Welcome.
It is Verdict Lock from the Republican National Convention.
Center.
Nice to be with you, and it's always fun. We come to these events because we get to hang out with thrifts.
It is great to be with you. Half the time we're recording Verdict and either I'm at home in my bedroom talking into a microphone late at night. Heighty's yelling at me because she wants to go to sleep. Yeah, or sometimes I'm in a dingy motel talking into a microphone and.
When your power's out, sometimes you're at my house at midnight.
Okay, that is true. The last podcast we did, you know, there was a hurricane that hit Houston. Power went out and then my internet went out, so I couldn't get online. So what did Ben say, Get your rear out of the car and drive to buy house. I've got internet. So that was the last podcast I dressed up for you full pjs. It was really it was disturbing, actually was so he was in a speedo. Let me just say it was far too muck ferguson for my ta dear this very all right, I'll get you back. I
won't get you back. I guess today we do. So we are live in Milwaukee. At the r n C. We have a test a good friend of mine, Dave McCormick. Now, who is Dave mc cormick. Dave McCormick is from Pennsylvania. He was All state in wrestling. He was All state in football. He went to West Point where he was the captain of the wrestling team in West Point. By the way, Dave was captain of the wrestling team at West Point. Ben played varsity tennis at Old Miss. I
was a debate. But both of these guys would have shoved me in a locker and forgotten. Then we agree on that. Savin right, I say, would have if I have one more joke about about locker. So Dave from there went on became an Army ranger, served in Iraq, and served in the federal government. Served as a senior official in the federal government when Donald He became one
of the leading businessmen in America. When Donald Trump was president, President Trump tried to convince him to leave making bazillions of dollars and come be the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Dave declined at the time, although his wife, Dina, another very good friend, was then the Deputy National Security advisor to President Trump. Dave is now running for Senate in the state of Pennsylvania. He is going to be the
next Senator in the state of Pennsylvania. When Dave wins, he is going to single handedly give us a majority and retire Chuck Schumer as the Jordan Dave has joined the podcast once before, but he's here today because we're going to start on a bit of a somber note and a note that the entire country, in the entire world is focused on, which is what happened on Saturday. And Dave was standing on stage with President Trump on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. He was there when the shooting occurred,
when the attempted assassination happened. And so Dave, I want to welcome you here, and I would like to ask if we could just start the podcast by telling folks, bring us to this day, tell us what happened, Where were you standing, and what happened that you saw.
Yeah, well, thank you both for having me.
It's great great with you and Senator Ted Cruz is one of the great leaders in America today, one of the great voices. So if I'm fortunate enough to be in the Senate this would be a guy I'd want to inspire to emulate.
So thank you, thank you.
For having me.
And I was going to trapping up, so you know, this was this was one of the moments I'm still
still digesting. But what happened was I had been with President Trump in Philadelphia about ten ten days earlier at the rally he did a temple and so when he when I heard that he was coming to the Butler County, we were in contact with this team and I was I went with the idea that i'd see him beforehand, which I did, and he came in and I said, mister President, I want to thank you for how great you were in Philadelphia endorsing me and your support, and
you can imagine presstime, he said, this is going to be ten times better, ten times better.
He goes, I'm going to have you come up on stage.
I want you to.
I want to, I want you to take some time and talk about your race. It's very important we win Pennsylvania. And so he then went out and sat in the audience and the President was looking out. It was an incredible, beautiful, hot day, but beautiful fifteen thousand people, just incredible people as far as. I a warm, cheerful, patriotic.
It was a wonderful day.
And tell us where we are, Like, what part of Pennsylvania is this?
What's the surrounding area western of Pennsylvania? Beautiful rolling farmland. This was at the Butler County Farm Show. And you know, it was a wide open area for the most part that was cordoned off instead of bleachers, big state, an enormous flag flying behind him, which you probably all saw.
And people waited.
You know, I didn't get there until three o'clock or so, but people waited started mid morning and it was close to one hundred degrees just waiting, and you know, there's no.
Shade unfortunately, and it was. But the turnout was incredible and.
So he so I sat, he was looking out the crowd.
I sat on his right side in the first row.
And he got up there and true to form, within a minute, a couple of minutes, he started to talk about my race, Dave McCormick.
We want him to win this race. This is important. He started to talk about my opponent, Bob Casey, and he.
Said, why do we have Dave come up here and talk about it? And so this was you know, right in the beginning. And so I got up and sort of went through the security and started to go up onto the platform, and he goes, no, no, no, I want to talk about the boarder first. He goes, so, Dave, I'll have you up in a little bit. So this is in front of fifteen thousand people. So I walked back down again in my chair.
That's the way of instruct you're right there.
Yeah, you know, I'm due to this political stuff.
But I got that message.
And within a minute or two, the bullets started to fire. And I was a military guy, as Ted said, so I recognized pretty quickly this was rightful fire. I wasn't sure whether it was one or two shooters. I wasn't sure exactly where it was coming from. And everybody went down immediately, and the President I saw, reach for his ear and then drop behind the podium, and almost instantaneously, the Secret Service jumped on top of him, as you
all saw. And then there was activity behind me, which sadly turned out to be somebody was shot in the bleachers behind me and ultimately died probably twenty five feet behind me. And I was looking at the President and I watched the Secret Service get up around him like that FAILANX and I saw this fist come out. I couldn't see his face, and then they moved a bit and I saw his face was bloody, but that he
was okay. And I remember having this moment, the idea, I mean, a hundred people, one hundred people are behind that podium and that shot gets fired. Ninety nine of them are in the fetal position, right, And the idea that he had the presence of mind, the defiance, the reassurance, the courage to stand up there and put out that fist. I think it was one of the reasons that there wasn't a stampede.
No, it was extraordinary. It was something we have never seen before. Yeah, but it was. It was extraordinary leadership. And you know, it was reminiscent. It was reminiscent of Reagan after he was shot in eighty one and an eight. After Reagan was shot, he said to Nancy, he said, Honey,
I forgot to doge. And as Reagan was rolling into the er, rolling into the operating room in the hospital, he looked up at the physicians and he said to the doctors, he said, I hope y'all are all Republicans and so that was Reagan and it was a great historic calm and peace of mind. And then you have Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt, not too far away from where we are right now, was giving a speech. He's standing
up there and he shot. Giving a speech. Now, now the bullet hits the papers he has in in his coat, but it also hits him, and he shot. And Teddy Roosevelt finishes the speech and says, it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. But I got to say President Trump's reaction, I think is very much in
line with extraordinary and historic leaders to stand up. Then the Secret Service trying to get him to go, and look, when a security detail is pushing you, they're not shy and they're like move, boob, And you can see him resisting no, and he's saying to the world that image, right, that image of him with the American flag behind him, with his fist in the air, with blood coming down his face, it shows that that that no matter how evil, no matter how how many forces are fighting against us,
that we can stand and win and turn the country around.
It's incredible. Yeah, in credit, it was, and that you know that at the moment. You didn't.
You didn't realize, but we now realize. It was an inch, you know, an inch less than an inch, and it's one of the most calamitous events in American history. And h and sadly there were others killed and injured that day.
So you have so you said, Chief Comparatoria was just behind you, behind about twenty five feet right. And I guess I don't know if any of y'all have read his daughter's face book post in our last podcast. We read it in the pod, but his daughter's Facebook post, she describes how her father literally blocked through her and through her mother on the ground and then blocked their bodies with his body. And he literally took a bullet
to save the life of his wife and daughter. Yeah, you know, that is the very definition of a hero.
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keyword baby, or visit preborn dot com slash verdict. That's preborn dot com slash verdict. I want to ask you a question. I'm talking about heroes. We've seen the Secret Service take a lot of heat, and I think it's the bureaucracy.
Aspect of it and the leadership.
But what was it like on the ground, because they looked like there were a lot of heroes, and I think we should separate them from the bureaucracy.
Inc Yeah, I'd say, you know, two things could be true at the same time, and I think they are. One is I mean, it was almost instantaneous. I mean, the Secret Service were surrounding him, the you know, the sort of swat team guys came out and we're looking down on the audience. You know, obviously the sniper was taken out quickly, and so the response seemed incredibly fast, and people were certainly willing to lay in front of the bullet for the president at that point. That seems true.
The other thing that seems true is you couldn't What happened was unthinkable. The ease with which, you know, a twenty year old kid with a high powered rifle got within one hundred and thirty.
Yards of the president seems unimaginable.
It's such a it's such a example of incompetence and failure that it's almost hard to believe it happened. And when everything I hear about it makes me and.
I know centers much closer.
This diem makes me think it's even more unbelievable that it happened. So we could have heroes on the ground and also have one of the biggest leadership failures and bureaucratic failures in American history.
That we need to get to the bottom of.
Because you know, listen, I'm I'm not always I'm not known to my family to be the best shot, but a nine out of ten Pennsylvania deer hunters could have made that shot ten times out of ten.
I mean, that was not a hard shot.
And the fact that the first thing we heard was that that roof was not in the envelope, I mean.
Yeah, so well, And I just got off a couple of hours ago with a conference call with the head of the Secret Service and ahead of the FBI. So I'm I'm going to walk into that and talk talk about that in just a minute. Before I do that, I want to finish talking through the experience on the ground. Now, when it happened, did you hear the gun shot and and look, you've been in Iraq, you've seen combat before. This is not that those are not the first gun
shots you've heard. I imagine things are are utterly chaotic. Could you perceive what when they took the shooter out? Could you tell that was happening? Could you tell where the shooter was? How much of that could you tell from the ground at at the rally?
Not much?
Not much.
I I honestly thought that there were two shooters for a while, I thought there were two shooters. It's very hard to tell. And maybe the other reason I thought that was because the Secret Service hunt.
But it felt to.
Me like there was multiple guns and so everybody was hunkered down and it was you couldn't really step up, and you know, take.
People rush out in the panic, they walk out, that people react.
That was the.
Amazing thing people reacted with obviously concerning confusion, but but there was no panic.
Huh, absolutely no panic. And was that because Donald Trump stood up? I really believe that. I mean you saw the.
Crowd even behind him, their faces where they hunger down, and.
Then he stood up with a fist and it was like jar stood up with him. USA.
They started to chant USA, Yeah, I think the way Trump responded gave people confidence not to panic and uh, and there was no panic. And it took you know, hours to unwind things in because the Secret Service blocked things off.
And you know, I will walk in.
You know, I'd been on the screen, so people many people knew who I was. Everybody would come up to me and say, what happened?
You know? What? Do you know?
I didn't know much, to.
Be honest with you, because that's the way it is in a situation like that, you don't know much. But it took a while to know that we weren't under attack any further. And uh, just to take the story one step further, I had a chance to talk to the president the next day. I called him and just said, miss pres I'm so glad you're okay, and you know what, an example of courage.
And he said two minutes.
Two more minutes, so you'd have been on that stage with me, and he said, Trump said the Trump like, Hey, you ought to be glad. I'd like to talk, so you ought to be forever.
It's even better. He said, two more minutes.
And I thought he was going.
To say, and you might have been hurt too, Dave, and he said, you would have been in prime time.
He knows his audience. What was it like after he left? And then how did it unfold? How long were you there? When did they let you leave on your own? Or was it orderly? What was it like?
It was orderly, but you know, because it was the way it went down. Cars were blocked and they had blocked off a whole part of the way that people came in. You know, honestly, when I came in, I came in a special entrance. They knew I was coming, they knew who I was. I was wanted the security seem reasonable. The security lines were for hours to get through all the the metal detectors and so forth.
But they closed off a lot of that, so it took a while for people.
To get out, took hours, and everybody was you know, the cell phone coverage was bad, so everybody was trying to get connected and make sure that you know, their loved ones weren't hurting and things like that, and people were just worried that the president was not okay. And then when it became clear the president was okay, but there were other casualties. It was it was a sad moment.
Well, look, I will say, and you said this earlier, it is utterly infuriated that this occurred. This should have been prevented. And this afternoon there was an all senator's call with the head of the Secret Servant and the head of the FBI, and the call lasted about forty five minutes. I will say it was a deeply frustrating call.
So for the first thirty minutes they talked and they basically filibustered, and they got up and they described all the security steps they did, They went their days ahead of time, they did this, they did this, they did this, they did everything else, and they went through excruciating details of a timeline of everything they did. And they did everything except stop a bloody man with a rifle from shooting the presidents correct. And it's kind of like I mean,
it was maddening. And then on this call they allowed a couple of questions. They had a thing where you hit a number to dial a question. I immediately hit a number to dial question. By the way, Mike Lee immediately hit a number dial question. Marshall Blackberny media hit a number of dial question. None of us got are questions. They did just a handful of questions, and I got to tell you, the questions were pretty patty cage. Look the questions that I would have asked had I gotten
the chance, and that I intend to ask. We need to have congressional hearings, that we should have them next week with the head of the Secret Service and DHS and the FBI under op. But listen the obvious questions to ask that nobody asked that. Chuck Schumer certainly didn't ask. Number one, why were there not more agents aside? Why were they not enough agents assigned to protect the president? Number two? Why was that rooftop not security? Was one
hundred and sixty yards away? It was an obvious line of sights. Number three? Why was there no aerial support? Why were there no drones? Why was there no helicopter? Why was there nothing providing aerial coverage? Number four? They went through a timeline that this individual, the shooter, and I won't say his name. I don't say the names of shooters. These bastards deserve to be forgotten by history. I will not repeat his name. Yes, but the shooter.
They spotted him over an hour earlier, walking in with a rangefinder to measure the range. They also spotted him a half hour earlier, casing the building that he ultimately climbed up on top of. And so the questions I intended to continue to ask is why didn't you detain the guy? And why the hell did you allow the president to keep speaking? If you're searching for someone you think might be an active sniper. There's a very easy thing for the Secret Service to say, which is, hold
on a second, we're putting a pause on this. We're getting the president out of harm's way. Why didn't they do any of that? Now, not even get a chance to ask any of those questions, because this was I think a CYA briefing, and it is frustrating. I will tell you they asked the head of the Secret Service, how did the guy get to the top of the building? She said, why, I don't know. What the hell do you mean? You don't know this was four days ago, five days ago, and you don't know how he got
up to the building. Is there a more important question that you're dealing with? Well, yes, it's how to cover your rear end from political accountability because you don't actually want to what. Let me ask you, what does it take to get fired by Joe Biden, like, seriously, this woman should be fired yesterday. It was the most spectacular failure. And let's be clear, it is not difficult to figure out it is a risk to a president from a rightfleman from a high vantage point. We do have a
little bit of history to be clear. That was not my father.
They retracted it recently, so we know the nation courses it was not there, you go, it.
Only took him ten years. I did have on the flora of the RNC. A reporter asked me about that last night, actually on the flora standing right with the Texas. That's hard hitting question right there. And I said, let me tell you actually a quote from Marco Ruvio to twenty sixteen campaign when the allegation came up that my father was involved in killing jfk And I said, look, Republican senators, we had lunch together every Tuesday, Wednesday and
Thursday in DC. Marco stood up in front of all our colleagues and he said, let me tell you I know for an absolute fact's dad did not kill Jfkesh And Marco continued, he said, because if a Cuban had done that, he would have told everyone very accurate, and y'all know my dad, we'll tell me to tell me that. You know, it's completely true. This is a known threat and it is infuriating that they did not protect against it. Look, you're having been on the ground, and you're also having
been an army ranger in Iraq. Give me your perspective on the just maddening failure. And to be clear, I want to underscore what Ben said. It's not a failure by the individual Secret Service agents. Those men and women put themselves in harm's way and acted heroically. It is the bureaucratic leadership that is covering their hindquarters and taking zero responsibility for their disastrous decisions. Give me your reactions.
Well, you know, if you sort of listed the the ten most obvious ways that the president could be put at risk in this circumstance, this rooftop would have been in the top three, you know, this would have been an obvious place at the president. So I have no answer. It seems high. And this is why an investigation is so important. Your hearings is so important.
It kind of.
Seems by the way, it's not clear we're going to have Senate hearings because it takes the Democrats to call them. So Dick Durbin is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we have jurisdiction over this. A number of us have called on Dick Derby call a hearing, but we don't have a hearing schedule. There's gonna be a house hearing. But Senate Democrats, as far as I can tell, are not interested in finding out what happened. We certainly haven't
heard of hearing announced yet. No, it's there has to be.
And the reason is is it's hard to imagine a twenty year old kid. I mean, we have you know, all of you are parents here. Imagine you're a twenty year old right plotting this thing in isolation, developing a plan, knowing enough to be able to piece to get a plan that would be so effective in a security environment which shouldn't.
Have been as permissive as it was.
And by the way, we had news breaking this week that the government of Iran has hired hitman to murder Donald Trump. So this is we still don't know a ton about this shooter, but at least right now it appears to be a twenty year old kid who went up and did this, Like Holy cow. If they can't protect against that, what about a professional hit squad from an enemy of this country. I mean, this is incredibly disturbing, right, unexplainable. So thank you for what you're doing. And I will
say there's a danger. There's a danger of this being like Afghanistan. Look Afghanistan. You look at the disastrous in confidence of the Biden administration in that withdrawal, and it encouraged every enemy of America. It encouraged It played a major role in why Putin invaded Ukraine. It played a major role. I believe in October seventh in Hamas attacking Israel that our enemies look to the Biden administration and
said these people are utterly weak and ineffective. I've got to say for any every enemy of America, they look at the incompetence of the Secret Service under the Biden administration. And I don't even like saying these words, but it's important to acknowledge this risk. Our enemies have just been encouraged. The danger has gone up because they say, if that jackdoodle can do it, yeah, what about if we send in real trained professionals.
They also said, if Donald Trump gets like it, I don't want to mess with that guy.
I hold on this is a point. Reiterate that, because that's actually a very important point. You're the enemy of there.
I think if you're sitting in Tehran, or in Beijing, or in Moscow or other places where advocate adversary sit, terrorist cells wherever they might be, and you watch that videotape and I think you say, if that guy becomes president, which I think he's going to become president again, I'm not going to mess with him. Yeah, I use other language, but weren't on the if we weren't on your podcast, but we're not gonna mess We're not gonna mess with that guy because he's a mean mbre and he's tough,
and his instinct is to fight you. And so I think almost overnight we've lost to terrence. Under Joe Biden, adversaries was like the bully on the playground. They're not afraid to punch us in the face. I think the day Donald Trump takes office again, deterrence goes back up.
Right.
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I want to ask you this.
You're mentioned the Senate only meeting details. I'm going to read this from CBS News. Details are emerging about the moments that led to the shooting. Bystandards alerted law enforcement to the government on the roof of the of a building about four hundred and ten feet away from the State Age at least two minutes before the first shot was fired at Trump.
Yep.
How vulnerable are we and how vulnerable is every president past and president? If you've got a two minute warning and the job is still not done?
Did anyone answer that question on the call? Look, we need to have Part of the reason we need to have a hearing is there a whole series of questions about how many threats have there been? How many agents did you have assigned? Should there be two x three x four x as many agents assigned to the president? What resources, what equipment you did you have the threat profile? I'm willing to bet that Donald Trump is the single
most threatened individual on the face of the planet. Now, I don't actually have the facts of the threats that have come in to prove that is correct, but you know what Secret Service do us? And I would like us to know what is the comparative threat level between Trump and Biden? And my concern is that did politics play a role? Was it? Politics? Are incompetence because it's clear they screwed up massively. I can tell you in this call. So you had one senator who asked were
their drones yes or no? And the answer from the head of the Secret Service was we determined that the risk from that rooftop was mitigated by counter snipers, meaning no. Number one. She didn't even say the word no, which is what someone honestly would say. She didn't say, well, obviously we needed drones and we should have had them, which is what someone obviously would have said. She didn't
make the obvious point. Well, the roof was slanted, so the counter snipers couldn't see the guy because he was on the other end of the slant. And by the way, I'm pretty sure the roof didn't suddenly slant itself in between when they advanced the scene and when it occurred. In other words, they could have figured out if your quote mitigation is counter snipers and they don't have a line of sight to a place a sniper could be, then you don't have effective mitigation. She addressed none of that,
but it was pure bureaucrat ease. That's a good work for it. That's why I love having a live studio audience. When you look at the room and for the folks listening at home, since we are in a studio audience and the audience is not miked, I will just say you guys were in a cowfield, and they suggested it was a substance that was probably there in large, large amounts. Exactly.
Well, you were there, and after the shooting happened, you saw how close it was. Where you shocked because I'm sure you saw the commotion on the rooftop. I'm sure you knew that's where the shots came out from. Then you look at it, is there any I mean former military When you look at it, could you believe that building was not monitored the way it should have been?
Well, you know, I was just be honest, I didn't know at the on the site, right, you know, you're in the middle of people, are you.
Know, you're trying to get people out.
So I wasn't sure until I got back and saw the TV projections.
And the aerial photos where it came were You're shocked then knowing that you were there and that's how close that goes?
Oh yeah, absolutely, because it's the most obvious place. And the idea, just to go back to my earlier point, the idea that the sniper, the twenty year old kid who has no experience, would have known the place where he wouldn't be in the sniper's line of sight.
Yeah, right, these are questions.
I don't know what the answer is, but it seems highly unlikely that a single person could have pulled this off without so much luck and so much incompetence. And so that's why the hearings to give us confidence that we understand what really happened here are so incredibly important.
Well, and look, I will say, the FBI was on and they're investigating, and at least what they're reporting right now is they don't have evidence of anyone else being involved, and they're looking at his cell phone and his computers, and they're engaged from the forensics, and we will find out we have seen with other instances there are times where their loan shooters commit horrific attacks, and it's possible that this young man who is an alienated loaner that
unfortunately is a profile we've seen in other instances of people who've committed horrific offenses. And so we'll find out in time. I will say when the shooting occurs, that this is one of the moments I think every one of us is going to remember exactly where we were when us happened, and whether we were staring in horror at a television set, or in my instance, I was sitting there having a meal with Heidi and we're staring
at horror at our phones and hitting refresh. And by the way, it says something that nobody was on news sites. You're on social media, you're on X because it's the fastest thing. You're getting immediate updates of what's happening, one after the other after the other. So we talked about, for example, our last podcast, we played from what got put up on X of like one of the guys standing outside the rally that saw this guy climbing on the roof yelling the cops, there's a guy with a
rifle on the roof. We now know a local police officer climbed up to that roof. He pointed the rifle at the local police officer. And yet, and we haven't had these questions yet, what level of communication was there between the local police and the Secret Service. The instant the local police officer saw a sniper on a roof with a gun, he should have been yelling at his
microphone shooter, shooter, shooter instantaneously. The Secret Service should have pulled Trump off of that stage before the shooter could aim and they should have taken him out right there. That didn't happen, which raises the question was the Secret Service did they have communications synchronized with local law enforcement? And I will tell you something also, so I right before this podcast, I was going to ask you that
question because people are gonna win. He hear this. You just met with President Trump at the convention.
For people that are listening, you got seenhim this first time since this.
First time I've seen him since he was shot, and I've visited with him, spent What do he said? Look, number one, he is, he is happy, he is he is strong as ear his bandage. I will tell you he he he was quiet for a second and he spoke with a seriousness that that was unlike anything I've heard from Donald Trump before. And he said God saved me that day. And listen, I believe that is absolutely right.
Many of us have seen online, for example, recreations of the angle of the bullet, and had his head turned even slightly to the right or even slightly to the left, he would have been killed. And it is what I said at the convention last night. I thank God for saving him. I believe God turned his head turned his head so that the path of the bullet did not
kill him anything. And listen, this is horrific. I will say, going back to the Reagan analogy, one of the things Reagan always said is that when he survived that assassination attempt, that it changed, that it gave him a seriousness of purpose. That God spared me for a reason. And listen, I think what President Trump has done already for the country has been extraordinary. But I got to say, just visiting with him a few minutes ago, it was powerful in
a very different way. And this was just him and me talking one on one, that it had had a real impact. And I also I talked to him about this briefing that I had just left, and I expressed how deeply frustrating it was. Now, I will say, have you noticed trump Secret Service detail here at the convention?
They look like an offensive lineman, like a whole line.
The Green Bay Packers. I'm pretty sure the entire Green Bay Packers are right now surrounding Donald.
What is your way and how tall are you? Yes, we'll take you today. Yeah, it is different. Final question for each of you as we wrap. I believe bringing in the packers is probably worth three points.
It what like you smooth? How you did that?
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Final question.
I believe that Thursday night actually may be the most important speech of Donald Trump's life. I think that his speech is an opportunity for him to unite.
The country in a way that he's never been.
Able to do and bring people into the Republican Party that maybe have written it off. I think everyone is going to watch to see what he says. How important do you think this speech is. I think it's his most important speech ever.
I agree with you.
I mean, I was.
I'm not surprised to hear you say that the President was quiet. I think he does feel like I'm speculating but I haven't spoken with him about this, but that he was spared for a reason and that this is his opportunity, and I think people want to be united. And I think this sent a chill through our nation. It didn't just send a chill through Republicans and Trump supporters,
to send a chill through everybody. That the state of our politics, the nastiness, the evil, the violence that's been encouraged by some of the nasty rhetoric, has to come to an end, and that there's a moment. And I think, based on what he said in his statement, I think there's an opportunity for him to really unite the country.
I had someone who called me the other day who was a Trump someone who didn't like President Trump at all, who's a donor, and he said, listen, the guy I saw get off that floor and stand up and put his fist in the air.
I want the guy to be our president. And I think this is the moment.
And I don't think it's an accident that had happened, and I think it's all part of a grand plan. And so I'm very hopeful and very optimistic, and I think it's his moment for, you know, really bringing our country together in a way it hasn't been for years.
Sir, Look, I agree that his speech tomorrow night is incredibly important. I also saw the news break today that on Friday, President Trump is going to be attending Chief Comparatoire's funeral, and I think that is the right thing to do. He will go down as an American hero. But this is a moment I think for everyone, I hope to come together. And I will say as I was doing a bunch of media interviews last night with reporters and they kept asking, Republicans are so united, but the.
Odd though there's been a long time, there's been a long time, you're probably gonna sit down together.
And they're enjoy that moment. Their look of like the funnelements combined with frustration, like damn it, can't you fight with each other? But like, come on, just start yelling at each other, please, that's what we want to cover. And look, I think that is the one overwhelming word out of this convention is unity. And I couldn't help but point out to each of the reporters I said, I sure hope you're prepared to do a compare and contrast to the Democrat conduction because they may not have
been for another they are utterly divided. I don't know how many of y'all saw today. Adam Schiff came out and said Joe Biden should drop out, that he can't win. Moments before day, I was real at the same time, so sore. Where I saw the President was at the premiere of a new movie that that Dave Bossi and Citizens United is putting out Trump's Mission Rescue, Mission Saving America. It's a terrific documentary and and and so I was there for it. Trump was there for so he got
up and spoke and introduced it. It was very funny. He did basically a rose to Dave Bossi. He said, you know, I'm speaking tomorrow, and everyone says the President before you accept the nomination, you're supposed to shut up and not talk. But then Bossi made me do this Dan, and so I'm here and he sort of did did a Trump trademark few minute riff, including pointing out that that that that Adam Schiff, whom he promptly calls whom I call
watermelon head. And I'm sitting next to Jeff Lander, the governor of Louisiana, great guy, and I just said, Jeff, he really is one of a KI. Tell me someone else who would say standing on stage Adam Schiff, whom I call watermel ahead. But you know, sometimes clarity is helpful and confusion, yes, and communicating, and look, I think tomorrow will matter enormously, and I do hope. Look, I hope this is a moment when the entire country comes in. Amen.
Programming note for everybody listening, we will be doing a special show tomorrow on Thursday at the convention, so make sure you grab that to our audience has been here in Milwaukee. You guys are incredible. Thank you so much for coming out.
Thank you, tell me fine, thank you, yes, thank you, thank you.
It's fine. We'll see it out here tomorrow.