286. Trump Assassination Attempt: The Aftermath

Will the Trump rally shooting change the course of the US election? Are we entering an era of further political violence and polarisation? What goes on behind the scenes in the secret service when someone tries to assassinate a former president? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all this and more in an emergency episode of The Rest Is Politics. Watch the livestream version on catch-up: https://www.youtube.com/live/Y0OwsWUbmOw?si=F2E95MwqoS1wxAG1 TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:13Rory Stewart?

  We're here today to focus on the attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump. So just for quick background, and the whole world will have heard about it, but I think maybe we've heard so much about it, it's getting a bit confused in our minds. So Donald Trump was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler, Pennsylvania is a little town of about 13,000 people, just north of Pittsburgh. And when you look at it on Google Maps, you see it as a sort of pretty sprawling, I guess, effect for suburb of the big city in effect. But it's also famous for its farm show. He was addressing a crowd in a pretty open area where they normally hold their farm show.

• 1:53Rory Stewart?

  And in the middle of speaking, he was struck in the ear by a bullet. And he goes down on the ground and we can talk about that a little bit. And it appears that the man who shot at him is called Mr. Crooks, 20 years old, was then killed almost certainly by a secret service sniper shooting back and he got far too close to the president. If you look at the setup, it's very strange. Initially, I thought it's often very difficult to monitor the roofs in a big city, but this is a very, very rural area. There are very few roofs that close to where the president was speaking and he got right on top one of about 400 feet away and the president, pretty lucky to make it because

• 2:37Rory Stewart?

  a shot at 400 feet was what seems to be an equivalent of an M16 assault rifle. He was very, very lucky to be alive. Another man tragically was killed in the audience. And President Trump is physically fine, but the defining moment is that when he got to his feet again, he lifts his fist and shouts, fight. And now these images of him positioned right next to the American flag, apparently defiant and courageous with blood streaming down his face is now having a huge impact on the election. So over to you, Alasdair.

• 3:10Alastair Campbell?

  It certainly has the capacity to. I think, look, first of all, I think we should, I'm sure both, regardless of what we think of Donald Trump, which is not a lot, have to condemn any attempt on his life. America is a democracy, like we're a democracy, and these issues should be resolved by peaceful debate. But interestingly, I think because America is so polarized, just looking at the comments that are coming in even now on our chat for the podcast. So for example, Slim Charles, some countries would take an incident like this and unify, if only briefly, around a shared interest. Not the USA, however. Within minutes, the blame is being attributed to Biden and the Democrats.

• 3:53Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody else, I wonder how many will now be saying Trump's presidency is ordained by God. And indeed, people are saying that, including, I think, J D Vance has been saying that. Matt Simmons, I've noticed a lot of Republicans trotting out the way the mainstream media talk about Trump is the reason for this line. All of the violent rhetoric has come from the MAGA side of politics. Then somebody replies, honestly, it comes from both sides, both candidates, both sides of the media. America needs to stop this nonsense. Now. I think that is kind of gets to the to the heart of of this, the polarization. We don't know anything about this Crooks guy. We know that he's 20. We know, as you say, that he had a a pretty sophisticated rifle. And again, the gun issue will doubtless be part of the debate as this thing goes forward.

• 4:36Alastair Campbell?

  We know that he's a registered Republican, but we also know that he made a small donation to a Democrat cause. So of course, in the polarization, you're getting Democrats say, ah, he's a Republican. And you get a Republican say, ah, and no, and and and none of us know anything about him.

• 4:55Rory Stewart?

  And fascinating, isn't it? Because we'll get on to this, and this, of course, is going to be the heart of a lot of conspiracy theories very quickly.

• 5:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Rory Stewart?

  You can imagine, you can put conspiracy theories on both sides. You can have a conspiracy theory, if you really want to go for it, that this is Democrats trying to kill Donald Trump. And I suppose you could come up an elaborate conspiracy theory that it's Republicans trying to promote Trump. That one, I think, is the least plausible of all, because you'd certainly need to be a pretty brave man to be prepared to stand there and let someone shoot you in the ear in the hope they're not going to go one inch to the right. But anyway, the conspiracy theories will come. Very striking, the New York Times put in an immense team of people on trying to find out about Thomas Crooks. And at least as of half an hour ago, a very large team of journalists was unable to find anybody in his neighborhood or his extended family who was prepared to speak. So they're going on a grainy image of him at his graduation, a little bit of details,

• 5:44Rory Stewart?

  as you say, on his campaign contributions. But but very, very little to go on at all. A couple of things, Alice, maybe first thing, you you mentioned this question of polarization in the US. It is so striking. I I remember, you know, you and I often are sort of seen as kind of centrist dads. And I made a speech in New York a couple of months ago, trying to make the case for the for the center. And I remember Democrat friends coming up to me afterwards, saying, Rory, forget that speech in the US. Nobody's interested. We just want to kill the other side. And now, obviously, they didn't mean it literally, but there is the sense that on both sides

• 6:26Rory Stewart?

  of this debate, they are so, I mean, and and I remember people saying to me. When I was asking to try to understand why people were voting for Trump, and you've talked a little bit about that fascinating book of somebody travelling through Trump country.

• 6:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Rory Stewart?

  But, you know, often I get people saying I'm not interested in understanding them. You know, I just want to defeat them. And then, of course, I think the second thing, which maybe we can get into in a little bit, is the question of violence in American politics, because, you know, four American presidents have been killed, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK.

• 7:02Alastair Campbell?

  JFK, yeah.

• 7:03Rory Stewart?

  There have been, there were attempts on Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, two attempts on Gerald Ford, an attempt on Reagan. So it is, and it's a very, very different society to the UK. I mean, we've had a Prime Minister assassinated and have been attempts, but nothing like that. And that's only since the 1860s.

• 7:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And of course, Martin Luther King as well, not a president, but, you know, the attacks on political figures are certainly not new in America. But this thing about the polarization, so on the one hand, Joe Biden clearly despises Donald Trump, despises what he did as president, despises the fact that he's still there and is determined, we'll maybe talk a little bit later about Joe Biden, how this affects his candidacy. But he comes straight out, says that this is outrageous, condemns it unequivocally, explains that he is going to reach out to Donald, calls him Donald as opposed to Trump, which is how he normally, or President Trump, former President Trump, he normally calls him.

• 8:06Alastair Campbell?

  And you've seen that from most senior Democrats, they've come straight out and said, this is unacceptable, we must condemn political violence wherever it rises. And yet, on the, quite senior figures on the right, Newt Gingrich, for example, comes straight out and essentially says Biden couldn't get him with all this legal baloney, so now these people are trying to kill him. Okay. Laying it straight at the door of Biden. Nigel Farage getting his usual easy pass on to the BBC airwaves. I notice in Westrum, not Clacton, on the caption. And he comes out and starts, at one point seemed to be blaming the comedian Jo Brand

• 8:48Alastair Campbell?

  because she made a joke about him when he had a milkshake thrown at him, saying it's the rhetoric of the liberal left. And the way that people talk about Trump, it's no wonder that this hasn't happened, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, that sense, as that earlier commenter said, I can remember when the assassination attempt on Reagan happened, and it was, it was a moment of unification for America. You saw virtually everybody coming out and saying, this is wrong, this is bad, wish him well. What you see, even with the Trump fight, fight, fight, and I think it's, look, I remember when you and I talked to Hillary Clinton on the podcast, and she talked about what it was like against Trump on stage, and she talked about his annual instinct. And he

• 9:31Alastair Campbell?

  does have an instinct. This is his political skill. He has an instinct for scene setting, for presentation. And essentially, he knows the protocol. He will have been talked through if there is something like this happens. The Secret Service, they are instructed. They pile him to the ground, and they pile on him. So if there are any more bullets coming, they take it for the president. That's how they're trained. And so he's down there for a while, bit of chaos. I thought the crowd actually responded pretty well in terms of, you know, not too much panic. But then, as he gets up, you can see the Secret Service trying to keep him shielded from view, and he's thinking, no, I am not having that. I've got blood on my face. I'm going to show it,

• 10:13Alastair Campbell?

  but I'm not going to show pain. I'm not going to show fear. I'm going to show strength. And he stands up with his fist and goes, fight, fight, fight. Now, who's he fighting in that? Like us, he knows nothing about what's happened. He knows nothing about the person who shot him. And yet, it's fight, fight, fight. And we'll see, he's put out a statement since then, very calm, grateful to the people who've been expressing the support for him and so forth, and then saying, on to the next campaign stop.

• 10:43Rory Stewart?

  Again, I mean, what he went through is horrifying and terrifying, and will be terrifying.

• 10:49Alastair Campbell?

  And also terrifying for family when you're watching it live on TV, which they probably were.

• 10:52Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely terrifying, yeah, for his kids and everybody. I mean, and it's a real sense of the terrifying stakes that he's up against.

• 11:02Rory Stewart?

  I've only once had somebody shoot at me and a slightly bungled attempt for somebody to get on top of me. In my particular case, my protection officer threw himself to the ground and then stood up again and then threw himself on top of me. It is, as you say, a very, very strange moment. And of course, you're under huge pressure from your security team to follow protocol and instructions. And as you say, what President Trump does, he senses he needs to show this moment. His whole head and body emerges up above the security detail, which will worry them because they are, of course, very worried that there could be something else going on. The deal is that they're doing three things. They're trying to neutralize, cover and evacuate.

• 11:45Rory Stewart?

  They're hoping they've neutralized because they've killed the man who shot at him, they think, but they don't know there isn't a second or a third shooter. They're trying to decide whether they're going to stay in place or get out. They really want to get out because they want to get to a secure location. They've already practiced what the routes are. They're going to have a safe place with medical assistance they want to get him to. But as they're going on that evacuation, that's a very vulnerable moment if there is another shooter in the chaos that they could get close to or a bomb could get in. So they'll want him off the stage with his head down. But he says, stop, and you can hear him say, wait, wait. And then he punches his fist up to get that extraordinary photograph. And my goodness, he's been vindicated because that is the photograph that's gone around the world. And that is the photograph that Elon Musk immediately put on Twitter.

• 12:30Rory Stewart?

  And of course, you've got the US flag behind it. By the time I look, I think it had got, I think I'm right in saying 30 million likes in a very, very short period.

• 12:40Alastair Campbell?

  And this is what often happens in these amazing moments in history, is that a picture will define. So the whole thing is on television and it'll be watched again and again and again. But often it is a still photograph that will define a moment. And there's no doubt about it. It is politically, and it's horrible to some extent to talk in these terms, but let's be absolutely frank, this is how political strategists think. It is likely to help Donald Trump.

• 13:14Rory Stewart?

  And so let's just dig into this question of, admittedly, it's only a few hours in, but what the impact can be on voters in the election. And a sort of brief reminder. The traditional view is that these US elections were going to be decided really by a few hundred thousand votes in Pennsylvania, where the shooting just took place, Michigan and Wisconsin.

• 13:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 13:39Rory Stewart?

  And maybe one tiny district, Omaha, Nebraska, for the sort of super geeks. And so, two things. One is, I suppose, if we're still looking at the traditional numbers, if they haven't changed dramatically over the last few hours, what is it going to mean for turnout of Trump, potential Trump voters, for example, in Detroit? So we know that there are a lot of young African American voters who have said that they are interested in voting for Donald Trump but haven't traditionally voted. So is this image going to be an image that's going to motivate people to get to the polls who wouldn't otherwise vote? But is it also going to have a more dramatic impact? Is it going to mean that he's going to be reaching into new voters and then the battleground

• 14:23Rory Stewart?

  isn't only this famous thin blue line? And finally, how does it play out against the images that we've seen recently of President Biden? And will it accelerate President Biden stepping down? So for example, I'm making a lot of reckless predictions on the show, but the one that I made, obviously a few months ago, and we've done a number of times on stage, is to say, do you remember, we used to say, who do you think is going to be next president?

• 14:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Rory Stewart?

  My shtick was it could be a third person.

• 14:48Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Rory Stewart?

  And I used to get no hands at all. I think Biden is now, or until the shooting, I would have thought that he might step down on Monday. But I wonder whether you think, well, I've thrown three different questions, actually. What's it going to have on the impact? What do you think it'll make on Biden's decision to step down? Any of the above?

• 15:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think that the situation for Joe Biden was getting more and more difficult, but he seemed to be digging himself more and more. I also think that he was starting to win arguments within the Democrat Party that, quote, "This thing is not as simple as you think," and that therefore we just have to kind of hold our nerve and keep going. But what I think this shows is that if, when we talked about our election recently, which, you know, Keir Starmer winning recent, just over nine days ago now, and we talked a lot about the sort of game-changing moments, and essentially the only two real game-changing moments were Boris Johnson and Partiket and Liz Truss made a budget, and the Conservatives

• 15:50Alastair Campbell?

  suffered massive blows from which they never recovered.

• 15:54Alastair Campbell?

  There hasn't been much to sort of game, change any game within the Biden-Trump debate. They're both amongst the best-known political figures in the world. They've been going along on their own tracks. Biden's health and age, which you have always, fair to you, you've always said you thought was going to be a really big problem, has become a big problem, and that has the potential to change the game. And this has the potential to change the game. Because Donald Trump can show strength. It will, here's just one sort of immediate happening, that as a result of what happened today, the Democrats have pulled a multimillion advertising campaign, doing negative attack ads on Trump.

• 16:36Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Donald Trump is the same person today as he was yesterday. He's got the same values, he tells the same lies, he's got the same record, but the Democrats have made that decision because they know that in, within the context of the guy, somebody just tried to kill the guy, and they nearly succeeded, that means that the Democrats have had to change their tactics. Now, that means that for the next bit, and bear in mind, we're going into the Republican Convention, where Donald Trump is going to be greeted as a kind of conquering hero. You've got this Heritage Project 2025, that is, was just beginning to get into the debate. It's now gone. They're not going to be talking about that for a while.

• 17:20Alastair Campbell?

  So I think this changes the nature of the debate. And the thing I think it underlines for the Democrats is the only thing they have left now for changing the game is to change the candidate. Now, you may be right that that was moving in that direction, lots of people seem to have been saying that in the last few days, but you saw no signs of that from the Bidens. But I think, I think that is the, I think that is where this might lead.

• 17:45Rory Stewart?

  So if, if I were thinking that President Biden might have been about to step down tomorrow, would I be right in saying that this thing means that it's unlikely that he'll step down tomorrow? Because that might look a bit weird, might look like he's stepping down because of

• 18:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 18:01Rory Stewart?

  the assassination of Trump. So if he were to step down, we'd expect it to be pushed out a few days or weeks.

• 18:06Alastair Campbell?

  It would happen, I think if he did it today or tomorrow. Well, first of all, we don't know, there's no indication for him, from him, that it's going to happen. But if he were, if he were thinking about it, it wouldn't be, and he wouldn't do it in the middle of the Republican Convention, I don't think. They might to sort of, you know, take the all the attention away from that. But in their current planning, before what happened today, they would have wanted attention on that. Take a break.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  The Great Game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  We assess Prime Minister. With high confidence, it was Russian.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. Disseminated into an operation order or frago.

• 19:23Speaker 06

  A frago that says to kill the president of Russia.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

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• 20:16Alastair Campbell?

  People are asking, by the way, whether Anthony Scaramucci and Kati Kay are going to do an emergency podcast as well. The truth is they they've already done it and it was very, very good. I recommend people listen to that after they've listened to us. But I think for I think for the Democrats, they are in they're in they're in disarray. Maybe the wrong word because they've they know they've got a record to fight on. They know that they've got an opponent that they can attack. But at the same time, they are all over the place as to who the candidate should be and how to get there.

• 20:44Rory Stewart?

  Just to play this through, we know that these assassination attempts, almost however you respond, have tended to lead to short term boosts in popularity. There was an attempt on Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, which led to a temporary boost in his popularity. Ronald Reagan's famous attack, the assassination attack, where he cracked this rather wonderful joke to the surgeon as he was wheeled in, saying, you know, I hope you're not a Democrat, led to his popularity rating going up to 76%, hugely high popularity rating. And it's also true that, you know, we often, this is slightly maybe a macabre issue, but

• 21:25Rory Stewart?

  we often in our popular consciousness want to believe that bullies are cowards. And so there would have been a hope that people who see Donald Trump and he is a bully, as somebody who would go to pieces, but of course he didn't. He pulled himself together, responded very, very vigorously. And that image, I think, will really help him. And I do think that up against Joe Biden particularly, it just reinforces the sense of somebody who's vigorous, energetic, quick on his feet, whether or not he had his shoes on. I'm not quite sure what happened with the shoes.

• 21:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't, he did, he said, let me get my shoes on.

• 22:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And there was a little bit of the Secret Service saying, okay, found one shoe, found the other shoe.

• 22:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I also noticed, I know it was chaotic, so, but the person in the Secret Service who seems to be kind of taking the lead, as it were, was a woman, which I, you know, I have to be honest, I've met a lot of Secret Service people in my time around different presidents. I don't remember seeing many, many women, but I thought that was, that was an interesting detail.

• 22:28Rory Stewart?

  It's also incredible to see them in operation. And obviously they rehearse it and practice it again and again. But what I discovered in this sort of brief attempt, someone shoot me, is how easily the whole thing can go wrong unless you rehearse it.

• 22:40Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, tell us a bit more about, who was this person who was trying to kill you?

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  This was in Iraq. And I had been given this very, very expensive security team who were mostly ex-British soldiers, but one of them had been in the French Foreign Legion. And it was a big team. I think at one point I had six people all earning incredible amount of money, walking around around me to try to stop people from shooting me. And we were in the government building and somebody fired at me. And my lead security person, who had been quite sort of, I don't want to mention his name, and he moved on to other things, but he had been quite sort of pompous about showing off about his record. And incidentally, most of my security people were unbelievable when

• 23:25Rory Stewart?

  we were attacked in our compound, you know, credible things, you know, Mark Mitchell, who's now a New Zealand MP up on the roof with a heavy machine gun, holding off people, extraordinary. But on this particular occasion, it wasn't Mark, it was another guy, immediately threw himself to the ground. And while I was looking around, wondering what was happening, he kind of dusted himself off, stood up again, got to me. But in the Trump situation, they moved very quickly. And you can see a man coming forward, you can see the sniper on the roof, immediately taking the shot. He's clearly seen, I think, the muscle flash, they've identified very quickly where it's come from. The question is, how on earth they allowed this person to come so close? It's difficult, obviously, protecting people. But that should have been one of the easier places to protect people. There were very few roofs anywhere nearby.

• 24:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there was also, there was also, the, there was, there was a thing that everybody had to go through to be body scanned and, and searched and so forth. So there, listen, there are going to be an awful lot of questions about that. And of course, you know, if you, if you go back to the, the JFK assassination and the report that was into that, which was at a time again, when the country came together, but that has spawned so many conspiracy theories. And this one, we now live in an era where conspiracy theories are much more commonplace. But I, I, I think just on this business about, about protection, I remember, I can't remember actually which president it was, but I remember once being on a, a trip to the States and

• 24:49Alastair Campbell?

  by comparison, we shouldn't really talk about the levels of security, but by comparison with American presidents, British prime ministers have relatively small numbers of people around them. And they have people ahead, they have people, you know, planning and so forth. But they, they travel much, much lighter than the Americans who, who literally go with hundreds wherever the president goes. And I don't know whether Trump will be on the same level of protection as he was as president, but it'll certainly be very, very, very, very high. I remember the the then president's head of the Secret Service detail, kind of, it was a kind of, you know, the something was going on, there was, we're all just hanging around. And bear in mind, they spend most of their time hanging around, okay? And we're all just sitting, having a chat.

• 25:30Alastair Campbell?

  And the head of the Secret Service was explaining, well, we have this number here and this number there and this number there and, you know, up to hundreds who are there. And of course, and there was Trevor in the special branch team, just sort of sitting, taking all this in. And then at the end of this great presentation says, well, all very interesting, but we've never lost one. And it was just a way of saying that sometimes the sheer scale of the security does not necessarily mean that you protect people in the way that you think you might. But I thought the numbers were, you know, as soon as it happened, there's lots of people in the comments saying that people, the Secret Service were very slow. I don't think they were. I thought that, you know, they can't be, they can't be there the whole time. Part of doing a rally is to be open.

• 26:15Rory Stewart?

  Oh, no, and you've got, there is inevitably a moment to react and work out what the hell's going on. I thought quite a good comment from Dorian Quell in the comments section, who says that we're underestimating the impact on the election. And he points out that it's going to be difficult for people to focus so much on calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy. And I guess there's a bigger message that Dorian's bringing forward, which is that actually, and this is something you touched on, I guess, which is attacks on Trump in general.

• 26:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Rory Stewart?

  Are going to be quite difficult for a bit.

• 26:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the biggest.

• 26:49Rory Stewart?

  And particularly stuff that looks like it's really whipping up to portray him as a sort of semi Hitler fascist figure who needs to be eliminated for the sake of saving democracy. People are going to have to hold off from that because presumably, if indeed the person who shot him was was trying to shoot him in a straightforward way, he was shooting him because he had convinced himself this was a threat to democracy. So people saying, and this is why you can see the Daily Telegraph already going on this criticizing Trump for saying, criticizing Biden, President Biden for saying that Trump was in the crosshairs. So I do think Dorian's maybe got a point there, that actually the negative campaigning against Trump will have to take a slightly different tone. Certainly for the next few weeks or months. No, do you agree?

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it will take its own, it already has taken a tone, which is why they pull the ads. But one of the big, one of the bigger tack lines that they were going to be using is that Donald Trump represents a threat to the future of a democracy. And given his record and given the sum of the things he says and his conduct, it's very easy to see why they're putting that right at the heart of their campaign. If that, at some point, they have to come back to that. And that then is just a question of political judgment as to when and how you do that. And the one thing we know is that he will, let's be absolutely frank about this. He will, once he's sort of got over the shock and the rest of it, they'll be sitting down thinking, right, this is a game changer, how do we use it to our advantage? They will be thinking that.

• 28:13Rory Stewart?

  And one of the things that's been surprising about watching him is that he's been subtler and quieter over the last couple of weeks than you'd expect. You pointed out, I think during the Biden-Trump debate, that he didn't do what you would have thought, which is to always point out when Biden was blundering and getting things muddled up. He just let him do it. And he's remained pretty quiet, hasn't he, over the last two, three weeks as the pressure's built on Biden? And as you say, he's been surprisingly sort of understated in his reaction to assassination. So maybe this is the animal instincts telling him that.

• 28:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think so.

• 28:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Alastair Campbell?

  But there's somebody, somebody just put a question up there, you know, how can you justify saying that Trump represents a threat to democracy? I think you have to go back to the last election. And, you know, part of democracy is that the loser accepts the verdict of the people. And a lot of the anger in American politics at the moment, this Clive McLaughlin who asked that question, a lot of anger in American politics at the moment comes from that, comes from the fact that they thought they lived in a democracy where you had the election, the votes got counted, and then the winner was declared, and they tried to stop that being declared, that's a fact. And he's, you know, if you go back to Charlottesville, there are good people on both sides. You go back to him saying that, you know, that those who rioted on January the 6th will be pardoned, those who've been jailed will be pardoned, this sort of thing.

• 29:28Alastair Campbell?

  That is all about the use of violence in politics. But right now, even, even me saying that, I can see it in the comments now, will get attacked. But that's what I mean about the fundamentals of the two persons involved, Biden and Trump. The fundamentals have not changed, but the fundamentals of the race may change, certainly in the short term. And then what happens medium and long term will depend on the, depends on the, on the decisions made by both camps.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  All right, so maybe as we come to the end, just to jump forward.

• 29:59Rory Stewart?

  I think we were all beginning to come to the situation, the understanding that Biden is in real, real trouble, serious, serious trouble. I personally think that we have to work backwards, that he can't win. And therefore, almost any complication, any risk, and of course, there's a lot of complication risk in replacing him, has to be justified because if he can't win, you might as well take the risk of trying to replace him, however complicated and messy that is. And I'm think that this will underscore it further. I think that the problem for President Biden is that now every time he appears, and this is the problem, this every time he appears in public now, people are looking for every flaw, you know, we saw this recent stuff of him making what, you know, you and I perfectly capable of

• 30:43Rory Stewart?

  doing, you know, calling Zelensky President Putin, or calling the Vice President, Vice President Trump, but coming from him now, but probably, I'm probably am after, after I've been up all night with you on Channel 4.

• 30:55Alastair Campbell?

  We didn't, we didn't, we didn't have much misspeaking went on.

• 30:59Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, I think he's, he's in trouble because I think every time he appears now, people are going, it doesn't matter, people are going to look at this. I also think he's in trouble because President Obama has not distanced himself from George Clooney's letter, calling for him to step down. Nancy Pelosi, our friend, you know, people should listen to the leading interview, but she is a great communicator. And also, maybe you can explain, just imagine, you know, Tony Blair has announced that he's going to be running again in 2005, and you ask one of the most senior figures in the Labour Party whether he should be running, and their reply is, it's, it's up to him. I think Tony needs to think about whether he wants to run again or not.

• 31:35Alastair Campbell?

  He's got a big decision to make.

• 31:36Rory Stewart?

  He's got a big decision.

• 31:37Alastair Campbell?

  I think we know what that, I think we know what the message was.

• 31:39Rory Stewart?

  Because the message is not supposed to be that, is it? The message is supposed to be, absolutely, we're completely behind him, he's totally fit. And so I think you can't begin losing Obama, Pelosi, this number of congresspeople and survive. I just don't think it's possible anymore.

• 31:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's, I mean, Nancy Pelosi is right, he does have a decision to make. And because the Democrat Party is I hesitate to use the word constituted, but sort of formulated as it is. Ultimately, he is the only one that is going to be able to make that decision. Um. So they keep sort of, people will keep chipping away, but of course, the more, there comes a point where they think, well, look, he's not going. So therefore, we just have to, we just have to go along with it.

• 32:20Rory Stewart?

  I, I, I don't believe that. I think what will happen is that if in the mad situation, he keeps chipping away, well, more and more people come out publicly against him. Um. They'll get to the stage where he will actually lose, lose his nominated delegates. There will be a constitutional crisis. If he actually ends up in a situation of a single, apparently vulnerable, frail man insisting on continuing when Obama, Pelosi, and most of the Democratic uh leadership is against him and the money's against him. I don't think there's any way of turning this around again. I don't think there's a world where suddenly he just hangs on long enough for these people to come back on side and the money's to start flowing again. I just can't see it happening.

• 32:59Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it will be a case of follow the money. I think if the, if the donors start saying, and it's terrifying, American, I was talking to a Canadian politician earlier. And we were talking about the difference in Canadian and American politics, let alone UK politics compared to, yeah, when we could talk about fundraising. Um. The, the funds required for these big campaigns are utterly enormous. And if the Democrats start to see the money's not coming in, but then one of the complications you have, the money that's come in so far has come in to an organisation called the Biden Harris Campaign. And then you've got these super PACs as well. It's a very complicated legal picture as much as anything else. So they, I guess the, those who are arguing to Joe Biden, you must stay in the race, are looking for these sorts of arguments

• 33:44Alastair Campbell?

  to say it's too complicated for him to go. But the truth is that if, if he decided to go, there would have to be a process that led to a, another candidate coming in. And I suspect that short term, this has slowed that process down. Medium term, I suspect that it's accelerated it.

• 34:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. There's a guy called Al Simpson or a woman called Al Simpson in the um chat saying none of these people have called for Biden to step Down, Roy is making it up. To be clear, what I'm saying is that if you, and this is what I was trying to play through and talking to Alistair about this, is that when Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emeritor of the House, cornerstone of the Democratic Party, is asked whether Trump, whether, you see there we are, I am capable of doing it.

• 34:27Alastair Campbell?

  Whether Zelensky should step down.

• 34:28Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, whether President Biden should run. Her response in any normal political communication has to be, yes, absolutely, we're completely behind him, instead of which, her response was, he's got a big decision to make. And she has then been asked repeatedly to clarify, and she keeps coming back to that. And, and Alistair, am I right in saying that if you were the communications director trying to support Biden, you would be furious about that, right? That Al Simpson is being too literal minded in saying that they haven't come out against him.

• 34:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, also others have, others have, not as well known as Nancy Pelosi, but others have come out. No, listen, you're absolutely right, Nancy, we interviewed Nancy Pelosi, she's a very, she, like Joe Biden, is, is, is not young, but she's a very, very skilled communicator. She was, even when we were talking about Iraq and Tony Blair that you mentioned earlier, she landed a point very, very well without hammering it. And what she's saying, when she says he has a big decision to make, she's basically saying, no, I'm not prepared to say right now, Joe Biden is definitely going to be the candidate, because that is being discussed and he has to make, make that decision. Just one, my final point, if I may, Roy, just to bring it back to the UK.

• 35:43Alastair Campbell?

  You know, when I saw Nigel Farage being, being interviewed about this and, and, and going straight into this, as Geert Wilders was in the Netherlands, straight into this, this is all down to the liberal left, the way they talk about Trump, et cetera. And I will never get over the, the, well, I'll never get over Brexit, I'm sure people know that anyway, but I'll never get over the fact, on the night of the referendum, him saying that, you know, this was a battle that was won without firing a shot, we, you know, Joe Cox was assassinated. And there is stuff happening in our politics, which actually even before this assassination, there was a lot in our media. About these organised campaigns of hate against some of the candidates in our election. And so I think all of us, and you know, sometimes I go over the top, I accept that as well.

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 36:28Alastair Campbell?

  And you know, you know, and I'm not incapable of going over the top. But I thought one of the, one of the things that we've tried to do on the podcast with this disagreeing agreeably, one of the things that Heller Tawning Schmidt said on the podcast we did with her recently about, you know, as you get a bit older, trying to bring people together, trying to build bridges rather than, rather than blow those bridges up. I think this is a moment where it would be wonderful to think that actually there could be a sense of, look how close we got to what would have been, whether you like Trump or not, a horrific event for the United States. And is there other a way now of sort of pulling back from that brink in the way that we conduct this political debate? And the truth is, I don't think it is possible, because I think we are, that the American politics now is so polarised.

• 37:12Alastair Campbell?

  But I think Joe Biden at least did show the leadership in the right direction.

• 37:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Dutch mapping. In the Netherlands, they really weaponised the assassination of Pim Fortun. So Pim Fortun was this very, very controversial right wing leader in the Netherlands who was killed. And as a result, the, the right, as he points out, every time you say something critical right now, they say, remember Fortun, don't, don't whip it up. So I think that's, that's a good, good point from Dutch mapping. Um, final words from me, I thought that the leader who dealt with this best was your friend Emmanuel Macron, who came straight out and said, this is a tragedy for our democracies. And I share the shock and the indignation of the US people.

• 37:52Alastair Campbell?

  Good. Okay. Well, I'm sure that that will really cheer him up amid his current political travails, Roy, that the rest is politics chose Emmanuel Macron as the best international commenter on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Listen, it is a, it is a huge event. It's one of those things people will be talking about for a long, long, long time. It will change the nature of the campaign for now. At some point, the, the challenge of the Democrats is how do you get back to the sort of debate that they wanted to have? And I think the only way they can do that is to have a new candidate.

• 38:22Rory Stewart?

  Alison, thank you very much. Have a great day.

• 38:24Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon. Bye bye.

• 38:25Rory Stewart?

  Thanks, guys.