7/15/24: Photos Expose Secret Service Breakdown At Trump Rally, Dems Give Up On Replacing Biden, Trump Rewrites RNC Speech For Unity, Dem Floats Wild Putin Trump Conspiracy

I do have some practice at this now, at this point. Now, of course, we have full spectrum coverage here at breaking points this morning of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. We brought you two breaking new segments over the weekend breaking some of that down. But we're going to go a full through the timeline of the events, some of the fallout, what we know about the shooter so far, the FBI investigation.

President Biden's response will then dissect exactly what we know about the Secret services colossal failure here in preventing this attempted assassination, some of the holes that have opened up, and some of the background also into the problems inside of this agency that are now glaringly revealed after this incident. We're going to talk a little bit about President Biden

and his political future. His political future appear saved more so now by the attempted assassination and some of the news coverage and some of the planning going on now behind the scenes by the Democratic Party. How they think that they can weather this and perhaps go all the way to election day without more calls from elected officials calling on Biden to drop out. We're going to give everybody a preview of the RNC, which of course kicks off today and will go all the way to Thursday.

Some news about Donald Trump and the speech that he has given, and about also some changes that he's made to that speech in the wake of shooting, how he's feeling exactly, and how this will change the presidential election race going into twenty twenty four. Will finally end the segment on a funny note, somebody who you saw very recently here on this program, the advisor to Democratic billionaire Megadonner Reed Hoffman, has apparently been caught in the immediate

aftermath of the shooting. Who you saw in our Counterpoints debate against Shank Yueger about Biden staying in the race, Well, he apparently was caught telling journalists in the hours after the attempted assassination that the entire thing was apparently stayed. So a real view into the democratic elite mind and some of the conspiracies that harbor there. As we said at the top, this is a full spectrum breaking points coverage.

Thank you to everybody, our premium subscribers who enable us to be able to put out that breaking news coverage to continue doing the show here every day. Our own Emily Jishinski is on the ground at the RNC, so throughout the week we'll check in with her about what's going on. She'll be doing interviews and other things. And then don't forget we also the entire crew will be on the ground for the DNC which is in August

in Chicago. So thank you to all of our premium members here, the guys who enable us to continue doing this work. Let's start with the attempted assassination on Donald Trump, and I'll try and just start at the very beginning of the incident. So let's go ahead and play some of the video here. This was in Butler, Pennsylvania, approximately six fifteen pm. You saw Trump, he was in the middle of his speech, only five minutes or so. Immediately you see shots begin to ring out and Secret Service

agents who jump immediately on top of the president. Most striking things is that you can see the incredible confusion going on behind Donald Trump. And unfortunately, that heartbreaking screen that you hear in the background is people realizing that an innocent bystander, just a normal person who woke up on Saturday, he was excited to go to the former president's rally, lost his life and was shot.

They say that the threat has been neutralized. As Trump begins to rise, they bring him up and they surround him and create a barrier with their own bodies around the former president. One of them is actually checking him

for wounds while he is standing there. Trump obviously is both He's a little bit confused in the immediate moment, but then he says wait, wait, wait, and that is there one of the most iconic moments where he shouts fight, fight, fight to the crowd, puts his fist up, also creating that iconic image that we have now all probably seen over the weekend where you can see the Associated Press photographer was right below him and was able to capture Trump with his fist in the air, blood on his face,

in the American flag flying high in the background as he has rushed to his vehicle. Let's go to the next part here as well and put that image please up on the screen. This is where a lot of the questions now are centering what the hell happened here with this response from law enforcement. So what you can see directly in front of you. This is a map that's been put together. You can see the stage where Donald Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania. You can also

see where the wounded rally attempt attendee was sitting. You can see behind where the law enforcement counter snipers were positioned on the rooftop. There's been a lot of discussion around the actions of those counter snipers. But then over to the left on that building rooftop was the location of the gunman's body. So there's a lot of questions here about how exactly a gunman is able to walk on to a rooftop with a direct line of sight

to former President Donald Trump. He's able not only to the rooftop, he's able to get into the prone firing position and then able to squeeze off some seven to eight shots at the former president. Let's go and put the next graphic up please. That is also very helpful in kind of discovering what happened here. This shows you actually on the ground image and it also realizes just

how close that this individual was able to get. We're talking about one hundred and thirty yards that this individual is able to get from the former president, and one of the most obvious and direct lines of sight. Now there's big discussions here about the failures of the Secret Service, but I think that image actually really puts everything together quite well. You could see exactly where the shooter was, you could see where the Secret Service snipers were, and

you can also see where Donald Trump was. They're on the stage, and unfortunately, in the path of that assassin's bullet, a innocent bystander was hit in the head while he was covering his own family. Just absolutely tragic in the results that have happened here. What I think that this image underscores most for us is the fail and some shocking questions that now have to be asked of the Secret Service and how exactly they allowed something like this

to happen. Everything that we're beginning to learn now behind the scenes points to absolutely colossal incompetence. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. In terms of what we know about the shooter, they've released his name. The individual's name here is Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about a forty minute drive from the Butler, Pennsylvania rally where Donald Trump was attending. There is very little known about mister Crooks. He was a twenty year old man.

He was killed by Secret Service counter at snipers after he took shots at the former president. The thing is, though, is all we really know about him so far is that he recently graduated from high school, twenty year old, does not appear to have had a significant social media presence.

Discord confirmed that he did have an account with them, but they claim, at least for now, that the account has been taken down and that he was not known to have engaged in any political discussion or anything related to the investigation. The authorities say that they are fighting and searching, you know, for any clues to the motive of mister Crooks.

has now taken control of the entire investigation. They also cast a little bit of a shock at the Secret Service. They said, yeah, it's surprising that this individual was able to get in contact.

his home with his parents. Parents are two registered social workers and or counselors. In terms of his own political history, a lot has been made.

posts in and of itself frankly a bit suspicious. I don't know a single twenty year old who isn't very, very active, or perhaps he had a pseudonymous username or something that has not yet been uncovered. We're waiting on discussions and information from the FBI. Didn't also, though, want to pass over the individual who was killed at the Trump rally. Corey competore And here is Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who told us a little bit about Corey.

share that we spoke. She said yes. She also asked that I share with all of you that Corey died a hero, that Corey dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally. Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing.

who were injured at this rally. President Biden spoken three times now since the attempted assassination, but perhaps his most high profile comments came last night from an Oval Office address in which President Biden urged unity. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

of where we are, how we go forward from here. Thankfully, Former Trump is not seriously landed. I spoke to him last night. I'm grateful he's doing well in Jill and I keep him and his family in our prayers. And in America, we resolve our difference at the battle box. Now that's how we do it, at the battle box, not with bullets. You know, we're blessed to live in the greatest country on earth, and I believe that with every soul, every power.

PMO Office address urging unity. So continuing, just in terms of the details, I want to make sure I give everybody that they can This is a little bit that came out in a report now from the Wall Street Journal where they say that the AR fifteen rifle that mister Crooks used, we know that it belonged to his father. Now, apparently the elder mister Crooks told investigators that he believed his son had gone to a gun range on Saturday. He became concerned when he could not reach him, and

he called police after the news of the shooting. There's gonna be a lot of investigation into the Crook's parents, obviously, because not only was their gun used in the attempted assassination, but apparently there were explosive devices alleged or rudimentary ones that were left at the residence and including in mister crooked cars. So some questions, you know, exactly about what they knew and some possible negligence on their own part

and what was happening according to the FBI. According to them, they say Crooks was not known previously to law enforcement, which frankly is a little surprising having been covering a lot of these mass shootings and other types of incidents over a long period of time. That's almost always the case. They also claim that Crooks has no history of mental illness.

Keep in mind, you know, however, he could have been allegedly treated or whatever by his own parents, because they themselves social worker and counselor licensed by the state of Pennsylvania, so its possible that it was kept in house. This is just speculation on my own part, just trying to piece together some of the details, but so far right now, I mean, all we can really say is just this

a shocking, insane event really that happened. We should keep in mind, I mean, this is the first time that a bullet has touched a president, even a foreign president or rally like this since Ronald Reagan was shot in nineteen eighty one here in Washington, d C. And there were a lot of people who were looking at that previous incident and thinking about how the Secret Service itself was supposed to reform. We should really keep in mind that was a very very different time.

of the Reagan attempted assassination. After the JFK won, that's when the Secret Service you know, was formed, at least, you know, for Congress, and they were supposed to do the sightline investigations. They were supposed to have counter sniper teams. After the Reagan assassination, that's actually when they first started doing metal detectors and a lot of other policies implemented over at the White House and also at presidential events.

And then slowly the security umbrella you know, has gone forward and I can tell you that's part of the reason why I was so stunned, and me along with many others, believed, because of the way that the shots were heard on the microphone that it was core could

have been a small caliber bullet and rifle. This was even and according to the people in the crowd, is because the disbelief on everyone's part was how could anybody even possibly get a shot off from outside of the security perimeter, from that sideline, just a mere one hundred and thirty six yards away from where the president is speaking directly at the president enough to get mere millimaters away from his face and have a bullet go through

his ear. I'm sure you've seen much of this, but we are literally living in a very lucky world where

the former president was not assassinated. If he had not turned his head at that exact moment, he would be a dead man and we would have I mean, think about footage from the nineteen sixties and then compared to the high resolution of where we are today, not to mention, you know, the political and the just civic fallout from what that would look like, just what mere days before the Republican National Convention, So literally, really dodged a bullet.

I think the nation and foreign President Trump, he himself apparently has undergone quite a change in the way that he's just looking at things. Who knows, you know, if it'll last or any of that. But at the very least, I don't think you can literally get shot in the head and not be a different person on the other end of this. And questions continue to remain about the Secret Service, about the failures in this investigation, failures in the in the in the setup for everything that went

down behind the scenes. There also is a lot of questions to continue now about the Secret services response potential cover up here. We haven't really heard a lot from the Director of the Secret Service, who herself she was in Aspen, Colorado, whenever this all happened, and apparently flew back to Washington. She's released only a very very short statement. We also, according to them, they said quote that they've made no changes to the security procedures at the Republican

National Convention. That itself seems absolutely insane to me. But to help let me break some of this more down, Ken Clippenstein, the great journalist who's done some work and has now written a piece here about the Secret Service failures, tracing things all the way back inside of this agency. Will join me now to break some of this down. Let's get to it. Joining me now is independent journalist Ken Clippenstein. He is an authority and a good friend of the show. And it's good to see you, sir.

the screen. Wrote how the Secret Service missed the Trump shooter and why we are going to be blamed for it. So, Ken, let's go back a bit, a little bit in time, and just from your memory, tell us about some of the failures inside the Secret Service. I set up a culture of incompetence that led to this incident.

these problems. I would encourage anybody curious about the agency and in disbelief about their ability to drop the ball on something like this, as indeed many liberals, at least on Twitter were within hours of the shooting, one of the top trending terms on Twitter, if not the top trending term, was the word stage the belief that the shooting was staged, which I think speaks to the lack of understanding people have for how many scandals that this

agency has been embroiled in, and the course of my reporting on it, looking back at many of the scandals that I just read peripherally from following the news, I stumbled across my own report about their deletion of January sixth text messages that were unable to be obtained by Congress, And this was just something I forgot because they come across so many of these different things, and so I mean, this is a scandal plagued agency that has deep, deep

cultural problems that proceed by a long shot, what happened this weekend, which was a shooter being able to get within several hundred feet of the president and able to situate himself on top of a roof with an air style rifle, and the fact that the Secret Service was able to clear that.

debate over you know, oh, this was local LA enforcements responsibility. Well, that's just moving the goalposts, because the whole point of an agency like this is to be able to anticipate problems like this so that you don't have to farm it out to local law enforcement, which isn't going to have the resources or training necessarily to be able to respond to these things.

roof with the rifle. And the police were h what, you know, like like they didn't know what was going on. You know, We're like, hey, right here on the roof, we can see him from right here. We see him, you know, he's he's crawling and next thing, you know, I'm like I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, why is Trump still speaking, Why have they not pulled him off the stage. I'm standing there pointing at him for you know, two three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from

the top of the barn. I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this, and next thing, you know, five shots ring out. So your certain that the shots came from not going on the one hundred percent And he was up there for a couple of minutes. He was up there for a couple of minutes, absolutely at least three to four minutes. And you were telling, we were telling the police, we were pointing at him for the Secret Service who were looking at us from the

top of the barn. They were looking at us the whole time, and we were standing.

him and then he fled. This is exactly the reason that you need a specialized force that can be trained to respond to high stress situations like this. You know, we can criticize that number of local law enforcement. They all we want, but they might not be trained for those kinds of high pressure situations. And so that's why.

And so if you look at the Secret Services response once once the shooting began, then the response was very quick, but this was was an intelligence feel And what's interesting about that is if you look at just exactly one week prior to the shooting, there was an interview that went pretty unnoticed with George Stefanopolis of ABC on the Part who was interviewing the Director of Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, and he brought up in a question that looks really

prophetic now, and I would encourage people to look that up. He brought up specifically the question of polarization and political extremism within the country in the context of the election, and asked her if she thought that this was going to be something to be concerned about, and she gave the most just token answer where she said, quote, it's definitely something we look into, and that was all she had to say about it. And this is an agency

that we've allocated all this money to. Earlier this year, the intelligence community put out its first ever what's called open Source Intelligence strategy, and this was signed by both the CI director and the Director of National Intelligence, and the document says that they want to make this the primary means of intelligence collection. And what's so interesting about this case is that it's a real stress test of that idea and it fails because as far as we know,

this kid wasn't on social media. And so all this money that we're throwing into these g wiz technology to try to hoover up all this information from social media platforms, use AI and all sorts of algorithms that private companies, frankly can make a lot of money off of failed to catch this guy, and are going to fail to catch the next you know, lone wolf who's described as

a loaner, because those people are not online. It's a failure of the system that we increasingly rely on to collect intelligence because there are all sorts of ways that threats behave that aren't going to leave that kind of digital exhaust.

could not let alone breakoff shots. Now you're highlighting very important thing here, which is that a local law enforcement actually confronted this person on the rooftop and apparently the gunman pointed his rifle at him, the guy retreated, and in that moment of retreat is exactly when the shots

broke off towards Trumpet. I could possibly have saved his life, of Trump's life in that and that he would probably not you know, he didn't feel like he was in the op where he was rushing the shots in that moment at the very least, still a little bit of a uvalde situation now, as you said, to be fair, not perhaps not trained, probably shocked that something like this happened, but still very surprising. We also know a little bit about the failure here is that allegedly this rooftop was

known as a quote well known high priority vulnerability. Here's a quote senior secret service source telling that to NBC News.

approval to shoot. One source telling NBC News that prior protocols were not followed. The FBI now says the alleged shooter, twenty year old Thomas Matthew Crooks, appears to have acted alone. This all provides new context for the shocking scene last night in Butler, Pennsylvania.

these problems. So in so many ways, this is almost like a nine to eleven kind of event because we had so many warnings prior to it and a total failure, bipartisan failure, and a part of both parties to respond to this and not just search resources, but search resources specific to what the people.

take the oath, it's very serious oath. They're willing to put themselves in harms way the ones that I know seem to take it seriously, and you know, to the extent there are going to be efforts to try to throw individuals under the bus just completely misses the point, because this is an institutional failure that needs to be responded to in a way that ameliorates whatever the systemic failure was.

with text messages from some of the agents. I mean we're talking here, Ken, That's just three things in the last year or a couple of years that tell us about what's going on.

exactly happen that day. And so what's frustrating to me about these national security failures from nine to eleven to January sixth and all the things in between, is the extent which the public ends up getting blamed for things.

to prevent something like that. So I would, you know, I really hope that in the response and the justified outrage on the part of the public, that this is pointed at the right things and not the and doesn't become the usual parts in football, so that we can prevent something like this from happening again.

there's no you know, taking responsibility inside of this. Can there's just well, we take the responsibility protecting him seriously, We're going to do a review.

So they're really going to need to respond in a way that is not what we've seen so far, which is immediately afterwards, even President Trump, the great critic of the so called deep state, the national security community immediately thank them now again, I you know, have respect for the rank and file individuals, But to say nothing of

the institutional failure, I think says a lot. And it goes back to a point I was trying to make at the beginning of the interview, which is that because of the mystique and because of Hollywood, and because of people's impressions of the national security community, I think it's really hard for people to believe, much less understand that these are fallible agencies, just like anything else, and that it's a lot less like James Bond movie than it

is like any job that you're familiar with, where things go wrong and people make mistakes and things are dysfunctional. So this is a really important moment not to just defer to oh, what do I know about the national Well, let's trust the experts. No, you know what you saw here, everybody saw it exactly was pretty much what happened.

and try and kill the president. At least, you know, from what we can see right now, in a normal situation, he gets arrested walking to that place with the gun, and boom, he's.

the blame to the public. They're going to increase the national security state the same way that they did after nine to eleven, but without solving for the basics, which is everybody just here does their job the same way they did. And you know, people were saying, oh, why weren't there any drones. You don't need to need a drone to do something like this, just barricade the rooftop off. Now, sure, use the drone if you need to, but we don't need to blow hundreds of billions of dollars, you know,

on expansion of technology. You just need to learn how to basic competence of what we're doing. And we'll look to you Ken in the coming days about some more news about the investigation more. But we appreciate your analysis here man, Thank.

Let's take a listen to face the nation where Bob Costa reports us.

Democrats going to put this up there on the screen, and I'll read from this entire thing. So there's the new Democrats as a coalition on Capitol Hill. They decide to have a zoom call with President Biden. So Biden apparently showed up late to the meeting. He then referred to a congressman who has a bronze star quote somewhat unintelligibly, and then pulled back before saying more. Sources were telling reporters that they were quote aghast and they took it

as deeply inappropriate. That was just the first of a crazy confrontation, basically insulting a congressman with a bronze star who was confronting him on his ability to continue running. Let's go to the next part here to just continue to look down a little bit. This was also a crazy moment and similar literally out of something like veep.

During the Biden call with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the President said that his staff passed him a note saying stay positive, you are sounding defensive.

saw the same Joe Biden from the debate. Another lawmaker says it was awful. A third says members were not holding back. It got tense with Crow for sure. Crow was the person who told him that he should drop out of the race. At one point, they two representatives grilled Biden on how he plans to turn his campaign around. In response, they asked Biden, how you're going to win

back disaffected voters. Biden said then that part of his plan was that members need to do a better job advertising his administration's accomplishment.

congressman then having to interject to finish your question. Crowe's question, the Bronze Star recipient prompted what two members were described as shouting from Biden, who went off in a tangent challenged that congressman to quote, name me a foreign leader who thinks I'm not the most effective leader, as if any of them are going to talk to a random House Democrat. He says, tell me who the hell that is.

Biden continued, he says that it was dead wrong that foreign leaders didn't lack confidence him in him, and he said, quote, I don't want to hear that crap. He then started continuing to shout at Jason Crowe for no reason. Another source told Axios that Biden's answer stress at the exchange ended then on a positive note, where Biden cut things off at the end and he said, if you're really getting input, then I'm not strong enough and I'd like to know more detail because I want to deal with it.

He then departed early from the call, despite showing up late. He said, I need to go to Mass. Then another one of the congressmen who actually said who was up next, for wanting to have a question, He was cut off his staff, basically pulling Biden from the call, saying he has to go to Mass. Before they got to another congressman who said that he thinks that Biden should drop out of the race. That guy apparently was very unhappy

that that happened. So look, I mean, this is all crazy, and it's also very telling too that this was part of the new Democratic coalition the quote unquote moderates, not really people we would agree with much on this show, but to look to them and actually see that they apparently had a lot more courage in their confrontation with President Biden as opposed to the so called Congressional Progressive Caucus, which barely confronted him at all. That really does highlight

kind of what the political dynamics here are. Is that a lot of the people who have a lot on the line, maybe in terms of swing state Democrats and others, they are the ones who are paying most attention to this. But this does appear to have smoothed all that over. I will say the craziest part, though, is this reaction. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. A senior House Democrat is now saying, behind the scenes, quote, we have all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.

Now keep in mind, senior House Democrat can only mean like fifteen twenty people, people literally in leadership who are saying this literally on background. I mean, that's just stunning. And what they say here is that quote Congressional Democrats, all consuming angst over President Biden's candidacy has now taken an abrupt backseat in the midst of the wake of

an assassination attempt against foreign President Trump. Democratic lawmakers say that their immediate focus now is on the personal security and that of their stabs, not on parties political woes, helping to allow a crucial cool down period for the embattled president. Quote, we're all just expressing condolences, keeping our teams safe. A senior House Democrat suggested that the atmosphere in the party is too chaotic for internal battles over leadership.

of stake emotions can run high. I think the president heard our message very clearly, and in fact, he promised to come back with more useful information to address our concerns and to answer all of our questions. So look, you can keep all of that in mind. But I mean the most significant one to me is how Biden is responding to this, which is he's done very short messages. Now, as I said earlier, I didn't want to get too much into it, but in the span of six minutes,

he said some crazy stuff. Just in that six minute Oval Office address, he said battle box instead of ballot box. He mixed up his words, stumbled over multiple times. These are short. These are basically off of a teleprompter. I mean, this is this lay up as layoup, get right as easy. There's no crowd, there's no mitigating circumstances. You're looking straight. You're looking straight at a camera the way I am

right now, except he has a teleprompter in front of him. Now, as you guys can see from me doing monologue, that's probably the easiest.

out strategy, that's a winning strategy for Biden. Remember next week after the RNC, that's when the virtual roll call is apparently scheduled to happen, and Biden will be nominated basically officially on the DNC before you even get to the convention. So all you have to do is wait

it out and survive a week. What's happening this week the rn C, which we're about to get to, which means that this weight and see strategy by Biden is basically just the is the winning one, at least for now, because what it means is that all he has to do is just call for unity, use the attempted assassination for his own political survival, and then House Democrats feel awkward calling for it or basically appearing presidential, you know, right now, and they're not really allowed to talk about

a few of these things.

Joe Biden, at least for now. None of the calls that immediately happen in the aftermath of his big boy press conference, you guys remember that on Thursday. All of that appears to have fizzled out now and none of the attention is being focused on him, and he's using it very much to his advantage. I will stay on the campaign front. They've paused all their political advertising. They're not attacking Trump right now on the airwaves. Everybody's calling

for unity. We'll see how exactly they're going to adjust. We do know that some of their fundraising had taken

a massive hit. Some ninety million dollars or something in super pack dollars were frozen from the Biden campaign, even though he was bragging about all the money at his disposal, So he could have a very very difficult time now going into this, not to mention the political dynamics of having your opponent literally survive in an assassination attempt, get bloodied and put his fist in the air and probably one of the most iconic photos of all time. So it's gonna be a tough road I think there for

mister Biden. Going ahead, all right, let's shift gears now to the RNC. We're learning some interesting news just this morning, a new interview that Donald Trump gave to the Washington Examiner. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This was an interview given to Selena Zito. You guys may remember her. She was really gained fame in twenty

sixteen for covering Trump rallies. She actually was present at Butler, Pennsylvania and has an interesting interview here with the former president who is rewriting his convention speech quote to focus.

the policies of Joe Biden. Honestly, it's going to be a whole different speech now, he says, he has switched from planning to excite his voter base to one that demonstrates his belief that the attack on him at a rally had changed the election and campaign entirely. Most Republicans

and Democrats have now acknowledged that. In the aftermath, Trump said, people across the country from different walks of life and political views have called him and noted that he was safe from death because he turned from the crowd to look at a screen showing data that he was using in his speech quote that reality is setting in. I rarely look away from a crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today,

would we talking? As he boarded his plane, Trump then continued saying his speech will meet the moment that history demands. It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance, And he said, God alone prevented the unthinkable from happening, and he said fear not, and again he.

Of the photograph, he said he believed it was an iconic image. He said that when he stood up and he saw the crowd had not moved, he needed to tell them that he and the country were going to be okay. The energy coming from the people in that moment they stood there. It's hard to describe what it felt like. But I knew that the world was looking. I knew that history would judge this, and I knew I had to let them know that we were okay. And so that's very interesting there to learn about the

rewriting of the speech. It is one of those things that demonstrates how much an event like this can shake things up, not only in terms of how we internalize it, but for the candidate themselves. I mean, I was reading just this morning, Tucker Carlson gave an interview to Axios about Donald Trump in which he said that quote, getting shot in the face changes a man. I think you

can really say that, so almost dying Rock's perspectives. Trump has shown little appetite for changing his ways previously, but his advisors tell us Trump plans to seize the moment by toning down his Trumpiness and dialing up efforts to unite a tinderbox America.

one forty nine for Trump. These are all must win states for Joe Biden. And in fact, their own campaign has basically admitted that's the whole ballgame. They're not even going after Georgia, they're not even going after Arizona. They're bear basically sacrificing Nevada. And this will tell you why. If you look at the likely voters for the polls there, Arizona fifty one forty nine for Trump, Georgia fifty one forty nine for Trump, Nevada fifty one forty nine for Trump.

North Carolina fifty two forty eight for Trump. Now, don't forget, we've seen after in the aftermath. New York is possibly in play there for Donald Trump. New Hampshire possibly in play. You've got other states that look like it could be total blowouts. My state of Virginia. Virginia looks to be certainly in play for Donald Trump. You've got places like Colorado and others, places that previously were like Redish, you know, ten twelve years ago that are now being looked at.

And if you look at the share of people who definitely will vote, this is another place where you see major enthusiasm.

crawl over broken glass to vote for him. So if the enthusiasm gap wasn't big enough already, I think what we're going to see is a huge amounts of register Republicans and others who it may not even be swing voters. But all you need is for the Democrats to be depressed because their candidate is incredibly old, feeble, and barely capable of acting as president now, let alone five years from now. But you also have your candidate who they literally tried to kill. Somebody tried to kill him and

he barely survived. Well, in that situation, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a lot of people are going to be come crawling out of the woodwork who are registered Republicans who may previously have been on the fence about him. And if we continued down this path of mental and cognitive health, well, if you ask registered voters do you think that Biden has the cognitive health to service president? Only twenty eight percent say yes, Seventy one percent say no.

into what's happening. They think that Kamala Harris. Only thirty percent say that she would have a better chance, thirty two percent say a worse chance, thirty seven percent basically say same chance as Biden. I think I kind of agree either it would be worse or maybe same, just because of how badly Biden is doing right now. But here is the other fascinating thing. And keep in mind this is before the assassination. This poll was done attempted assassination.

Fifty three percent of Republicans say they are excited to vote for Donald Trump, Thirty three percent say satisfied, and only fourteen percent say they are disappointed. They're a full third of thirty six percent, a full third of Republicans back in twenty sixteen who said that they were disappointed and were upset about having to vote for Donald Trump. In terms of the VP, there is some interesting stuff here about how this is all going to play out.

Keep in mind, this is before the attempt assassination, but he apparently was mulling a quote Apprentice style VP reveal at the convention and considering the convention literally starts tomorrow and we still have absolutely zero idea about who it is. As well, I think it does tell you a little bit about how he is keeping the suspense and was before all of this even happened. Now, what they said is all of the finalists are expected to be at

the convention. Trump has decided obviously to keep this quiet over the weekend and the attempted assassination happened. Trump's team themselves they have no idea, they said, nobody knows. They said, for instance that for the record, I don't know who it is. That's from the freaking campaign manager Chris las Savita. Trump was asked about this on Thursday. He says, I would love to do it at the convention or just slightly before the convention, like Monday. Today is Monday, so

we'll see. We don't actually know in terms of how it would be revealed. The idea behind it is basically to have this mystery person behind the stage. Nobody knows who it is and they walk out on the stage, and that is the big revelation to everybody at the RNC and also to everybody at home. Now, we actually have some polling kind of interesting about who Republicans want to be the running mate. Now, amongst registered voters, sixty one percent said they be enthusiastic or satisfied with Marco

Rubio forty three percent, with JD. Vance thirty four percent, with Doug burghamte percent, Tim Scott forty three percent, Nicki Haley thirty one percent, at least Stephanic. So that gives you a little bit of a sense who people would be most decided about. I'm not sure I'd take it necessarily for granted, just because I think whoever Trump picks, they're going to get an instant bump. Listen, there's been a lot of speculation about this. I have no inside information zero.

of major backers of him. JD also, though, has developed close relationship with Donald Trump Junior. Some people have noted on the schedule actually that Donald Trump Junior is scheduled to speak before the parent vice presidential pick for Donald Trump.

assassin to force change or scheduling or anything else. Therefore, I will be leaving for Milwaukee as scheduled at three thirty pm. That was put out yesterday, and there was video that was released that actually showed him on the ground already in Milwaukee. There's also been a reaction from the Trump campaign. They've apparently put out a memo telling

staff quote not to comment and to avoid dangerous rhetoric. So, in this shift, campaign managers of the Trump campaign have called on the campaign to quote issue dangerous rhetoric on social media. In a missive scent on Saturday, after the assassination, they wrote, we urge you to recognize the political polarization of this heated election. If something looks or feels off, flag it immediately for leadership or an on site security team.

Do not comment publicly on the occurrence of today. We condemn all forms of violence, and we will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media. So that obviously a bit of a tip shift in tone for the campaign, and they have very much an idea of what they're dealing with them. Then finally, let's just check in with the RCP polling average. Again to look at where things stand.

Let's put this right now. This is just general election overall, right now, Trump leading by two point seven percent in the now polling average of everything that's been put out.

two points. The reason me focuses a lot on what you're doing.

lot of it is just age two. So the more that you can just look vigorous, and what's more vigorous really than surviving attempt assassination, probably better off you're going to be, especially with every camera in the world that is aimed straight at you. So, as I said, we've got our own Amilygasinski. She's on the ground in Milwaukee. She'll be doing interviews and other things for us, and we'll be highlighting her throughout the week here on the program.

Thank you to our premium sbscribers, by the way, for supporting that. All Right, a couple of fun stories that we had to throw in here about the craziness inside of the elite democratic mind. We're going to start first with Dmitri Melhorne. Now, you guys might remember Dmitri Melhorne. He's the advisor to Read Hoffman. He's the billionaire megado Or. We recently had him here on this program actually for counterpoints debates against Jenk Yuger about whether Joe Biden should

stay in the race. It appears now he has actually been caught trying to tell reporters in the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination that the entire thing was staged. Now, if he didn't know anything about Dmitri, we're gonna give you a taste of who he was during that debate. Let's take a listen.

out emails on Saturday at seven thirty four pm. Keep in mind that is after I did a breaking news segment for everybody where it was obvious and clear that this was an attempted assassination, and that was if anything, it was a huge security failure. So I believe I filmed mine at like six p fifty or something. The

attempt assassination happened approximately six to fifteen pm. So in this email at seven thirty four pm he said to sympathetic journalists, which was also apparently sent here to Semaphore, he wrote that one possibility, which feels horrific, alien and absurd, but it's quite common globally, is that the shooting was encouraged and maybe even stage so that Trump could get photos and benefit from the backlash.

demand that Trump should step down as unfit. The other possibility, he writes, is that some crazy anti Trumper in this chaotic moment, decided to assassinate the former president.

mass murder in a synagogue, et cetera, violence happens. On the other hand, I am prone to bias, but this is a classic Putin play, and given the facts, seem more plausible. Look at the actual stot shot. Look at the staging. Look at how ready Trump is to rally this pampered baby shit his pants when an eagle lunged at his food. Look at how quickly Trump protects himself at the expense of others, but showed few of those lifelong instincts in this moment. And consider how often Putin

and his allies run this play. I know it feels yucky to discuss such a possibility, but in this case the odds are so high and the steaks are so consequential, we must ask the question. I have skimmed a few headlines just now, all caps. Not one newspaper or opinion leader in America is willing to openly consider the possibility that Trump and Putin staged this on purpose. Ask the question, people, if it proves wrong, we should respond appropriately to a

non stage act of political violence is outlined above. But your credibility in our entire system of truth and justice depend on being certain in the answer so that is that's unhinged. Shall we say, shall we call it what it is? That's fucking crazy. I mean, he's basically somehow Putin is now involved in this, and he basically says it is the most likely the Okham's razor, the most likely explanation for what happened here. Now keep in mind again, this is a seven thirty four PM. This is more

than an hour after the attempted assassination. And by this time we and others already have video from people who are on the scene who are like, hey, I saw a guy crawling up there with a gun. I saw all this happening. That was behind the scenes. He saw that the foreign president by pure happenstance, turns his head at that moment, gets freaking shot in the ear, and a man is killed who is behind him. And you think that that was stage. Keep in mind this too.

If it was stage, why is a guy going to allow a shooter to basically graze his head within the margin of error where a single you know, flap of a wing of a butterfly moves a win in a different direction and we get a pink misshot on live television. You think that is going to be more like, is that's something you're gonna trust, you know, in your hands. If this was allegedly stage, that's where it's like, what are we doing here? This is psychotic, This is insane.

But what's more insane is that this is the mindset of a person who controls billions of dollars in American politics. This is the mindset of the most elite rings of the Democratic Party and the conspiratorial thinking that goes through them.

any other topic is a distraction. Unfortunately, I only talked with Reid after I sent that email. I agree entirely with this thoughtful post. This morning, I joined all America in demanding we lose no more innocent lives to political violence, so he claims he didn't clear it with read Hoffman at the very least. So this is a guy who Readoffman trusts a lot. This is a guy who journalists trusts enough to get me getting emails from him that

are something like this. He's lucky that he was. This is probably the first one that's ever leaked, because even they were like, hey, this shit is crazy, all right, but look, this is what we're dealing with, folks. These are the people who are proping Biden up. These are the people who are keeping Biden in the race. This is the mindset which has been running this country now for a long time. This is a mindset that runs

right through elite media. And the fact that even somebody would ever put down on paper who is in a position of power, send it out to people and not expect to get ridiculed. That's one of the craziest things that I've ever seen. And I'm glad that they burned him and they put this out because he deserves every ounce of condemnation that he is getting. All Right, So elite media news, this is breaking just this morning. Just had to put it here in the show because it's delicious.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Report from CNN's Oliver Darcy, Mourning Joe has been pulled from the air Monday because of the Trump shooting. MSNBC will not air Morning Joe, it's quote celebrated politics Roundtable, opting to instead air continued breaking news coverage of the asseempted assassination. They confirmed this decision to preempt its influential

and top rated morning show Sunday evening. After CNN reached out to them, The network said that the show will resume on Tuesday.

Given the breaking news nature of the story, it made more sense to continue airing rolling breaking coverage and fraud political moment. Given the gravity and the complexity of the story, NBC and MSNBC have been remained in rolling baking coverage as we continue. These networks continue across simulcast, alternating between NBC News and MSNBC, so there is one feed covering

the assassination and the alleged attempt. Now there is a lot to be said about that, but for one of the bosses to say we don't trust our own flagship anchors not to say something crazy.

the time nothing that important is happening. Like we're bringing the people the news. It's not earth shattering, But one of the reasons that you have to do. That is because this is all about trust. This is me coming to you. I'm I've been doing this job almost five years now that some of you have been sticking with us between rising and breaking points, even watching the show

almost every single day. At this point, we have a relationship, right, And so because you stuck with us now through all the ups and downs, not just the big times, but in terms of inflation or you know, anytimes you pick random or fun stories or whatever, you know the stuff that is going on.

I would say it's times like now. I'm not going to say you meet us the most, but it's times like now where we feel most gratified because you have the most amount of wanting to know what the hell is going on, and we feel very, very fortunate that you're willing to put your trust in us at that time, in the bad times, the good times, and also in the medium in the downtime. So whenever you take somebody off the air in a breaking news situation, at the

time when news consumption is near and all. I mean, I don't have the data yet, I'm willing to bet this is an all time high for just the last couple of years. If we take somebody off and you say you don't trust them to cover it, then that's actually admission you should never trust them at all. That's really what I know the most about, having done this job now for quite some time. And the sad thing now is I think they're right. Is that they're obviously

right in that. Look at the way that Scarborough burned all of his credibility on Joe Biden on saying he has, you know, even more cogent than ever before attacking the Wall Street Journal, and then three weeks later admitting saying, yeah, maybe Joe Biden doesn't need to drop out of the race after they can't cover it up anymore, and then back, you know, changing that flip flopping saying oh no, no, he should stay a Mika Brazinski is saying, actually, I'm

cool with him, saying but more so, think too about what's the story I just did?

want to say this too, because it's important. A lot of people are out there talking about unity, et cetera, like, oh, we got tone down the rhetoric, and I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but a lot of people are also doing the same thing that democrats in the media did against Sarah Palin in the aftermath of the Gabby Gifford shooting, where they're like, oh, you said you know, Biden said something like we got to put Trump in

the bulls eye. It's like, guys, that's bullshit, all right. He wasn't targeting Trump for assassination. This is just normal political rhetoric. Now should it be that way, I don't know whatever, but I've seen plenty of Republicans do that. And when Sarah Palin put out a map which had a quote bull's eye over Gabby Gifford's in targeting her for political defeat, that was not legitimate to say that she was trying to incite assassination. We are allowed to

criticize each other. We believe in free speech in this country, especially here on this show, and that's not necessarily the grounds. But what we do know with the MSNBC situation here and taking Morning Joe off the air, is if they were to say something inappropriate like that, it's more that they don't have the wherewithal to even understand the moment

that they are in. And I think this should be a lesson for everybody, and hopefully maybe send this to your boomer MSNBC relatives, the people who put their trust.

who do trust them for information. And I would urge all those people to reconsider that if their own bosses and the people around them don't trust them, to not quote say something inappropriate in this moment that tells you everything you need to know about what.

We'll bring everybody the news from the RNC throughout the week. It's gonna be big a couple of weeks here on breaking a big couple of months I think here on breaking points, and for everybody for the entire country, and we really appreciate you sticking with us at a moment and at a time like this, a fraud time. We appreciate you, we thank you, and we'll see you tomorrow