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July 23, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
45:50
THEIR LITTLE SECRET Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep880
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Coming up, are there any secrets that the Secret Service is telling us?
I'm going to dive into some strange new anomalies surrounding the Trump assassination attempt.
And David Grantham, PhD, a nationally renowned law enforcement professional, head of a group called the Threat Management Group, he's going to join me to bring some light to these matters.
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I'm focusing this show today on what we've learned and continue to learn about the attempted assassination of Trump.
And I've got an excellent guest.
His name is David Grantham.
He's a law enforcement professional.
He's a combat veteran expert in issues of security, CEO of the Threat Management Group.
That's coming up.
But let me offer a couple of preliminary thoughts before I get into that.
The first one is that I'm still struck, days later, about the turn of the head that saved Trump's life.
And in one sense we can interpret this providentially, but in another sense, what happened with Trump?
Why did he turn his head?
Well, interestingly, we now know why.
There was a massive chart, and I have it in front of me.
It's a chart that documents illegal immigration into the US.
And I'm gonna hold up the chart so you can actually take a look at it.
It's a fairly...
kind of complex chart with three different well there are multiple graphs in multiple different colors and it is a sort of chart that goes through time to show you the massive escalation in immigration At various points.
When DACA was announced, the Obama family, detention policy.
So apparently Trump, who liked this chart and knew it was coming up on the Jumbotron, was like, I better look at the chart to be able to give you some of the details.
So that's why he rotated his head and in the process saved his life.
Now, very strikingly, I saw, just a day or two ago, Mark Zuckerberg, of all people, talking about this.
And Zuckerberg says, on a personal note, he goes, You know, put his fist in the air with blood on his face and goes fight, fight, fight.
He goes, this is like the most impressive display of personal bravery that I have witnessed.
And I thought, well, first of all, it's interesting to see a little, you know, robotic nerd like Zuckerberg making this kind of an admission, but it has a substantive follow-up because Zuckerberg went on to say, He went on to say, well, he goes, you know, I did a bunch of stuff in the 2020 election.
He goes, but I'm not doing it in 2024.
He goes, I'm out.
I'm not endorsing anybody.
And so I took this to be somebody who was very much in the leftist and democratic camp.
Put $500 million or thereabouts in 2020 to help the Democrats across the finish line, paid for a bunch of these mail-in drop boxes, and now he's like, I'm not doing it.
So, neutrality is good when we're dealing with somebody who in the past just put so much money into the Democratic side.
Now, we continue to hear more and more about the failure of security that led to this attempted assassination.
And it is a failure on so many fronts.
I mean, it's not just the Women's Secret Service agents who are these confused, bewildered DEI types.
That's part of the problem.
That's actually understandable.
Understandable in the sense that if you saw that, you'd be like, oh, I know how that happened.
That's like DEI run amok.
Now, DEI can get you killed.
And so it is a demonstration of the great limitations of DEI, particularly in these kinds of sensitive areas.
You're flying an airplane, you're doing a Surgery or a secret service agent protecting the former president's life.
This is not the place where you want.
You don't want DEI anywhere but certainly not here.
But there are so many other problems.
I mean there was apparently no aerial surveillance of these campgrounds.
Well there was aerial surveillance but it was done by the shooter.
He had run a drone to be able to take a look from the top, from the air, at the site and evidently the Secret Service and all the local police with all their resources, they didn't do that.
This guy had gone multiple times to sort of scope out the place.
This is a guy who had a rangefinder to calculate distance.
So, kind of what I'm getting at?
You may say the shooter did everything right, and the Secret Service did everything wrong.
It's the opposite of what you'd expect.
You have a 20-year-old, you think, well, this guy's a goofball, whatever his motives, however much he hates Trump, he's not gonna be able to actually pull something like this off.
How would he know where to go?
How would he know where the Secret Service isn't looking?
How would he know where to take his shot from?
How would he know exactly how far Trump is away from him?
But it turns out that this kid, I say kid because I'm here operating on the assumption that he acted alone, although we don't know if he did.
This guy got it right.
The only reason he missed is because Trump, at the last minute, turned his head.
Trump was almost like De Gaulle in the movie The Day of the Jackal, where when the shooter, who's extremely competent, gets ready to fire, De Gaulle inexplicably Moves his head forward, actually to kiss one of the veterans on the cheek, and boom, the bullet misses.
And same with Trump.
He turns his head, the bullet grazes his ear, but it's not because the shooter per se did anything wrong.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service did seemingly everything wrong, and I've just raised a series of questions over the past few days about it.
We'll have somebody who is very involved with security talk about these issues, and I think he's gonna, by and large, try to explain it from A human or bureaucratic point of view.
In other words, let's not assume that something deeply nefarious is going on here.
Let's see if simple kind of human bungling, limitations of resources, those kinds of things can explain what happened.
Because that should be the starting point, but not the ending point of any investigation.
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Guys, I'm very pleased to welcome to the podcast David A. Grantham, PhD.
He's a nationally renowned law enforcement professional.
He's a combat veteran.
He's also an author.
He's the CEO of Threat Management Group and you can follow him on X at D Grantham, G-R-A-N-T-H-A-M, 1016, 1-0-1-6.
David, welcome.
Thank you for joining me.
I wanted to get your take as a combat veteran, as a professional in this area, about what's really going on here with this attempted Trump assassination.
I mean, let me just start by saying it looks to me like there are Two sort of broad theories to try to understand what happened.
One is let's call it the extreme ineptitude theory that there were just a series of bungling mistakes made not by one person or even at one stage but in many different places The other theory appears to be that there's something more to it.
And even if we don't know what that something more is, that the incompetence theory just gets stretched so far that it doesn't make any sense anymore.
It couldn't be that when you're dealing with people who are professionals in the field.
So let me start by just asking you, you know, when you saw this, as you followed it, what is your take on what happened here?
Yeah, well first of all, thanks for having me.
Second of all, I feel like without, before I talk about this and my heart goes out to the victims, there are other victims other than Trump and I just feel devastated for them.
So I wanted to make that point.
Yeah, my experience has been a lot of times this stuff falls somewhere in the middle because there are ironies that occur in investigations all the time that you would never suspect are just simply ironies.
My concern is two things.
First, the Secret Service itself has been understaffed for a long time.
Those agents have to fly around the country all the time for weeks on end.
They don't have a very good home life because of that, and I feel for them because they're asked to do something that's becoming almost impossible to accomplish, and I think What has happened to is in order to support that and I've been a support to Secret Service and different sorts of protective service in the past and you're brought on to supplement them and I think here what we see is some of those supplements
Uh, who aren't trained in the day to day operations of protective service.
It can be absolutely nerve wracking.
I can tell you there was an incident where we were guarding a general and there were some other elected officials.
The Secret Service was there protecting and there was nothing significant that happened, but we had to escort them out.
And Secret Service, they had their team, they knew where they were going, and I was in the way.
And I felt about this big, because I thought, do I open the door, do I close the door?
Do you want me to move?
And I hadn't been instructed, nor had I thought to ask, which was partly on me.
So, anyway, I think what concerned me watching that was the supplements to what I believe were the supplements to that Secret Service.
And because of that, there's a cascading Failure.
Now, when we talk about the pre-analysis, the pre-survey, the advanced team, that I have a big question about.
And I haven't heard a quality answer thus far to explain why that was left untouched.
Now, I will caveat.
Outdoor venues, they're incredibly difficult to defend.
The standoff distance is significant.
The drone threat now is significant.
You have to have overwatch, underwatch.
You really have to have a 360 view when you're doing an outdoor.
There's no controlled entry.
So, I'll grant them that.
The ability for him, and now we're learning, he flew a drone over the area prior.
We know that he's cased the set physically, the area physically.
He did a lot of pre-planning, which tells me that he had, this wasn't a random, obviously it wasn't a random act of violence, but there's something more going on here.
So anyway, I think, When it comes to your question, I think it falls somewhere in the middle between some level of mismanagement of the scene, and I do think there is more here than we know right now.
Very interesting.
Let's put all this, there's so much here, and I have so many things to say, but I think I'll put it in slow motion by just starting with the shooter.
So you got this kid, and he's 20 years old, but evidently he's able to get a drone, get a range finder, as you say, case the place, do kind of a surveillance beforehand,
And not only that, but he sort of is able to outwit the Secret Service and all the other protective detail by going up on presumably the one roof that was not really being guarded.
I mean, there were people in the building, they were apparently at the windows, but there was nobody on the roof.
And then, almost nothing is known about this kid.
I mean, he apparently has no social media footprint, or if he did, it's been scrubbed clean.
It's not even clear what his politics are.
It's not clear what his views are about anything.
I saw an article that said something like, He's really looking forward to going to a university.
He likes the prospect of AI and he's hoping to have a career.
And I was thinking to myself, none of this really matches what you would expect of a would-be assassin who is motivated to take out the former president and perhaps leading candidate for presidency the next time.
Do you agree that there's something off in terms of just what we know about this... this shooter?
Yeah, from what I've seen so far, there does seem to be something missing from this story.
I was reading through this morning, trying to get a handle on what all they have found thus far on him, physical items.
On the roof, they found a transmitter, a gun, they found in his car, a drone, explosives, More ammo?
I think four different clips of ammo.
Then they went to his house.
They find thumb drives, a hard drive, a second cell phone, not the one they found on the roof with him, If I'm collecting that as evidence and I'm taking it to the evidence room, I immediately am looking at the totality of the information in front of me and say, this kid clearly has an online presence.
He has a hard drive.
He has thumb drives.
He has a computer.
He has two cell phones.
He knows how to operate a drone.
He has it on, and then if somebody said, actually, we can't find any footprint online, I would immediately go, okay, he has scrubbed it.
That would be my initial take.
That doesn't mean it's correct, but my suspicions would lead me to, okay, he is covering something up.
Moreover, on his cell phone, I believe it was Waltz out of Florida reported during the RNC convention that they found three foreign apps on his phone that were encrypted.
We haven't told what those apps are and what they're used for.
Could be just pornography or other nefarious activity, but the fact that he's gone to significant lengths to mask his activity Despite having all these electronics, there really isn't a footprint.
That, to me, is the number one indicator.
When I'm looking at this thing, is there more?
Yes.
I could be wrong, but based strictly on the evidence coming in, That tells me he was up to something and has a footprint somewhere and he has scrubbed it or, or, worst case scenario, and I hate to be the conspiracist, but as an investigator, I would look at this and say, is he capable of functioning with all these items or was he coached?
Did someone provide him the ideas?
You need to put up a drawing over the site.
You need to case it in person.
You need to have three thumb drives.
You need to have an external hard drive.
You need to have encrypted apps.
That, as a 20-year-old, maybe he has the capability to understand all those things.
But, I mean, even as investigators, we're coached on how to... I worked in intelligence.
I had to cover my tracks on many occasions.
Even then, we have to be coached.
Make sure you're doing this.
Make sure your backstory is this.
So, when I'm looking at that, if I'm getting really suspicious, my mind begins to go to, Can I ask the question, was he coached?
Is that too provocative here?
Because I find it very odd that even a 20-year-old would have the knowledge, capability, we call them TTPs, tactics, techniques, procedures.
Why would he have the TTP knowledge to do all of this?
Maybe it was just YouTube, maybe self-educated.
That seems highly unlikely to me.
We'll be right back with David Grantham.
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I'm back with nationally renowned law enforcement professional, David Grantham.
He's also a combat veteran.
He's an author.
Follow him on X at D, Grantham 1016.
David, let's talk about the Secret Service here because it's been reported just in the last couple of days, number one, that the Trump people have been making requests for added security really over two years, at least according to the New York Post.
And the Secret Service essentially said no.
More recently, it's been reported that the Secret Service was stretched for its resources.
They were allocating to Joe Biden.
They were allocating... Apparently Jill Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, was doing an event on that exact same day that Trump had the rally.
There were some resources that went over there.
Do you think that this is partly the problem?
That, I mean, you've got an agency that gets a lot of money, but on the other hand, like you said, this is an extremely complex job, and did they simply give Trump a little bit of short shrift that they initially tried to deny, but now, with reporting from the Washington Post and others, they've kind of had to admit, well, yeah, they did make those requests, and no, we didn't supply the additional resources that were requested.
Yeah, again, I think it falls somewhere in the middle.
I would imagine some people in the Biden administration are playing politics with who gets extra protection.
Generally speaking, what's going to happen is the Trump campaign would bring a legitimate threat.
So we have evidence to suggest there is a threat.
This is what it looks like.
And then the government would generally respond with some sort of supplement or additional resources.
Short of that threat being provided, it starts to become this shell game of resources.
And that happens at the most basic local level of law enforcement.
If you can't justify a threat, Then resources probably aren't going to come your way, even if your situation begets A threatening potential, such as a former president.
So I think where the Secret Service leadership is finding themselves flat-footed is just being able to articulate those things.
The biggest struggle I have with law enforcement at large is the Seemingly an inability to articulate some of these very basic things to constituencies.
You just have to admit, guys, our resources are thin.
We have to allocate.
And frankly, if I allocate to the wrong person, there's an elected official that will remove me.
So sometimes it's not even up to me.
But I think making those basic Identifying those issues to the public, I think would be helpful.
But here in the Secret Service, I mean, from the sloped roof comments, which I can only hope was just a misstated comment that was intended to say we didn't have snipers up there or extra protection on the roof because of the grade of the roof.
But it came out obviously so much differently and so clumsy.
And I think there's been a few instances of that where.
But then again, when you look at DHS, At large in my orcas, they're constantly having to say things that.
Frankly, the reality on the ground is not the same whether it's the border, whether it's secret service issue here.
So, anyway, I think my point is.
The Secret Service is and has for a long time been underfunded and understaffed for the job that's required of them.
And they do rely heavily on local law enforcement and others to supplement them.
And if those kind of things could be articulated, I think the suspicions would lessen.
I mean isn't part of the problem here that with Trump you're not dealing with a you know you mentioned a presidential candidate but here's a guy who has been vilified in a very poisonous rhetoric really for eight years, right?
I mean, when John Hinckley took a shot at Reagan, people would say about Reagan, oh, he's a washed-up actor, oh, he's a, you know, he's a dumb, you know, bungler, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
But no one was suggesting that it would be kind of That this guy was a grave threat to the nation, and it would probably be kind of a good thing if he could be removed one way or the other.
People have been saying that about Trump.
You know, he's an aspiring dictator.
He will bring democracy to an end.
He's a grave threat to the nation.
I mean, this is almost a direct quote from President Biden.
And so, when you say this about somebody, I mean, think about whispering that in the ear of a would-be assassin.
That guy goes, well, I'm pretty much following up on your logic.
If you're right that this guy is Hitler circa 1933, what would we do if we had the opportunity to take this guy out?
So, what I'm getting at is, do you think that this is a case where that Even though we don't know a lot about this 20-year-old, that poisonous atmosphere out there is not a healthy one in terms of ensuring the safety of a guy like Trump.
No, I think your last point there is valid.
When it comes to threat management, you do have to assess not just what threats you can measure, what threats you can look at, but also the potential for threats.
High visibility person, like you said, creating an environment, a risky environment around that person.
Those sorts of things have to qualify Within that spectrum of threat management, when you're deciding who gets resources.
And it seems like here that that wasn't happening or perhaps it was underappreciated.
Because for several years, people have talked about, you know, the way you talk about former President Trump, it's putting a target on his back for those who think that That you're not doing enough.
All you're doing is talking bad about him.
I'm the one that's going to do enough, which, you know, alluding to your comment about would-be assassins.
I absolutely think rhetoric inspires others to take action.
We look at that from ISIS to Antifa to a right-wing extremist.
Radicals respond to rhetoric.
It's a very common thing.
You know, the whole point of rhetoric is you want to be able to say, well, I didn't do anything, but maybe I got the outcome I wanted, even though I had nothing to do with it.
And we seem to be disconnecting that rhetoric from the actual implications that it could cause, especially when you think of the minds of a 20-year-old boy who Who probably feels the need for whatever reason. We see it with active shooters. They want to make themselves known.
They want glory.
They feel they have a grievance of some sort and oftentimes all they find is rhetoric online or through their friends enough that inspires them to say I'm moving past rhetoric. I'm I'm moving to action.
And all that to say, the rhetoric that's been spoken of around Trump, I think should have been a legitimate cause for increased security.
But also, that's generally not the way threats are managed, unfortunately.
I mean, I'm thinking even back to John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham Lincoln.
This was a guy who was an actor, and he thought of the assassination as his greatest role.
He wanted to be recognized.
That's why he jumped on the stage after he did it, and he had a political motive, a political motive in doing it.
What significance do you attach, David, to the people who spotted this guy on the roof, kind of crawling on the roof, and they tried to alert I don't know if they alerted Secret Service or if they alerted local law enforcement, but they certainly tried to alert the cops and say, look at that guy, look at what he's doing.
And that was some time before the shooter was able to get off those shots.
Is that a failure right there?
Is that not such a big deal because in the confusion very often action is not taken immediately even when you are able to point out a real threat?
Man, Dinesh, that is a great question and one that I keep asking anyone that I know that was around that event or law enforcement in general.
I keep asking that question.
I've been watching videos trying to figure out because, generally speaking, what's going to happen is local law enforcement are going to have an extended perimeter, responsibility for extended perimeter.
Secret Service is going to have the immediate perimeter, but they are the priority law enforcement agency on the ground when this is happening.
I would imagine it seems to me that the crowd was likely signaling to local law enforcement because of where they were at.
I don't think Secret Service would have responded.
Secret Service may radio over to local law enforcement and say, hey, we're hearing this.
Can you get on the roof?
What I don't quite understand is if someone said there's a guy with a gun, and you hear it on some videos, he's got a gun.
That, if I, you know, obviously hindsight's 20-20, but I feel like if someone, if I was in a protective role like that as a local law enforcement officer, and someone said there's a guy with a gun on the roof, I wouldn't wait to collect evidence.
I mean, I would be up there as fast as I can.
And it sounds like a couple guys did respond, but there was supposedly no access to the roof, which I don't know How he got on and they couldn't, but there was no access to the roof and apparently he pointed his gun at them as they were trying to access the roof and he was on top of another officer and they fell because he pointed the gun back at them and then he began firing.
If indeed that was the case, they may have saved Trump's life by rushing the shooter and forcing him into shots that he didn't want to take that quickly because he had to come back with his gun.
But I still have big questions about that.
The crowd was pretty adamant.
The videos I've seen, they're claiming a guy with a gun.
You see him low crawling up the roof.
But then again, Dinesh, we've seen, gosh, an unfortunate amount of active shooters who people have said, that guy's trouble, that guy's a problem, don't let him on campus, lock this door, make sure from the school here in Texas with the door that was not operating, in Florida, The guy on campus hid while the shooter came.
I mean, it's unfortunate when we see this lax or this lapse in judgment routinely.
So I don't want to say local law enforcement was was negligent.
But I do have big questions.
And I just for your audience.
And it's an unfortunate thing that it should be no surprise that in some cases we just don't believe it.
It's very, very difficult to Believe into that.
Moreover, if someone said there's a guy with a gun on the roof, you better be right.
Because if you start shooting at that guy, and it's a poor kid who's mentally incapacitated with a gun that was fake, And law enforcement is facing this issue right now where there is a hesitancy because of going back to George Floyd.
I remember being in law enforcement during that time and then went from COVID to where they were handing us danishes saying, thank you for going to work.
Within a week, they were like, I can't be seen with you.
I mean, the turn of events was extraordinary, and that's put law enforcement on their heels.
So, that's a lot.
I rambled a little bit there, but giving you the context of what I see, I do have big questions about how that occurred, but I reserve the right to say there probably is some legitimate explanation, and I hope and pray there is.
I'll be right back with Dr. David Grantham.
I'm back with Dr. David Grantham, CEO of the Threat Management Group.
Follow him on X at dgrantham1016.
David, we're talking about the members of the public who are trying to alert law enforcement about a guy with a gun.
Here's my question.
Even if you can't get up on the roof or you can't do anything, isn't the first thing you do Like, radio the Secret Service, like, get Trump off the stage, because that's going to be something you can do immediately, even if you can't somehow reach the shooter, and maybe that will be enough, and then you take the time to figure out who's the guy with the gun and where is he exactly.
So I do think it is odd.
Trump was on Fox News, and he said something like, you know, I'm quoting him now, nobody said there was a problem, he goes, I would have waited 15-20 minutes if I needed to, Absolutely.
No, that's a fantastic point.
seemed bewildered as to why he had not been given any kind of a any kind of a heads up.
Now, it wasn't wasn't that a problem, right?
Don't you need to get to the bottom of why that simple thing didn't happen?
Absolutely.
No, that's a that's a fantastic point.
And the only only reasoning I can think behind it would be I don't want to be the local law enforcement guy that calls the Secret Service because they have a hunch or a suspicion about something and they pull the president or the former president from the stage.
I I can see where a local guy would be a little hesitant to make that call.
However, that's exactly what you're supposed to do on those details.
The Secret Service does not look down on you for doing that.
That's the whole reason you're on that detail.
So while you could potentially fault someone for not responding and not communicating that to the Secret Service, they have to understand that's your job on that Assisting the Secret Service.
So I think it's absolutely a great point.
And it's something I think all of us would hope that at minimum, we would say, hey, we have a potential threat up here.
I'm not going to sit and collect evidence and get eyes on the threat first.
Could you please pull the president from the stage?
Play some music in the interim.
Tell the crowd to just chill for a second.
Let's make sure this threat is not real, and then we can go back up.
And I got a feeling you're going to see more and more of that now, where people are going to say, don't be afraid to make the call.
Tell me what's going on.
Let's see if there's a legitimate threat.
Let's determine whether that threat's real.
We say that in law enforcement to people all the time when it comes to active shooters or school shooters.
Say, if you have a suspicion, reach out to us.
If you see something odd, reach out to us.
It's not your job to determine whether you think so.
Tell us, we'll look into it.
So, it's absolutely a great point and it's a big question that needs to be answered.
Let me ask you about the video of the counter-sniper who was the guy who shot the shooter.
If you watch that guy, he's got his weapon seemingly Pointed right at the shooter.
And I say that because when you watch him, it's not like he's gotta scan around, go, where's that shot coming from?
Oh, there he is!
Bam!
It looks like he's already got him.
And yet, he doesn't fire, and then you hear, bam, bam, bam, and then bam!
And then down he goes.
So, it looks like, as I slow it down, that the shooter got the shots off first.
Multiple shots.
Then, the countersniper who already had the shooter in his sights takes him out with one shot.
And what I wanted to ask you is to analyze that for me because A. Is the countersniper waiting for the shooter to fire first?
Second, how was the shooter able to get off more than one shot, given that he was already in the counter sniper sights?
I mean, I'm just telling you how I see it, just watching the video of it.
What was your take on that response?
Well, I'll say this.
I dreamed of being a sniper and never got to be, so this is an amateur speaking when it comes to how to be a sniper.
But what I would say is a couple things.
Your first question about Where he was at and positioned.
If you look at the landscape of the land where they were having this rally, there's a collection of buildings in that area.
So it stands to reason that the sniper already was trained in that area because that was the most likely spot where any threat would come that they would have to address.
When you have flat land out elsewhere and you have coverage in the back, Um, you know, it was likely that that's where they just said this is the high probability threat area.
Keep an eye on it.
Um.
When it came to the volley, the shooting.
I'm going based on what I've heard so far, and what I've heard so far is that the shot was an incredibly difficult shot.
There was a tree in the way, and he could only see a part of his head.
If that in fact is true, I could see where some would say there's a threat on the roof.
He probably had him in his sights, could not take a clear shot until he saw the rounds come, and then he takes his shot.
Now, whether the rules of engagement for them was do not fire until fired upon, I can't speculate with that.
I could see, just generally speaking, law enforcement being unwilling to fire on somebody until they have fired for sake of Criminal negligence.
It's just the environment that we're in.
But I'm hesitant to take that path because the role that the sniper has is expected to take out threats regardless whether that threat is engaged with you.
I mean, that's kind of the role of this of the sniper.
So.
I think that's less likely of a situation.
I think it probably had to do with line of sight, ability to acquire the target precisely.
And in that in that situation, he probably got off that three round burst that he got off.
And then the sniper took the shot.
What do you see, David, as the role of politics here?
And here's kind of what I mean by this.
You've got a very odd situation.
We have a very heated presidential campaign.
We've got two sides.
And ironically, Trump's safety, which basically means his life, is in the hands of His political adversaries, right?
Because who's running the country?
Biden.
Who's in charge of the Department of Homeland Security?
Mayorkas.
Who is in charge of the Secret Service?
Kim Cheadle, friend of Jill Biden.
So you've got this sort of, it's almost like my life is in the hands of guys who not only don't like me at all, but see me as a political threat to their own future in running the country.
I mean, isn't that a dicey situation?
I mean, maybe it's just a reflection of the fact that the country is divided as never before.
I don't think that we would dream in past eras of thinking that a presidential candidate is unsafe because the other party is running the government, but that's the way we think now.
Yeah, it's an unfortunate mindset that we have and we immediately go to suspicions versus trust.
And that's, I think that's the overarching question here is, can we still trust our government?
And that's where I think the American citizen is.
is right to have questions, particularly after COVID, where you feel like you were led down a path that didn't lead to where everyone said it was going to lead.
And in fact, it led to more trouble than I think a lot of people thought it would.
And so I do think there's a definite level of Of mistrust and so it leads to questions.
I would add to that that we're in a situation where this is fairly unusual to have a for it's not unprecedented, but it's unusual to have a former president running again for office.
Against the incumbent who beat him the first time.
So that alone adds to a really delicate situation.
I would add too that logistically, Biden is not as active as Trump.
Trump is, I mean, that man has an energy of, I've seen very few candidates, much less candidates his age, who have the energy to have a three hour speech at the RNC.
Have one to two rallies a day at one point in his prior campaign for president.
So he's asking a lot of the resources around him, and I'm sure those resources are looking at him compared to Biden going, Biden's much easier to handle than Trump.
And so there probably is just a little bit of logistical Logistical frustration with trying to keep up with Trump.
But I'm hesitant to, well, maybe I want to think the best in people, but I'm hesitant to think that resources are purposely pulled from Trump to put him at greater risk.
Because the same people that are going to guard Trump are going to eventually guard Biden.
These Secret Service, you know, they're assigned to Trump to a degree, and there's others that rotate through.
You know, I would find it hard to believe that they would want the same guy guarding Trump, now guarding Biden, knowing that, hey, you allowed someone to shoot at me when I was with Trump.
So, that just seems a little far-fetched to me, but I understand the questions.
Yeah, I agree, and I'm certainly not suggesting that.
I think that the ordinary agent is somehow involved in putting Trump, or Biden for that matter, well Biden's pulling out, but in danger.
But it does seem like there is much more to this story than we have learned to date.
But I want to thank you very much for joining me to share your thoughts.
Guys, I've been talking to Dr. David Grantham, CEO of the Threat Management Group.
Follow him on X at D Grantham 1016.
David, thank you very much.
Thank you.
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