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July 10, 2025 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr

01:21:14

Butler: The Untold Story, Interview with Salena Zito | TRIGGERED Ep.257

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	With author and journalist Selena Zito, who has a new book out, Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland.
	She was literally standing only feet away as bullets flew over her head and from the stage when the gunshots began nearly a year ago today.
	In the book, Selena zooms out and tells us the story of the battle of America's heartland and the issues that actually motivate voters.
	To understand how and why my father won the 2024 election, you have to understand places like Butler, Pennsylvania.
	There's so many of these towns that really house the forgotten men and women that we talk about all the time that are such an important and critical part of why my father did all of this.
	There are moments that define America.
	The late afternoon hours of July 13th, 2024 was one of them.
	And there's still a lot of unanswered questions about that day, including a motive, key findings from the congressional report, including significant failures in the security plan for the day of the rally.
	I believe it was just today.
	Five people from the Secret Service details that were there that day were actually suspended.
	Another example, investigators found that the building from which the shooter fired was identified as a concern due to its clear and obvious line of sight to the stage, yet it was not properly secured or monitored.
	That stuff doesn't happen.
	It's not supposed to happen.
	That's a major breakdown.
	The report details a breakdown and further breakdowns in communication and coordination between the Secret Service and state and local law enforcement partners.
	Evidence shows that law enforcement was aware of a suspicious individual on the building's roof for a significant period of time before the shooting began, but this information was not communicated to the appropriate personnel.
	So today, we'll do a deep dive into all of it.
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	All right, guys, joining me now, journalist and author of the new book, Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland, Selena Zito.
	Great to see you again, Selena.
	It's been a little while since I ran into you in Pennsylvania.
	Yeah, I did run into you in Pennsylvania.
	You were at a chocolate factory and you were having a really good time.
	Well, you know, listen, if you're going to be campaigning, you're going to be working that hard, you have to have a little bit of a good time.
	And I think, you know, that usually works well.
	When you're authentic and you're having a good time, people get it also, which is probably somewhat helpful in politics as well.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Well, thank you for joining today.
	I know you were just feet away from my father back almost a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, when shots broke out in Butler.
	Take us through that sequence of events and how it really shaped your new book.
	So that, you know, I think it's important to say people running for president don't go to places like Butler.
	And they go to places like East Palestine.
	And I had written a story right before he went, the day before, saying, why does he go to Butler?
	I understand that.
	And these are the people, and your father and I have talked about this numerous times, that he has a connective tissue to.
	And he feels as though both parties have left them behind for generations.
	So that day I was set to interview your dad.
	When you're a journalist, there's a level of expectation that things are going to change.
	And things changed several times that day.
	Chris Lasavita texts me, Zita, you got five minutes with the president.
	I'm like, okay, well, I know your dad.
	I know I'd get more time.
	Yeah, that could turn into an hour really quickly with him once he gets going.
	It really does.
	And then I get to the farm, the farm show complex.
	I should tell people that Butler is very near and dear to my heart.
	My family first settled There in the 1750s, one of the founding families of Butler, Pennsylvania.
	So I know this place really, really well.
	So I get there, it's hot, it's hot as heck.
	I bring, see, it hits 100 that day, and there's no trees to cover you, there's nothing to go to any shade to get to.
	And I bring my daughter, she's a photo journalist, she's going to do the photos.
	And we drag my poor son-in-law, who's like a finance guy, right?
	But we vainly believed that he was going to hold all the equipment and we would stay nice and, you know, we wouldn't get sweaty.
	Well, that didn't happen.
	We were a mess by the end of the day.
	But once we get there, about two hours in, I get a text from Susie Wiles.
	She's today, she is the president's chief of staff.
	At the time, she was the other co-campaign chair.
	And she says, hey, Selena, we're going to have to make some changes.
	And as a reporter, I'm thinking, well, it's probably going to get canceled.
	And when you're at a rally, the internet like breaks down.
	So you don't.
	Yeah, the Secret Service, there's all sorts of jamming stuff.
	You can never live stream.
	I always try to do it, you know, just for various social, just to give people that sort of first-hand experience of it.
	It just usually never works well.
	It never works.
	So I thought, oh, well, it's not happening.
	And then the rest of the text comes through.
	And she goes, how about five minutes after?
	And I'm like, fine, I'll roll with it.
	And then like three or four, I mean, I'm there for ever.
	And I have three or four hours later, your father's plane has landed.
	He's in the back of the stage area.
	If people aren't familiar with this, this is called the click area.
	This is the area where the president will meet with local law enforcement, firemen, paramedics, police, state trooper.
	But also they pull, I always find this very lovely.
	I wish more people saw this.
	They always pull people from the event just to go back and meet the president, shake his hand.
	He talks with them.
	He hugs them.
	It's a very endearing moment.
	And so he's back there.
	And I get a text from Susie and she says, so change of plans.
	And I'm like, there it is.
	It's canceled.
	And it wasn't canceled.
	She said, how would you feel about going to Bedminster and doing the interview on the plane?
	And I'm like, well, okay.
	I didn't have that on my bingo card, but I'm in.
	That's an upgrade.
	Yeah.
	He said the president really wants to talk to you about Pennsylvania.
	I said, I'm all in.
	And so five minutes before he's supposed to come and get myself, my daughter, my son-in-law, Michelle Picard III, and his name is very, very important, comes running back.
	He is the campaign advance man.
	He said, it's go time.
	I'm like, okay.
	They changed their mind again.
	So we race through the crowd.
	We get behind the stage.
	We're standing there.
	We're at the end of the click line.
	And I look at Picard and I say, where are we doing this interview?
	And he's like very sheepish.
	He's like, I actually don't know.
	So he goes around and he asks the president and he comes back and he says, he just wanted to say hi to you.
	We're still going to Bedminster.
	So I'm making my way around the blue curtain and I can hear your dad.
	I can hear your dad.
	He always says my name the same way, Salina.
	He like exaggerates the E. And he gives me the same greeting he always gives me.
	Look at that hair.
	Guys, doesn't she have the most beautiful hair in America?
	And of course, it's a room filled with state troopers.
	And I'm so like, I'm so awkward, right?
	I just want to like crawl inside myself.
	Listen, I mean, I'd say it's solid bag of hair, though.
	I mean, it's a, it's a, you know, hey, as a Trump, I don't make fun of hair because, you know, one day I could wake up if those genes ever kick in, it could be a total disaster.
	So I'm just, you know, I go with it.
	So, so he's like, he asked, he remembers my grandchildren's names.
	He asks about them.
	He asks about my kids.
	And he said, I'm really looking forward to talking about Pennsylvania.
	I really am looking forward to this interview.
	It's going to be great.
	Now, at that point, as most people know, there's a sort of sequence that happens with music.
	And I know Lee Greenwood's song is next.
	And so I'm ushered out of there quite quickly.
	And Picard doesn't know what to do with me.
	So he says, you know, you're just going to have to stay in the buffer.
	The buffer is that well between the president's stage and the people that are attending the rally.
	And he goes, you just go in through the buffer and make your way over to the other side because you're just going to hop in the motorcade.
	I'm going to be able, I'm going to need to grab you and Shannon.
	I said, okay.
	So your dad comes out.
	In fact, if you look at the cover of Butler, my daughter took that photo.
	Oh, wow.
	And it's very significant why we chose that as the cover because it says so much about what he tells me later.
	And so we get out there.
	He goes, if people were following me on Twitter that day, I had video and pictures, people in the stands, your dad, make our way sort of over to the other side because I don't like logistics.
	I don't want to fail at them.
	I want to make sure I'm exactly where they told me to be.
	And your dad does two things that he never does.
	A chart comes down.
	Now, if there's ever a chart, the chart is always on the other side of him.
	And it's always at the end.
	And it's pretty rare that there's a chart anyways.
	So this chart comes down.
	It's a digital chart.
	And I'm thinking, I said to my daughter at the time, I'm like, what is he, Ross Perot?
	Yeah, he's never, that was the odd thing about that day.
	I noticed that too.
	It's like, yeah, I've been to a, let's call it, you know, what, just shy of a billion rallies.
	I've never seen him use like a PowerPoint presentation.
	Like he's never done it.
	You know what I mean?
	It's not his style.
	Yeah, it's not his style.
	And then he does something else.
	And I'm sure you know this about your father.
	The relationship between him and the people that attend is very connective.
	There's a lot of connective tissue there.
	It's very transactional.
	And what do I mean by that?
	Well, he feeds off of their energy, but they also feed off of his energy, right?
	It's very mutual.
	So your dad may turn his whole body to face a different part of the rally, but he never turns his neck.
	He never turns his neck.
	The chart goes down.
	I forget the words that he says.
	He turns his neck and it's pop, pop, pop, pop.
	It goes right over my head.
	Now, when people say that time slows down for them in the midst of something that's traumatic, I will say that was also the case for me.
	And it almost seemed to have my, I remember just feeling out of body, not out of body, but just almost had a 360 feeling of my place.
	And I remember seeing the blood go across your face, your dad's face.
	I remember him, I mean, I'm just a few feet away.
	And I see him grab his ear.
	And then I see him take himself down.
	And I remember making a mental note.
	He didn't fall.
	He wasn't knocked off of his feet.
	He was able to take himself down.
	That's a good sign.
	And then he's surrounded.
	At the same time, he's surrounded by a sea of blue suits, right?
	The Secret Service, his field people, they put a protective stamp around him.
	There's another four shots.
	Now, I'm still standing.
	There was a part of me that was saying, God gave you a gift.
	You are someone who recounts history and you have a purpose in this moment and you need to live up to that.
	And obviously it was a conversation with myself, right?
	But I remember thinking that so vividly.
	So my recorder is still on.
	I always have my recorder on when your dad has a rally, not because a transcript doesn't come a couple hours later, but I think it is important as a journalist, not just with presidential candidates, but also with people, to catch the nuance when someone says something.
	Because if you don't do that when you're writing the story, it can come across in a very different way.
	Yeah.
	You're interviewing.
	I've seen that a lot where it's like, you know, if you play the video or the audio of me saying something, it clearly means something.
	But you put it in print, you change the punctuation a little bit.
	You know, a question looks like a statement.
	A statement looks like a question.
	They can manipulate that very, very easily in print.
	Yes.
	And I wouldn't do that to your father.
	And I wouldn't do it to anybody that I interview.
	I wouldn't do it to the car service guy.
	I wouldn't do it to the mechanic, right?
	That's my obligation as a reporter.
	So the record, I forget that the recorder is on.
	It's in my pocket.
	At that moment, Michelle Picard III, like 28 years old, cancer survivor, just comes flying over and knocks me down.
	Like, get down, get down, get down.
	And he protects me.
	And I'm thinking, I just met this kid six hours ago.
	Like, that's next level, right?
	In terms, it tells you a lot, you know, about who your father surrounds himself with and who that he makes part of, whether it's his cabinet or his administration or the people that just work for him.
	And so I can see your dad from the angle I'm at.
	I can see your dad.
	I can see, I can hear the conversation.
	I know the shooter is dead.
	And then I know that your dad's okay because he's, this was kind of funny.
	If it wasn't so tragic, it was funny.
	He's fighting with them about putting his shoes on.
	When I saw all of it, even when he came back up, I was like, I told him, like, I was like, that was the most badass thing I've ever seen.
	I'm not sure it's the smartest tactically because who knows if there's another shooter, but like, he was not going to not get up there and show that level of resolve, which I think, you know, people now understand.
	And I think it was a big turning point in an election because they're like, you know what?
	I want that representing me, not word salad comba.
	It's important that you point that out because the next morning, your dad calls me at O'Dark 30.
	And the first thing he says is, Selena, this is Donald Trump, President Donald Trump.
	I'm like, yeah, like I don't know what's you, right?
	He's got a distinct voice.
	Yeah.
	Announces his name.
	He said, I just want to make sure that you are okay, that Shannon is okay and Michael is okay, meeting my daughter and a son-in-law.
	And I'm really sorry I didn't get to do that interview with you.
	I was like, I did something.
	My parents are going to be so mad at me when they read the book.
	I said, I swore like a truck driver to the president of the United States.
	I never swear.
	And I said, are you bleeping kidding me?
	I didn't say bleep.
	I said another one.
	And I'm like, you have been shot.
	I'm like, that is so kind of you.
	And I'm not worried about an interview.
	And your dad would go on to call me seven times that day.
	And very powerful conversations.
	We talked a lot about, you know, I suppose other journalists would have handled it in a different way, but he'd been through a traumatic experience.
	And I did too, not to the extent that he had, but certainly just being a witness to history, right?
	And so your dad starts talking to me, asking me, but I think he was more asking himself, like, why did I turn my head, Selena?
	Why did I keep that chart down?
	And then he comes to a conclusion where he says, that had to be God.
	That was the hand of God, wasn't it?
	Yeah.
	And that's why I said, I mean, when you look at all the shortcomings, I'm sure we'll get into that shortly with the failure, this, that.
	I mean, I don't believe in that much coincidence, but watching him go to a chart that he never's done before, all of Those things happening in that instant.
	I remember when I was talking to him about it either the next day or whatever, and he was like, Well, you know, 130 yards pretty far shot.
	I'm like, No, I mean, I came from a competitive, you know, shooting background and everything.
	I was like, No, that's like missing a, you know, quite literally a 100-yard shot prone from a roof for 10 minutes.
	It's like, that'd be like missing a six-inch putt, you know, on someone's head.
	And he's like, I was like, Yeah, dad, it's not golf where, you know, if you get it within 10 feet of the hole, it's a, you know, it's a great shot from 100 yards.
	It's a little different in shooting.
	Like, if I couldn't hit a golf ball every time at 100 yards, I'm doing something really badly wrong.
	Yeah.
	Don, this was the part that I think is the most important part, not just in terms of his character and understanding the moment, but also redefining American politics and the coalition that has formed around him.
	Because I said to him, why did you say fight, fight, fight?
	Because I could see him, the crowd was saying USA as he's getting up and he says USA a couple times.
	I don't even know if he remembers that, but I remember, and he was not saying it out loud, but he was repeating what they were saying.
	And then he turns around and he says, he's like to the Secret Service, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	And he says, fight, fight, fight.
	So I said, why did you say that?
	And this is a part of him that I think more people should know.
	He says, in that moment, I wasn't Donald Trump.
	I was representing the country, the presidency.
	And all the grits, all the exceptionalism, everything that the country stands for, I had an obligation to show that strength.
	I had an obligation because the people there would have would have, you know, there could have been chaos.
	There could have been a stampede.
	So an obligation for the country is watching this.
	We are a resilient, strong country.
	And as that, as that, in that moment, I'm not representing me.
	I'm representing what America stands for.
	Yeah, you know, it's interesting you say that because I had two people, because obviously that was, you know, right before the RNC, you know, basically that was Saturday, I think Sunday night we went to the RNC or Monday morning we went to the RNC and we were there for a week.
	And two separate people came up to me at the RNC and told me this thing that you're sort of saying as well.
	And I didn't even realize if he was conscious of it or not.
	But he goes, your dad saved a lot of lives that day.
	And I go, what are you talking about?
	What do you mean?
	Like, he got shot at.
	He goes, when he came back up and he did that fight, fight, fight thing, everyone just calmed down.
	He goes, you know, I was on the highest level of one of the rafters and like people were trying to stampede.
	This thing was going to collapse and crush people in the wake.
	The second he did that, it was just like a calming force across the entire field.
	Everyone just sort of stopped and were in the moment and it allowed things to settle down, which was kind of amazing.
	I never thought of it.
	I had never thought of it until that, but like two separate people came and said it and you seem to be sort of saying the same thing.
	Yeah, I talked to him two weeks ago and we went back to that.
	And he said, yeah, you know, that's why I did it.
	I thought it was the right thing to do.
	And to your point about the crowd, it was fascinating to me.
	And that did happen.
	The crowd immediately calmed down.
	People evacuated quietly.
	There was no screaming.
	I mean, obviously there's a medic there.
	The medic is with Corey and Helen and the other two men that have been injured.
	They were very seriously injured as well.
	They almost died.
	But they left quietly.
	And the Secret Service took me to the back of the stage where the click room was.
	I think because of that sort of iconic photo of me with my cowboy boots on and Picard on top of me, I think they thought I had been injured and I didn't know that, which is possible.
	There are people that get hurt and they don't know it because the adrenaline.
	The adrenaline kicks in.
	You don't even feel it.
	Yeah.
	And so I didn't go out until an hour later.
	Well, we walk out and we see this farm field.
	It's so quiet.
	And there's a wheelchair just sitting in the middle of it.
	And the farm field, you know Pennsylvania really well.
	We have these, Appalachia, you have these rolling mountains.
	So the farm field rolls just like the rest of the train.
	And that's where the parking lot was.
	Now, there were at least 50,000 people there that day.
	So that means there's anywhere between 15 to 20,000 cars there.
	They were all still there.
	Oh, wow.
	And people were out of their vehicles.
	They were hugging.
	They were singing.
	I get chills when I think about how people behaved in the moment.
	I actually have never even heard that.
	I didn't realize that.
	And obviously, that's not a story the media is ever going to tell because they want to vilify every Trump supporter and every sort of America first patriot and all of that.
	But that's pretty incredible, actually.
	I had no idea.
	They were sharing water.
	They were sharing food.
	If someone's phone wasn't working, they were calling loved ones for them to let them know they were okay.
	And we were down there for another hour.
	So that was a total of two hours that they were down there.
	It was the most beautiful thing that I saw.
	And I remember thinking, and I wrote this in the book, they disparage these people so much, bitter clingers, Bible holders, you know, clinging to a past life, angry, resentful, deplorable, garbage, right?
	Extremist.
	And I thought, and I've always thought this, not just because I'm from Pennsylvania, it's because I've never left Western Pennsylvania.
	These are the best people in the world.
	And they showed that in that moment.
	There's no cameras rolling, right?
	There's no benefit for them to behave in a certain way.
	And I really thought that your dad, because he did that, not just in that field, but also in the Raptors, but also across the country, could have been incredibly different.
	That moment changed American politics.
	There are two moments in the past year and a half that changed American politics that I think people haven't understood the depth of it.
	One of them was when he went to East Palestine with JD.
	I was on that trip.
	Yep.
	I remember.
	That was an ugly day.
	Typical Appalachia, right?
	Like gray sky.
	It's like sleet, snow.
	You don't know what's in the air.
	You don't know what's in the puddles, right?
	But your dad comes rolling in with bottled water, buys all the law enforcement McDonald's.
	But most importantly, he walks around town.
	Now, my family is from East Palestine.
	Oh, wow.
	My great-grandfather was a farm boy and a coal miner from East Palestine.
	He even ran for office as a free silver Democrat, which today would be a Republican.
	Right.
	And, you know, it's a village of 1800.
	Nobody else cared.
	But your dad, that moment changed because in that February of 2023, your dad was probably at the lowest point in terms of polling with DeSantis, right?
	And he was down, the New Hampshire poll had just come out a couple of days beforehand, and he was down to DeSantis.
	And I wrote the story that day.
	I still have, like, it has water stains on it on the paper as I was writing my notes down.
	I said, if everything changes for him, it happened right here.
	This is his inflection point.
	Two weeks later, he's ahead of the polls and he never looks back.
	Yeah, because no one was going to go.
	And it was only once he showed up, then all of a sudden Pete Buddhajed showed up in his unworn work boots and very shiny hazmat work stuff the next day because they had to show something.
	Then, of course, Biden shows up two years later for a campaign stop, I guess, for 30 seconds after not really doing anything.
	But no one bought it.
	There was a difference.
	No one bought that the other sale, but he at least forced some attention onto the issue.
	And I think that was a big, big difference.
	I completely agree.
	They didn't understand that moment.
	They didn't understand why your father goes to places like Butler.
	Why does Butler matter?
	Well, Butler matters because of place.
	Place and rootedness have a deep and profound impact in American politics.
	And there have been very few men or women that have run for office and understood that as a value.
	Eight out of 10 people in this country live within 50 miles of where they grew up.
	Those are the placed, right?
	And those are the people that overwhelmingly voted for your father.
	And he doesn't have to always have the same ideals or same sort of buffet of what they want done.
	But that doesn't matter either because he sees them and he respects the dignity of their lives and he respects the value of where they come from.
	The other thing that changed was also Butler.
	Butler changed everything.
	And again, nuance, which is dead, right?
	You know, today I was asked in a podcast and I don't have a poker face.
	They said, well, was he really shot?
	And I was like, that's the most stupidest question I've ever heard.
	And I'm just not going to answer that.
	In those moments after your father was shot, there were several stories that came out.
	And I remember Chris Lesavita like losing it with these stories about him being hit with shrapnel from a teleprompter.
	And I mean, I'm laying on the ground and I see these stories coming up from people who aren't even sitting in the, they're not even in Pennsylvania.
	They're in a computer somewhere in DC, right?
	And so those stories, which by the way, still exist, I have this beautiful story today in the Washington Post interviewing both your dad and Helen Compatore.
	And most of the comments say, it really didn't happen.
	And that was the irresponsibility of my profession for immediately wanting to be first and not caring whether the story was right or wrong.
	And American people saw what happened and they made their decision in that moment that they don't trust anything anymore.
	We have completely given up on you.
	And it changes not only American politics, but it also changes journalism and how Americans are covered from this day forward.
	I think that's right.
	And I mean, you know, we're used to sort of the plethora of Trump books, and it's by some hater journalist who interviewed probably no one.
	They probably just made it up.
	But unnamed sources, very close to.
	I've seen those unnamed sources.
	They're not very close.
	They don't know anything, but they'll say whatever they need to to further their narrative.
	But I know this book's different in that my father just gave you extraordinary access for the book, including top aides to JD Vance, to even the security detail.
	So I mean, this is one of the few books that's actually written with actual sources, with actual access to the people that were there, not sort of the, again, unknown sources, unmanned sources, you know, yada, yada, yada, for protection, to really protect them because they're so high level.
	You know, they give me a break.
	We've all seen it.
	So this one's a little different.
	You know, what stands out to you most about what you learned in the process of writing all of it with all of those people?
	What I learned is how much the country was changing right under our feet.
	And there were times I literally wanted to be a four-year-old having a tantrum and stomping my feet because I kept saying, you guys, you're not covering this in a way that is happening.
	You're covering it the way you want it to happen.
	And the country is changing so much.
	You see and I explore the youth vote, which is very, very important.
	And I see the change.
	And I've been watching this for a while actually with Hispanic voters.
	Hispanic voters vote very much like my grandparents did.
	So when they first came to this country, they're Democrats.
	And then that sort of evolves into saying, wait a minute, we're actually Republicans, right?
	That more lines up with my values than what the Democrats stand for today.
	And so you see how this changed.
	You see where it changed.
	If there's any state that is the most important in this country in understanding American politics, it's Pennsylvania.
	And if people read me, they know that I don't fly, not because I'm afraid, but because I miss so many stories.
	I don't even take the turnpike, right?
	I'm like on what's up where your place is, US6, right?
	The Endless Mountains.
	That's where the story is.
	And so that is really important that people understand that this book doesn't end on that day.
	It begins the story of where America is right now.
	And I think that's really, really important.
	So that's sort of interesting.
	I mean, you obviously mentioned you have deep ties to this sort of part of Pennsylvania, but is there a significance to this happening in a community like Butler as opposed to happening in an urban area or whatever it is?
	How does the culture and the support from my father in rural Pennsylvania play a part of that story?
	It plays a large part.
	One of the things that people say, it's a throwaway line that really irks me when people say, oh, that's the middle of nowhere.
	I always call it the middle somewhere because I don't think any place in this country is nowhere.
	And, you know, every inch of this country matters.
	And it matters why, do you remember the song, you're young, you probably don't.
	Well, maybe you do.
	Do you remember the song Allentown by Billy Joel?
	Yeah, of course.
	Okay.
	So when I was growing up in the 70s, that was like everybody was singing that song, right?
	Why?
	Well, because everything was falling apart in the middle of the country.
	And they saw themselves in that song.
	They weren't from Allentown.
	They could be singing at Peoria, right?
	But they felt that song and what that image of place meant.
	And that's what the middle of somewhere in this country, that's where places like Butler and East Palestine and your father being in places like that, it's symbolic of all different kinds of places.
	And so I think that goes back to that importance of place.
	But also, you know, places like Erie, Pennsylvania are always going to be more significant, more important, and more determinative than New York City is going to be in a presidential election.
	Our challenge, Don, and I write about this a lot in the book, our challenge is with our cultural curators, people that curate what we see in magazines, what we see online, in corporations, what they sell, in academia, what we teach our students, what we teach our kids, in Hollywood, in legacy media, and institutions, right?
	It's all curated by people that are located in the super zip codes of this country, very far removed from the people in the rest of the country.
	And there is a tension that has broken between the middle of the country and all those cultural curators because they don't know them, don't understand people that are going to sit in their seats, buy their products, watch their news.
	And that is the overriding thing that both the press doesn't understand.
	They don't know how to cover Erie, people from Erie, Pennsylvania.
	They don't know how to cover a girl that goes hunting with her dad.
	Has any of that changed?
	Because I mean, that was the same thing you saw in 2016.
	And it wasn't just a U.S. phenomenon.
	I mean, I remember going, we were opening up our golf course in Turnbury in Scotland in 2016 the day Brexit was happening.
	And it was funny.
	You're in a small town outside of the major cities in Scotland.
	And you're having a conversation with the Greenskeepers and they're like, well, we're gone.
	We're totally out of this thing.
	No question.
	I don't know a single person who's voting to stay in the European Union.
	Then you speak to all the reporters in the other room and they're like, we don't know a single person voting to leave.
	And it's like, you live in the same town.
	No one's ever had a conversation.
	In 16, we saw the same thing.
	I always found it so ironic.
	It's like, how does this like, even me, you know, the son of a brash billionaire from New York City, like, how can I go into like parts of Pennsylvania and like just have a conversation with people?
	But the people who choose to actually represent them in Congress are actually still incapable of doing so many of those things.
	I mean, there's some great irony in that.
	I used to get made fun of when I first called my father, like the blue-collar billionaire in like the early 2000s when I just started working.
	I was like, you know, he kind of wants to watch a ballgame.
	No one knows more about sports than him.
	He's sort of a regular guy.
	He can, you know, he can turn on the show, but like who he is is actually that regular guy and it's why he can relate.
	But people in that New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles bubble, you know, the rest of the country is flyover country because they don't know anyone outside of that little provincial world of theirs.
	Yeah, it's really interesting.
	You know, people from the middle of the country, they'll go to New York and go see a Broadway play and they'll go see a bunch of things in New York and they'll soak up and enjoy and respect what New York has to offer them.
	The problem is, is that people that in New York often don't do the same thing in the middle of the country.
	I mean, they'll go to a resort.
	That doesn't count.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You've got to immerse yourself in the culture of the country.
	I think that dam has broken.
	I think that dam broke on Inauguration Day.
	When you saw the people that your father brought alongside shoulder to shoulder with future cabinet members, himself, your family, you saw the dam break.
	And I see evidence of it every day.
	That stranglehold of power is now has lost that power.
	And they're flailing because they don't understand it.
	Now, you see some universities, some corporations making decisions that sort of sheds that.
	And that's what I mean by the dam has broken.
	Well, at least optically.
	I'll believe it when I actually see them do it.
	But they're going to say they're going to do it so they get funded by the federal government for no reason.
	I'll believe it when I see it, like I said.
	Agree.
	I completely agree.
	Have you seen any of that change in journalism itself amongst your colleagues in journalism?
	Because it was the same thing with them, right?
	They couldn't get it.
	They didn't understand.
	They couldn't see this wave coming because they'd never spoken to anyone else in sort of real America.
	I know you're known for sort of your shoe leather journalism.
	You said you don't even travel on planes because you don't want to miss the story that's happening in what I call sort of real America.
	How do you approach reporting in a way that's different from the others in the media?
	Do a lot of those stories get traction or do they get lost because it's just if no one else is sort of highlighting them, they just sort of go by the wayside?
	Well, interestingly, The Washington Post hired me in January.
	Wow.
	Didn't see that coming.
	I know.
	My first story, I sat down with John Fetterman and Dave McCormick.
	My second story, I spent the day inside a steel mill and tried to make them understand the importance of that deal.
	By the way, that deal your dad made, oh my God.
	Game changer.
	Absolute game changer.
	And the third story was I tried to make them understand that AI and energy, that's happening in RESPAL.
	That's where it's not Silicon Valley because all of these AI power data centers, what do they need?
	They are thirsty for energy.
	They're not going to get it from solar.
	I mean, you would have to go from one end of the country to the other with solar panels to be able to fuel one data center for an AI data center.
	And so there is a rebirth.
	And in fact, your dad's going to be at a summit next week.
	I'm going to be interviewing him, an AI energy summit.
	I'm so excited about it because this is the second industrial revolution.
	And the second one that is in the middle of Pennsylvania, just the way Titusville and Drake's oil discovery started the Industrial Revolution in the 1850s with steel and coal and iron.
	So I forget what you asked me because I just kept talking.
	Well, I was just saying, has anyone else really adapted to that level of journalism that you're doing or do the stories just not matter to them anyway?
	Like, you know, when you're driving, you know, off the turnpike, just on back roads, are you just stopping at a restaurant?
	How do you go about speaking to those people?
	How do these stories emerge?
	What are those moments like?
	Well, I do a couple of things.
	First, anytime I go, like I said, I go on a back road.
	So I'll take US 30, US 6, I'm in Pennsylvania, 22, 15, 11, any of those roads.
	And I usually just stop in a town or two, and I'll just sit down and talk to people on the sidewalk.
	I'll pull up to their farm.
	I'll pull up to their company.
	I've had, I got to go in a coal mine at one time by doing that, which was really awesome.
	And, you know, or diners, bowling alleys, anywhere where there's centers of community, right?
	Where the place rocks, going to church.
	And I usually stay in like a bed and breakfast.
	There's a reason for that.
	It's typically owned by a small business person.
	Well, nobody knows where all the bodies are buried more than the, you're right.
	The best gossip is a small business person.
	So I get to know the town that way.
	And I try to respect and behave and observe the way they behave so that I can have conversations with them that I wouldn't have if I flew over them.
	These are the people that decide elections.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I guess that's something, there's sort of something unique about Pennsylvania in that it's sort of anchored by two major cities, all the way east and all the way west.
	And the rest is very rural.
	I mean, the voters in Bucks County or Allegheny County or Butler County all tell a different story.
	It really is the Keystone state that way.
	What are the themes that really stick out to you in Pennsylvania for the future?
	What are the things that people are going to have to pay attention to politically?
	Because it is such a bedrock state for future sort of national elections.
	Keep your eye on the middle class.
	The middle class and the working class.
	They've been siloed off by my profession as being white working class, black working class, Hispanic, Asian.
	They don't vote and think that way.
	They vote and think as a community.
	They all go to church together.
	They all go to their kids' baseball games together, right?
	They coach each other's kids.
	They're ushers at church.
	They go hunting together.
	And I think that the working class and the middle class have been largely overlooked in how much they've changed by the press and by the Democrats.
	The Republicans have been lucky.
	President Trump has done a good job of communicating to them about things that are important to them, which is often community, dignity of work, right?
	And security and safety and protections of their rights.
	I think JD Vance does a good job of that as well.
	He's an incredible communicator.
	I've been covering JD.
	The first time I met JD, we were both working together at CNN.
	It was like our first day and it was inauguration day.
	And you know how they would have those big panels.
	It's like a half circle.
	And he was on one end and I'm on the other.
	And I forget who the host was.
	I remember who the host was, but they were making fun of Trump voters.
	And both of us at the same time looked up.
	we hadn't met each other yet.
	We both looked at each other, went rolled our eyes like, Oh, I cannot believe they did that.
	We talked after that, and we became.
	I quickly had a lot of respect for this young man.
	Yeah, I think he's great.
	I covered his Senate race that primary in 2022.
	And everyone was knocking him, like saying he's not going to win, not going to win.
	Yeah, I basically endorsed him when he was running number four in an Ohio GOP primary.
	So I was like, I saw the talent.
	We'd become friends.
	I was like, you know, this is a long shot bid, but this guy's going to be, you know, this guy's got a future.
	And it seems like I was right.
	He's absolutely got a future.
	Right before you were introduced or endorsed him, he was in Steubenville, Ohio inside an old church and giving a speech.
	And after he was done, I said, JD, you're going to win this.
	He goes, I don't know.
	I goes, no, you're going to win this.
	I don't think you understand what you have here.
	You're really, really good.
	And then I interviewed him in mid, no, late 2023.
	He went to a Votech school in Cincinnati.
	And I was excited because I'd get to go to Skyline Chili afterwards, right?
	And I do the, he does, and this was so great.
	This was like such a- For those of you who don't know, that's a big deal in Ohio.
	Okay.
	And no one else outside of Ohio would know what that is, but yeah.
	He's he's in this, and this is in the book, but he's at this Votec and he's going to the different classes.
	And these kids are trying out to be, or studying to be surgical techs.
	And so they were taking their finals and the one young lady was supposed to get her blood drawn and she was really nervous.
	And so JD said, I'll step in.
	Why don't you draw my blood?
	And like the whole class was like, oh my God.
	And this poor girl, Don, if you would have seen how much her hands were shaking.
	And he just rolled up his, took his jacket off, rolled up his sleeve.
	And she and he was so soothing to her.
	He said, it's okay.
	You got this.
	My mom studied to be a nurse.
	I was her victim all the time.
	You got this.
	She got it on the first time.
	That's pretty cool.
	And that interaction, taking from something he knew and seeing someone that he would see anywhere in this country, I thought was, and after that moment, we did the interview and I think I did it for the Wall Street Journal.
	And we're just sitting there talking.
	And it dawned on me.
	I'm like, oh, my God, are you thinking, is President Trump talking to you about being vice presidential pick?
	And he immediately changed the subject.
	He said, you know, the skyline chili's right down the street.
	Yeah, it's right there.
	It's right down the street.
	I'm like, oh, why didn't I think of that?
	That's funny.
	Because he just leaned, he wouldn't say anything, but it was pretty funny.
	And I got to interview his mom, too.
	Yeah, she's great.
	She's great.
	I got to go to the White House when she had her 10-year anniversary, which was really a beautiful moment.
	So, you know, to bring it back a little bit to Butler, Celine, I'd like, you know, you've obviously had unprecedented access to all the people around there, but what have you taken away from the questions that perhaps continue to persist about the assassination attempt itself?
	I know we heard recently, I guess, a couple of Secret Service people were suspended.
	I mean, finally now, I guess, after all of that.
	What else have you learned?
	What do you want to learn?
	What are some of the unknowns?
	Or is this going to be one of those things that we'll just never actually know?
	Because between the shooter and his background and the history just disappeared and you have this radicalized 19-year-old, 20-year-old kid that was so radicalized, but magically has no online footprint whatsoever.
	It doesn't add up to me.
	That a shooter can get on a roof within 130 yards of the presumptive nominee of a political party.
	I don't know.
	I don't think that ever happens in real life unless it was either sort of intentional neglect or create enough chaos to allow these things to kind of happen.
	But I don't know.
	What are the questions that you hear most?
	What are the things that most other people want answered?
	Or are they just sort of buying that no one knows?
	We'll never know.
	No, I don't think people are buying that.
	Here is my best educated guess as to where we are in this moment going forward with this.
	Do you remember after 9-11 and there was the 9-11 commission?
	And one of the things that came out of it was how our law enforcement agencies, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, all of them, they weren't communicating with each other.
	They had no way to communicate with each other.
	And that was going to be one of the things that changed.
	That's why we got Homeland Security.
	It is shocking to me that no one was communicating that day in Butler.
	The most important people watching that event were local in terms of knowledge and of terrain and rhythm of a town and knowing what to look for are local law enforcement.
	And yet they were not engaged.
	Correct.
	And I think that...
	Like, let's look at this and not the guys whose job it is to do that each and every day, right?
	It's a, yeah, a law enforcement guy in Ian Butler, I'm sure he has plenty of things that he deals with on a daily basis, but a sniper on a roof is probably not one of them.
	You know, or even looking for that.
	Whereas, you know, some of the federal agencies, that would be their job on a daily basis to be searching these things.
	So, yeah, the whole thing seems a bit fishy to me.
	Yeah, that lack of communication.
	Those decisions don't come from the guys in the field.
	Those decisions come from the suits in D.C., right?
	And I think that's where the onus of the investigation should be.
	And I suspect that's going to continue.
	As far as Thomas Matthew Crooks, I did a lot of hard work trying to find things, and it was almost literally impossible.
	He didn't have any kind of footprint at all.
	Yeah, but these days, how do you get that?
	Like, I don't even know how someone would get that radicalized at that age.
	I think it was.
	Without it.
	Like, you know, like the online stuff, I mean, I see it.
	I've got a lot of kids and sometimes they're like, oh, I'm watching a thing on history.
	I'm like, that's not history.
	We have enough understanding of where you're getting your information from.
	Just because it's online doesn't mean it's always accurate, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And, you know, he was atypical in terms of the isolationist way he led his life.
	There's, there has since COVID and all the things that impacted him, that impacted him in his sophomore year of high school.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And no going to school for, I forget, maybe a year.
	Right.
	And if you're already an awkward, shy kid, it just gets worse.
	Yeah.
	And then I think, you know, we don't talk about this enough in the public forum, but we have a real mental health crisis in our country that we totally just shove under the under the tablecloth, right?
	We don't want to address it.
	We don't want to make people take their meds.
	We don't want to institutionalize people.
	We don't want to address it.
	And they hurt themselves and they hurt other people.
	I mean, and that began.
	There's cause and effect.
	They decided to start shutting down mental health institutions where people were treated and kept safe from themselves and from other people.
	And instead of fixing the system, they just said, well, we're just going to medicate everybody and shut them down.
	And we hope they take their pills.
	Well, they don't.
	That's why I call them by, right?
	That's why we have what happened because they have issues that are not addressed.
	And this is a kid that really started to really decline in the last four months.
	He was at the gun range, not when people usually go to a gun range.
	He was there on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, Valentine's Day, right?
	These are days that you would spend with family.
	I don't know.
	Listen, I've been to the gun range.
	I'm not going to lie.
	Listen, sometimes I get bored.
	It's nice.
	I have a gun range in my backyard.
	So I can get done cooking and I'm like, okay, I need a couple of minutes.
	I'm going to go shoot some clays.
	I'm going to go shoot something far away.
	I've definitely gone hunting a lot on Thanksgiving.
	But okay, fair.
	But yes, I'm probably unusual as well.
	Not nearly as homicidal as this moron.
	Well, I think you combine that with no friends and you start to see a pattern of behavior, right?
	That's what we look for in people that have done things that are unexplainable.
	What's the pattern of behavior?
	And that's what, to me, is what stands out.
	And so, you know, when his grandfather died, his grandfather was an officer in the Vietnam War.
	He served his country.
	He served his community.
	He was very well thought of.
	And when he died, he said the loves of his life were his two grandchildren, Matthew and Matthew and his sister, or Thomas and his sister.
	And then you fast forward to now, that grandmother hasn't talked to the family in years.
	Something happened in that family.
	Something just completely collapsed in that family.
	Yeah.
	So there's a saying, you know, sometimes in life, the moment finds you.
	That sort of seems like this story.
	How did you get your start in reporting and come to embrace such a hands-on approach to really storytelling?
	Because it seems no one else in your industry is doing that.
	Well, I came to it late in life.
	I always wanted to be one, but then I got married and had kids.
	And I wanted to stay home with the kids.
	And I came to it after the kids were in high school.
	But, you know, I think where it comes from is I come from a long line of people that have been journalists.
	My grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, and so forth have all been in the news industry in some capacity or other, mostly small newspapers.
	But I've also, I've been a waitress.
	I have worked in a sewerage treatment plant.
	I have been a shampoo girl, the cafeteria lady, and worked in a daycare center.
	So I think, and I've always been a, I always have had a profound love and respect for history, good and bad.
	I just feel like it tells us something every time we read it and learn from it.
	And so I came to it late in life and I started in the 2000 as a local reporter.
	And this is an interesting aspect to my career.
	In September of 2016, my local newspaper decided to offer everyone buyouts.
	And I love my job.
	Don, I would have never left it.
	I loved my job.
	And they said, you know, you ought to think about something new and take the buyout.
	And I was like, oh, they're telling me I have to take the buyout.
	I'm dumb, but I'm not that dumb.
	So I'm walking out of the newsroom.
	I'm weeping because it's like the land of the misfit boys, right?
	You all love each other and hate each other all at the same time.
	And I get a phone call from a guy that I have known forever.
	His name is David Urban.
	And he said, hey, you have an interview with candidate Donald Trump tomorrow.
	And I was like, oh, you know, like I put my best face forward.
	I'm like, oh, okay, that's awesome.
	And then I hang up the phone and I'm like, I don't have a bleeping job.
	So I called the New York Times and they turned it down.
	I called the Washington Post, they turned it down.
	I think I called like, I don't know, one of those online papers like Politico or Daily Beast at the time.
	They all turned it down.
	I called the Atlantic of all places and I got paid $200 for that Story.
	I interviewed your dad at the Marcellus Shale Coalition convention.
	Two really important things came from that moment.
	That's when I noticed your dad's connective tissue with working class.
	After the interview, he said, Come on, Zito, let's go for a walk.
	I'm like, okay, it's the first time I interviewed him.
	I'm like, I don't, where's this taking me?
	I didn't have my recorder on.
	There was no cameras.
	It was just me and him and, you know, his people.
	And we're walking around behind the green room, like the curtained off green room.
	So behind where the C-suites are, people are.
	And there's the janitors, there's the electricians, the plumbers, the people pushing the carts with the water, the caterers.
	He stops and talks to just about everyone and asks about their life.
	Why do you do what you do?
	Why do you like what you do?
	Tell me about your family.
	And I was like, oh, he's not a guy with a gold building in Manhattan.
	He's a guy from the outer borough who worked on construction sites.
	Who also has a gold building in Manhattan, but yeah, minor details.
	Old habits die hard.
	I know how the elite in New York are.
	I know how old money versus new money, right?
	There's a sort of punching up that you do when you come from an outer borough and trying to make your way into Manhattan.
	And the other thing that happened in that moment, which changed my career, was I said to your dad, you know, voters take you seriously, but they don't take you.
	And everyone's stolen this line, right?
	But they don't take everything you say literally, right?
	Like when he's joking.
	But my profession takes everything that you say literally.
	No, they actually do the opposite.
	When he's serious, they pretend he's joking.
	And when he's joking and everyone knows that he's joking, they pretend he's serious.
	So yeah, no, it's even worse than all of that.
	Yeah.
	So that's sort of how my, that's like sort of the trajectory of my of my career.
	I didn't have, like, I didn't have a job.
	Like I was working four different freelance jobs, by the way, making $200.
	Yeah.
	$200.
	Travel all over the country because I wanted to finish that election.
	I knew your dad was going to win.
	I knew it.
	It had nothing to do about whether I did or did not like him, but the evidence was overwhelming in front of me in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania.
	And so on the last, the night before the election, I interviewed Mike Pence on the tarmac in Pittsburgh.
	And I went home and wrote the story, filed it, and cried because I knew after the next day, I wouldn't have a job.
	The next day, I worked for the New York Post covering the election in Pennsylvania, election night.
	I were 10 counties that I was watching, Don, to would tell me if your dad was going to win or not.
	People forget, this is why I need to like how much the Democratic Party has dramatically changed in my state.
	People forget that Barack Obama won by 11 percentage points in 2008 in Pennsylvania.
	He didn't even crack 5% in 2012.
	That's a massive amount of loss of voter support.
	Where did those voters go?
	Okay, that's what I was thinking about.
	And so I went and looked at 10 counties that Mitt Romney, if he only had gotten 2,000 more votes, he would have won.
	Didn't matter what happened in Philly or Pittsburgh.
	If he got 2,000 more votes in those 10 counties.
	So election night comes and he surpasses it in those 10 counties.
	I filed my story for the New York Post at like a quarter to nine.
	I'm like, it's over.
	He's won Pennsylvania.
	And if he's won Pennsylvania, that means he's won Ohio.
	Remember, Ohio.
	Yeah, Ohio is a purple state.
	Now it's like it's solid red like Florida.
	It's sort of amazing.
	And I remember that, you know, that night very carefully because I was, and it's, frankly, it's why I'm just not a big believer in so much of the conventional polling anymore because I would much rather look at the guys at Kelchie and look at the guys at polymarkets.
	When there's actually a betting market, like people aren't just, because some of these things, we get the exit polling, they're like, man, we thought we were going to do better than that.
	We're down seven points in a place we thought we were going to win by three.
	And they go, so I go, what's the breakdown?
	It's like, here's the Trump voters.
	Here's the Clinton voters.
	I go, yeah, but like, there's 10% missing.
	It's like, oh, those people told us to go F ourselves.
	It's like, that's a Trump voter.
	And if you added the go F. You don't know, because, you know, hey, and by the way, even to this day, right, then there was even more so probably, but there was a stigma.
	You know, if you were a Trump voter, you were the deplorable and you were this.
	So people just didn't want to bother.
	They just wouldn't tell them.
	And so if you took the Trump voter plus the go F yourself voter, it added up to exactly what the polling should have been.
	But that's why the conventional polling is never going to do it.
	No one has anything at stake.
	So they may even lie and be like, oh, because it's politically easier or expedient to just say, oh, yeah, I voted for Clinton, even if you didn't.
	Hopefully some of that's changing.
	But that's where so many of those flaws existed in that conventional polling, which is why the betting markets, again, Calci, polymarkets, all the stuff that I follow online, it's like, it's amazing how they're getting this.
	They get the trend.
	They get the movement.
	They're feeling that stuff in the moment.
	And it's just much more accurate.
	Yeah, it absolutely is.
	People have skin in the game.
	And, you know, it's that election taught me to trust my instincts.
	Yeah.
	And to who cares if you get the crap bullied out of you online?
	Yeah.
	So what?
	Hey, it was this.
	So what?
	That was not easy as a guy for like maybe coming out of a real estate.
	You know, we build hotels.
	It's like, I want everyone to stay at my hotel.
	But like when you became like, oh, now 50% of the country, 50% of the world, you have ostracized, guess what?
	Like, I'm okay going all in for my side and, you know, being looked at as a thought leader in that world perhaps is much better than just sort of being agnostic to the 100%.
	And so once you get comfortable with that, it's actually a great opportunity and very cathartic.
	You get rid of those people that you do the obligatory lunch once every other year and you sit there, you don't really have anything in common anymore, but you've known each other for 25 years.
	So you do it.
	Like politics was great because it's like those people flush themselves out of my life forever, and I don't have to waste the time.
	So it's been good.
	It's been a great experience.
	I want to ask you one question.
	Sure.
	Where were you, and how did you find out about your dad?
	With Butler?
	Yeah, so I was actually, I mean, it was a Saturday, obviously, July 13th, and I got the unusual call from my daughter, my 17-year-old Kai.
	She was the one that spoke at the RNC, and that was.
	I mean, she's awesome.
	Yeah, that was totally sort of organic and whatever it was.
	But she called me up that day, and this does not happen often.
	And if you're father of a teenage girl, I'm probably most of the time in her mind, like the least funny, dumbest human being in the world.
	But I got a call that morning.
	She's like, I want to go fishing.
	And I'm like, who are you?
	And what have you done with my daughter?
	Because she's a great athlete, great golfer.
	She's always working out and playing golf.
	And she takes it very seriously.
	And so that was unusual to get that call.
	So when you do get that call as a dad, you're like, we're going fishing.
	I don't care if it was 12-foot C's.
	Like, we're going to go fishing.
	And I'm going to put her on some fish.
	And we went out, pretty calm day, but we're way offshore.
	We're, you know, probably 13 miles offshore.
	And we just got a call.
	I mean, you're getting to that range where it's almost spotty cell reception.
	And I pick up the phone.
	It's like, your dad's been shot.
	And I'm like, and, you know, I mean, there's no good.
	You know, some calls are good or bad.
	Or, you know, there's no range of good in terms of when you get the call, your father's been shot.
	But it's like, well, I mean, is it like really, really, really, really bad or just really bad?
	What are we talking about here?
	We don't know.
	I'm like, oh, shit.
	Now I got to tell, you know, my 17-year-old daughter at the time, we got to go and we got to go fast.
	And we had a great day.
	We were catching fish.
	We were having an absolute blast.
	And she's, you know, strangely enough, I mean, she's probably spent more time one-on-one with my dad than me, my brother, my sister, you know, in a certain way because of golf, right?
	So she's like his golfing buddy.
	I mean, they play every weekend when he's around.
	And certainly at this time when he wasn't president, you know, he was there all the time.
	So, you know, she's, you know, shocked.
	I set the, you know, the C-speed record from wherever I was back into, you know, my house in Jupiter.
	And it's 90 minutes.
	We can't get through.
	You know, like you said, there's always bad cell phone reception, but then they shut everything down.
	You couldn't get through.
	No cell phones, no nothing.
	They just, all the radar jamming.
	They didn't, I guess, you know, trying to prevent IEDs and stuff.
	So 90 minutes before we could get through to find out, if anything.
	Now, by that time, I'd start seeing the videos online, him coming up defiant.
	And finally, we got through and he's, you know, hey, I just told him, I sort of opened up.
	It was very like sort of somber.
	And, you know, again, the adrenaline dump starting to hit you a little bit.
	More afterwards, like, you know, I was like just wired.
	And then it hits you and then you sleep for like a lot.
	But, you know, I just like, hey, man, that was the most badass thing I've ever seen.
	You know, we're talking a little bit, but again, it was sort of awkward.
	It's like my brother, my sister, my kids, they're all there at my house.
	We're sort of gathered on a speakerphone with my dad.
	And then finally, I was like, okay, we got to break this ice.
	And so I just go to him, I go, okay, most importantly, how's the hair?
	And he goes, you know, Don, Don, the hair is fine, Don, but a lot of blood.
	There's a lot of blood in the hair, but the hair held up, it'll wash out, but there was a lot of blood.
	And I think, you know, everyone on the phone probably rolling their eyes at me, but it was sort of that, you'll break the ice moment to get all of that.
	And it was that next day, I guess that Sunday, my daughter calls me at like 6 a.m.
	Also unusual for a teenager, although she wakes up early to work out.
	But like she called me at 6 a.m.
	She's like, I'm speaking at the RNC this week.
	And I'm like, oh, that's wonderful.
	I just bumped some governor.
	Like it's just going to happen.
	And she's like, no, I'm serious.
	I want to do this.
	And everyone was like, oh, you know, the lovely ladies of the view were like, Don Jr. trying to pawn off his daughter.
	I was like, I would never put my, like, your first speech shouldn't be in front of 40,000 people.
	It's just not the great, you know, it's not the greatest warm-up.
	That can go really wrong.
	It often does, even with seasoned professionals.
	So I called my dad and I was like, hey, man, Kai wants to speak at the RNC.
	And I'm like, he's like, he did the same reaction to me.
	He's like, whoa.
	He goes, whoa, that's a big one.
	You know, because he understands these people are animals.
	You know what I mean?
	Hunter Biden was beyond reproach, right?
	He could do no wrong as a 50-year-old man.
	If she's a 17-year-old girl, but she's got the last name Trump, they will try to destroy her if it's even a little bit off.
	But he thought about it for a few seconds.
	He goes, you know what?
	That kid's a winner.
	Let her do it.
	She'll be fine.
	And I was like, okay, look, someone's going to be pissed because they're going to lose a prime time slot.
	And she absolutely crushed that thing.
	I mean, I continued to get comments two years later almost about it.
	So she really rose to the occasion.
	So it was sort of a groundbreaking moment for even her taking sort of that adversity and coming out of it.
	But yeah, it was a crazy time.
	But like we sort of opened up with, I think it also changed not just his, but everyone's faith in God.
	Whether you had 100% faith in God or zero, whatever you had, you moved up the scale because, again, I don't think anyone believed in that much coincidence anymore without some sort of higher power intervention.
	So it was a pretty amazing time, pretty crazy.
	I mean, would love not to have gone through it, but the fact that it ended out this way, I guess, makes all that difficulty worth it.
	You said you told your dad that was a badass moment with the fight, fight, fight.
	What he told me, does that now make like even can you?
	Yeah, no, totally.
	He's that, you know, that guy.
	At first I was like, was this just like the greatest publicity stunt ever?
	Like, you know, look at, again, he's still Trump.
	I was like, was that, he's like, honestly, it was like, He's like, and he's cognizant of those things, but he goes, It really wasn't.
	I didn't think about it in those times.
	I probably knew I shouldn't have gotten up, but I also wasn't going to let the chaos sort of prevail and let those guys get the better of me.
	And it was really one of those moments.
	And it's funny, the people I hear about it most from are actually soldiers.
	they're like, hey, man, there's guys that are the toughest guys in the world, and then under fire, all of a sudden, not so tough.
	You never know until you actually have it happen to you.
	And they said that same thing, which is like, that was badass, man.
	I know a lot of serious guys that under that circumstance just break a little bit.
	And the fact that he didn't tell me everything I needed to know.
	So it was, I think, a big learning experience for a lot of the country, right?
	Especially the way they try to vilify him.
	It's like, you know, you can say what you want, but like, yeah, you don't do that if you're not actually a badass.
	Yeah, no, that was totally a badass moment.
	It changed, it contributed to changing everything.
	And you see that today.
	Yeah.
	So, Sala, where can people find the book?
	When's it come out?
	How do we get this going?
	Yay.
	Nice.
	My daughter took that photo.
	That's great.
	That's amazing.
	I love that because it conveys that he's looking at them and they're looking back at him, that connective tissue.
	You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, small bookstore.
	But right now it's on sale on Amazon.
	for prime days.
	Well, Selena Zito, thank you so much, guys.
	Make sure to check out her book, Butler, on Amazon and everywhere else that you get books.
	You know, someone that's truly, actually had access to all of the people involved.
	If you want to see all of the details, you know, truly an incredible story.
	And I mean, I think whether it's that photograph or the fight, fight, fight photograph, you know, I thought, you know what?
	You're not going to get many photos as good as the mugshot in an election cycle that will sort of become a part of Americana.
	But I think that one certainly did it and actually blew the other one out of the water.
	So an amazing time.
	So Selena, thank you so much.
	Really appreciate your time.
	The fact that you are doing this kind of journalism, that you are getting down to the ground, that you're telling the stories that affect so many Americans that so few other people are really willing to tell.
	I think it's really incredible work.
	So follow Selena as well, guys, you know, on all the social channels.
	And we appreciate it.
	We'll have you back soon.
	That sounds great.
	Thank you so much.
	Guys, thanks so much for tuning in.
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