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|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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House Republican leaders changed the floor schedule after the Rules Committee recessed to block Democrats from offering amendments involving the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. | |
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| Journalist and author Selena Zeno joins us now via Zoom. | ||
| She's the author of the book Butler, the Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland. | ||
| Selena Zito, why did Donald Trump pick Butler, Pennsylvania as the site of that rally back on July the 13th of 2024? | ||
|
unidentified
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So the book delves into the importance of place. | |
| So it's really important that you ask that question because places like Butler, you know, there's only ever been two presidents that have ever campaigned for president in Butler, and the other one was JFK. | ||
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unidentified
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These are the places that often decide election cycles, but they're very far off from the, you know, sort of main places like D.C. or New York. | |
| But they offer a different venue for the president to be able to make his case or whoever's running to make their case. | ||
| Josh Shapiro, John Fetterman, Dave McCormick, they're also elected officials that understand the importance of place. | ||
| It's situated right along the Ohio border. | ||
| Erie's to the north. | ||
| Pittsburgh is to the south. | ||
| So all of that makes sense in terms of if you're trying to appeal to the middle of the state or the middle of the country, it gives something for voters to have an association with because they see their place through the eyes of the people of Butler. | ||
| Why were you in Butler that day, and how did you end up right there by the platform when the attempted assassination of Donald Trump happened? | ||
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unidentified
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So I'm a reporter. | |
| I cover national politics and I live in Western Pennsylvania. | ||
| So, you know, anything that was happening in Pennsylvania, I was pretty much there. | ||
| I think I put, I don't know, 30,000, 40,000 miles in my car last year. | ||
| So I try to make every event that all the candidates were doing. | ||
| Butler is also home to me. | ||
| My family, not the Italian side, the Scottish side, were one of the first founding families of Butler County in the 1750s. | ||
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unidentified
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So it's also near and dear to my heart. | |
| The morning started out, if people look at the cover of the book, my daughter is a photojournalist. | ||
| She took that cover photo. | ||
| We started out that we were going to interview President Trump for five minutes before the event. | ||
| Chris Lasavita, who was his co-campaign chair, had called and said, hey, you know, you have an interview. | ||
| I requested one. | ||
| You have an interview five minutes right before. | ||
| I have interviewed President Trump several times. | ||
| I knew it was going to be a little longer than five minutes, just because he loves to talk about Pennsylvania. | ||
| That quickly changed, which, by the way, is not all that unusual. | ||
| And as a reporter, things change all the time. | ||
| You never really set out that morning and have accomplished what was on your list by the end of the day. | ||
| That changed about midday, and they said, We're running late. | ||
| Can we please do the interview after the rally? | ||
| That call came from Susie Wiles, who was the other co-campaign chair and who's today's chief of staff at the White House. | ||
| I said, Sure. | ||
| And about an hour before the president came on, I get a phone call from Susie Wiles, and she says, So, how would you feel about flying to Bedminster and doing the interview on his plane? | ||
| And I thought, Well, I'll have a lot more time. | ||
| And they said they would get me back, my daughter and I back. | ||
| So that's the decision we all came to. | ||
| About six minutes before the president was set to go out, he had already landed. | ||
| He was in Butler. | ||
| He was in behind the stage in an area that's called the Click area. | ||
| It's called that because this is where the president meets with local first responders, law enforcement, community leaders, grabs some people out of the rally and just talk to them about their lives, thanks them for their service. | ||
| In fact, Mark Vogel's mom was there. | ||
| He was the Western Pennsylvania teacher who was held in Russia for several years, and she was asking him to please do whatever he could, if he won, to get her son released. | ||
| So they rushed myself and my daughter back. | ||
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unidentified
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And I didn't know where I was going to do the interview. | |
| And so I said to the press aide, his name was Michelle Picard III, what am I doing? | ||
| Where am I doing this interview? | ||
| And he had no idea. | ||
| So he went around the curtain where the president was and then came back very sheepishly and said, He just wanted to say hi. | ||
| You're still going to Bedminster. | ||
| So I went around, said hi. | ||
| We basically talked about our grandchildren. | ||
| Both of us have a deep love for our grandchildren. | ||
| This is sort of this connection. | ||
| And then I go to go back to the riser with my daughter. | ||
| My son-in-law is there too. | ||
| He's carrying all of our lighting equipment. | ||
| And they couldn't get us back to the riser. | ||
| So Picard tells us, okay, you guys go in the buffer. | ||
| The buffer is the area between the stage that the president walks out on and the people that are attending the rally. | ||
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unidentified
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Mostly it's used for photojournalists and Secret Service. | |
| So he comes out, we follow him out. | ||
| If you look at the cover of the book, my daughter took that as he's coming out. | ||
| And that cover has significance. | ||
| And I'll tell you about that in a minute. | ||
| But if you take a look at it, and you can see it's not, it's a photo of the back of him looking at the people attending the rally. | ||
| So we go out and Picard had told us, make sure you end up over on the side so when the motorcade is ready to leave, we can just grab you. | ||
| So that's what I did. | ||
| The president comes out, he comes out to the song, and two things happen simultaneously, which rarely happen, if at all. | ||
| A chart comes out. | ||
| And I thought, what does he think? | ||
| He's Ross Perot. | ||
| Like, he never has a chart. | ||
| And if he does have the chart, it's at the end and it's on the other side of him. | ||
| I've covered enough Trump rallies to know that. | ||
| It's very rare. | ||
| If it does happen, it happens at the end. | ||
| And the other thing that happens, and this is the significance of the cover, President Trump never turns his head away from the people attending the rally. | ||
| It is a very transactional relationship. | ||
| He feeds off of them and they feed off of him. | ||
| This sort of connective tissue that happens. | ||
| And now he may turn his body to face different parts of a rally, but he never turns his neck away. | ||
| However, he did. | ||
| He turns his neck away when the chart comes down, and that's when the four shots went overhead. | ||
| And let me show viewers that in real time. | ||
| I'm sure they've seen it before, but it was less than two minutes from when the shots ring out to when Donald Trump is taken off the stage. | ||
| Here's that two minutes. | ||
| You want to really see something this said? | ||
|
unidentified
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Take a look at what happened. | |
| Ready? | ||
| Move! | ||
| Move! | ||
| Go! | ||
|
unidentified
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Hawkeye's here. | |
| Hawkeye's here. | ||
| Move the stair. | ||
| Get ready. | ||
|
unidentified
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Get ready. | |
| We ready? | ||
| Good job. | ||
|
unidentified
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Shooters down! | |
| Are we good to move? | ||
|
unidentified
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Are we clear? | |
| We're clear! | ||
| Let me get my shoes on. | ||
|
unidentified
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I got you, sir. | |
| I got you, sir. | ||
| Let me get my shoes on. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hold on, you're headed, buddy. | |
| So we've got to move to the class. | ||
| Move to the class. | ||
| Watch out. | ||
| Selena Zito, as you listen to those moments again, describe where you were and what you remember from those two minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, this is very detailed in the book. | |
| I have my recorder on, so I have all of that too. | ||
| I'm a few feet away. | ||
| We are going to take you live now to remarks from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. | ||
| He's speaking at the Federal Reserve Conference here in Washington. | ||
| Live coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
| Well, good afternoon, everyone. | ||
| Thank you so much for being with us for this day of our first ever Capital Conference. |