The Dark Truth About The Trump Assassination Attempt - Tim Kennedy

An emergency episode in the wake of this past weekend. No ads, no edits — just a raw, unfiltered conversation with Special Forces Sniper and Green Beret Tim Kennedy. - 00:00 How Has America Come to This? 06:12 Explaining the Different Security Roles 13:26 Step-by-Step Rundown of the Shooting 20:29 What Was the Counter-Sniper Thinking? 27:22 How Many Shots Were Fired? 34:14 Who Were the People Shielding Trump? 39:54 Criticisms of the Security & DEI 48:27 Trump's Fighting Spirit 59:24 What Happens Going Forward? - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  How big of an intelligence failure was this?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Well, it's you have to think of it more as a logistical failure as opposed to an intelligence failure. This was a breakdown in what should be very standard security protocols. And look, the Secret Service does that very well, but clearly, right? And you always have to, I'd caveat this with one thing. You have to always wait for an investigation to finish, right? They're currently in the middle of their own investigation as to what the hell happened. And obviously, as soon as this happens, everybody on social media is an executive protection expert, right? So everybody's talking about, you know, exactly how this happened. Well, well, you know, I, so I think it's important not to get out of your skis, but

• 0:48Speaker 01

  in a situation like this, clearly, it would be insane to say that there weren't failures, there weren't breakdowns here. And even people with no experience can can look at this and say, I'm sorry, how did you not have somebody up on top of a roof that had line of sight to the stage, to the rally event? And so typically, look, when when something like this happens, and I've done countless, you know, advanced plannings and security assessments and risk and threat assessments. And typically, when something happens like this, it's not one thing, right? It's a it's a series of of mistakes or missteps that compound, and then you end up with this

• 1:33Speaker 01

  this goat rope that never should have happened. So they're doing an investigation. Congress, of course, has called for an investigation. I wouldn't expect anything to come from that because Washington DC is where all investigations go to die. And but the the bureau is is involved, Secret Service, obviously, doing their own hot wash. And they sit underneath the Department of Homeland Security. You know, so if DHS does a review, fine. But there's so much video footage of this, right? And it happened in real time with so many people watching and so many different angles that.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I think in this case, unlike sometimes, sometimes you get investigations of an event and you don't get much transparency, right? Because internally, they're trying to figure out, okay, how do we improve this? Well, you don't want to necessarily talk about all that activities because you're informing people who might have nefarious intent. But here, it was, it was clear for everyone to see that there was a significant number of issues and problems.

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  Whose responsibility, who does the buck ultimately stop with when we're talking about this? Homeland Security, Secret Service, local law enforcement?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think what you're gonna find likely is, first of all, in terms of who has primacy on the ground, it's the Secret Service, right? So, they established a security perimeter, and then, according to at least early reports and what, what Secret Service is saying is, then they designated local law enforcement as having control outside that designated security zone, which included the building where the shooter took up position.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  But, that's, you know, ultimately, it's the Secret Service's responsibility. So, they should have, obviously, said, okay, so, what are you doing in relation to those buildings that have line of sight? And if local law enforcement had said, well, we've got a, we've got a couple of unarmed officers that are patrolling the ground, and, you know, interacting with the attendees, then you'd say, okay, well, how about you give me a state trooper, or one of your local officers up on that rooftop, and that one over there, any building, right, that's got line of sight, and you post somebody up there, just cover it down. That's Secret Service's ultimate responsibility, even if, you know, theoretically, okay, on

• 4:01Speaker 01

  paper, this area over here is under the control of local authorities. So, there is a procedural problem, there's a command and control problem, there's a communications problem during the course of this rally. I think you'll also find there was some command and control issues in terms of the ability for the sniper, or the counter sniper team on site, and they had a couple of them up there, to act, right? And there was probably, I don't know this, I'm speculating, right? But I'm speculating based on experience from past events, that, you know, there may have been a lag time in getting the, you know, the go no go figured out, in terms of taking a shot on the, on the target.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  There may have been problems at the top of Secret Service in terms of what did they allow for as a security package for former President Trump?

• 4:53Chris Williamson?

  When you say that, you mean the number and quality of the people that were on the ground?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've got a, you've kind of got a standard, you know, former president security package, because they get coverage for life after they they finish their their time. And you could easily argue that perhaps the package for Trump, given that he's now the presumptive nominee for the November election, that clearly he

• 5:24Speaker 01

  he draws a lot of heat.

• 5:26Chris Williamson?

  Should have been beefed up.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Should have been beefed up. And look, also, look, it was under the Trump administration when, you know, we tagged Soleimani. And the Iranians and their various proxies are still very upset about that. And we know that they've been looking at various opportunities to try to target individuals they feel responsible. So there were a variety of reasons why you could look and go, yeah, the package for for for former President Trump needs to be more robust than say what we would normally allocate. And so that may be, I don't, I'm not saying it is, I'm just saying that may be an issue where now you've got more of a of a procedural problem with management, right? And then you've got the whole other issue of just

• 6:10Speaker 01

  general discourse. If you demonize somebody on either side and call them Hitler, fascist, you know, intent on destroying democracy, a threat to the nation, as President Biden's referred to him even the day before the shooting, you're probably, you know, inciting some irrational person who, you know, may not be able to process all that as hyperbole, right?

• 6:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And they're going to take it literally.

• 6:40Chris Williamson?

  This is a point that Tulsi Gabbard made, where she said that how can you expect someone to not try and stop Hitler if you keep calling them Hitler? Would you not go back in time and try and kill Hitler? And if literally Hitler, there was a Magazine that had him looking like the few, a number of magazines that have had him basically in the same poster style that Adolf Hitler did in the past, you know, how many more analogies do you need to draw? And it's one of these things where until the repercussions and the consequences of doing that become kinetic. Everyone thinks that it's just a lot. Well, Trump's bombastic. He's gregarious. He says crazy things. We need to push back with the same sort of technology that he uses, which is words and imagery. And then someone takes it up a notch.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I mean, it's, it's, it's clear and people always say, ah, it's what about isn't, but it's clear. It's a problem on both sides, right? On the, on the edges of both sides. There's all this rhetoric and hyperbole. So there's no doubt about that, but you're right. Look, if the new Republican, that was one of the magazines that had the, the sort of this propaganda poster of, of Trump as Hitler. They're throwing these things out there and I, I think rational people look at that and go, okay, well, man, that's over the top. It's rhetoric, it's hyperbole. I, I get it. You guys are using this as a campaign strategy. But there are a lot of people out there who aren't going to process it that way. And disappeared on these rabbit holes. So there's a, there's a lot of layers here. So when you say who's responsible, I, you know, it depends on what

• 8:10Chris Williamson?

  Level of magnification you want to look at it from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where does the, where does the domino begin? One of the things that I did read was that there was a lot of homeland security contractors on site as opposed to secret service agents, that there was a more heavy reliance on local law enforcement than you would have done typically. I'm going to guess that this is the package, the security detail packages you mentioned. Just being more diluted than it should be. You have some talent and some of the talent, I guess, is questionable based on the video footage. But then you also have this sort of the outer regions, which are maybe not even more as competent and more of that was done by contractors and more of that was done by local law enforcement than typical.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, the election season, any election season, right? But particularly now when everything's so heated and both sides have been lobbing hand grenades at each other for quite some time.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  It's a difficult time for Secret Service, right? They're stretched, you know, thin because there's so much to do. And their resources are working constantly. So, yes, they draw on, but they typically draw on, even, you know, when it's not an election season, they draw on local authorities. And there was a significant presence at the rally of Butler County Police. And, you know, there's going to be some other issues about, you know, there was an encounter between one of those police officers who, you know, attempted to go up and interact with the shooter and then, you know, didn't when the shooter pointed a gun at him. And then, you know, the firing started shortly thereafter. But, look, there's a real breakdown there, right?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Because you've got a moment where, obviously, this guy has enough time to go to the building, try to get up to the top of the building to interact. Where are the comms with the, you know, counter sniper team saying, "I'm going up on the top of the building to interact with somebody who apparently has a weapon because lots of people on the ground saw him and alerted the authorities." So, there's, again, as I mentioned, it's never just one thing. It's a series of problems usually that contribute to a security breakdown.

• 10:17Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting. I get what you mean about during an election cycle, there's more people, more places, more checks need to be done. But it's not like you don't know this.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:26Chris Williamson?

  You know reliably it's going to happen in four years' time and four years after that and four years after that. So, all of this could have been prepared for in advance, whether it's training, whether it's recruitment, whether it's whatever you need in terms of staffing. I remember reading not so long ago as well, after Trump's indictment, conviction, whatever it is, that there'd been some suggestion to completely rescind the security detail from him. Or at the very least to dial it back as some kind of recompense that he needed to pay for now being a felon.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, that was a move in Congress by... Uh, I think it was Congressman Jeffries, maybe. I don't want to get caught with the wrong name, but one or a handful had, I think, kind of floated the idea that well, probably somebody who's been convicted shouldn't have Secret Service protection. It's an asinine idea. I mean, it was a completely asinine idea because he's still a former president and he's still the presumptive nominee, but they were trying to score some political points, right? And that's, that's been part of the problem. You get, you're getting a lot of dysfunctional and irrational behavior because, um, you know, the, an element within

• 11:44Speaker 01

  the Democrat Party has this, this, uh, I don't even know how to describe that, the, the hatred for Trump. But then again, on the, on the right side, on the extreme right, obviously you've got this same sort of rhetoric that goes and, and demonizes the Democrats and Biden and all this. It just, it, uh, it's not a, it's not a good place for the nation to be, obviously, given what can happen and what we saw happen on Saturday.

• 12:08Chris Williamson?

  It's, at least at the moment, a little bit asymmetric that only one side has control over how much protection an ex-president gets. And, you know, it's so, it just seems to me, it, it seems to me like the amount of protection should be proportionate to the potential threat. And, you know, regardless of whether you like or don't like Trump, he's a pretty big target. I mean, you know, you, you don't need to do much to Biden to cause him to fall over, but you know, Trump's a, a much, much larger target.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna let that one go. Um, but, uh, yeah, I do, no, you're not, you're not wrong. Uh, and that's why you do, uh, risk and threat assessments on a constant basis, right? Because the risks, the threats, they change. Um, they can increase, they can decrease, and you're always doing that. Whether you're talking about executive protection, uh, you know, for a political candidate, whether you're talking about, you know, what sort of level of protection you provide to a facility, or it doesn't matter. So, you're absolutely right, and they should have been looking at this. Now, they, they did say that they, there, there has been some comment that the Secret Service did, uh, heavy up the, uh, the security package to some degree back in June, I believe, for, for Trump.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Um, but it's only now that they've, um, approved, uh, Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy, right? And

• 13:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  You know, that's an indication that really what the Democrats wanted was they just wanted him to go away. They didn't want, they almost didn't want to acknowledge that Kennedy was a candidate out there.

• 13:39Chris Williamson?

  Ah dude, so I've been to, I went to dinner with an R, with RFK at a friend's house, maybe about a year ago. Then I went to a rally thing of his in Austin about six months ago. And then I went to another meetup with him about two months ago. And each one of those, he's made it very, very plain. I have no security detail. I have no extra special care from the government, despite the fact that I come from the most assassinated family in American political history.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was insane and it were, you know, and it has been, but I do think it was, it was essentially for a very political reason, which was we don't want to acknowledge that he's a candidate. We just wanted to go away. Could you, I mean, you know,

• 14:22Chris Williamson?

  And giving, giving him the detail is almost like a stamp of approval in some way. This is a legitimate.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of that formalizing of his candidacy in a way, right? That's, a lot of people process it that way. They see the Secret Service detail and they imagine, you know, okay, he's a presidential candidate, right? And they were so afraid of him taking oxygen out of the room. But now as a result of what happened on Saturday, they've, they've reviewed, I assume they're going to, you know, increase the package for President Trump. They've approved a package for, for Robert F. Kennedy. You know, they've been looking at, I'm, I'm in Milwaukee where they have the Republican National Convention there. You know, they immediately got on the ground here and started reviewing the security. Go figure. I mean, that should have been done. But this is not, there's, there's, there's a methodology here, right?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  And you can have little bits and pieces that, that change based on what the event is. But the standard practice, the standard protocols really don't change that much. And so more than anything, there were, there was a command and control and a communications breakdown between Secret Service and, and local authorities that I would, I, I, I believe an investigation is going to prove contributed mightily to. What happened on Saturday?

• 15:37Chris Williamson?

  What will the process from here internally be to investigate? I imagine it's just going to be a fucking nightmare to try and work out who's culpable, what happened, how's this going to occur whilst also doing the investigation, which requires resources from the very thing that you're trying to now beef up, given the failure that just occurred during a time when you need them more than ever, but also their time is trying to be split working out what the fuck happened.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that, yeah, and you raise a really good point. And that's where, that's where a congressional investigation can really kind of muck up the works, get in the way because, you know, they, you know, they, they get out there and they start sucking up oxygen that really needs to be spent, you know, doing operations. But, uh, look, it's important, uh, right after, after this go rope, uh, you know, internally, Secret Service was doing a hot wash.

• 16:26Chris Williamson?

  What's this mean? Stop using these words. What do you mean?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they were, they're basically just, uh, doing a, a after action review of, you know, what happened immediately in the aftermath of this thing. Um, but there's a lot of moving parts, as you pointed out, look, it's, there's DHS personnel, there's the local law enforcement. It's not a good sign that so soon after this event, there's already some finger pointing going on, um, saying, well, that was their zone, uh, not ours. Butler County saying, well, that's, you know, it doesn't matter. A secret service has primacy, so they should, you know, be telling us what to do in a sense. So that's not necessarily a good indication. Uh, but, you know, I think this thing has got to play out in, uh, in public

• 17:13Speaker 01

  in part because, you know, government agencies, whether it's the Secret Service or the Bureau, the CIA, whatever, they, you know, they, they've lost a lot of credibility, uh, which is kind of a painful thing to admit.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  But they've lost a lot of credibility over the recent past. And so, you know, one of those things, one of those ways, I think you build back some level of trust is to be more transparent. And, and again, they don't have anything to lose because everybody was.

• 17:42Chris Williamson?

  They're starting at zero.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're starting. Well, I meant, I meant because everybody was watching, they can afford to be more transparent. But, but okay, I take your point. Yeah.

• 17:53Chris Williamson?

  So, you know, going into the rest of this year, do you think these sorts of threats are over or are there more serious risks to come as we get toward the presidential election?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Well, the threat's not over for sure. You know, that never goes away, right? You never get this down to zero. It's not how the game is played. So they have to approach every event, whether it's the RNC happening outside or whether it's any other campaign rally, the DNC, which will be taking place in Chicago. They've got to approach every event in the same fashion, right? And yes, there'll be more under the spotlight, you know, from the public and from, you know, their own agencies and the various people involved. But that's a good thing, right? It kind of refocuses the mind. You know, I'm not saying that the event on Saturday was a good thing. I'm just saying that it's going

• 18:47Speaker 01

  to, one of the, one of the, one of the end results will be everyone's going to be a little bit more on their game because they're going to be reminded in a very terrible way what's at stake. You could argue they shouldn't have to be reminded, but you know, you do these events and you do these events. And the thing about executive protection is it can be a grind. Mentally, it can be a real grind, right?

• 19:11Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Well, you're, you're standing outside a door, you know, Secret Service details, there's a lot of hurry up and wait, you know, it's, it can be kind of mind numbing in a way, right? There's, you know, then you got a movement. Okay, fine. Now I got to go do another advance and I'm doing the advance and there's, there's a lot of routine, a lot of, you know, rote, which, you know, can, it can be a bit, again, it can be a bit mind numbing.

• 19:38Chris Williamson?

  Which inevitably causes people to pay less attention, which then allows small errors to, to kick up. Yeah, I was speaking to Tim Kennedy. I got him to break down the body language of the counter sniper from the Secret Service that was on the roof. And he's, you know, looking, he's coming up off his glass, he's going back down, then he flinches and then he goes back down again. And, you know, he, Tim's assessment was he thought that was a person Never been in a firefight before that that was someone who potentially hadn't seen combat action. But another thing to consider is that this isn't training. You haven't just rocked up for caffeine, you know, on the range with your buddy. That's your spotter. And I know when I'm

• 20:18Chris Williamson?

  going to need to shoot. You've been there for how many hours sat up there doing this thing, you know, that sort of endurance. And as it continues to go on. But again, that it seems to me that all of that can be fixed just by more volume and higher quality personnel, you know, if you've got someone that's doing the night shift, don't make them do the day shift, you know, have sufficient resources that you don't need to drain everyone like that.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You've got to have, you've got to have sufficient staffing. And, and, you know, again, talking about how much of a grind it can be, it's not the sort of business where you can just, you know, you know, just, just work through people until they're exhausted, right? You've got people have to be at an optimum level all the time. And so that requires you to be able to work through a number of shifts of rotations. And so you have to have those resources. But look, I and, and, and training, you know, you've got it, you've got to have constant training. And that costs money and time. And so sometimes those things get kicked aside. I don't, I'm not saying they did. I'm just saying that, you know, sometimes in the world of government, you know, certain things can be pushed aside and in favor of other things

• 21:29Speaker 01

  that aren't really as operationally beneficial. So

• 21:33Chris Williamson?

  Likely, do you think it is that the heads of Homeland Security or the Secret Service are going to end up getting fired or disciplined for this?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think DHS Mayorkas, I don't think isn't going anywhere. He's, he seems to be, you know, coated in Teflon. Because, you know, you could argue he should have been fired for the, you know, for the, the lack of management of the US southern border for the past three years. But I don't think he's going anywhere. Kimberly Cheadle over at Secret Service. Look, she, you know, she's been there, what, almost 30 years, maybe longer. She was, you know, an agent and a supervising agent for 27 years. Finished up, then went to, I forget, Pepsi, I think, where she was Global Security Director, and then she got called in. She had worked on Vice President Biden's detail years and years ago.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  And so that, who knows, maybe that was part of the connection, but she came back in to run the Secret Service. Is she gonna be kicked out? I don't think so. Washington DC is not typically a place where people get fired.

• 22:40Chris Williamson?

  Why is that? Just nepotism and people know people and people know things and you scratch my back?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, look, you know, people, people get reassigned at lower levels, you know, if, if there's, if, if things go sideways, typically, you know, that, that shit rolls downhill. And so you may get, you know, mid-level officers or agents, you know, they get reassigned or put on ice. But typically, people don't, you know, at higher levels, you know, they're not expected to pay the price. I don't know why. But it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like this problem with, with the civil discourse and people talking about how we have to turn the temperature down, right? Well, that requires self-awareness, and it requires a willingness to accept some responsibility for where we got to now,

• 23:28Speaker 01

  right? Because they were part of the problem. But I don't think politicians necessarily, or political appointees tend to be, you know, loaded for bear with self-awareness or willingness to accept responsibility.

• 23:41Chris Williamson?

  What do you think happens to the political discourse moving forward from here? How do you think it changes or doesn't?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  I, I think, give it another, I don't know, 15 minutes, and we're gonna be right back. We're gonna revert to the main. I, I have no doubt that there, there will be a short period of time, including, I, I think, including Trump's nominating speech at the RNC. I think, you know, that's going to be more dialed back than people would imagine coming from Trump.

• 24:16Chris Williamson?

  He said that he re, he wrote a, a brand new one.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure he did. Look, he's got, look, it's, I don't think you can go through that, an experience like that, and not. Have some moment of reflection, right? Uh, now whether it lasts, whether he can change his stripes, I don't know. Whether the Democrats can change their stripes, who knows? You know, look, they they ran a campaign based on Trump as a fascist and he's going to destroy democracy and it was working for them, right? It was energizing at least their their base. And and I think they felt like that's the narrative they were going to run with for the next few months. I don't think I don't think either side's really going to dial it back significantly for any period of time. So yes, there'll be this, there'll be a moment. But then I think

• 25:01Speaker 01

  everyone's going to kind of revert back to the normal, jump back in their trenches and, you know, we'll be right back to that.

• 25:08Chris Williamson?

  Biden said, or at least the Dems said that they'd turned off their campaign ads for a little while, sort of a show of a mark of respect. I imagine that if you'd kept running those, there'd be some in there that are absolutely tone deaf for a guy that just got shot. But yet there is a big question. Can you say that Trump is Hitler one day and then the next day wish him well, given that he was just shot?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I know. He's Hitler.

• 25:37Chris Williamson?

  Blowing with the wind.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Thank God he was only grazed. Um, yeah, I it's it's a it's a, yeah, it's a really good question. But I think what they're counting on is the attention span of the of Americans, maybe. Um, you know, everybody's so busy just trying to get by and feed their families and do their work and kind of whatever. And they're all staring at TikTok anyway. Um, so I think they honestly think, yeah, sure, we can, we can get away with this incredible pivot from he's going to terminate the Constitution and take away all your rights and he's, you know, the biggest threat to the nation. And and then turn around and go, well, we sure, I talked to Donald and I told him I was.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  So I, but I think they feel like, you know, they can get away with it because they done it. So.

• 26:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Selective amnesia of the entire populace. So yeah, I'm glad that you brought up TikTok, your favorite topic of discussion. I, this is the first time that I've observed, actually, I didn't even do this with January 6th, because with January 6th, I actually watched mostly Fox News CNN coverage. I was watching things be streamed live. But on Saturday, this happened just as I was going for dinner here in Montana, and I, for the first time, realized just how important X Twitter is as a social media. It was a genuine utility for everybody that wanted to know what was going on. And I wasn't, I'm not going to

• 27:12Chris Williamson?

  Facebook to find out this information. I'm not going to TikTok to find out this information. I'm not going to Instagram to find out this information. I'm not going to the mainstream media to find out this information, like mostly peaceful but fiery assassination attempt from CNN or whatever the headline was.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were some headlines. There were some headlines that he was pulled from the rally because he fell down. And.

• 27:34Chris Williamson?

  Secret Service interrupts Trump rally.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Or there was, there was a New York Times article just today that said, you know, that referred to the assassination attempt as that somebody shot at the president during a rally. And you think, okay, so, so I agree with you. You know, I think X has kind of proven its usefulness in this.

• 28:00Chris Williamson?

  Agreed.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Event over the weekend. Yeah, I was, I was, I spent probably more time monitoring what was happening there than I think pretty much anything else. Although I was, I was perfecting a new TikTok dance, so I had to.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  That wasn't easy, but it's gonna be a hit.

• 28:18Chris Williamson?

  I'll tell you what else I didn't see much of. I didn't see much sort of crazy misinformation, wild accusations. I haven't seen much that people have really needed to row back. Now, is that the, is that the benefit of the platform? Or is that simply just because of what users were talking about? You know, you can't promote a tweet which lies about something that somebody doesn't actually post. You can only actually promulgate whatever messages people say. But yeah, I was, I was really impressed. I was looking at X and going, holy fuck, like, we need this thing. And I've not, I've not had that sense really before. It's just like, oh,

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  it's, you know, if you've got Truth Social on one side, and you've got X kind of more toward the middle, and then you've got Threads on the other side, you know, it's just, it's just another one of these. But it, yeah, it made me think differently, I think.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it takes a little while for the crazy to come out, right? So I have seen some conspiracy theories, you know, this was an inside job, you know, and, you know, and then, of course, all the, all the, you know, the sort of the armchair executive protection specialists, you know, talking about exactly, you know, how, what went wrong five minutes after the event, right? Are they okay? Well, at least let the dust settle a little bit before.

• 29:37Chris Williamson?

  Let's mop the blood up off the, off the stage canvas.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, might be, might be good. But no, the, the, look, the imagery was amazing.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  The like him or hate him, right? And there's a lot of people on both sides of that for Trump. But you have to, you have to think, good God, right? I mean, he, the fact that he stood up, had the wherewithal to kind of like face the crowd, you know, give him that indication that he was fine, that he was, you know, I mean, that's. Those instincts, right? You can't teach that, right? That's, that's kinda in there somewhere. And so I think that was, that was amazing, right? Again, people who hate him are gonna say it was terrible. He shouldn't have like shook his fist. I did hear CNN was upset with him because he shook his fist at the crowds and fight. And they were like, well, that seems inappropriate.

• 30:26Chris Williamson?

  Stoking, he's stoking a wartime rhetoric.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  He just got shot.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  He just got shot. They're upset because he's like shaking his fist and he's, they're like, well, that's, that's, that's not appropriate.

• 30:37Chris Williamson?

  Inappropriate, inappropriate to get aggressive when you've, when you've just been shot. Yeah, dude, I, I said this to Tim. Look, I have, I, I sort of respect Trump in that I find him a, an interesting orator. And his sort of staying power has been, has been impressive, but I've never before said that I admired him. Uh, you know, I, I don't know whether it's because he's kind of like a WWE character, which he actually also happened to be briefly for a little while. Um, or he's super gregarious and he's out there and he's all of these things and he's like older and he is from a different culture and all of these things, lots and lots and lots of things, right?

• 31:16Chris Williamson?

  And I saw that video and then I saw that imagery and I was like, that is fucking badass. That is a, you, there is no amount of media training or

• 31:29Speaker 01

  No, exactly.

• 31:30Chris Williamson?

  Top-down dictatorial rhetoric building and image sort of, um, promoting that you can do to make being shot, then standing up and putting your fist in the air and going fight, fight, fight. That is him. That's his character.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:46Chris Williamson?

  That is his character. We saw everything stripped back. Who is the guy? Like, if you wanna know who someone is, shoot them in the ear, right?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Well, let's say, okay, now for you, for those of you watching at home. That's, that's, yeah, let's, let's step back on that guidance, but, um.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Okay, kids. No, but I take your point. And also, the striking thing is just the contrast, right, between that and what we had been talking about on nonstop, right, on Friday and Thursday and Wednesday before that, which was

• 32:24Chris Williamson?

  feebleness, fragility.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Feebleness, the mental acuity issues for Biden. And so that contrast, I think, is going to hit really hard for some time now, going through this election. And obviously, you know, the Republicans will use that imagery, you know, but I think they have

• 32:40Chris Williamson?

  For the rest of time.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  They have to be, but they do have to be careful, right? I mean, you don't want to, you know, because look, you know, we, there was a fatality there, you know,

• 32:50Chris Williamson?

  Maybe, maybe more.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe more. And so I think they're going to want to, so I'm hoping what this does is, I hope it dials down the discourse. I hope it keeps things for a little bit of time. Again, I'm cynical, but, you know, civil. And I hope it makes the Trump campaign more reflective, right, about their strategy and their tone and the way that they approach things.

• 33:19Chris Williamson?

  What does, what does that mean? Be most specific for me.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think, look, everybody talks about, everybody talks about how you got to win the moderates, right? You got to win the independents, you know, if you're going to win it all in November. And I think

• 33:34Speaker 01

  if, if, if what we got was the Trump of old, right, he's not winning those people, right? Because they already left him in 2020. That's why he didn't win, right? Because they were like, I'm tired of the chaos. I'm tired of the noise. I'm tired of it. You know, all of this. And, and so I think that if this makes him more, or the campaign more reflective, and they say, you know, what You know, let's, let's, let's continue to dial it back. Democrats are going to do whatever they're going to do. If they get back to throwing hand grenades, okay, fine, let them. But let's be the, let's be the contrast, right? I think that's the way that you get, and then just focus on policies. Just talk about policies, nothing else.

• 34:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, you already had a little bit more of a pivot to a slightly more statesman like version of Trump during the debate. And then after the debate, you know, there was no posting about Biden, there was no silly tweet of what equivalent, there was, there was none of that. Silence was his greatest weapon for the first time ever.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. When you, when your enemy is imploding, don't, don't get in the way.

• 34:39Chris Williamson?

  Get in the way. Yeah, precisely. Talk to me about what you think this does to Trump's image among the American populace. How do you think that this incident changes it, if at all?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know that it, look, I, I think it, I think it will make a difference with some who were undecided, not necessarily, I'm not talking necessarily about, you know, independents and moderates who are focused on politics. But I think those people who, you know, maybe don't spend a lot of time thinking about politics, but were still kind of undecided.

• 35:10Chris Williamson?

  Maybe, maybe unregistered.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:12Chris Williamson?

  I wasn't, I wasn't sure if I was going to vote at all.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I think that that, and then part of that will be that contrast between this guy standing up after he shot and what they saw during that debate, if they happened to see clips or they watched some of the debate. I think that contrast will influence a certain group. I think if he can, if he can, I don't know if statesman is the right word, but I think if he can be more moderate than, and speak to the issues and just stay there, then I think that can influence those moderates and independents perhaps that, that are a little more focused on politics and did abandon, or abandon the campaign the last time around. So I think it can have an impact. Look. The Democrats, you know, they must be amazed right now, right? Because all that conversation about Biden, that's, that's nowhere to be found, right?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  That's done, at least for now. People are not talking about Biden. They're not talking about his feebleness, his mental acuity, is he still fit to serve? And so I think the White House is, if anything, is taking a breath and going, oh, thank God.

• 36:12Chris Williamson?

  I, I, I'm not sure there. So I, I think that, I, I get what you mean. The, it's a good day for bad news, or it's a good day to be senile, I suppose. Um, but the problem is that this recent shooting assassination attempt is framed against the, uh, foundation that we already had. Everyone still already has that in the back of their mind. We know the fragility that we've seen of the existing president, the fact that he doesn't have that sort of gusto and that get up that, that we want to show from a, a leader up against China, up against Russia, et cetera. Uh, and then you have this, even if you're not looking at it anymore, it's like just being in a cold bath and getting into a hot one. You're like, holy fuck, this is different. So I, I, I do think that that's going to be there.

• 36:56Chris Williamson?

  I also agree, I think the more mature and, uh, standoffish that the Republicans can be when it comes to messaging around this, I think that's going to benefit them more. For the first time ever, this is one of my, George, who I'm traveling with at the moment, told me this yesterday, for the first time ever, Trump has a victim card. He's never had a victim card before. Trump has, that's, he has a fucking victim card.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, although I would argue that the, the base, right? His, his loyal, loyal supporters view him as, as the, the supreme victim, right? Just being victimized by lawfare and the, the Biden administration. And so I think that group always looks at them in that regard, right? You know, look what they're doing to him again.

• 37:42Chris Williamson?

  And now he's been shot in the.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  And now he's been shot, yeah.

• 37:45Chris Williamson?

  In the, in the fucking air. Well, so another interesting thing is how much damage does this incident do to the left moral high ground around not being the violent ones?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think they care. I think they just they'll they'll just I've never seen any awareness on their part that that could be an issue, right? It's just sort of like that mostly peacefully Antifa riots and, you know, burnings and violence. I think that they just brushed that aside. And so I don't know that they're worried about that idea. They all jumped on the notion they were they were they were really wordsmithing, but they jumped on the notion in their statements about the assassination attempt that the shooter was a registered Republican. And they, you know, and by the way, why do all these guys look the same? I don't I don't understand.

• 38:38Chris Williamson?

  [laughing]

• 38:39Speaker 01

  They were, you know, and I didn't I didn't say that. My oldest boy said that. He said, what the hell is it with with with people like, what are they? What is the commonality? You know, his point was maybe they need to do a study of all these people and find that one thing.

• 38:54Chris Williamson?

  What was that? What was that thing that was super racist and done in the 19? Was it phrenology or physiognomy or whatever it was?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:01Chris Williamson?

  Like face shape as being indicative? What do we what? What do we know about the shooter?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  You know, what, 20 years old from the from the area Bethel Bethel Park in Pennsylvania? You know, I've only heard a few comments from people who claimed that they knew him in high school. And those are typical comments. Quiet loner bullied. You know, his dad purchased legally legally, apparently, the long gun that was used on Saturday by his kid some six months ago. And, you know, so there's not a there's not a lot of information out there. It's interesting. The Bureau's got his, obviously, they got his electronic devices. They took his phone down to Quantico. And, you know, once again, they're they're, you

• 39:49Speaker 01

  know, struggling it according to reports. I don't know whether that's the case or not, but they say they're struggling to unlock it.

• 39:55Chris Williamson?

  Phone of a 20 year old loner from Bethel Green or whatever it is.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think it's it's, you know, we'll get more detail. But that's one of those areas, right? Well, you have to be. I always hate to see people speculating about motives, because that's one of the things in terms of an investigation, regardless of what type of shooting event it is, that you really need to let the facts, you know, come to light before you start talking in in earnest about, oh, you know, what the motivation of the shooter was.

• 40:27Chris Williamson?

  So bizarre, man. There's definitely, I think, another discussion to be had around what is the training of local law enforcement? You know, we've had it before. I was watching this documentary about, um, there's a name for them. What's the name for police officers that don't enter firefights even though they should do? It's like, it's not coward or whatever. It's like, there's a specific name for it, you know, like a, um, false valor or whatever. There's like an equivalent sort of name for it. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just failing at duty. And, uh, you know, I saw in this same documentary I was talking about that a lot of the police officers were saying that they spend more time in diversity meetings than they do with their firearm in their hand.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that is true. When you look at the consistency of training, that's why that, you know, one of the things that could drive you crazy during that, the sort of the height of the defund the police was really, you're just fucking stupid because if you want a better police force, a more responsive police force, a more responsible police force, you want to actually give them more funds for training. That's where it all starts, right? So part of the problem is again, going back to something we talked about earlier is that, you know, a lot of times when you hit budget cuts, training is one of the first things to go. And that can't be the case when you're talking about law enforcement.

• 41:41Chris Williamson?

  Especially not if you're going to be a guy who goes up a ladder and sees a dude with a long gun and.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, again, I'm fascinated by the comms portion of this and the line of communication because there's a period of time there, right? Where the attendees alert the local authorities, local authorities decide someone, you know, Bob's got to go over there and investigate. Well, at the same time, all that communication should have been shared with the counter sniper teams and command and control from the Secret Service, right? They should have been making decisions in real time. So if that person was going up a ladder on that building, they should have had him in their sights at that point, right? Now, maybe they didn't have line of sight on the, on the shooter. Maybe, you know, he was out of range, not out of range, but out of sight. And then he pops up and points his weapon at the, but that's the time to shoot him as soon as it,

• 42:30Speaker 01

  you know, so there's little steps here. But again, you know, is it fair for me without the investigation being done to make all these, you know, statements? I don't know. I'm just speaking from, you know, from past experience on other events, but. You know, they got to let the investigation play out. It's just, it's such a, the event had such magnitude and such impact that it's natural. I get why people rush to make judgment or statements or talk about things. It makes sense.

• 42:56Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that this stops Biden from stepping down because Trump now has a, a martyr vote?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Well, I think, um, yeah, that's, that's a, yeah, that's a really interesting point, but I think it goes back to what I was saying when, uh, I was, I was trying to refer to

• 43:17Speaker 01

  the, the, the fact that the noise around Biden's situation has died down, uh, to no noise, right? So I think it does, uh, buy him significant time. And I think him coming out and saying, you know, look, we need to be civil. We need to think about how we talk about each other. He's trying to be presidential. He's trying to show, obviously, like with every event that he's had since the debate, that he's, he's up to the job. But I think it's making it more difficult, right? For the Democrats to continue to beat the drum. There were probably prior to Saturday, there were probably more Democrats in Congress or in the Senate who were going to step out, you know, and say, we think he needs to go, right? That, that was a building drumbeat.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  I think that it's more difficult now for them to do that because of the events of Saturday and because of feeling like, okay, well, maybe, you know, maybe we just got to stick with Joe.

• 44:11Chris Williamson?

  Dude, think about the last three weeks of fucking news.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, think about the, I mean, really think about this past year, right? Everything that's been going on. I mean, obviously, you know, Ukraine, fucking Gaza, right? Um, you know, the, the, the discourse on, around the election, this event on Saturday. I mean, good God. Um, you know, all we need is a pandemic.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Sorry. Sorry. That's terrible, but you know, not that we won't get one. We're gonna get another pandemic, by the way.

• 44:48Chris Williamson?

  It'll happen. It'll happen. It'll continue to happen. Talk to me about J D Vance.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting. I guess not an unexpected choice. They'd been banging on for a while, saying it was either gonna be Vance or Burgum or Rubio.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  And look, J D Vance is close to Trump's son. They're very good friends. He's he's an interesting cat, right? Has almost no-

• 45:16Chris Williamson?

  I don't know anything about him. Explain to me who he is.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's got almost no political experience. He wrote that book Hillbilly Elegy, which was a very interesting book. I mean, a very interesting book. And, you know, they made a movie out of it, I think. But he's a political newcomer. He's been a very staunch supporter of Trump. He's out of Ohio.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And, you know, of the candidates,

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I don't know that if what you were saying was I want to, I want to pick a candidate who can really help me win over,

• 45:56Speaker 01

  you know, groups that I need to win. I don't know that J D Vance is that person because he's, he's already got his base, right? And so I think J D Vance kind of shares the same supporters. Rubio, you know, could have shored up Florida, obviously, you know, with the Hispanic vote as well would help. He's a much more seasoned politician. Burgum is, you know, he's a good friend of Trump's. He's, he's got, you know, very good political instincts, business instincts.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Nikki Haley was hanging out there. And I gotta tell you, if you wanted the moderates or you wanted the independent voters.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  You could argue Nikki Haley could have been a terrific choice, except they got, you know, they were so sideways with each other during the primary.

• 46:44Chris Williamson?

  What do you think? Do you think there's any chance that Trump changed his VP pick post-Saturday?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  No, that's interesting.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  No, probably not. I think, I think the

• 46:59Chris Williamson?

  Wheels are in motion too much.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the factor that would have changed his decision possibly would have been if Biden had stepped out and had pulled himself out. That, that may have recalibrated the thinking perhaps over the VP pick, but I don't think Saturday, I think at that point, you know, he just, he went with Vance and didn't change his mind.

• 47:24Chris Williamson?

  I was in a, I'm in a group chat with a bunch of different people here, one of them saying, Teal hired him at his VC fund Mithral, also endorsed his Senate campaign with the biggest individual donation ever for a Senate campaign of $15 million. Very happy with Vance, super smart, competent, veteran, Rust Belt, blue collar orientation. Also, and sad that this is the case, he provides assassination insurance.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, look, I mean, Trump had been saying that, right? He said, you know, his, his decision over who to pick would be, you know, if something bad happens, are they ready to step in? But okay, to be fair, you know, every presidential nominee says that. I want my VP pick to be ready on day one. And look, I like, I like Vance in the sense that he's, he's unique, right? He's not a, he's not a 110-year politician, right? And that's not a bad thing at all. And I like the fact that he's a veteran. That's a very good thing. So I'm, I'm just saying, it's an interesting choice in the sense that I don't know that it expands the voting block necessarily for the campaign, because

• 48:35Speaker 01

  it's drawing from the same kind of block as opposed to maybe one of the other picks. But then again, you know, you want somebody that you can, you know, be simpatico with. And Vance has been a staunch supporter.

• 48:48Chris Williamson?

  Nikki Haley might have just been a fucking nightmare from behind the scenes from day one.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Well, I think it would have been a very interesting dynamic. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's the case. And maybe Rubio, you know, was a bit of the same way, you know, maybe there was some, you know, concern over past, you know, you know, punches they'd thrown at each other. So who knows? At the end of the day, does it does it matter all that much? I don't know that a VP pick matters all that much. Look, if Biden stays in, you know, I think the key has got to be saying, look, you're not running against Biden, you're running against, you know, President Harris, because I don't think anybody in their right mind believes that Biden, you know, makes it through four years if he wins. So a vote for Biden

• 49:36Speaker 01

  is a vote for Kamala Harris. And you're willing to say that Kamala Harris, you know, is is could be the leader of the free world. And I can't even say that with a straight face.

• 49:45Chris Williamson?

  I mean, that's that's more terrifying than the president getting shot or the presidential candidate being shot in the ear. I've seen this map, the election map of when Reagan got shot afterward, and you've got red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, and then this one blue dot that remained up at the top. How likely or how unlikely is that to be the case, given the sort of never die, never Trump, etc., kind of even after all of this, you've basically got the ultimate one-two punch, like jab in the face, Biden's completely incompetent, punch, the other guy is totally competent and can literally get shot and stand up 15 seconds later. But that's just surely there's no way that we

• 50:30Chris Williamson?

  can see a huge red sweep in the same way, because people are just so passionate about hating Trump.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's a different if it's a different situation. You can't it's apples and oranges when you're talking about what happened with Reagan, I think. And so, look, there's no way he's going to run the table or get anywhere close. It's going to be a close race still. And I think that

• 50:53Speaker 01

  You know, the jury's still out. Maybe, maybe when the noise dies down, right? And, you know, the election really heats up again and the rhetoric, you know, comes back kind of the way it was, that the Democrats, you know, start reevaluating again Biden's, you know, suitability. And, you know, so that could be, that could be the next big event in terms of the election season that we're, we're in the middle of.

• 51:17Chris Williamson?

  Fucking hell. Okay. So one other thing that I really wanted to ask you, uh, one of your expertise, international relations, uh, first off, have any other world leaders of interest said anything that's interesting? And secondly, how do you think other countries, the Chinas, the Russians, the Iranians of the world, how do you think they interpret the ease with which a 20-year-old bullied kid with bad hair was able to shoot the president's ear off?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think that, I think that jihadists are looking at it and going, what? That's it? That's all we have? What are we gonna do? Climb up on a damn shed? Um, yeah. So I think that they're looking at it from a security breakdown and thinking, oh my God, maybe we've been overthinking this, right?

• 52:02Chris Williamson?

  Gave them too much credit.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, uh, but look, the Chinese regime has always, Xi Jinping and, and the Foreign Ministry, they, you know, they were very muted in their response, uh, after the assassination attempt. And, you know, they, you know, wished, wished him well. Um, but they, they tend to, you know, try to be seen as not waiting in because they don't want anybody stepping in their business. Um, European leaders said exactly what you would imagine. You know, everybody was condemning the political violence. Um, it was, weren't really many.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Um, I'm trying to think Slovakia, Robert Fico, you know, he made a couple of interesting comments because he had been, you know, uh, they tried to assassinate him not that long ago, shot him, I think, four times. Um, so he, uh, he alluded to the idea that, you know, the, the rhetoric from the opposition party, you know, probably played a role. But there, there, there was pretty much just what you would expect, you know, condemnation of, of political violence from, from world leaders, you know, UK, uh, Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, he came in and weighed in very quickly. Um, and, and so that makes sense. It's- You wouldn't expect anything different. Um, I think Russian, Russian, uh, I'm trying to remember

• 53:21Speaker 01

  what, what they, they, they didn't really say much. I think, uh, Peskov, the spokesperson for the Kremlin made a, made an offhanded comment. Um, but you know, basically it was not that interesting.

• 53:32Chris Williamson?

  Another advertisement of America's in fighting operational poor management, the fact that one party that's kind of in charge of the protection detail for the other party isn't capable of stopping this. It's, it's more sort of America falling flat on its face on the world stage, only recently after the guy that's in charge couldn't string a sentence together.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, I, speaking of that, you know, the, the White House during the NATO summit, which was just, you know, concluded last week, um, uh, John Kirby was, was asked and he said, look, I, you know, the, nobody in NATO questions, uh, Biden's abilities, right? We don't have to justify Biden to anybody. They all, you know, firmly believe, well, what else are the NATO leaders going to say? You know? I mean, they, you know, but it was, it was interesting that, that even at that point, when it was clear that there were some issues, um, the White House was still trying to portray Biden as, as, you know, being on top of his game and sharp his attack and all the other, like I, again, we're all getting older, right? You know, you, me, everybody, we're all getting

• 54:39Speaker 01

  older. We all age differently, right? It's not age, it's mental acuity. And we've all got elderly parents. We've all got elderly grandparents. We all know what it looks like. So, um, I think the problem the White House has, even during this moment when that talk has died down, is that people understand that process, right? And they know what it looks like because they've seen it or they've had to deal with it directly. So I don't know ultimately that they're going to be able to hold the line and keep him in there.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  But frankly, Kamala Harris and John Kirby and Karine Jean-Pierre and, you know, everybody in his little circle and his family, they've kind of been lying to the American public for quite some time now and trying to cover up what's been happening, despite the fact that we've been seeing bits and pieces of it. But that's why he hasn't been out there, right?

• 55:35Chris Williamson?

  What was it called? What was it called when you, when you take videos out of context? What was that? There was a name?

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Oh, a cheap fake. Cheap fake. Yeah, that's what, how they were referring to it. It was a, it was a cheap fake, every time that there was a reference to it, or that we were just, and the media, for the most part, were willing to cover it up as well.

• 55:50Chris Williamson?

  Complicit, dude. Complicit. Did you read, I think it was Ben Usher, he wrote an article called Common Knowledge?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  I didn't read that, no.

• 55:58Chris Williamson?

  I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you afterwards. So basically, the, the breakdown, it's phenomenal. It's so good. And it basically says that it's not enough for you to know a thing. You need to know that other people know that thing too. So for instance, it's not enough for you to know that Biden, it's the emperor's new clothes, right? You can pick your favorite fairy tale of choice. And the problem being that until you have reliable insight that other people will agree with your position, nobody is prepared to take the position. So it's not enough for you to know that you know. You need to know that everybody else also knows. And what we saw on the debate night was common knowledge

• 56:40Chris Williamson?

  be distributed to the masses. There was nowhere else for anybody to hide. Therefore, when you come out as someone who previously has said Biden's sharp is attack, or, you know, pick New York Times, fucking like Washington Post, whoever it is.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:55Chris Williamson?

  And then you pivot and say something else. Well, it's a completely costless position to hold because everybody else knows it. Like, it's the same with the free speech position. You know, free speech doesn't matter for people who agree with you or who you agree with. Free speech only matters for the people who you disagree with because it's a costly position in order to be able to hold that. And it's the same with this common knowledge thing. And it's so- Interesting to me because for those of us that exist terminally online in the heterodox sphere of Substackistan, we have all known this for forever. This is something, this is, to me, talking, like, doing jokes about Biden's mental degradation was hacky. It was so obvious

• 57:39Chris Williamson?

  that it felt lowball to say. And then you watch the debate and you go, oh, there's people in the world who don't have access to my common knowledge. Now, I'm sure that there's shit tons of stuff that I don't know about, but that was one of the things that I did. So much so that I take it for granted. It's an accepted fact, and it's so much of an accepted fact that it would be hacky and lowball to make a joke about it. And, oh, the world thinks that this is fucking revolutionary. And it really broke my brain for a while when I realized, oh, my understanding and the way that I see certain parts of the world and the way that maybe the rest of the, a big chunk of the populace does is, is fucking miles apart. I'm no fucking clairvoyant political

• 58:20Chris Williamson?

  divinity guy, but fuck me, I knew that. And for it to be a revelation was just like, oh, wow, this really does show how echo bubbles and the, still the power of legacy media to be able to filter what actually gets down to this sort of ocean floor of most people. Wild, wild.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  And the, and the, and the, the ability to repeat a message, right? If you're, you know, if you just keep saying the same thing over and over again.

• 58:45Chris Williamson?

  Sharp as a tack, sharp as a tack.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  And then, and then it works. And then, then we find out that they, you know, had been basically complicit in hiding this. And, you know, that's why, and then, of course, you know, people come out and pundits come out and people who had just been on, on their shows, you know, talking about how great he is, you know, saying, well, you know, we've kind of seen this for a while. I can't believe that they've hidden from us. And you think, it's kind of like, it's kind of like, again, what we talked about earlier, calling Trump Hitler and then the next day wishing him well. You know, it's, it's, it's that, it's that immediate turnaround that, to me, is shocking, but, but people just move on, right? And they, and they know that, right? They know they can do this. There's almost no shame because they just like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot and

• 59:27Speaker 01

  completely reverse my position and I'll be fine in a day or two. It's, it's shocking. But anyway.

• 59:34Chris Williamson?

  In the interim, just rounding out the conversation on security, does Tim Kennedy or Eric Prince need to be called in? Do you go private security to bolster Trump's security detail or maybe other people's security details?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  No, no, I think, look, I was out and we had a large operation out in Iraq, early days of Iraq, right? I mean, talking '03, '04, '05, '06. I mean, and, you know, we had a large private security operation out there. And that's a war zone, so it's a little bit different. But when we're talking about augmenting Secret Service with, you know, private security, I don't think so. I think, look-

• 1:00:22Chris Williamson?

  What are the challenges that you face when you try to augment Secret Service with private guys? Hierarchy, power-

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're just layering on potential communications and command and control issues. And I just think it's, and it's also, I think, look, the Secret Service, their staff were some great people, right? We always have to be careful about, you know, there's this tendency to say, oh, they're all screwed, dismantle it, you know, that's, it was that cry about, you gotta get rid of the Bureau and get rid of the Agency and do all these things. And I'm thinking, really? That's your take on this? How about just fixing problems? And so, the Secret Service augmented by local and state, you know, law enforcement,

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  they can do the job. They've been doing the job, right? You know, part of this is, they've got to, they've got to be transparent again. They've got to come out and say, these are the steps that occurred. And some of them won't surprise us because we all watched, right? But they've got to be very clear about what those steps are. And they've got to be very clear about how they intend to not have it happen again, right? And that's going to require some people taking responsibility. And that's where I think that can be a problem because you have to make people at the top take responsibility and maybe suffer some consequences, as opposed to just saying, you know, the officer on the ground who failed to communicate in real time what he was about to do by going up on that building, you know, that's the guy who we can all blame.

• 1:01:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I have had it in my head since Saturday. I wonder whether there is a level of negligence you reach where it almost becomes complicity.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think it's complicity. It could be, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Complacency, you know, maybe at times.

• 1:02:12Chris Williamson?

  Well, you know, it just, the, the, the reason that I brought up the private security thing is I saw that trailer saying thirty percent of Secret Service staff are going to be female by 2030. I spoke to Tim and Tim explained to me that the mile time for guys versus girls to run is different. The weight load that you need to be able to lift is different.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Chris Williamson?

  The height, all of the rest of the stuff, you know, you saw a woman who was, he came up, she came up to Trump's nipple, maybe? You know, got this big guy, got this big dude and this like little woman.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Really? That's where you decided, that's where you decided to go as far as the height measurement was the nipple?

• 1:02:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the nipple. I think that's precisely where she, that's precisely where she got to. And, um, you know, I,

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  I know what you mean. And then, you know, they would get a, you had an agent, you know, kind of fumble fucking with their weapon, trying to rehol, you know, holster it.

• 1:02:59Chris Williamson?

  That was the same one who used Trump, hid behind Trump like this, like sort of in that kind of like, uh, top of the fucking, the guy, woman in the kitchen from Tom and Jerry, like,

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  That's a great cultural pull right there.

• 1:03:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you haven't thought about that for a while, have you?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Tom and Jerry. Uh, look, I, I think there's, uh, you, there's no room for DEI in, in the world of operations of security, right? You just simply choose the, it shouldn't be the way it is in everything, not just those sectors, but you, you choose the most qualified, capable people.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  And if they can't cut it, then you move them out and you bring in somebody who's more capable and qualified. And you're right, you can't, you, there's a problem when you, when you, because I think the Secret Service will say that, look, we didn't lower the standards, right? That's not, that's not what we did, right? But you hear that all the time. Problem is that. That belies the reality, right? Al Nahrak is a good example, right? For a while there, it was only, we won't even bring former, you know, spec ops guys out, right? Well, that's, that's, that's a small pool, right? There's not a lot, it's not a lot of former guys there with that qualification. So then you started seeing, you know, everybody, squaddies and everybody coming out there and claiming that they were a spec ops former, you know, this and that. And, and so, uh, you've got a, you've got a limited pool of capable

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  people, I believe, right? That you can choose from for a certain jobs. And you just have to take those people and say, fuck DEI, that's not what's important in this business, right? Um, and, and again, I'm, I don't want to rush to judgment, right? I don't know the qualifications of these people. We have to kind of look and see, you always, let's be measured, that sort of thing. But I take your point and I, I don't disagree with it at all.

• 1:04:47Chris Williamson?

  Well, the, the problem being, the reason that I men- I mentioned, uh, Eric Otimo, some other private contractor is that, you know, Tim brought it up to me. He said, the people that you see that are on Trump's detail, even though they may not have performed like the A-Team, they weren't hired yesterday. You don't get hired and then get put on a presidential candidate's detail. You have been in the agency for a while. You've been hired and trained long ago. You've been around for a long time. So in order to say, well, we're going to rectify it, we're going to train better, we're going to hire better, we're going to change the DEI initiative, we're going to do whatever it is that they say that they're going to do. Brilliant. You know, the 2028 election may very well be more, way more secure than this one. But, you know, when you're thinking, what's going

• 1:05:28Chris Williamson?

  to happen over the next however long? Uh, RFK Junior has just been given, uh, Secret Service Detail. That's going to take some of the resources away. And how many people are going to have their time taken up going through fucking meeting after meeting after hearing after court case after investigation? As you said, sucking the oxygen out of the room and taking the attention away from the thing that it needs to be focused on. So yeah, I, I, I don't know, man. I mean, it, America is not showering itself in glory and oddly, the only person that is at the moment is Trump.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  That's a great way to put it. That's no, I, you know, that's, that's going to drive a lot of people crazy when they hear you say that.

• 1:06:07Chris Williamson?

  But it's fucking true. Dude, I, I, people can go back and listen. I, I don't think I've ever been complimentary about Trump. Not that I was particularly critical of him over Biden, but I'm like, he's just a dude. He's a dude that's kind of a bit crazy. And I just think, tell me, tell me that you look at that photo and you don't think, yeah, like that's some late eighties, flag flying Americana.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Chris Williamson?

  Like legitimacy. Um.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Chris Williamson?

  It's, it's, it's crazy.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Almost like he's out there yelling Wolverines, right? Yeah, no, I, I, again, and it's that imagery that's so important, right? Because people make decisions quickly. People don't dig deep, you know, and, and they're going to see that and maybe they make up their mind. And, and you know what? Again, you can't, we're going to argue with that. You're going to look at that and then you're going to look at, at President Biden from the debate and you're going to go, okay, who's more fit?

• 1:06:57Chris Williamson?

  Obviously. Yeah. Tell you what's, tell you what's an awesome, awesome video that you can get a hold of. So Evan, the guy that took the photo, um, he is a Brazilian jiu jitsu guy, looks an awful lot like a Navy SEAL. Like massive. He looks like, he looks like a young Jocka Willink. Hard dude. And, um, if you watch the video, there's a panned out version of the stage and those shots start firing. He doesn't stop and cower. He starts strafing across the front of the stage to get those shots. There's two guys that get them. Really interesting video that you can find, um, which was shot on a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. So I've, I've got a pair of those too. So it's a pair of sunglasses that you wear and they've got two little lenses on either side and they can shoot up to about a minute of video in very high quality.

• 1:07:42Chris Williamson?

  And the color representation is really good. And this guy, so Evan's the guy that took the photo, the photos that are going around everywhere. There's another dude who presumably got very similarly good photos as that.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he's from the New York Times. I think, yeah, Doug Mills, maybe. Yeah.

• 1:07:55Chris Williamson?

  So he, yeah, it is Doug Mills. He had the foresight when he's around the back, he's around the back of the stage and. The video begins, but you can't remotely start those glasses. So he's had his, his camera like this, or whatever it is like this. And he's shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. And he's taken his hand off, pressed the button, held it. You have to hold it if you want to take a video. And then gone back to that. And if you watch, I, I messaged Dean, the guy that led it this episode. You met him in, in Miami, my video guy. I was asking him, what is that dude, Doug? What's, what's that dude doing? Because you actually see from his glasses, you can see both of his hands, right? So he's got his hands up like this and you're looking at this thing. And um, he, he's shooting a lot. This is during a firefight.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Chris Williamson?

  These guys, it's so cool. I love seeing people who know their craft inside out doing something. And what's coolest about this isn't the shot, the shots that he get. It's the seamlessness with which he does it. So you see that he's shooting and he can't frame up properly. So he takes his hand off the front of the, the camera, flips the screen down so that he can get a better look. And he's, he's working on his, I think either exposure or focus, whatever Dean said. And then uh, he's checking, he's checking the screen. He's going like this and Dean was like, he's working about every one to one and a half seconds. He's looking at the composition of his shot during this. So he's shooting, shooting, shooting, look, shooting, shooting, shooting, looks, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. And the burst, burst, burst, burst, burst.

• 1:09:23Chris Williamson?

  I'm like, that's one of the coolest parts of it.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  You know what else? You know what else is amazing? If you watch right behind Trump, there's some lady, right? As soon as the shooting starts, literally the shooting starts, she puts up her phone. And she just, she's just in the audience, right? She's like first or second row behind Trump. So you gotta watch, watch the videos that are out there and you'll see she's got a, I think she's got a white case on her phone. And she's sitting there and wearing a white shirt, I think. And she, and, and it literally, it starts off and she just puts her phone up.

• 1:09:58Chris Williamson?

  And I'm like, God. So I don't know whether this is true. Tim is the only guy that's told me this. He said that the man who died, uh, com- com- com-

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Compteur, yeah.

• 1:10:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Corey Compteur. Yes, um, he apparently, this is what Tim said, threw himself on top of his family. And that he took the, the shot in his head.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what the reports are saying. Yeah.

• 1:10:23Chris Williamson?

  Using his body, which is the Aurora, Colorado, shooting all over again, right? That someone goes in and boyfriends throw themselves on top of girlfriends.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, it's, you know, and I think, uh, I think that's another reason why, look, you, you know, if, if no one else had been hurt, maybe they would treat it a little bit differently. But you can't, you gotta be very measured about how they talk about this. I'm from the Republican side, from the campaign side, and I think they, their, their best thing to do is just let it go. Obviously they'll probably reference it during the RNC speeches or whatever, but they gotta let it go. Just go and then just, and then just let, you know, some of the imagery speak for itself, but move on and go to the issues and.

• 1:10:57Chris Williamson?

  And it looks too, um, callous to,

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Chris Williamson?

  to use it as a look at how awesome we are, we're hard as, whilst a guy died and there's one or two people still in intensive care.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. Dude, I, I hate to say this, but I gotta pop.

• 1:11:13Chris Williamson?

  That's all right, dude. I appreciate you for doing this emergency episode. I needed to get you on. Mike Baker, ladies and gentlemen, MB Company Man?

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  MB Company Man, um, also, uh, the President's Daily Brief Podcast. Look at me, marketing right now. Just before we finish up, I'm, but now he's talking about that, but the President's Daily Brief Podcast, available on all podcast platforms and we do a weekend TV show now called The Situation Report.

• 1:11:38Chris Williamson?

  Well, you'll have a lot to talk about next weekend, mate. I really appreciate you. Stay safe at the RNC.

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Ravennet.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.