Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask Meta AI. Whether you need to summarize your class notes or want to create a recipe with the ingredients you already have in your fridge, Meta AI has the answers. You can also research topics, explore interests, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. What if you could remember everything?
Everything you said, everything you did, everything other people said and did around you, everything you ate, everything you watched, everywhere you went, what if you could remember all of it? On this episode of The Vergecast, brought to you by Meta, we explore how AI might make that possible and what it might mean to be a person in a world where nobody forgets anything ever again. That's The Vergecast, anywhere you get podcasts.
From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is a special edition of Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara. The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has shaken the country and the world of politics. In the day since the shooting, we have continued to learn more, but many, many questions remain.
To make sense of this senseless act of violence, I'm joined by former NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, John Miller, and former US Attorney and my CAFE and SIDER co-host Joyce Vance. We discuss the secret service failures that enabled a gunman to target the former President and preview the FBI investigation into the failed assassination attempt.
And in a bonus exclusive for members of CAFE and SIDER, Joyce and I discuss Federal District Judge Eileen Cannon's decision to dismiss Trump's classified documents prosecution in Florida. Joyce Vance, my friend. Welcome to the special episode, John Miller, awesome high friend. Welcome to the program. So there's a lot to talk about with respect to the
assassination attempt. We are recording this on Tuesday afternoon, just a couple of days after the shooting and there are a lot of questions and every time we sort of dig into one question, it raises other questions. John, the reason we have you here is you bring multiple completely directly relevant perspectives from the perspective of the NYPD, local law enforcement, the perspective of the FBI, federal law enforcement, and also the perspective of journalism.
You've done all three things. We thought you'd be a perfect person to join us to sort of unpack what happened here, what the failings were. Do you have a sort of a general view of what the distribution of authority is supposed to be when there's a protectee and the very important protectee, such as the former president and potential future president in a jurisdiction. Obviously, when you were working with the NYPD, that law enforcement organization was working hand
in glove with the secret service. I saw it many times myself. Can you just describe how that's supposed to work and how in your view, it didn't work at all last Saturday? The way it works is with a protectee who is the president of the United States, a former president of the United States, or a major parties candidate in a presidential election process. The secret service is in overall charge. They are in command. They call the shots. They set the requirements. The issue with the
secret services that they are of limited size. It's not the FBI. It's not the NYPD. It's an organization of 5,000 people, only 3,000 of which are probably secret service agents. Then you have a number from the uniform division and then civilian analysts and technicians. When you spread that out, it gets small very quickly. That's a seven day a week, 24 hour a day job. You have to factor in sick time vacations, stays off, which are very few. They usually operate on the, we're
smaller than we want to be, but we're going to make it work. I think that showed up here. They rely heavily on local law enforcement. When they're in Palm Beach with Donald Trump, that could be the Palm Beach County Sheriff, that could be the Florida State Patrol, that could be the Palm Beach City Police spreading out those responsibilities and layering them. We saw that here in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State Police, Butler Township, Butler County, Allegheny County, next door helping out.
And that is actually more common. When they come to New York, we have 36,000 police officers. We can give them layers and layers of backup. And we are a place that is very used to a custom to visits from the president and former presidents. It's part of the drill for us. But one of the challenges they faced in this event was their informed country, they're in a rural place, and they're relying on their partners who operated within their capabilities.
Would you be more comfortable and confident supporting the Secret Service with respect to a protectee in an urban environment that's complicated like New York City, or in a rural area where you can kind of see all the threats? I have been turning that question over in my head because there have been so many times when the lead package that arrives a minute ahead of the president
is the package that I rode in with Chief Tom Galati from the Intelligence Bureau. And the first thing I do when I used to jump out of the car before it stopped moving was look up and look around. You're looking for that open window. You know, you know, that motorcade is a minute behind you. You know that there's a lot of people there who have been there the whole time, but you can't help
making that last-minute visual sweep to say, is there something out of place here? In this case in Pennsylvania, there was no high ground per se, even the buildings that surrounded this fairgrounds were one or two story affairs. So in the place where the shooter was, you have a two-story kind of metal carigated type building. And you have one of the sniper teams we are told now inside that
building on the second floor using the building as an observation post. Opposite that, well, who's covering the roof of that building is the Secret Service sniper team, one of four teams, two local, two Secret Service that had, you know, their quadrants and their lines of fire. And they would have seen activity on that roof. What nobody anticipated, and this is the question that we're wrestling with, which is nobody anticipated and why not, was that an individual with a weapon could get to that
rooftop and not be spotted until he actually was about to open fire. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is I think difficult for people to understand, but something I wonder if you can talk about is this mentality that Secret Service agents are forced to live with. You know, they have to get up every day and do it over again and again, right? It's they're playing defense all the time. They can't afford to let any single incident happen. I think it's remarkable the way they do their job
and the number of incidents that they foresee and prevent. But in this case, that didn't happen. What do you think that does to the agency going forward? What kind of reviews will have to happen?
And what kind of reworking will have to take place? Well, I think one of the reviews that is going to happen is the Secret Services own internal review, which is where we up to our own standards followed by an independent review, which is going to be appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security, where they'll bring in outside experts who have no stake in in the chain of command there
and say, what do you think? And then there's the going to be the congressional review, which may run ahead of these two, which is probably wrong because the congressional review is going to be the one where politics is injected into the discussion and where things will become discolored and jaundiced
because of, you know, the different politics on either side of that aisle. But I think that we can look to that independent review and the Secret Services own review to say, does this address the idea that the Secret Service is just too small or does this address the idea that they could
have done a better job here? And there's probably elements of both there. Do you have any understanding of this reporting that I've seen where there was a countersniper team of Secret Service special agents who reportedly had eyes on the shooter, but did not fire upon the shooter until the shooter fired first? A, do you know anything about that from your reading and from sources? And B, does that make any sense to you? Yes, and yes. So this is another one of those nightmare
scenarios, which is they're hearing traffic, radio traffic in their earpieces. This is the Secret Service sniper team, which is made up of members of the Secret Service uniform division who are extraordinarily highly trained and held to a very high standard. So they're hearing traffic in their earpieces about some movement around that building and possibly an individual on the roof. And then they're not seeing that individual on the roof. And then when the individual on the
roof pops up, they have that second three seconds, five seconds. And these are the thoughts that go through your head. Is that one of the local SWAT team members responding to the report of the guy on the roof? He seems to be wearing kind of green fatigues. I don't know if I can make out that weapon. Is that not a law enforcement person? Is that the person they're talking about? And when the person pops up and that first shot goes off and then the second very rapidly pop pop.
Of course, their questions are answered for them. And then you see within a second and a half of the first shot, they get that target. They take the target out with five to seven shots from that sniper team. And from the Butler Township Police Department sniper team, which was at a different location, both zeroed and then a target and took it out. And we will spend hours, weeks and days
saying, why didn't they shoot that guy the minute they saw them? And these guys have to spend that second, second and a half saying, before I kill some person or another law enforcement officer, am I sure of that shot? And in the time it took me to say that sentence is probably longer than they had to make that consideration before that question was answered for them by the individual
shooting that weapon. That's it. I haven't heard people make that point. So there's a scenario in which a reasonable person may not have shot because obviously among other things, the shooter wasn't wearing a jacket that set a assassin on it. No, that's right. And I mean, this is one of the problems that this would not have been the first time in history that somebody from another agency or law enforcement ended up in a position where they looked like a potential target. And usually
that's resolved over the radio quickly with communications. But in this case, this was very fast moving. It's not an excuse. It's more kind of, you know, when you pull out the instruction manual of when things start to go wrong, what those risks are, it's a very difficult decision. When you are behind a 50 caliber sniper rifle with extraordinarily accurate optics where you can shoot someone in the head from, you know, 1000 or more feet away to say, am I sure of this shot? Because once you
pull that trigger, there is no calling that bullet back. And that bullet is not going to wing somebody, hurt somebody, wound somebody. That's going to take them out. So there's a lot of gravity there. If you look at the rest of that day or those minutes, it's the threat emerges. We can have a longer discussion about why the threat hadn't been detected first, but the threat emerges. They assess the threat. He fires the shots. They take him out. It took as much time to actually do that as
it just took for me to say it. And then on the ground, from the time they hear that first shot, the former president touches his ear, he himself knows to get down while they're yelling get down. They literally cover him with their own bodies. And while they are shielding him with their own bodies, and at the same time, they are, they are palpating. They are literally running their hands up and down his torso and other extremities to say, is there a bullet wound here? Is there a
bleeder? Is there something coming out? Do we feel a damp spot while they're doing that assessment and shielding him in their ear pieces? The traffic shots fired shots fired and shooter down. Shooter is down. And you hear them repeat that out loud. Shooters down. Shooters down. And the next thing you hear is they use the code name for the counter assault team, which you now see is Secret Service agents in in black overalls and tactical gear with with law and weapons
surrounding them on the stage. They are going to literally cover the removal of the former president to that secure vehicle. They had an ambulance there. They could have put him in the ambulance, but their assessment was he's conscious. He's alert. We don't see another bleeder. We've got some blood coming from the ear, but he's talking. He's making sense. This is probably not a critical
wound. We should move him to the armored vehicle. Can we pause there for a moment, John? Because there's a lot of controversy and discussion about the decision to bring him upright and expose his torso and head to a potential second or third shooter. And the question of how confident they should have been that the shooter was down. Do you see malpractice in that minute after he was down and brought back up again and exposed? I mean, I see the opposite. They're putting themselves
in harm's way by shielding him with their own bodies. Some of these people were shorter than the than the former president. Well, that was something that they couldn't change in the moment. But you know, the first rule is if you can move your protectee and get him off that X into some protected space, the armored vehicle, the time to do it is based on your assessment of what was the threat of second ago? The threat of second ago was a thousand percent. What is the
threat right now? We are getting traffic from the observers so that the shooter is down. That was probably a good time to move. But after pausing to get your shoes into fist bump. Well, that is a different subject, which is what do you do with a protectee who is not following your every instruction? And you see, watch that video. And I say this to our audience, watch that video where you can see they are literally trying to to hold him up, move him forward. And he's putting the
brakes on and you can hear him on the order using weight, weight. And you know, he wants to put his fist up. He wants to say fight, fight, fight. There's two schools of thought here. The secret service could care less about politics. We need to get you off the X. That's what they're thinking. The former president is thinking, I cannot look weak, feeble or injured here. I must look strong, brave and defiant. And these two things are literally playing against each other before
a very eyes as they both try to protect their interests. The secret service, let's get our protective of the X. And the politician, I have to be very careful as a master of television arts to make sure that I get something out of this crisis in a television way. So can we dig a little bit deeper into that? I spent a little bit of my life living under not secret service, but under the protection of the United States marshals. And something that I
learned is that they're very deferential to the people that they're protecting. They do as little as possible as you're suggesting to interfere with whatever the protectees, motivations and needs are. Is that something that's a problem? Because I'm listening, you know, to the audio on this immediately afterwards and hearing this moment where they stop for shoes and then where there's the sort of pop up. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, we are so fortunate that nothing bad happened
in those moments. I mean, is that again something that needs to be reassessed? I don't think so. I think at that point, they were extraordinarily coordinated and professional. If you listen to that audio, you know, you don't hear people yelling and screaming, you don't hear people yelling, what happened? You know, let's get the F out of here. You see calm professionals, command and control in charge of the situation, making assessments. What is his medical condition?
Do we have a critical situation here? Are we safe to move? Shooter is down as the first thing that feeds into that. The second thing is when that secret service SWAT team appears, they verbalize that. They say they're here. They're here. And you know, somebody repeats it. Are they here yet? Worked good to move. So there's a lot of calculation going on there that, you know, comes out of a situation where, you know, they're not sitting around a comfortable table in a boardroom going
through slides about how to make these, you know, potential strategic decisions. This was rapid, tactical, and I think from having watched that video so many times, just about as well executed as it could have been on the back end. The questions remain on the front end. Can we talk about the medium end if there's such a thing as that? We talked about the moments
after the shooting. We talked about the moments just before the shooting, but a few minutes prior to that, the reporting is, and we've seen testimonials to this effect, there were attendees at the rally who saw the shooter either getting up on the roof or on the roof. And they had a few minutes to warn law enforcement was at a unforgivable gap of time in which this could have been averted.
Do you have any view about that period of time in this whole event? Yeah. So the first time they see him, he's moving around the area and something about him is suspicious and somebody actually puts it over with a description. I don't know what that was or exactly how early it was. It was initially described to me as in the staging area around the magnetometers. Got to dig deeper into that, but what you're talking about is the immediate minutes before the shots are fired. So
people spot him on the roof and they say there's a guy on the roof. It's a quintessential, if you see something, say something, and that happened here. And it did. And the guy has a rifle and they're communicating that to police. The initial reports are, you know, we're yelling this to the cops and the cops aren't doing any there. They're like, yeah, okay. But I mean, what they're doing is they're alerting the police. The police are putting this over their air.
That means it's going over the local law enforcement frequency that people are saying there's a guy on the roof. We can see a guy. They say he has a gun. Two local officers arrive at that location. I believe that they find the shooters ladder because they are climbing up to that roof. When the shooter comes over the edge of the roof, pointing the AR 15 rifle in the face of the cop, who believes he's about to be shot. I mean, nobody points a rifle at you when you're climbing up the roof to
get them where there's not in your mind the idea that he's about to pull that trigger. He lets go of what he's climbing up on and falls to the ground where his partner is. And then whatever Tom Crookes' plan was, the shooter about how exactly he was going to do that at that point is sped up exponentially. You know, he's not going to lie in wait from his secreted position. He's going to have to take that shot now because there's literally a cop coming up the ladder behind him.
And that's exactly what happens before that officer can get back to the top of that ladder or get more help there. Those shots are fired. And a second later, the shooter is dead. I'll be right back with John and Joyce after this. Support for Stay tuned comes from Squarespace. In this day and age, if you're starting a new project, one of the first things on your to-do list is to create a website. That might seem a bit scary
at first, especially if you've never done it before. But there are tools out there that make it easy for anyone to create their own site, like Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that you can use to build a website and help people find your ventures. Creating a website with Squarespace is straightforward and painless, even if it's your first time making one. Whether you want to sell your products or a service, or need a place to host your blog or portfolio, Squarespace can help
you get your name out there and makes it easy to find on the web. They have plenty of tools to help make your website look pretty great too, all while customizing it to fit your particular needs. Because your site is your own, and it shouldn't be fit into a one-size-fits-all box, get the functionality and the unique look that you need. Head to Squarespace.com slash tuned to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code tuned.
Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask meta AI. Whether you want to design a marathon training program that will get you race ready for the fall, or you're curious what planets are visible in tonight's sky, meta AI has the answers. Perhaps you want to learn how to plant basil when your garden only gets indirect sunlight. Meta AI is your intelligent assistant. It can even answer your follow-up questions, like what you can make with your basil and other ingredients you
have in your fridge. Meta AI can also summarize your class notes, visualize your ideas, and so much more. The best part is you can find meta AI right in the apps you already have. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. Just tag meta AI in your chat or tap the icon in the search bar to get started. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with meta AI.
Today explain Sean Ram is for him standing outside of the White House to ask Americans how they feel about a historic moment, their president dropping out of the presidential race. Mixed feelings, I think it's sad, but overall I think he might be making the right decision. I'm sad to see him drop out, but I think it needed to be done. So I think like hopefully it brings out more young voters. Joe Biden is considered as an anti-cris. I wanted to stay in this way,
I know Trump would have won. Now it's up in the air. But I just feel like his America ready for a woman and also a black woman. So that's what scares me. I just don't really see Kamala or I really anyone else being a Bible threat to Trump. Kamala, Kamala. We need the facts, man. I don't know. You know what I mean? I think it's something fishy going on, but you know, don't pull me. Yeah. I'm gonna quote you. We're gonna ask Vox's Andrew Prokop and David Axelrod how they feel
on today explained. Amen. Going back to what you said a minute ago about the longer term, was there a failure here to not identify and anticipate that this person might be a threat to others himself or even the presidential nominee? So far, the answer to that is no. And I say that because as of early Monday morning, they had managed to penetrate into his phone, pass the passwords and the locks and start to exploit the contents, looking for violent,
extremist postings or propaganda or his own communications or writings. And usually when we reach these suspects in the active shooter world, you know, we find a lot of that on their social media, haven't found that on his yet. Within his own devices, haven't found that yet. They've got a phone and a laptop. And so far, they haven't seen anything remarkable. So it raises a question about whether there was an undercurrent here and whether or not it even could have been visible,
but we do know he wasn't on the FBI's list. He wasn't on the Secret Services list. And he frankly wasn't on his parents list. I mean, in their discussions, what they have told law enforcement is he was not political. He wasn't vociferous about favoring one candidate over another. He had been a registered Republican, but he had also sent $15 to a Democratic fund. It's a little bit of a puzzle because he doesn't fit the normal profile except for the fact that, you know, his 84-year-old
neighbor, when Kaya Miller reached her and said, what can you tell us about him said, Tom? Tom was a nice boy, you know, he helped in every way. He was very sweet, very kind, very reliable. And isn't that what we always hear at the end of these things? We didn't quite hear that about him. We heard that he fits the profile of some people who engage in shootings, mass shootings, and otherwise because he was bullied because he was bullied and that he was a loner and didn't
have any friends or very few friends. How does that fit into the profile? So interesting question. Again, in the discussions with the people close to him, they say, yeah, he was a nerd. He didn't have a big social circle. He didn't express any interest in a partner, whether male or female. And he was bullied, but not any more than the average, you know, kid who's not on the football team is bullied wasn't an overarching theme. I mean, I was I was a bullied nerd myself.
Haven't shot anybody to my recollection. Right. Hey, but can we talk about one piece of evidence that we do have here? I mean, I think I heard the president say and I agree that maybe we should let the investigators hunt down motive in his personal situations, you know, in many ways he looks like the young men that you sometimes see who get radicalized online, but there's no evidence of
that. But there is a report, John, that they found some explosives in his vehicle. Can you talk a little bit about what the FBI might do with that in Pwanico and where that kind of a piece of evidence can lead? Sure. And that evidence has extraordinary meaning, not in its clarity, but in the questions it raised. So when they search him after he is killed, they find a transmitter, a remote control on his body. When they locate his car in the trunk, they find an ammo box that has
wires coming out of it to a receiver. The logic is the transmitter he had probably goes to this receiver. So then the question is, what would the purpose of that be? I mean, the fact that he had the transmitter on him at the time he was on that rooftop indicates that he may have been intending to set that device off that was in the car. Now, let's break that down because this is really
interesting. Scenario number one is he set that device off in the car because he wants to cause a distraction and draw attention away from the roof to affect his getaway, but that doesn't work because if he blows up his own car absent another vehicle or an accomplice, which we don't see, that was his getaway. On the other hand, what if that device was left in the trunk because he was walking around that perimeter, he had already been flagged by someone as suspicious and he just
decided I got too many eyes on me to take this thing out of the car and place it. If the idea was to take that device out of the car and place it on the perimeter in the staging area or inside the event that he could hit his remote control from his position, have all of the attention and security resources move towards wherever that noise from that explosion was coming from where he would have, you know, a clear shot at former President Trump. That's another theory, but the only one who knows
the answers to these things is Tom Crookes and he's not with us to be questioned. Yeah, I mean, I've seen the FBI and ATF do amazing things with this kind of forensic evidence. They can track down where it was purchased. Of course, in this day and age, maybe some of that at least can come from online. But do you think that we'll learn more about Crookes as they begin to run down how he acquired all of this stuff? Well, we're starting to learn already. I mean, we know that on Friday,
the day before this incident, he goes to a gun club where he's a member. It's about, you know, 30 minute, 25 minute drive from his house, I think. And he does his practice shooting with a rifle. So that could be a thing that he normally does there because he was very interested in shooting or it could be exactly because he wanted to hone his skills for what he was going to do the next day. We know the next day he wakes up and goes to home depot in his own town and he buys a five-foot
ladder. Now, when I'm thinking of scaling a rooftop, I think five feet is a little short for my needs. But if I've already been there and I've identified a low point, a point of vulnerability where I can get up and climb to the next point, maybe he did preservellance since this was announced in early July and knew what his needs were. He goes from the home depot to Allegheny Arms, which is a gun store not far from his home. And he buys 50 rounds of 223 ammunition. Once he's done that,
he has practiced his shooting the day before. He's obtained a ladder, which he believes he's going to need to get to some kind of high position. He has obtained additional ammunition, which is more than enough for the mission he has in mind if it is to fire a shot that is going to take out a presidential candidate. So we see some planning there and some operational steps. But it's interesting to me that they're happening so close to the event. Usually in a plot like this, wouldn't all of
that have been done further in advance if there wasn't some element of spontaneity here. Then you flip your chart to the next page, which is what about these IEDs? Took time to acquire that material to develop those skills to get the chemical mix that are inside those boxes, the one that was in his car and another one that was found in his bedroom. You know, some people might be asking the question, given that this was secret service, there was in charge and secret service who had
the authority and secret service has agents who can do investigations. Why is this now an FBI investigation? That is a question that I would ask the United States attorney. But as you know,
the secret service job is to protect the protectee and to take out the threat. Right after that, the legal piece shifts to what agency has the lead on the federal statutes regarding assault on a federal official assault on a government official assault on official under government protection, assault on a president, former president, and all of that goes to the FBI as the lead. The other piece is they have to resolve questions that are deep within the FBI's capabilities
and context, which is, is this terrorism? Is it domestic violent extremism? Is this, you know, somebody who fits into the lone wolf active shooter realm and, you know, the answers to those things have great depth in the FBI experience between their profilers, their records, and their investigations? People might wonder, why does any of that matter if the guy is dead and if they have determined he acted alone? It matters a lot because for every incident like this, whether it's
the active shooter in the mall or whether it's the person who is shooting Ronald Reagan. Why? Because he hates Republicans. Why? Because he's against the war. Why? No, he was trying to impress Jody Foster. That would have not been front of mind, but as you study each one of these offenders and you really dig deep, every one of them contributes to the vast library of where can we find the common offender characteristics? How could those help us identify the next one earlier when we build those
profiles and we compare them? And that's what the FBI behavioral analysis unit, what people know from silence of the lambs or criminal minds, does in real life. More from our conversation after this. Isn't there a more nuanced point here too? I mean, people have expressed concerns and some politicians have tried to make hay out of the fact that this is generated by political speech, by conversation about the campaign. And there were members of Congress who came out immediately
afterwards and suggested that Joe Biden was responsible for this. Well, you know, it's a good moment for people to reevaluate their tone and be careful about the choice of words that they're using when they engage in political speech. Wouldn't it be comforting, I think, for people to understand the motive with some precision? Because if, and I think you use a great example, right, John Hinkley, if it's something like that, I think that tells us a lot more than we might learn if this
is in fact a radicalized member or a militia member who had a political agenda. I think, choice, we're in probably the most brittle and taught political environment that this country has seen since probably the Civil War at least since 1968. But, you know, words matter. And we've gone through the looking glass down the rabbit hole. I mean, when you have politicians making statements about their opponents, he's the worst president in the history of this country. He's
destroying this country. That is very vitriolic language. When you have language coming back, you know, the other way from critics that contain strong words, when you are coming out of an election where it became relatively common practice. Can we just stop and think about this for a minute?
For people to show up at polling locations with lawn chairs and folding chairs in military camouflage, carrying assault weapons, as their way of saying, we are protecting this for our candidate, where you have the proud boys and the three percenters and other organized groups showing up in military gear on January 6th to storm the capital of the United States with strategy tactics,
radio communications. You really have to ask, where have we gone here in our country, where we are supposed to be not only the most advanced civilization on the planet earth, but also the most advanced democracy. It has all got this veneer of violent speech, violent hints, violent subtext through the normal day-to-day language. And a lot of this is driven by social media, but a lot of it is popping up in very visual and tangible ways.
You know, with your media hat on, do you have a view of where the line is between legitimate political speech and this sort of more dangerous speech? We might call it hate speech or speech that designed to incite violence. I mean, how do we know where that line is in today's environment? I know where I work now at CNN that before they put on something that is going to be insightful or inflammatory, there's a moment where they stand back and say, who is the speaker here?
Is this news? And does this particular individual deserve that level of bully pulpit just because it's a great sound bite? There is a combination of legal people, standards people, and editorial people who weigh in on those decisions, and they are very cautious if not conservative about that.
But on the social media side, it's the wild, wild west. You know, there's nobody making that decision and more and more people, particularly young people, are being influenced, but what they see and hear over social media channels rather than mainstream media where these considerations are made more carefully. John, can I ask you a final question that is both out of your lane, technically, and above your pay grade? I believe I've always been most comfortable speaking about things I know
nothing about. Let's go. Well, you've been around the block and you've seen a lot of things in law enforcement and otherwise. Do you think that the Secret Service Director will or should resign? I don't know if she will. I don't think she should. Kim Chiddle is a career long secret service agent who broke a number of glass ceilings as a woman coming up through that organization
over a number of years. And at the end of that, she got the reward of a government pension and a comfortable retirement, where she went to a major company for a significantly higher salary to be rewarded for all of the nights that she stood in hallways and stairways guarding a candidate. All of the time she spent on investigations, all of the birthdays and holidays and everything else she missed, because that is the lot of the Secret Service agent being transferred from city
to city separated from family. And when the phone rang from Joe Biden saying, I want you because of the confidence I had in you on my presidential protective detail to protect me and my family, I want you to lead that agency. She went back to her boss and her new high paying job and said, I'm sorry. I know I told you this job was so important to me in the interview process, but
I need to step out because my country has asked me to serve. The Secret Service Director has a tremendous challenge because they have to with their 5,000 people get every threat from every direction in every city and then every country of protectee goes right every minute of every day. The bad guy only has to rely on some glitch, some luck, some something to get lucky one time. And the entire agency's efficacy is going to question, that's a hard job. She's done a lot to build
the agency, build its recruiting, make it larger, lobby for extra resources. And I think the idea of casting her aside to find someone else who is going to be relying on the same Russian roulette of that unlucky moment doesn't really move the ball forward in terms of stability. John Miller, thank you for your time. Thanks, Priet. It's always a pleasure to talk with you and you know, I admire you and everything you've done so it's a pleasure to be here and you too, Joyce.
Good to meet you, John. Thank you, sir. My conversation with Joyce continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss federal district judge Eileen Cannon's decision to dismiss the classified documents prosecution against former president Trump and Florida. I think she really bent over backwards to reach this result that dismissal was warranted instead of giving the law a fair and careful reading. To try out the membership for just one dollar for a month,
head to cafe.com slash insider. Again, that's cafe.com slash insider. Well, that's it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, John Miller and Joyce Vance. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me at Priet Bararr with a hashtag AskPreet. You can also
now reach me on threads or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That's 669-24 preet or you can send an email to letters at cafe.com. Stay tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Seper. The technical director is David Tattashr. The deputy editor is Celine Roer. The editorial producers are Noah Azalai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Cloudy Hernandez and the cafe team is Matthew Billy,
Nat Weiner and Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I'm your host, Priet Barara. As always, Stay Tuned. Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask meta AI. Whether you want to design a marathon training program or you're curious what planets are visible in tonight's sky, meta AI has the answers. It can also summarize your class notes, visualize your ideas, and so much more. It's the
most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger.