Kyoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. US politics is in a free fall after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The shooting killed a spectator and injured to others, while the Secret Service fatally shot the gunman, a twenty year old man from Pennsylvania, where
the rally was being held. The shocking incident comes at a time when the United States is already polarized politically, smack bang in the middle of the twenty twenty four election race. The Republican National Convention is still going ahead this week, and pundits are already predicting that this event could have a major impact on the twenty twenty four
presidential election. Today on the Front Page, we speak to University of Wyke at the International law professor Al Gillespie on what's next and how this event could change the US political landscape. But first we'll get the latest from CBS News campaign reporter Jake Rosen, who was at the Pennsylvania rally when the shots rang out. Jake, you were covering Saturday's Trump rally and Butler Pennsylvania. What was it like being there on the ground.
You know, I do these often.
It's part of my job at CBS to go wherever the former president is. I'm here in Milwaukee now. He just landed a couple hours ago, and you're only one hundred feet from him. The campaign loves to make sure that you have a good shot of you know, when he's speaking and you're doing live shots. We thought yesterday was potentially going to be a presidential announcement, and so you know, there was an kind of an environment of
excitement by its supporters. Everyone I spoke to there thought maybe it could have come yesterday.
Obviously that didn't happen.
But you know, you go through layers of security when you're dealing with Trump rallies and Biden events and many events with US officials, high ranking YOU officials, and you know, I'm certainly still in shock. I know my coworkers who were there definitely are. It's just not something that you expect to ever see happened in your lifetime, let alone when you're there physically on the job.
What was it like when the shots rang out?
You know, I've said this to a couple of people, but coming off of our July fourth holiday where people launch fireworks off. It sounded like someone maybe brought some in and lit them off. It sounded like maybe someone nearby the rally site set off some fireworks. You know, here in America we love an explosion or two. And even in my neighborhood to Washington, DC. And after the assassination in attempt last night, people in the Butler, Pennsylvania area were still lighting off fireworks.
But we heard top pop pop.
If you want to really see something, that said, take a look at what happened.
Over from turned and grabbed his ear and one of the bullets hit a hydraulic lift that holds the speakers up when Trump speaks, holds a you know, massive set of speakers. And I heard a hiss and saw some smoke come from there. And then all of a sudden, we look back at Trump. The crowd is shrieking. There the sound of women and children yelling and calling for help.
I'll never forget it.
We saw, you know, a swat team come right up on stage with Secret Service and protect Trump.
But you can hear it all, you know.
I was just watching some of the video from yesterday for the first time, and it took the crowd by surprise. It certainly took all of us by surprise.
And you would have spoken to some attendees there, Hey were they shocked?
Yeah?
Yeah.
I spoke to the people who refused to leave because they didn't know what to do. I think part of the struggle in that situation as a reporter is the first thing I wanted to do is call my parents.
And let them know I'm okay.
There wasn't enough self service there to really do that, so I just went around with my cell phone and went up the people who were still leaning up against the press area of railings and hanging out there. We were making sure that people were okay. An elderly woman handed me a chair and asked me to just get it out of the way as she was trying to get her family through. And I talked to a doctor yesterday who was off duty, an emergency room physician who tried to save.
The life of the man who was killed.
He did CPR on the man and tried to save his life in the stands before the medical officials got there.
And you know, the man had blood all over his shirt.
He was shaken, his partner was shaken, and it's you know, it's just a scene that's unfortunately become all too real in America and now stretched into American politics.
I heard the shots.
I thought it was far crackers to begin with. Somebody over there with screaming he's been shot, he's been shot. So I made my way over. I said, I'm in a merchant department, physician, let me help you. The guy had spun around, was jammed between the benches. He had a headshot here, there's lots of blood and he had brain matter there. So I got him s genitor CPR fIF chest compressions as well as a brief point.
I guess from a New Zealand's perspective, it's astonishing that someone can get so close to a former president with a firearm. I'm not sure if you know our laws here, but guns aren't as prevalent, I guess as they are in America. Is that the kind of feeling there at the moment, because from the outside looking in, the fact that people can carry around guns in the US is just astonishing.
You know, when you go to these rallies, and I only speak of this, and you know in the context of what you have to go through, but you go through bomb dogs.
They smell your bags.
Like I have to go with a camera bag and a tripod and backpacks and stuff. When I go, you go through metal detectors. Security agents open your bag and check through them. So I think you're operating under the presumption that you're safe, right, And I think in this case what seems to have happened is either short staffing or mistaken you know, assignments by Secret Service and the
local police. And this gunman who was you know, four hundred feet away, climbed up on a roof and despite warnings from people who were watching the Trump rally from outside that initial Secret Service security perimeter, it just wasn't enough time to save you know, the life of the man who was shot and to stop former President Trump
from being hit with a bullet. And you know, I will add that the way that his head was turned and he was hit, you know, Trump boton looks around, but just the way that his head was if it was turned a different way, it might have been a different story.
Can you tell me the lightest on what we know about the alleged shooter.
So he was a twenty year old man from Pennsylvania. He was a registered Republican The latest reporting that CBS has is that the man had some kind of explosive device in his car which was near the rally site.
Not at the rally, but near there.
And look, I believe that a bomb squad found explosive material and bomb making material at his home. And we have not found any kind of manifesto or anything yet, but our social media investigative teams and everyone is doing their best right now to piece together what we think got him to the point where he felt like he needed to try to take the life.
Of a former president.
And the Republican National Convention is still going ahead. You're there in Milwaukee this way. They're concerns about safety ahead of that event.
Oh absolutely, you know, this event just like the Democratic one, just like things like the World Cup, the Super Bowl, massive supporting events in America, celebrity events. They're operated and run by Secret Service, the same group that runs these rallies, and they're certainly concerned. There's a couple of security perimeters. The former president is here. He got here right before you and I started speaking, and you know, we'll kind
of have to see you. You know how these politicians and speakers talk about what happened yesterday, but it just seems like, you know, it's this tangible feeling of nervousness among my colleagues and I who are there and who are now here, and just generally across the board that there's so much going on in the world outside of America that we are already on alert for, and now there's one very, very significant development that I think just makes you know, the hair on the back of your
neck stand up a little bit as you kind of walk around the city. And I was in Chicago at the airport about an hour and a half ago, and just makes you look behind your back a couple more times than usually would.
Thanks for joining us, Jake. With four months to go until Americans head to the polls, this shooting could not have come at a more contentious time for American politics to discuss the wider ramifications of this. We're joined now by Alci Llespie Ow. The FBI and other authorities are currently sweeping the shooter's social media accounts searching for any
kind of possible motive. Now it's all dependent on what they find, of course, but what are the early indications of what this could have actually possibly been.
Well, most people will recognize it as an assassination, and that's more of a political term than a legal term or an attempted assassination, and that's where you target a high profile person. Searching for the social media is important because they'll be looking more for a motive, and if you can find a motive, that could change it from an act of murder or attended murder to an act of terrorism. And that means they'll be trying to find out the ideological purpose of why the shooter did this act.
They're also following up on the suggestion it could have been a domestic terrorism attack. What's the difference there, Well.
If it's terrorism, it means that it will be viewed very differently, not just legally, but also politically, because people will instantly start to associate that one person with any groups that they may have associated with. And so often when you designate some of the terror act, you can, if it's not carefully done, implicate wider communities or people with like minded views. It shouldn't be political, but often when it is designated this terrorism, it can be seen as political.
I want to speak to you tonight about the need for us to lower the temperature in our politics and to remember or we may disagree, we are not enemies. We're neighbors. We're friends, co workers, citizens, and most importantly, we are fellow Americans. We must stand together. There's no place in America this kind of violence, for any violence, ever, period, no exceptions. We can't allow this violence to be normalized. You know, the political record in this country has gotten very heated.
It's time to cool it down.
The US is already quite tense in the midst of the twenty twenty four US presidential election. What could this event mean for the race going forward?
Well, there's so much going on right now. I mean in terms of the race going forward. With regards to further tanks, there's always a risk that you'll get either copycats where someone will find inspiration and the notoriety of the killer and do a similar act, or you might get a reprisal attack as well, where someone will lash out against the community that they perceive the attempted assassin to have come from. And so the risk of violence
will be elevated in a number of areas. I don't think that the actual terror threat levels in America have yet increased, but they will be increasingly vigilant around high profile events. And the second thing that you need to watch for is the inquiry process, because whenever you have such a high profile attack and is in all countries, you have to find out why that happened, and so that it's never good to call for quick inquiries as
mister Biden's done. You want to have initial inquiries and then you want to get right to the bottom of the details of why this person did that and how
they achieved it. With regards to the actual election, I know a lot of people are saying it's going to be a landslipe for Trump right now, but I think it's premature to actually come to that position because there's a fair chance that mister Biden might even be the preferred candidate going into the election in November, and so I think there's still a lot of water to go into the bridge in what is already a very tense political campaign cycle.
The history of assassination attempts and assassinations of US presidents isn't new, and with it comes that barrage of conspiracy theories. People still can't agree on what actually happened to JFK, for instance. This time, though social media is playing a big role in spreading theories on both sides of the aisle. Hey, some of the right wing saying Biden or George Soros was behind it, some of the left arguing the shooting was staged. What do these suggestions mean for US politics?
It's not just US politics, it's politics and all democracies. That the amount of misinformation and disinformation is on steroids right now, and that we need to take a little bit of a step back, try to be calm and let the authorities go about their processes so that we can get to some certainty. It's not new that dis misinformation or disinformation or even propaganda, but the spread of it, the speed of it, and the depth of it is unprecedented.
And the risk is that this information is then used by others to go on and justify violence against other civilians intercourse of their actions.
This shooting comes as a tax over. Project twenty twenty five, a right wing think tank wish list for Republican presidency, has been making the headlines.
Product twenty twenty five is a collection of conservative policies and a blueprint for the next conservative president, which includes policies like a crackdown and abortion pills. The reinstatement of the Trump era immigration bans, a ban on transgender people serving in the military, and eliminating the Department of Education.
The handbook outlines an expansion of presidential power and plans to fire as many as fifty thousand government workers to be placed with conservatives, including a top to bottom overhaul the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Does this incident just bury any attack lines on Trump for the next we are?
I hope?
So.
I hope the Americans can take a pause from this terrible incident and come together. I was heartened by a millennia Trump's post about the importance of getting above politics and just coming together as a community. Ideally, in my world, there'd be no campaigning for the next ten days, that Biden and Trump would come together and collectively condemn political
violence under any justification. The problem is that the election cycle is now only perhaps one hundred days away, and trying to pause it and not use this for an unnecessary gain for one party or the other will be very difficult to achieve. But right now, all Americans need to just take a deep breath, because the risk is not just to the presidential campaign, it's to the integrity of their country in general, because if more conflict breaks out, it could just spread more conflict.
Since the attack, we've seen an outpouring of nation from world leaders after the shooting, including Israel's Benjamin Natan Yahoo. What does an assassination attempt like this mean for international relations?
Sometimes assassinations are linked to foreign countries, and if they're linked to foreign countries, it can make it very difficult to maintain stable relationships. We yet to see all the information about the killer, but primar face, it appears that he was a lone wolf acting by himself. Most politicians, especially in Western democracies, will come out and condemn this because they will realize that if you don't condemn it, unfortunately,
very quickly you two could become a target. So it's in best self interest, not just for their own preservation, but also as a question of politics and principle.
Now do you think this incident is enough to change the public's perception of Trump and see him re elected or will it only drive divisions in the US.
I am always hopeful that there's a good middle ground in America, and I think that's somewhat optimistic on my part, that there is a good common center between the Democrats and the Republicans where they can find unity, and I'm hoping they can find unity in their joint condemnation of any kind of political violence. But the realistic side of me understands that ever since mister Biden won the election has become a much more contested and a much more
angry country. Americans nearly always do the right thing. It just takes some time to get there, but it will take extraordinary restraint from many people right now not to lash out, both in terms of blaming other communities and seeking vengeance for themselves.
This attempted assassination on Trump. Obviously, it's astonishing that someone can get a firearm as close to a former US president as this person has. What do you think it will do to the debate around gun control in America.
It will make it difficult, especially now that the president has been a target of a loan shooter. Normally, what happens when you have an incident like this is they review the firearms platform that was used, how the firearm was accessed by the shooter. In America, in the past, they have prohibited these types of firearms. Between nineteen ninety four and two thousand and four, but that prohibition lapsed
on semi automatic. I don't think that there will be a appetite for prohibition of these firearms, but I expect you will see a lot of focus around the laws that allowed potentially an unlicensed person without a background check to have access to firearm that his father may have bought. So I don't think you'll see prohibition, but I think you may see a tightening, especially in Pennsylvania, around the safe storage of firearms.
Thanks for joining us out that said, for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at ZAD Herald dot co dot z. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals with sound engineer Patti Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.