service leadership. The first attempt, that is, Kimberley Cheatle resigned in the aftermath. We have an acting director now in Robert Rowe, who I guess as a result of this may or may not ever be in a formal directing capacity. That's a question we'll have to await the answer to. If we could just go Genie back to this whole notion Donald Trump is putting out
there about rhetoric. It's specifically him talking about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris casting him as a threat to democracy, and people taking that threat potentially literally, is a threat that needs to be eliminated. Will this need to change the way in which Kamala Harris talks about her opponent on the campaign trail because she hasn't been hitting that democracy lined as heavily as Joe Biden was when he was the nominee.
That's right, that's been one of the changes since Kamala Harris came on board. That was Joe Biden's mantra, Donald threat is a Trump to a Trump, a threat to democracy. Kamala Harris has not gone in that direction. I don't
think we'll see a change in her rhetoric. And to your point, when you find your opponent as a threat to the existence of the country, to the existence of democracy, and both sides have done this, you can't be surprised if somebody who is unhinged, as Dave Ehrenberg described, this assassin potentially unhinged acts on that rhetoric, and that's why leadership matters, and Donald Trump should not be speaking the way he is this morning, and the Democrats have to
tone it down and we have to demand better from our leaders. I'm not convinced we will see that because to Rick's point, this has been happening for a long time on Trump's side in the Democrat side, but that leadership does matter, and we are much in need of leadership which takes the rhetoric and the impact of it seriously.
Kayleie mentions the acting director of the Secret Service, we can tell you that he has arrived in Palm Beach and is expected to be meeting with Donald Trump today. If that hasn't happened already, Rick, we heard from the Speaker of the House, Joe Biden, suggesting earth that the Secret Service needs additional resources and needs Congress to act. He said, I think Congress should respond to their need.
Mike Johnson on Fox News says he will demand that Donald Trump have every asset available, but he argues with the issue of funding. Quote, President Trump needs the most coverage of anyone, he said, he's the most attacked, He's the most threatened. But shocking it up to an issue of manpower allocation is the idea that the speaker is
arguing with this being a funding problem. As someone Rick who has worked directly with the Secret Service in managing a presidential campaign, can you speak to that argument here funding versus manpower.
Yeah, it's not like there are a bunch of very well trained members of the Secret Service sitting around waiting to be deployed for additional service to presidential candidates. And in this case Donald Trump, they come with a lot of equipment, both kinetic, you know, military style weapons, communication gear, transportation. I mean, it's an amazing accomplishment to have built out
our security services the way we have. So when you talk about, you know, bolstering that to a significant degree, you're talking about reassigning people from all over the country into revolving groups of three different teams that cover the president twenty four hours a day. And so it is not an insignificant resource drain, and that comes with added financial burden, and so you have to then start making decisions as to whether you are going to then take
people off of current protectees. Remember there's an Iranian dust squads operating in the United States trying to kill public officials, both in the current and previous administrations. I mean, you know, this is not a country that sticks its snack out without taking a risk. And so yeah, I would think it wouldn't be a political issue. You want more money to protect President Trump, you got it. How much you need, We'll put it in the continuing resolution and you know,
get that done next week. I just don't understand why this has got to be a partisan issue. Frankly, I would love to see Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris have a press conference and say, you know what we got to do. We got to tone down the political rhetoric. We've got to try and you know, calm the public because this kind of political violence is not healthy for our democracy or for our candidates, and it's
got to stop now. I mean, I would think that would go farther than anything else imaginable when it comes to trying to protect the lives of our political leaders.
All Right, Rick Davis and Jeanie Shansay know our signature political panel, thank you so much, And of course, show within the last twenty four hours. We have seen partisan condemnation of political violence, that's for sure, and plenty from both sides of the isle in Congress. It's just a matter when they return tomorrow how quickly they might address it.
And what form that's true. We're going to have a conversation as well about organized labor coming up, an important meeting for Kamala Harris today. It's coming up next. This is Bloomberg.
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I'm Kaylee Liones alongside Joe Matthew here in Washington, where we of course are following a presidential race that has had many twists and turns, another presenting itself just yesterday with the attempted assassination again of Donald Trump. He of course came out of that unscathed and the suspect has been charged with federal gun crimes. But against that backdrop,
the presidential campaign continues. Donald Trump himself will make a number of campaign stops this week, and Kamala Harris is doing campaigning of her own today in some sense, as she is participating in a meeting with the Teamsters Union, of course, helmed by Sean O'Brien, who spoke at the RNC in Milwaukee and to this point has withheld an
endorsement from the union for either candidate. Of course, after speaking at the RNC, he has since dubbed Donald Trump and his idea around laying off workers as economic terrorism. But that doesn't mean that he's speaking in favor of Harris yet to this point.
Yeah, that followed the interview with Elon Musk remember on Twitter spaces, in which he credited Elon with being the greatest cutter of all time, and they kind of laughed at the idea of firing workers who were interested in organizing. So the conversation changed a lot since Milwaukee, but they still haven't met. And there was an important line that
the head of the Teamsters Union brought on CBS. He said he has not endorsed Kamala Harris yet because quote, you don't hire someone unless you give them an interview. The interview is happening today, Kayle and were joined by somebody who knows a little bit about this. Seth Harris a frequent voice on this program when it comes to matters involving labor. He's senior Fellow at the Burn Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, former top labor advisor
to Joe Biden, in fact, former Deputy Secretary of Labor. Seth, It's great to see you. Welcome back to Bloomberg. So we finally have the interview today, the Job Interview. Kamala Harris is sitting down with the head of the Teamsters Union. Will it end in an endorsement?
I think it will. She's actually going to meet with President O'Brien and some members of the executive board, but also there will be frank and file Teamsters involved in the meeting, and I think it'll end up an endorsement because the discussion will be about policy and on labor policy. There is simply no question that Vice President Harris has built a record that is far better for the Teamsters Union than President Trump's record. President Trump pretty aggressively anti
union when he was president. Vice President Harris cast the deciding vote that assured that tens of thousands of Teamsters retirees would have their pensions secured strong supporter of collective bargaining and worker organizing. The Biden administration, Biden Harris administration appointments to the NLRB and to the Labor Department have made a tremendous difference in Teamster organizing and Teamster collective bargaining.
And one of the biggest issues for the Teamsters is what should be done when employers misclassify workers as independent contractors and therefore deprived them of the minimum wage and collective bargaining rights and organizing rights. Vice President Harris has been very, very strong on that issue, dating back to her time as an attorney general. President Trump's administration made
it a lot easier for employers to misclassify workers. So if that's where the conversation lies, I expect the Teamsters will endorse Vice President Harris.
But if steth all of that is true raises the question of why such an endorsement hasn't happened already. If she is so obviously pro labor as you describe her, the fact that it has yet to happen and may happen after this meeting, does that suggest there's going to be an ask from the union. Do you expect they're going to want something specific from a Harris administration.
I don't think it'll be a quid pro quo kind of meeting. I take President O'Brien at his word that what matters to him is allowing his members and the leaders of the union alongside him to hear the views of the candidates for president up close and personal, to be able to ask them pointed questions about their what their presidency would mean for the Teamsters Union. I think that's a reasonable thing to expect. It's you know, the Teamsters have said all along that they're going to wait
until after the conventions to make their endorsement. I think this will be the last step.
Okay, that said, one point three million members. That's a serious ground game if you activate them, regardless of the campaign, regardless the endorsement seth How do the Teamsters use one point three million members to get someone elected.
Well, they give a lot of money, They give a lot of elbow grease, they give a lot of shoe leather. They will campaign among their members, because I think that some of their members are still almost certainly undecided in
this race. They will mobilize their members who are for vice president Harris to get out to vote, but they'll also communicate with Teamster family members, with Teamster community members, and I think that they will get out and support the campaign very aggressively with volunteer hours and with telephone calls and with door to door canvas, saying Teamsters can be a very very effective union, and they have significant prominence in a lot of the critical swing states that
are going to decide this election. Remember there's a UPS driver almost everywhere in America, and those folks are Teamsters.
Well, and we remember well last year's negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS as well. That was one of the prominent periods of labor strife, if you will, that we were paying attention to, followed of course by the actors and writers in Hollywood, than the UAW strikes with the auto workers. And now we're dealing with a different situation seth it's Boeing with thirty three thousand workers having walked off the job in Seattle last week, something that could
hamper production. Boeing now saying it's going to freeze hiring to try to preserve cash during this period. Because this is a company that's actually on junk watch. It could lose its investment grade credit rating potentially as a result of this seth If you're the union trying to extract or exercise leverage against the company that arguably is in very precarious position, how much room do you really have when you don't want to actually risk these jobs just disappearing altogether.
Well, let's start by acknowledging that Boeing has been the company that has shot itself in the foot more than maybe any other in America. They have safety problems, they have law problems, they have debt problems, and this is a company that has had really serious challenges over the course of the last let's go back a decade. They could enter into a partnership with their union, and the union could help them to be much much more successful
at what they're doing. But they came to the table with an offer that frankly was an insult to the members of the Machinist's union. They represented their pay increases being twenty five percent, but then they took back an annual bonus of four percent, so the increase the pay increase would have only been about nine percent a year. These members have not had a pay increase over almost
a decade except for costs of living adjustments. I think that you have a lot of very very very angry machinists out in Washington State who have been cut out of the collective bargaining process for almost sixteen years for a whole bunch of reasons. A bunch of their work was shifted at out of Washington to a non union plant in South Carolina. They want to see significant progress in this collective bargaining agreement, and I think they're going
to continue to hold Boeing's feet to the fire. It's going to be up to management to figure out how to produce the resources that are needed.
Should Kamala Harris walk the picket line with these members the way Joe Biden did the UAW.
You know, I don't know if they've asked her to do that yet, but my guess is that if they invited her that she would come. She's walked picket lines before, and she is very very strongly supportive of workers getting a fair share of the profits that they produce. I think she would like to see workers' wages go up. The union here has demanded forty percent without the take back of the bonuses, So I think it's going to
be a very very interesting strike going forward. My hope is that it will be resolved quickly by the parties coming to the table and they their ability to reach a deal. But I have to be honest, I'm a little bit skeptical. I think, you know, you have new leadership at Boeing that has never seen anything like this before, and you have some very very angry machinists. Hopefully they'll get some of that anger out on the picket line and they'll be able to get to a deal.
All right, Well, we'll all be watching to see how this develops in the coming days and potentially weeks ahead. Seth meantime, this week, we're all really focused on one big event that comes on Wednesday. It's the great decision from the Federal Reserve. Yes, it's expected to be a cut.
The question is of what size, and this gets to the labor market in the position it is in very specifically, as you look at the concerns raised by a trio of senators in a letter to the Fed today, Elizabeth Warden, Warren Sheldon Whitehouse, and John Hickenlooper authoring a letter urging the Fed to cut by seventy five basis points on Wednesday, because they think if the FED is too cautious and cutting rates, it would quote needlessly risk our economy heading
towards a recession. Is that of you you share seth.
I would like to see the FED cut interest rates by at least fifty basis points. I think there is a justification for doing seventy five basis points. But the truth of the matter is the Fed has been extraordinarily cautious. They are very concerned about inflation, I think too concerned about it, and not concerned enough about jobs and the state of the labor market. We have seen some meaningful slippage in the labor market over the course of the
last year. We have seen the number of job openings decline. We've seen the number of workers quitting their jobs decline. We have not seen a big increase in layoffs because employers continue to hug their workers. They don't want to have to go out into the labor market and find new workers. But I think we need to juice growth in the economy and juice the labor market. So I think the Senator's position is certainly justifiable. I think it's unlikely that the FED is going to go quite that far.
I think fifty basis points is more likely, and I fear it could be twenty five basis would send a terrible signal both to workers and to Wall Street.
Well, that's interesting. If there's room for seventy five or justification for seventy five south, does that mean the FED was that late or things have deteriorated that much since July.
I think they are late. I think they are late to the game here. You know, we have seen slow, drip drip deterioration in the labor market for many months now. It didn't all happen over the summer, and there have been signals sent to the FED that the labor market was beginning to face trouble. Now, it's not a crisis, it's not the end of the world. We're not headed
towards a recession. But certainly the revisions that we have seen from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the number of jobs that have been created tell us that the labor market has been growing much much more slowly than we believe. The FED should have since that, they should have understood that from their beage book, and they should have acted much much sooner. I'm concerned that they're going to do too little and it might be too late.
Seth.
Finally, before we let you go, as we consider the dynamics in the labor market and the pace of job creation, I wonder if some of the policy proposals we've heard from former President Trump, specifically the notion of not taxing overtime hours worked if you're worried about the disruptive effect
that could have in the labor market. If you can make more or not be taxed on your overtime hours, does that actually encourage existing employees to work longer rather than another employee potentially filling those hours.
Well, that's the theory of overtime, is that if you make overtime more expensive, employers will hire additional workers instead of making their current workers work harder. It was all about trying to bring down the number of hours that current incumbent employees are working. Removing the income tax on overtime don't have any effect on employer behavior because the costs will be the same for employers. It's just that employees will do a little bit better. But that's not
the best solution for our economy. That workers should have to work really, really, really hard and then get a small marginal increase in their pay because we've gotten rid of income taxes on overtime. The better strategy is higher wages for workers across the board, a higher minimum wage, higher prevailing wages, higher wages through union organizing, and workers collectively bargaining for better wages. In that way, very tight labor markets that make labor a seller's commodity, not a
buyer's commodity. That is the way that we help the largest number of workers more. We want workers to balance their work life and their home life.
More.
Overtime is not the solution to that.
All right.
Seth Harris, Senior Fellow at the Burn Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, former top labor policy advisor to President Biden. Thank you so much.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast kens just live weekdays at noon Eastern on Applecarplay and then roud Oro with a Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
There is important news beyond this here in Washington, like funding our government. Lawmakers don't come back until tomorrow, and when they do, they may as well be starting from scratch, because what we saw last week resulted in nothing. This idea of a six month CR combined with the Save Act couldn't get enough Democrats or Republicans to make it happen. So there are great questions about what is going to happen with the clock ticking now, what are we fifteen
days away? It's two fridays off here right the thirtieth of September, and there's no floor action in sight. Now, there are many different sides to this story. When we talk about a potential shutdown, people get really bogged down into that. No one's calling for a shutdown right now. There are great concerns, however, about what corrosive effect a long CR would do here to various programs, including something
called the military. I will point you to a statement from the Office of Management and Budget as we prepare to talk to Retire General Arnold Panaro. The bill it read when this CR was put on the floor is especially irresponsible in terms of national security, as a quote, six months CR would erode our military advantage relative to the People's Republic of China, degrade readiness and fail to
provide the support our troops deserve. Unquote Arnold Panaro, a retired two star Marine Corps major general, former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, author of the book The Ever Shrinking Fight Force. General, it's great to have you back. Welcome, good to see you today. On Bloomberg. Can you put a finer point on this what a six month CR would mean for our pentagon?
Well, first, let me say you can sleep walk into government shutdown, and so we should not rule out that possibility. Certainly people are saying they don't want it, but we've seen it happen many times before with the current situation. The second point I would make picking up and I'm going to stay clear of any political rhetoric on the military man, but if you perimeter in your military is
not secure, you bring in more people. It's clear to me that the Secret Service needs more people, more resources. You can't get that under a government shutdown. In fact, the Secret Service wouldn't be able to go to work, although they would be deemed essential personnel, but they wouldn't be paid in their support. And you certainly can't increase resources under continuing resolution because it keeps it flat. So we're event. As devastating as that would be, it would
be even more harmful to our national security. Secretary of Lord Austin sent a nine page letter to the congressional leadership last week outlining all the devastations. And typically, you know at this time of year, we do a lot of hand raadings. This was very different because what we're talking about is a lack of perch power of about forty billion dollars. China doesn't operate under CRS Russia, North Korea, Ukraine. You know, we have to get our government funded and
we have to keep the military funded. You would lose an actual cut the program increases. They can't adjust over one hundred and sixty eight monernization programs. It would be over one hundred programs WRO with about forty billion that couldn't get rate increases. We would con the sequestor will happen if the appropriation bills don't pass all this is
totally avoidable. We knew at the beginning of this this current calendar year, in January, we're going to be under a cr If they could have passed this and gone home, gone back to get re elected, and so really it's inexcusable that Congress has not done its work. Again, We've now had five years of tumultive CRS on DoD China can basically go from concept to first flight in five years.
We take twenty five years and under five. We've lost five years of government funding with CRS for our national defense.
Incredible, five years without regular order. You mentioned an important word general of the sequester. If this CR in fact pass, doesn't look like it will. But I guess a different six month verson could if it would end March twenty eighth, walking us right up to the line to across the board cuts if there is no this is part of
the Fiscal Responsibility Act, remembering from last year. If in fact there's no good old fashioned budget twelve spending bills, and nobody seems to see that coming anytime soon, this, I guess the point is, could get much worse, couldn't it.
Absolutely, and frankly being candid, we didn't see it coming back in fiscal twelve and thirteen. Oh, the sequester is never going to happen. It didn't happen, and we got stuck with a sequester level for defense for ten years, and we lost five years of readiness, and so we're in a very dangerous and uncertain, turbulent world. We cannot afford to go into one October, certainly not with a government shutdown, but also not tying our financial security is
behind our back. When one day we may have to move a carrier from the Indo Pacific to the Mediterranean, we may be send truths in harms. Way, we live in a very dangerous world. This is so irres responsible on the part of Congress. Great break. I would say the Republican leadership in national security the Chairman of the House Owned Services of Any Mike Rogers, the ranking member
and Armed Services, Roger Wicker. The Republican leadership is very much on the national security side against what the Speaker has outlined six months. They are with say that, so I want to give credit to the national security bipartisan group in the House and Senate. They're pushing back on this, but so far we don't have a solution.
You are right, is creating a bit of a fissure inside the Republican conference. You're inside the Republican Party general. You've said a lot of things here, and I wonder if the idea of an emergency supplemental budget request for both the military and as you mentioned, the Secret Service. If there is an additional request you're mid be part of the lame duck session or had early next year. Is that the way this ends with an emergency supplemental.
We can't own the Secret Service, We can't wait for the lane DOT. Both candidates need security now. They need to beef up security, and there's a lot that goes with that when they travel. When the candidates travel, they need all kind of support. They need local law enforcement that has to be paid for. So even under a continuing resolution, it could adversely hamper the candidate's travel plans
because they've got to be secure. So we can't wait for a lane DT for emergency funding for the Secret Service, and frankly for some of the things that our military needs.
To do right now.
Can you speak general when you consider the idea of projecting power internationally? Can you speak to the message that we are projecting as a nation. When it becomes apparent that we're having trouble keeping our presidential candidates safe, I think it's.
A signal of of extreme weakness, and frankly, deterrence is the key we in the military we're the last people that want to get in the shooting war. You want to deter war. For deterrence to be credible, you have to have the capability. So you have to have the forces in place that has to be credible, and your adversaries have to know you'd be able to use it. If you can't fund your government and your government sets down,
you lose the terrence. And so frankly, I think it sends a very great signal of weakness, and I think that's one of the reasons by Secretary of Austin. I've been around a long time, decades and decades and decadies, I have never seen a letter from a Secretary of Defense that is damaging in terms of the adverse impacts on our national security as the one that he sent to the congressional leadership last week, and they ought to pay attention to it.
Can the Republican Hawks in our last moment here generally you mentioned can the Michael McCalls. Can the Vickers turn Speaker Johnson to a different position in the next two weeks.
On this well, I had the greatest respect for the bipartisan national security leadership, particularly of the Republican leadership on national Security. Let's see, they should and they should listen. The Speaker should listen to them, and I hope you will.
I can't predict because it's such an uncertain because you have people in the Freedom Caucus that basically the isolation this wing in both parties, and so I would hope they would listen to Mike Rogers and Roger Ricker and Mike McCall and Ken Calvert and Mike Turner on the Intelligence Committee, just like I know that Speaker Schumer and Leader Schumer and Minority Leader Jefferies are listening to Adam Smith and Jack Reid and Don Tester and Susan Collins
and Susan Collins by the way, on the appropriations it.
Said they'd be time for another family conversation. General Arnold Ponaro, Thank you General. As always, this is Bloomberg. Thanks for listening to the Balance of Power podcast. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already an Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can find us live every weekday from Washington, d C. At noontime Eastern at Bloomberg dot com