Will the assassination attempts decide the election?

It's a dangerous business, however, being president. It's a little bit dangerous. It's uh you know they think race car driving is dangerous. No. They think uh bull riding that's pretty scary, right? No. This is a dangerous business so we have to keep it safe. And today I a little while ago I got a nice a very nice call from Kamala. No. It was very nice. It was very nice. It's it's It was very, very nice. Here we are again. The second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life.

in less than two months. And once again, the questions are revolving not around gun crime, not around access to firearms, not around mental health in the US. but around political language. So today we're gonna break that down and ask whether the name calling is actually at the heart of what's going on. And what you heard there was the problem that Donald Trump has. He wants at times to stick to policy, to stick to consensual

But his audience, which he adores, wants him to throw out red meat and they want to boo Kamala Harris. They do not want to hear that Donald Trump had a nice call from her. So does Donald Trump listen to his better angels? Or his worse ones. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitless and John Sopor. It's John. It's Emily. Now, I'm not gonna be weird, but the last time I flew to America was on my son's birthday when he turned twenty.

and there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life. And this time I flew to America on my other son's birthday, just turned eighteen, and there is an assassination attempt. on Donald Trump's life. I think I'm gonna get a travel ban soon. Statistical int statistically interesting. Isn't that a syllogism? Utterly r irrelevant. Isn't it a syllogism where All cats have tails and all dogs have tails, thereof for all cats are dogs. I mean, isn't it kind of a similar sort of logic?

Well I suppose the trouble is at the heart of this is that all the arguments that we've rehearsed already this summer about political language, about the toxicity of American politics, about the ramping up of violence and about, you know, gun crime, which is always really the first line of argument whenever this sort of stuff happens, have already been used.

And here we are, back again, trying to rehash this sense of whether life in America has got more dangerous for Donald Trump, whether anything has changed for Donald Trump, whether it is about rhetoric, or whether it's just a kind of absurdly dangerous state of affairs that you have a president

who goes off on a golf course that he owns and can't be protected by the Secret Service because they cannot patrol every single perimeter of every golf course that he owns. W well y yes and no. Yes this is history repeating itself. It is the second assassination attempt.

But no, the arguments are different this time round because Donald Trump has made them different this time round. The first time round, Donald Trump said, We need to come together as a nation. I am a different human being. I'm kind of changed by what I've been through and I've realised we've got to unite. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all.

America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America. Second time round, with Kamala Harris now in the race and apparently surging in her likability ratings, which are really, really interesting numbers. That if you look at the polls on that.

Donald Trump is going It's the language of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden that are responsible for these assassination attempts. They have almost got blood on their hands because it is the inflammatory things that are being said. By the Democrats that are leading swivel eyed people to come and attack me. Hard leftists. Because of the communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying and it will only get worse. Even though the two attacks seem to be

have been done by people who are less politically motivated than just odd. Okay, well let's talk about the suspect first, just to give you some of the ground facts. A guy called Ryan Routh, late fifties, who we are now learning had basically been hiding out in the bushes around this West Florida golf course.

for twelve hours before the Secret Service confronted him. And actually he never fired a shot, unlike in Butler, Pennsylvania, the one that clipped Trump's ear. He never fired a shot, but his A K forty seven, his rifle essentially, was spotted by some eagle eyed s service person when it was sort of being aimed towards Trump but through the railings. They think he was about three hundred and fifty, four hundred

yards away. And so they've traced back to what they know about him and they have found that he's unaffiliated, but that he was a very strong supporter of Ukraine, that he actually went to Kyiv, that he wanted um to encourage people to fight to support Zelensky's um, war against Putin, and that he also, I think, voted in the Democratic primaries earlier this year.

in North Carolina, a citizen of of both North Carolina and of Hawaii. And I guess from these sort of slim pickings, they're trying to form a sense of what we should be thinking about this particular crime. He he was armed with a go with a GoPro as well as a rifle, which suggests that part of the um construct around this, you know, attempt would be the amplification of whatever he did.

And it's very hard, isn't it, to understand whether this was a politically motivated crime, attempted crime, whether it was about self aggrandizement, whether it was about wish prestige, whether he wanted to call attention to the Ukraine war. We I guess we don't know at this point. The the suspect was apprehended later when he was actually on a motorway and was pulled over and and and taken in by police.

It's not like he has posted a manifesto online. Yeah. It's not like, you know, kind of when Islamic State have carried out a killing and you see the video that was pre recorded beforehand and saying why they are doing this in the name of Japan. There's nothing like that from this guy. There are bits of sketchiness. I mean so for example when he was in Ukraine there are now a lot of reporting from Ukraine saying he was a fantasist, he didn't know what he was.

It was this fifty eight year old guy who's saying, Come and fight here you know, he sounds a bit lost, who's trying to find a cause in late middle age to kind of make sense of his life. Well we all know how that feels. No, I'm still trying. And and I think that there so there are elements in all of that where you think uh this doesn't quite add up to it. But it is the way it has been politicised.

as a means for the Republicans to focus their fire on Kamala Harris and it's also been A way of Donald Trump to seize back the people. Control of the conversation about politics in the US and JD Vance has been doing it too, and turning on the rhetoric. The elephant in the room here, which is of course just a couple of days ago, my running mate, my dear friend and our next president, was nearly assassinated again.

Two assassination tips attempts in as many months, and I think that it's time to say to the Democrats, to the media, to everybody that has been attacking this man and trying to censor this man for going on ten years. Cut it out or you're gonna get somebody killed. So all very well. The rhetoric must be calmed down. Otherwise you're gonna get somebody killed. He then went on to describe

Kamala Harris is a total fraud. We've never had a faker, more fraudulent person run for president of the United States, and we gotta remind people of that every single day. Donald Trump repeatedly refers to her as Comrade Kamales, a communist, a Marxist, a revolutionary. Exactly. And so you think, well hang on, what is it just one sided that you can't say?

Or does it apply to both? Because J D Vance really needs to talk to Donald Trump as well as the Harris campaign. I actually think you've nailed something there, which is increasingly apparent to kind of V P watchers actually. which is this very odd relationship between Vance and Trump. Where Vance is sent out onto the airwaves and he has to do the defending, you know, he's the surrogate. Look, we can disagree with one another, we can debate one another.

But we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he is elected it is going to be the end of American democracy. And then Trump quite often sort of contradicts what he's just said. This is fascist. There's a radical left Marxist communist fascist. She's a Marxist.

She's a fascist. Comrade Kamala Harris. They're scum. They're scum. And they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage. And so you end up with a situation where Vance is then nervous to say anything because he doesn't know if his boss, you know, the former president, is actually gonna come out and say something completely different. And I think that Raleigh speech where he mentions the Kamala phone call kind of speaks to that. Um, we played it to you right at the beginning. But

Trump talks about Kamala making this, you know, he calls it a very nice phone call and the crowd doesn't like it at all. It's very nice. And Trump is clearly trying to say, No, no, she did the right thing. You know, we're all lowering the temperature here, it's it's a good thing.

But he realizes that that's not going down particularly well with the people who've come to the the rally who much prefer to hear him calling her a Marxist, you know, or a dangerous lunatic, or a fraud, or going after her or whatever it is. And so it does go to the heart of how you campaign in in your Trump style language, whilst also accusing the others of being inflammatory. Look, this is if j if Trump wins the election in November

J.D. Vance, get used to it because this is what it was like for the four years that Donald Trump was president. That senior officials would meet inside the White House. There would be these meetings in the West Wing for the

where they would decide policy on this or that or the other, what they were going to do about the border, what they were going to do about the Affordable Health Care Act, what they were going to do about the R. And then Trump's been watching CNN and then Trump was something different. And he and even though Trump has been in the room and agreed to the policy

He goes out into the briefing room and says something completely different, rips up exactly and makes everyone else look like a Charlie. Yeah. And J D Vance is going through that process at the moment. And JD Vance is it's happening him.

Again and again and again. I guess the wider question we're asking here and we did ask it in twenty twenty, before the attempt insurrection on the capital in January the sixth, was uh are we getting to a place where election results aren't enough, where the ballot isn't enough, where people are making their feelings known and sometimes their conspiracies aired.

with violent acts instead of votes. So i given what happened on January the sixth It feels to me, and given the number of lawyers that Donald Trump uh is taking on and poll watchers who are there to scrutinise who's turning up at ballot stations in almost in in an intimidatory way.

to drive people away from the police state. Yeah. That you think there is no chance that it's going to be resolved on November the sixth. That there's not going to be. Yeah, if Trump wins, I believe that Kamala Harris will pick up the phone and say

Donald Trump, congratulations, I concede you have won. I do not believe for a second if it is in any way tight that Donald Trump makes the reverse call to Kamala Harris. Now if Harris wins by an absolute landslide A blowout election there may be But there is nothing to do.

Absolutely nothing to suggest that Kamala Harris is on trajectory to win a blowout election a la nineteen eighty four. I mean yeah, I used to always frame the US election. I mean in terms of our coverage, they were all done and dusted by midnight. Right. You'd get the the votes in, the sort of the calls from California at eleven o'clock on that night and you'd be like, Okay, that's fine. We're we're done here. We can we've got a clear winner.

Obviously the election of two thousand blew all that out of the water because Gore, Bush didn't end until January and even then it didn't end very clearly. It was it was all kind of murky and ended up in the Supreme Court with lawyers in Florida. But now you wouldn't go home the day after a US election because you don't actually believe that we will have anything like a clear result. For days to come. Exactly. So it's worth looking at uh where we've got to now.

Sort of in the race. We are it's kind of dizzying. I mean really dizzying that as you say, two assassination attempts we are a week on from the debate and the debate is already forgotten about I g I didn't even remember that. Yeah, you know, when it was raining cats and dogs. It now reigning assassination attempts. Um th the most interesting polling stuff I've seen is the extent to which Kamala Harris, her approval rating

Which were terrible f you know, from twenty twenty one. They have been sliding, sliding, sliding. They have really come back strongly and the likability that she showed in the debate I think is a significant point. And the fact though that Donald Trump is still preferred on the economy. And you've got likability, approval ratings for Harris, really, really good tick.

Donald Trump economy tick and how the force is there and the balance between those two play themselves out. I mean it really we used to talk about, you know, is he somebody you'd go for a beer with? That was always the test, wasn't it? Oh

You know, the likability, who's your Prime Minister, would you go for a beer with them? I don't know whether that's just because kind of drinking is out of fashion now, or whether what you're asking is much more profound, which is you will still vote for somebody you don't like?

You don't even trust her. you don't agree with on many things if you think that they will improve your pocket. And it's as simple as that. And this election I think will be a test of that, because more Americans Either like Kamala or don't dislike her, Van Trump. You know, according to the polls you you're discussing. And more Americans.

preferred the economy under Trump. So it literally comes down to w do we do we not really care about personality or or character anymore? Well I think we do and I think that I think that you know per s I mean I think that kind of the character of America, the future of a democracy of the United States will be on the ballot in November. That will play a part. But we are going to get later today the the Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates.

If they cut a half a percent off interest rates, as some are speculating that they will do. That hands a massive victory. to Kamala Harris because it is essentially the Fed saying, America, inflation, we've beaten it and we can now cut interest rates and Donald Trump is gonna go berserk about it because he's gonna say, well hang on a minute, the Fed is interfering in politics. And I I read this great line saying uh from the New York Times saying the Federal Reserve is independent from politics.

That doesn't mean that politics is independent of the Federal Reserve. You know, politicians are gonna pile on the The Federal Reserve for whatever decision they make. Do you know what I remember was in twenty twelve when Barack Obama had just done actually a pretty disastrous debate opposite Mitt Romney. It always goes down as one of the ones where you know even though he went on to win. It was not a good moment for him. And just before the election the job numbers came out.

And unemployment had gone down below you know, the he'd sort of brought them down. And th and there'd been this whole thing of, you know, no president has ever won. This was after the financial crash, obviously, it was in the aftermath, all that. No president had ever won when when unemployment was, you know, around the ten percent mark. And they suddenly came in just below and everyone went, Oh, that's convenient, that's good. But it kind of worked, you know. I mean, that was

From then on, it was Obama's election all the way through. And and I think that, you know, the the Fed decision today will yes, of course it will have, you know, a a bit of impact. But it says it set a narrative of the direction of travel of the US economy where, you know, if you read the Wall Street Journal, which very few Americans do, or you read the Financial Times, which very few Americans do,

Actually the economic outlook in America has been looking pretty good for a while. It's not yet felt in pocketbook. It's not yet felt in the cost of filling up the grocery trolley. If interest rates are coming down, the cost of borrowing is going down.

And people are having to pay less for the debt loans that they have, then that is felt. And I think that that would be a very big move and you know Impossible to say decisive when you've got so few people in so few states who will decide the outcome of this election, but it could be important. One of the most interesting figures I think who's on the doorstep in the rallies at the moment is Tim Walls, Camel Harris's VP.

Now, when he was first um sort of chosen There was all this stuff Trump was calling him Tampon Tim, you know, because he'd sort of gone all out to put, you know, s sanitary products in different bathrooms and and make sure that everyone was kind of feeling at home and all the rest of it. And that became a a symbol of wokeness, you know, for Trump.

We always thought if you listen to him he s he says things like, As long as you surround yourself with smart women, you can't go far wrong. You know, he's always been sort of the th the feminist on the campaign, doing the stuff that she probably wouldn't choose to do because she is a woman. And yet one of the most interesting conversations he's had this week has been with young white men of the kind that might be tempted

by the strongman Trump sort of authoritarian leader. And we're just gonna play you a little clip of it because Wool's kind of Listens to them, doesn't patronise them, doesn't assume they're going to be one way or another, and gently brings them round. And I think this is an underestimated part. of the Harris campaign now, which could have devastating effects. Spread wide.

This guy was undecided, so is this guy and they're both coming out for you guys. I think I think I'm decided now. I mean they were they were apathetic and that's you know it's not about agreeing on every single issue, it's about that core belief. And I said uh

This this whole idea that you can't agree that the election was fair, this whole idea that people should have personal freedoms, uh which is kind of like the politics are turning over. Yeah, nice meeting you all. Yeah, really grateful you take the time again. Yeah, thanks. Go get'em. Talk to your friends. Some of them are just gonna say, Look, I'm not that into that into politics? The answer to that is too damn bad. Politics is into you. So get engaged, go vote. Thank you so much.

And she was saying to me that actually the the social media stuff, the digital advertising that the Democrats are putting out f towards young people is absolutely brilliant. Off the scale. They didn't do anything like as well in the Clinton campaign. There is a lot of smartness. in the Harris campaign that so far hasn't really hit a big hurdle yet. Overnight?

Billy Eilish has come out and said We are voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walls because they are fighting to protect our reproductive freedom, our planet, and our democracies. I don't know whether it will transfer But Taylor Swift Billy Eilish, they're not nobody's Okay. So yesterday I was in New York. Did I mention it? I was in New York. Yes I was, yeah.

And we were hanging out round Washington Square, which is the kind of heart of NYU. You know, it's the feels like a university campus. As soon as you're in that part of sort of Greenwich Village. And yeah, I'm with my ki my my son and his friend and we suddenly see this bright pink ice cream van. And on the side it said, tastes as good as voting feels.

And they are handing out soft scoop ice cream to any of the students, to anyone who wants to come along and we're kinda going, Oh, I wonder if you need to show your voter registration, oh what's going on here? The answer is no. You know, e the ice cream is free. I don't know, some big, you know, Democrat benefactor presumably decides that they're gonna give you the free ice cream. But they are aligning it with

Voting intentions. Have you registered? Have you signed up? All the stuff that was in Taylor Swift's post at the weekend after the debate. You know, they are trying to make this a vibe. We've talked about it so much, the vibe campaign. Whereas you go straight out, you target young people where they are and you don't just say vote for her, you say register to vote. Funnily enough, I was in I wasn't in New York this weekend, Mateless. No. I was I was in London.

Outside the nearest street market to to where I live? There ice cream there? No no free ice cream. But there were there were a number of people holding Banners saying US citizen question marks votefromabroad dot org, register to vote. So even in London. Aren't we sad? Do we just run round looking for sort of US memorabilia or wherever we are? I know, we are tragic. I mean I I do think you and I are really

tragic losory people for the thing. But I got the ice cream, you didn't. But but the other thing I saw as well was Donald Trump on Twitter Saying Pennsylvania early voting has started now. Exactly. Go vote. Monday The voting began. But but four years ago Donald Trump was going into the White House briefing room and saying This is gonna lead to fraud, this is a con, don't do it. It cost the Republicans huge numbers of votes because Donald Trump was decrying early voting. Now he realizes.

You have to embrace it because these are people who might not go to the polling stations but want to vote for Donald Trump. This is one of the conversations that his close advisor, Susie Wilkes, was having where she said stop putting people off early voting, male voting. Don't do it.

and he had to w to be convinced and he was like, No, but don't you understand? That was you know, they they use the d drop in boxes and you know, h his whole thesis was that The principle of early voting made it corruptible in states like Pennsylvania. And she, his advisor, was saying to him, Don't do that, you know, make

Just get behind the people who might be voting for you and make it easier for them to vote. And it sounds like they Your account of that story sounds realistic except for the word mate. I don't think Susie said to Donald Trump, the former president, mate. Yeah mate, you know what? What you need to do, Sonny No, don't believe that. But but broadly, you know, if he's now on board

With postalvotean he's gonna tell his own supporters to do that. That is a game changer. Because last year for him he didn't. Well we will be back in a moment where we were gonna be talking To an old friend of Donald Trump's, but as someone who has written extensively about the safety of the First Family and the role of the Secret Service in America. The News Agents USA with Emily Mate. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitley. And John Sopot.

We're joined now by Ron Kessler, who knows Donald Trump very well, journalist and author, and has written a great deal about the White House, about the Secret Service, about yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r that there was at Trump's golf course at West Palm Beach two or three days ago. It just seems bizarre almost that there can have been Two assassination attempts, sort of credible, within two or three months.

Well, it certainly is shocking. On the other hand, I've been writing about the Secret Service's shortcomings for about a decade. Uh and it's just one thing after another. It really comes down to their attitude of we may do with less. And it means that they are proud not to spend money, not to get more agents. Uh

And it also leads to cover-ups and line. And there have been examples of former Secret Service directors and and now the most recent one, uh, Kimberly Sheadle line, where she said the problem with putting agents on the roof. At uh the first assassination attempt was it was

it was sloping so it would be dangerous, which was just a a total lie. So that just tells you, you know, what the what the uh atmosphere is and and uh it's a clue to the problems that we're now Talking about I guess the obvious difference is that America just has more guns, you know, fundamentally than than we do.

I wonder if you'd make a distinction between the first uh attempted assassination and the second. Clearly at the first, when there was a rally, when he was, you know, clearly sort of targeted on the stage. It sounds like there were massive security flaws there, including what you were saying about the roof. But I I can you ever really stop uh a man who owns a lot of golf courses

From playing golf on a Sunday afternoon, you know, with a perimeter fencing. I d I I wonder if you can ever really do that safely. Uh yeah, I think you're right. But certainly uh in this case, Secret Service should have had agents encircling the entire Gulf course along the perimeter. Ron, you're talking in very practical terms about the way that the Secret Service can and should protect presidents or former presidents, the money that should be spent on it

Obviously in political circles they're talking about rhetoric, they're talking about inflammatory language, they're talking about whether this is actually pushing people into a place of violence. I mean do you believe it's having any effect? We've heard You know, we've heard both candidates frankly accuse the other of of fascism. I mean it's something that Trump has used against Kamala Harris, um certainly as much as Democrats have used that against Trump.

I I wonder whether you think this conversation about language is relevant or is absolutely a sidebar. I I think it is relevant. It does stir people up. It does give them ideas. But, you know, to to try to focus on that is is pretty pointless because it's gonna continue, especially with our uh social media allowing people to to make these outrageous comments. Uh so it it's just uh another unfortunate fact of life in in today's age.

Uh so uh we just have to live with it unfortunately and and we have to take the proper measures to keep the candidates safe. I w you know, if I were Trump I w I wouldn't be golfing, but of course I don't like to golf anyway. But but that's the quote. Yeah. But but but Ron, isn't there a separate point that it's not just the people on social media?

using the inflammatory language. It is the principles themselves, with, you know, Donald Trump calling her a communist and all the rest of it. That is that that is inflaming the situation. Yeah, no question. Um it's gotten totally out of hand and and uh the Secret Service has to take steps to to keep the candidates safe. That is the first the you know, th thing that has to be done. You know, the Secret Service budget is about three billion dollars a year and more than half of that

goes not for protection, but for investigating financial crimes like counterfeiting. And it would be very easy to move some of those agents over to the protection side. to to protect uh Trump. Secondly, uh the whole budget should be increased. The whole budget is equal to the price of one stealth bomber, and yet we're talking about preserving democracy in the United States.

Uh and that's that's the big picture. Ron, I think I'm right in saying that you haven't been in touch with the former president since the events of January the sixth, the attempted insurrection. From where you're standing now. Do you fear for a second? Trump presidency? I th I think his you know, his policies were very good. He had the lowest black unemployment rate. The country was prosperous, the the borders were sufficiently closed. So I I look at that. I don't like

Some of his comments and outrageous uh statements at times, but you know, neither a candidate is perfect. Ron Kessler, fantastic to speak to you. Thank you so much for your time here on the News Agents. We started this episode with Donald Trump speaking at a rally and saying nice things about uh Kamala Harris. And we're going to end this episode again listening to Donald Trump where he is making the point. Well what point exactly? She said I guess I don't think I've ever said this before.

So we do these rallies, they're massive rallies. Everybody loves everybody stays till the end, by the way, you know? When she said that, well, your rallies people leave. Honestly nobody does. And if I saw them leaving, I'd say, and ladies and gentlemen, make America great again and I'd get the hell out, okay? Okay? Because I don't want people leaving. But I I do have to say so I give these long, sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs.

But they all come together. I do it a lot. I do it with uh Raisin Cane, that story. I do it with the uh story on the catapults on the aircraft carries. I do it with a lot of different stories. When I mention Dr. Hannibal Lecter I'm using that as an example of people that are coming in from Silence of the Lamps. I mean he does extemporise, doesn't he? Um uh uh what have we learned that's new about Trump? I guess that all these things that you think are weird ramblings of the mind

are not necessarily off putting to those in his rally. And it's something you commented on earlier. That the comments that he made about the cats and the dogs. And there's been so much more reporting about it that you've got to be a little bit more than literally set to music. Yeah. Right? Yeah. JD Vance was talking about y this, had it posted it on t his uh s one of his social media accounts, refused to take it down even though

It was he was told categorically it was not true. I've seen loads of this stuff that just you know, a woman who reported her cat missing oh, it's back in the basement now. But it's already the story has Uneaten. But uneaten. Uneaten. Yeah, still intact. And yeah It was mad. And it has served Donald Trump's purpose simultaneously. Frankly, batshit. don't seem to hurt him in the way they would any other person. And if what he's done by talking about edible dogs

is to put Springfield, Ohio and a Haitian immigration problem top of the political agenda, then he will be saying job done. And now I guess it For the Democrats who thought that they'd scored a complete goal when he went off on one with the old pets. to sort of go, No, no, no, no, no, this isn't happening and this isn't true and Haitians aren't doing this and the mayor hasn't, you know, got a problem with this. But they're the ones trying to defend

immigration in America right now. And it's all an upside down world. So uh I just seen some polling evidence this morning which suggests that something like eighty five percent of Republicans now support mass deportation of illegal immigrants. I wasn't surprised by that number. 25% of Democrats agree. So Donald Trump starts off talking about cats and dogs being eaten, Haitians illegal immigrants.

Then many of whom aren't illegal at all. They are there with you know But he then folds the argument into illegal immigrants and then needs to be mass deportation of these people and he's getting support. So the madness don't count it out. We'll be back next week. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Global Player Original Power.