| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Are made and the nation's course is charted. | |
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| 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? | ||
| 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. | ||
| These are the places that often decide election cycles, but they're very far off from the sort of main places like DC or New York. | ||
| But they offer a different venue for the president to be able to make his case or whoever is 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? | ||
| 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, 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
| And I didn't know wherever 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 go 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. | ||
| 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 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. | ||
| And 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. | ||
| want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go! | |
| Scare get ready! | ||
| Scare get ready! | ||
| We ready? | ||
| $10. | ||
| Are we good to move? | ||
| We're clear! | ||
| Let me get my shoes! | ||
| Let me get my shoes. | ||
| I got you, sir. | ||
| I got you, John. | ||
| Let me get my shoes. | ||
| 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. | ||
| 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, and I didn't see the video that you showed, but if it's the one I'm thinking of, you can see me, it would be off to your right. | ||
| And you can see the Secret Service guy in camo just point the gun straight at me. | ||
| Because at that point, they didn't know if there was someone else there. | ||
| So I see it in the gun. | ||
| I know, I'm a gun owner. | ||
| I knew exactly what it was immediately. | ||
| I see him grab his ear. | ||
| I see the blood go across his face. | ||
| I see the sea of blue. | ||
| That's the same time that the next rounds go off. | ||
| I'm still standing at this point. | ||
| It's at that moment that Picard takes me down. | ||
| And there's a really iconic photo of him hovering over top of me, protecting me. | ||
| And we have that photo that we can show as you talk through that moment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, I didn't know this young man. | ||
| He wasn't law enforcement. | ||
| He was a press guy. | ||
| But yet, you know, he just stayed there until we got the all clear. | ||
| And I will forever be grateful for that moment from that young man. | ||
| I have my recorder on. | ||
| I always have my recorder on. | ||
| And people will say, well, why? | ||
| There's always a transcript. | ||
| Yes, there's a transcript, but transcripts are one-dimensional. | ||
| You don't always get the nuance of what someone's saying. | ||
| And writing it in a very flat, one-dimensional way often misses the point of an event. | ||
| So I have that all recording. | ||
| And so they leave. | ||
| We are taken. | ||
| All of the photo journalists and myself are taken in the back for about 47 minutes. | ||
| And then after that, we go to leave. | ||
| And it is so quiet when we get out of there. | ||
| Everything's gone. | ||
| Everyone is gone. | ||
| At least we thought they were. | ||
| Now, if you know anything about Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania, we have beautiful rolling hills, including our farmland. | ||
| And so on this, the Butler Farm Show complex is an old farm. | ||
| So there's a rolling hill, and that leads to where the parking lot is. | ||
| And I didn't realize, we didn't realize that everyone was still there. | ||
| They had not let anybody leave. | ||
| And they didn't let them leave for an additional hour. | ||
| And what could have been very chaotic and angry, like you could imagine all kinds of worst case scenarios in that situation. | ||
| People have all different kinds of reactions when they're scared, they're angry, they're, you know, they're destabilized, right? | ||
| You literally witnessed a president of the United States being shot. | ||
| But what we came upon was actually something aspirational, remarkable. | ||
| People were singing. | ||
| People were sharing. | ||
| A lot of people had coolers in the back of their cars or trucks. | ||
| And so they were sharing water and food and they were hugging and they were talking. | ||
| And so it was really in a moment that could have been gone very, very different way in the aftermath of an assassination was really quite remarkable on those farm fields. | ||
| And Butler, I believe that is because of the way the president comported himself when he said fight, fight, fight. | ||
| And we called me the next morning, called me bright and early the next morning. | ||
| We eventually get to why he did that. | ||
| And Selena Zito talks about this in her book, Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland. | ||
| You can join the conversation this morning by calling in. | ||
| Phone lines are open for you to do so. | ||
| Phone lines split as usual in this segment. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8001. | ||
| Republicans, phone lines for you. | ||
| Independents as well. | ||
| Go ahead and start calling in with your questions for Selena Zito. | ||
| And as folks are calling in, you mentioned talking to the president. | ||
| You ended up talking to the president several times over the course of the next 24 hours. | ||
| How and how many times and why so many times? | ||
| It would end up being seven times. | ||
| And the first phone call was almost funny because he said, good morning, Selena Zito. | ||
| This is President Donald Trump. | ||
| And I'm thinking, well, I mean, nobody else has that voice, right? | ||
| I just wanted to make sure that you and your daughter and son-in-law are okay. | ||
| And he named them. | ||
| And then he said, I'm really sorry for not being able to do that interview. | ||
| And I swore like a truck driver and I won't hear. | ||
| And I said, are you bleeping kidding me, sir? | ||
| You have just been shot. | ||
|
unidentified
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I feel like I'm fine without the interview. | |
| Now, you ask why. | ||
| Before I tell you what those conversations are like, you asked why, and that's an important question. | ||
| If anyone out there that's listening or watching has ever been through a traumatic event and your family members or close friends or loved ones were not with you, and you try to explain it, they can nod their head and understand and have empathy or sympathy. | ||
| But if they weren't there, they don't know what that moment felt like. | ||
| And President Trump and I have always had mutual respect for each other over one very particular thing, and that's the people I cover and the people that he comes to see. | ||
| So he knew me really well, and he knew I was right there because he just saw me just a couple minutes before I went out. | ||
| He knew exactly where I was standing because we walked eyes. | ||
| And so I think the reason that he repeatedly called me is twofold. | ||
| First of all, just that respect for people that I cover and he sees, but also the fact that he knew someone that was right there. | ||
| And to talk about it and sort of figure out why he did the things that he did is sort of why we had those conversations, I believe. | ||
| And, you know, I suppose if I were any other journalist, I would have really pushed him, but I could tell he was going through something. | ||
| So I let him just talk. | ||
| And I was also going through something, right? | ||
| I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I knew that never happened in front of me before. | ||
| And so he began questioning, like, why did I turn my head? | ||
| I never turn my head. | ||
| And why did that chart go down? | ||
| I never do that. | ||
| And those questions and those conversations, repeated conversations, led to the hand of God and led to faith and purpose. | ||
| And he concluded that he was spared and that he had purpose and that if he won, that he would use that in the way that he believed was the best for the country. | ||
| You may disagree with him, but he came to that conclusion. | ||
| And so the last thing I asked him in our last conversation, I said, sir, well, why did you say fight, fight, fight? | ||
| And he said, oh, yeah, I wasn't Donald Trump in that moment, like not Donald Trump the man, right? | ||
| I was representing the presidency and the presidency of the United States and representing the country. | ||
| In that moment, I understood that I needed to show that the country, not me, but the country was strong, that the country would endure and we had resolve. | ||
| And I needed to represent the grit and the exceptionalism that our country has always stood for. | ||
| So I didn't do that for me. | ||
| I did it to show that we will be okay. | ||
| But he was, and I also was very aware of the fact that there's 50,000 people there. | ||
| If I'm, my shoes aren't on, let alone his shoes. | ||
| I can still care. | ||
| You know, he kept asking about his shoes. | ||
| Well, he didn't want to be, you know, walking down with stalking feet on gravel, right? | ||
| He wanted to project strength. | ||
| And he wanted to make sure, well, the people there didn't feel panicked. | ||
| And to his great credit, the temperature in that place went way down in that moment. | ||
| It was like a light switch. | ||
| And so that was a really smart decision on his part. | ||
| But also, he said, I wanted to project that to if there was anyone that was videotaping it or the cameras are rolling. | ||
| That there was no panic in the streets in other parts of the country. | ||
| Well, let me pause there and bring in some callers for you. | ||
| And we have several for you. | ||
| The book, again, you've probably heard about it. | ||
| It's been very much in the news since the anniversary of the shooting Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassin of Donald Trump and the fight for America's heartland. | ||
| This is Tom, Spring Hill, Florida, Republican up first with Selena Zito. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Appreciate it. | |
| Good morning, Ms. I was wondering if there is any information if you're investigating who is behind all this. | ||
| My first suspect, I would assume, would be Barack Hussain Obama. | ||
| And who's ever funding it would be, of course, George Surros. | ||
| Well, Selena Zito, do you want to talk about the investigation since the shooting? | ||
| So it was slow-walked. | ||
| You know, there was a void in intellectual curiosity about Thomas Matthew Crookes. | ||
| And also, I did as best as I could, but this is a young man who seemingly had a, he was quiet, however, seemingly had a normal life leading up until November of 2023. | ||
| And that's when something changed, snapped, whatever way you want to reference it with this young man. | ||
| And you can find through public records that he went from, you know, public email through school to encrypted email. | ||
| He went from using Google to using encrypted dark websites. | ||
| His father, in the interviews, said something had changed, that he started dancing and talking when no one was there. | ||
| And it was a concern to him. | ||
| But, you know, in this country, we really don't treat mental illness with the proper scrutiny that I think we should. | ||
| There's still a stigma that goes around, that comes around in people's heads about mental illness. | ||
| And so for whatever reason, the family is not talking. | ||
| That was never, it appears that that was never explored. | ||
| Michael, Suffolk, Virginia, Line for Democrats. | ||
| You're on with Selena Zito. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm calling to congratulate you on the book. | ||
| And I did have a couple of questions. | ||
| I heard you mentioned earlier, someone asked about why he would ask for his shoes. | ||
| And I would submit that if someone was shooting at me, I would run out of my shoes. | ||
| And I also would like to know why isn't his ear damaged now today? | ||
| And I believe that the whole thing was a fake. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Selena Zito, what do you say to people who say that a year later? | ||
| Someone died, okay? | ||
| Someone died. | ||
| Someone was shot there. | ||
| And that, to me, is a horrible question. | ||
| And I just interviewed the president a couple of days ago. | ||
| There's a scar there. | ||
| Charlie. | ||
| I'm just going to leave it at that. | ||
| Upstate New York. | ||
| This is Charlie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Love C-SPAN. | ||
| I was watching the event live on C-SPAN when it happened. | ||
| And, you know, I'm not a big conspiracy theory guy, but it did look kind of fakey to me. | ||
| And the last call, the referenced his ear, so I'm glad your guest mentioned that she saw a scar on his ear. | ||
| Selena Zito, why do you think conspiracy theories continue on this a year later? | ||
| I don't know, because I don't like Trump. | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| Someone died. | ||
| So I'm just not going to entertain that question. | ||
| In terms of understanding it, we started by talking about Butler and why President Trump went there that day. | ||
| You talk about understanding in the term of rootedness, of rootedness to an area. | ||
| This is a quote from your book. | ||
| Most reporters would better understand what and whom they cover in today's politics and more importantly, where to cover events if they understood the importance of place. | ||
| It's a big theme in your book. | ||
| Explain. | ||
| So the majority of Americans live less than 100 miles of where they grew up. | ||
| Most of them live within 25 miles of where they grew up. | ||
| People are very connected to place. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Well, priorities, your priority tends to be, and the thing that's valuable to you tends to be living down the street from your parents or your grandparents or the ability to see your grandchildren. | ||
| You're very rooted to community. | ||
| This crosses all races. | ||
| This is why you saw the coalition for the Republicans to grow among Blacks and Hispanics and Asians, because place begins to be more and more important to American people as the elites tend to make things more important or events more important than community. | ||
| And so that's why place matters to voters. | ||
| It's very difficult to get to that in a poll. | ||
| It's very difficult to get to that as a strategist. | ||
| I would suggest that likely our problem with not understanding that characteristic is out in places like Pennsylvania, there's a lot of news deserts. | ||
| What do I mean by that? | ||
| Lots of small newspapers have closed down. | ||
| Places where people used to get their news, local news, and even national news from a local perspective, have now closed, which has made people gravitate more towards national news. | ||
| Now, there's nothing wrong with national reporters. | ||
| However, they are a more placeless. | ||
| They're more transient. | ||
| I did an event the other day at Hudson, and I asked everyone to raise their hands if they were from DC. | ||
| Nobody was. | ||
| But I asked them to raise their hand if they lived in DC, and everybody did. | ||
| And they all came from, there's 100 people there, and they all came from very different places. | ||
| The people that are in our legacy media are more transient. | ||
| They know less and less people that live in places like Butler or Erie, Pennsylvania. | ||
| So when they cover them, they don't understand what's more valuable to them. | ||
| So things like climate change isn't as valuable as are our roads going to get fixed. | ||
| And so when you cover them, you tend to cover them almost as like an anthropological study because you don't know them. | ||
| And that's where that distrust in media happens. | ||
| And that's our problem in covering American politics because not enough local reporters cover national issues. | ||
| This book was a long answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| Your book, Butler, is, of course, the story of that day in July a year ago, but it's also this idea of place and what happened with the rest of the 2024 election. | ||
| There's been a lot of books about the 2024 election. | ||
| Jake Tapper had a book with Alex Thompson, the 2024 book that just came out with Josh Dawesy and Tyler Page and Isaac Ansdorf. | ||
| Chris Whipple had a book, Uncharted, about the 2424 election. | ||
| Do any of them get to this idea, this sense of place? | ||
| Have you read those books and what do you think of them? | ||
| So I love Jake Tapper's Nag Thompson book. | ||
| That was great. | ||
| I'm only halfway through Josh's book. | ||
| These are very well-reported books, but they're also very inside books. | ||
| This book takes a look at the people who changed American elections. | ||
| This looks at the people who make the decision that decides who presidents are and what we can learn from them and what we've been ignoring about them. | ||
| What do you think was the turning point for Donald Trump when it came to his run in 2024? | ||
| East Palestine. | ||
| Not Butler. | ||
| I would say, so I would call showing up in East Palestine when nobody else did, in particular in the entire Biden administration until after he did. | ||
| I covered East Palestine intensely. | ||
| I was there many times. | ||
| My family is from East Palestine. | ||
| And my great-grandfather ran as a free silver Democrat for state rep in East Palestine. | ||
| But not showing up, the Biden administration not showing up there and Trump showing up there was really, really important. | ||
| That was February of 2023. | ||
| President Trump at that time was down in the polls, New Hampshire poll to Ron DeSantis. | ||
| It was probably his lowest point. | ||
| And I wrote that day: if everything changes, it's because he showed up and he told people that he saw them and he heard them. | ||
| And a week later, he was ahead in the primary polls. | ||
| But I also knew it had general election implications in a very significant way. | ||
| Butler, when the assassination happened, I believe that was the second moment where if you had any doubt that he was going to win, it should have been erased in that moment. | ||
| But I think two other moments are important. | ||
| One happened, it was a year ago yesterday when President Biden dropped out. | ||
| And seemingly, everyone in my profession just turned their gaze away from the fact that a president got shot and they focused on the shiny object. | ||
| And people saw that. | ||
| And people that wouldn't likely vote for Trump said, wait a minute, there's no balance here. | ||
| And why are we chasing this shiny object? | ||
| And this is a guy who you've been telling us is fine. | ||
| And now he's dropping out. | ||
| So that lost people's trust in my profession. | ||
| And I would say the final moment, if you had any doubt at all, happened when the massive floods hit Western North Carolina. | ||
| And once again, it's just sort of a bookend East Palestine. | ||
| The Biden administration, Harris, were very slow to show up. | ||
| Trump and Vance were both there immediately. | ||
| And that showing up and getting stuff done, it's a quality that Trump has, but also shared by Governor Josh Shapiro, U.S. Senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick. | ||
| They all get that. | ||
| They all have that quality. | ||
| And the Biden and Harris administration were very lacking in that. | ||
| Less than 10 minutes with Selena Zito, the book is Butler, and we're taking your phone calls. | ||
| This is Velma in Ashland, Kentucky, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I just wanted to say something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A couple of callers said that they thought that the assassination of Jim was phony. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And that really is a sense of any sensitive. | ||
| He's got a family there that lost their husband and father. | ||
| And someone else was wounded. | ||
| And then the president was nearly, could have been assassinated. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And for people to say things like that, this is so what they want to see. | |
| What would satisfy them that it was real? | ||
| Us the family that lost a loved one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe it was a fireman. | |
| Corey, is that right? | ||
| Yes, Corey Compatore. | ||
| He was a fire chief in his hometown of Sarber. | ||
| He served in the Army Reserves. | ||
| He was the husband of Helen. | ||
| They met in kindergarten and were boyfriend and girlfriend since middle school. | ||
| And he has two beautiful daughters. | ||
| You wrote a recent story about the family. | ||
| You write that Corey, this is quoting Helen, looking back a year later. | ||
| Corey should be here, Helen told the Washington Examiner through tears while sitting at a picnic bench not far from her home of crooks, of the shooter that day and the failings of the Secret Service. | ||
| They haunt her. | ||
| They failed my husband miserably, she said, and I want answers from this, she said. | ||
| What sort of answers is she still seeking? | ||
| I think she's really concerned about the way that this was conducted by the Secret Service from the top decision makers. | ||
| There is an archaic role in the Secret Service where former presidents are not covered with the same robustness that current presidents are. | ||
| I remember covering this with Barack Obama before he was the nominee. | ||
| And President Trump was like almost a week away from being the Republican nominee. | ||
| And I don't think that at that moment you put the same footprint for, you know, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Donald Trump. | ||
| This is a man who was a former president. | ||
| He's a polarizing figure, but he is also, you know, days away from being the Republican nominee. | ||
| I think that was, there are rules to be broken. | ||
| That would probably be one of them. | ||
| I would think the other problem is a lack of shared resources between local law enforcement, who know where every nook and cranny is in those farm fields, because most of them grew up there. | ||
| And not sharing communication with Secret Service who have spent a couple days there, but not the lifetime there, was also something that needs to be explored. | ||
| Michelle is waiting in Maryland Line for Independence. | ||
| Michelle, you're on with Selena Zito. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, John. | ||
| The guest is clearly enamored of Trump. | ||
| You can hear it. | ||
| He has won her over with his charm. | ||
| But there are four reasons why someone, including myself, believe that Butler was a setup. | ||
| And it's very interesting that Zito says that she doesn't want to entertain those questions when we had Trump for years. | ||
| And he continues to say that the 2020 election was a setup, that it was fake. | ||
| And so that's why people do not believe Butler. | ||
| Secondly. | ||
| Well, Selena Zito, let you respond to that. | ||
| I have no response to that. | ||
| When it comes to responding to Donald Trump, one thing you have talked about is a theory on who takes Donald Trump seriously and who takes Donald Trump literally. | ||
| Just less than four minutes left here. | ||
| Wanted to give you a chance to talk through that theory, especially as it applies today. | ||
| So Donald Trump has been in the American psyche for decades, right? | ||
| He didn't just show up in 2015 and decide to run. | ||
| People knew who he was. | ||
| He was always in the New York tabloids. | ||
| He had a television show. | ||
| He had two television shows, I think, right? | ||
| And so people knew who he was. | ||
| They also knew how he comported himself. | ||
| So they didn't take everything that he said literally, but they took his candidacy seriously. | ||
| Whereas my profession takes everything that he says literally and doesn't particularly take him very seriously. | ||
| It was the two worlds that I straddle. | ||
| If I go on X, whether it's the far right or far left, it's a very different world than when I experience when I'm out interviewing people. | ||
| I don't fly. | ||
| I don't take highways or turnpikes. | ||
| I only take back roads and listen to people in their barbershops and their homes and in their businesses. | ||
| To make the number one best-selling on the New York Times, this book is really a testament to the people who opened their doors and to the people who bought the book and that live in the middle of the country. | ||
| I guess the final question would be after going through this experience with Donald Trump, talking through his thoughts and his feelings afterwards over the course of seven phone calls afterward, continuing to cover him on the campaign trail. | ||
| It was just last week where he mentioned you were in the building at an event that he was doing in Pennsylvania. | ||
| How has this impacted how you cover Donald Trump? | ||
| Does it change at all how you cover him as a president? | ||
| How do you deal with this as a journalist after living through it as a person? | ||
| So he's also been mad at me too. | ||
| He's also called me a fake news reporter. | ||
| So it doesn't change it. | ||
| You know, I've gotten the same kind of greetings from Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator John Fetterman. | ||
| When I interview people, I tend to not ask the questions that is more important to someone that's like covering him from a policy perspective, from D.C. or from New York. | ||
| I tend to cover them through the people that I interview-Democrats, Republicans, Independents, people that don't even vote. | ||
| And I do the same thing with Governor Shapiro, Senators Fetterman, and McCormick. | ||
| And I also did this with then-Secretary Hillary Clinton. | ||
| And I covered Joe Biden for 30 years. | ||
| So it's just the way I am. | ||
| The book is Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland. | ||
| The author is Selena Zito, and we, of course, appreciate your time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Back with us on the Washington Journal. | ||
| It is Illinois Democrat Sean Kasten. | ||
| He serves on the Financial Services Committee. | ||
| And Congressman, before we get to some of the looming fiscal deadlines and the congressional agenda, I just want to start with the question that we posed to Democratic viewers at the very beginning of today's program. | ||
| We asked the question to Democrats: are you satisfied with the direction of your party right now? | ||
| How would you answer that question? | ||
| It frankly feels very lonely right now to feel like so many things that we take for granted as Americans are being defended solely by the Democratic Party. | ||
| And I think it's hard for a lot of us to process that. | ||
| I mean, do you have a Fifth Amendment right to due process? | ||
| Do you have a 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law? | ||
| Do you have an Eighth Amendment right to not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment? | ||
| All of these things matter to the American people, and they are defended on a purely partisan basis right now. | ||
| And, you know, I love my Democratic colleagues. | ||
| Some of them are better at articulating that issue than others, and that's fine. | ||
| We've got a fair amount of diversity. | ||
| But like I said, it's just lonely to feel like we have to defend those things on a partisan basis that used to be. | ||
| We used to think we're universal. | ||
| Who are the Democratic Party's national leaders right now? | ||
| Who would you say is the leader of the party? | ||
| I think we're going to find out. | ||
| I think leaders are made in times like this. | ||
| They are not assigned. | ||
| You know, I'd remind you that back in 20, I came into Congress in 2018. | ||
| And at the time, Donald Trump was in the White House. | ||
| The House was controlled by Republicans. | ||
| The Senate was controlled by Republicans. | ||
| And I don't know how you would have answered the question at that time. | ||
| Would you have said it was Chuck Schumer? | ||
| Would you have said it was Nancy Pelosi? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And obviously, we had a lot of success in 2018. | ||
| But when you don't control the executive branch, when you're not the leader of one of the two houses, it's difficult to get the national spotlight. | ||
| I think Hakeem has done an excellent job of running the House. | ||
| But that's a different job than being a national leader. | ||
| I think that'll change a little bit in the next year, year and a half, as people start throwing their hats in the ring to run for president, and we'll start to see some people have some national messaging. | ||
| But I think that's okay. | ||
| We'll find out who catches fire. | ||
| Since coming to Congress, you're known as somebody who is happy to talk to constituents and hold town halls. | ||
| Are you planning more town halls for the upcoming August recess? | ||
| And if so, what is the message you're going to be bringing to your constituents? | ||
| Yeah, so I've averaged a town hall a month since I've gotten in, and we do a mix between in-person and telephone. | ||
| I always joke that an in-person town hall is a conversation, and a telephone town hall is a lecture. | ||
| On the other hand, you get a lot more people in a telephone town hall. | ||
| What I've found in the last couple that I've done, and I don't expect this will be any difference, is the questions have become sort of existential. | ||
| You know, I'm used to doing town halls where you say, here's what Congress is working on, here's what I'm working on, here's some constituent services we can offer. | ||
| And some people, of course, say, I like what you're working on, some people don't like it. | ||
| Why did you vote on this? | ||
| That's all pretty easy. | ||
| I mean, it's important, but it's pretty easy. | ||
| What's been really tough the last couple town halls is people are asking these questions like, you know, I'm fully documented. | ||
| I'm an American citizen, but I have brown skin. | ||
| What should I do if ICE arrests me? | ||
| That's a really hard question to answer. | ||
| You know, people saying, you know, will the courts protect us and what if they don't move quickly enough? | ||
| These are sort of deep fundamental questions about democracy and I've found that we need to be out there. | ||
| We need to be talking to people. | ||
| We need to be sharing what we know. | ||
| We need to provide hope where we can, but also be realistic. | ||
| You know, I increasingly feel like it's sort of like a Winston Churchill moment where the purpose of those town halls is to let people know that I have nothing to promise you but blood, sweat, and tears. | ||
| I know that if we don't fight, we will lose, and I can't guarantee that if we do fight, we'll win. | ||
| But it's pretty heavy. | ||
| Does the rise in political violence, and by that I mean violence specifically against politicians for simply being a politician and being in a position of power, does it give you pause as you are somebody who is, again, known for in-person town halls? | ||
| It is certainly a concern. | ||
| We have a much larger police, both uniformed and ununiformed, presence in our town halls than we used to. | ||
| I had someone get on the stage with me that we had to have forcibly removed from an event, and that happens. | ||
| I've never personally felt physically threatened. | ||
| Candidly, I'm a straight white guy. | ||
| People don't come at me the way they come at other people. | ||
| But it's a concern. | ||
| I mean, certainly some of my colleagues, and out of respect, won't name them. | ||
| They've shared stories of people calling their office in the morning and reading to them their schedule for the day, sending pictures to them with pictures of their car with the license plates. | ||
| That's really heavy stuff. | ||
| And, you know, we shouldn't require, we shouldn't require as a condition to service that you may have to martyr yourself. | ||
| But it's a reality of the moment we're in right now, that that threat is out there. | ||
| Congressman Sean Casten is our guest Democrat from Illinois. | ||
| Familiar to C-SPAN viewers, phone lines are open for you to call. | ||
| Democrats, Republicans, and Independents will put the numbers on the screen as they're calling in, Congressman. | ||
| Let me come to some of those looming fiscal deadlines that we mentioned off the top. | ||
| What's your expectation after the August recess for what happens as we come to September 30th, a funding deadline, potential government shutdown? | ||
| I mean, you should have Mike Johnson on to ask these questions. | ||
| We have only gotten one appropriations bill through the House on a purely partisan basis. | ||
| There's absolutely no way we're going to get the rest of those appropriations through. | ||
| The calendar has been hung up because the House and Senate Republican leadership decided to prioritize first Trump's tax cutting bill and then this rescission package, which essentially says that money that Congress has appropriated, the White House doesn't want to spend. | ||
| And Congress, on a straight party line basis, gave the White House approval to not spend that money. | ||
| So, you know, things you depend on like PBS and NPR, they just decided to cut. | ||
| The fact that they prioritized that chewed up time on the calendar, but it also created a real crisis of trust because for those of us who's, you know, we have the power of the purse. | ||
| Our job is to set funding levels. |