Questions About Secret Service Intensify; Teamster President's Extraordinary RNC Speech; PLUS: Michael Tracey from the RNC
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Questions about Secret Service Intensify (5:54)
Teamster’s President Speaks at RNC (28:01)
Michael Tracey LIVE at RNC (55:21)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, the best thing that one can say about the U.S.
Secret Service, the most benevolent description, is that they are guilty of the gravest security failure in decades, if not in the history of that agency.
It was inconceivable from the start to understand how it is possible that someone was able to simply crawl on top of a roof in very close proximity with clear aim at former President Trump, the person the Secret Service was duty-bound to protect.
And then allow him to shoot a bullet that only missed killing Trump because he moved a few inches right before the nearest bullet to him had been fired.
As we explained last night, there's simply no reasonable explanation for how the Secret Service could fail so blatantly.
But as more facts emerge, and they are emerging very slowly, these questions and doubts are not being resolved at all, but instead are rapidly growing.
The same is true for the vague and shifting stories the Secret Service Director is providing about exactly what happened.
And earlier today, the local police in Butler, Pennsylvania made quite clear how little they appreciate the Secret Service's attempt to blame them for what clearly were the failures of that federal agency.
Unsurprisingly, the Service's Director, the already controversial Kimberly Cheadle, is categorically refusing to resign.
Showing yet again how DC is as accountability free as the corporate media is.
There is almost no failure, no bad act, too extreme to permit the perpetrator to continue on their merry way.
Remember, the people who are at the top of the corporate media chain are the very people who have repeatedly told many of the worst lies in our country's history.
They just go on their way, and so do people in D.C., no matter the magnitude of their failures.
We'll examine these latest developments and what they suggest about what actually happened on Saturday in Pennsylvania.
Then, as we reported last night, the president of the International Teamsters Union, Sean O'Brien, went on Fox News and heaped ample praise on Trump's vice presidential running mate, Republican Senator J.D.
Vance of Ohio, for what he described as Vance's numerous pro-worker stances.
That was quite a striking thing to do for a union leader, given how much the Democratic Party has had labor unions on full lockdown for years.
But after we covered that Fox interview on our show, O'Brien, as the president of the Teamsters Union, did something even more extraordinary.
He attended and then spoke at the Republican National Convention, the first Teamster president in decades to speak at a Republican convention.
And in the speech he gave, which not only again praised J.D.
Vance and Josh Hawley as allies of the American working class, but also made clear why the establishment wings of both parties are no friends of labor, the realignment that the Trump era ushered in in this speech has really been clearer.
That speech was momentous, simply that it was deliberate at all, as well as, more importantly, what it said.
And we will look at some of the most revealing parts.
And then finally, The roving independent reporter, Michael Tracy, is independently roving around Milwaukee at the Republican National Convention this week.
Actually, he's not entirely independent since he is there reporting for our program along with one of our outstanding team members, Megan O'Rourke, but he has been interviewing all sorts of Republican officials who are present at the convention and also was able to interview John David Longo, the mayor of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, a town very close to where the assassination attempt took place.
That Mayor was actually present very close up at the event, and we will show you all of those interviews that Michael was able to do, including one with Congressman Michael Allwer, who was the principal sponsor of the so-called Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, that bill that was enacted and then signed into law.
Just a few months ago, that was a grave assault on free speech in the name of protecting Israel.
And Michael confronts Congressman Mueller about the rationale behind that.
Before we get to all of that, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
I started the show last night by observing what I think is a somewhat remarkable development, which is that there was a major assassination attempt.
That took place on the former president of the United States, who is also the current frontrunner by all polls for regaining the presidency this year in the 2024 election.
And it wasn't just an assassination attempt.
It was one that came extremely close to succeeding.
And it involved the firing of multiple bullets, one of which actually hit the ear of the person that Secret Service was duty bound to protect.
And it all happened under extremely bizarre circumstances in terms of how it is possible that the Secret Service could possibly have allowed to happen a security failure of that magnitude.
And obviously there's a lot of other questions and doubts about what exactly happened here, in part because of how extraordinary it is to even believe the level of incompetence that could have pervaded the Secret Service to this extent, But also the very slow and begrudging transparency that the Secret Service is providing and the vague and shifting explanations that the Director of the Secret Service is providing have only intensified those doubts and questions even more.
Not resolving any of those questions and doubts, but actually creating all new ones.
Here from CNN Today, you see the headline, Rally Security Failure Has Secret Service At Odds With Its Local Law Enforcement Allies.
Quote, in an interview with ABC News on Monday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle said it was local police who were inside the building at the time of the shooting and that it was their role to secure the building, roughly 120 to 150 meters away, yet outside the hard perimeter and with a line of sight to the rally stage.
Now, we showed you this last night, but what they're essentially saying, the Secret Service is, is that even though that building from which the shooter fired was in extremely close proximity to the stage where President Trump was to speak.
And that even though it had a direct line of fire to that stage, that apparently the Secret Service just arbitrarily draws an extremely tight and small circle around where their protectee will be speaking.
And they just say anything outside of this line is not our responsibility.
It's the responsibility of the local police.
Why would the Secret Service simply not?
There you see the screen.
We showed you this last night.
You can see there the location of the shooter on that sloped roof, which becomes important.
And just look at how close that is to the stage where President Trump was speaking.
It's right there.
It's unimpeded.
But apparently the Secret Service, according to them at least, took this little tiny circle and superimposed it on this map and that building was outside of their circle and so they said, yeah, that's not for us.
The whole point of the Secret Service is to do everything possible to eliminate obvious threats to the person that they're duty-bound to protect.
So it's an attempt to blame the local police of Butler, Pennsylvania for The fact that Donald Trump was almost assassinated, even though obviously the local police is not trained for that kind of work.
That's what the Secret Service is for.
Quote, one former Secret Service agent took issue with Cheadle placing so much blame on local law enforcement, telling CNN, quote, the service, the Secret Service is responsible for everything, not just the inner perimeter.
They should make sure all of this is covered.
Quote, officers inside a building, that's not mitigating a high ground vulnerability, the former agent said.
Attendees in the crowd noticed the gunmen on the roof nearly two minutes before the shots were fired.
A CNN analysis of witness video and the official video feed of Trump's speech shows.
So, so far, pretty much one of the only explanations that we've gotten Is the classic Washington response, the sort of bureaucratic response, oh, that's not my job.
Not my job to secure that building right next to the stage, even though we're the Secret Service.
That's the job of the local police or whoever, and if they didn't do it, that's their fault.
Don't look to us.
I mean, it's mind-boggling that that would be their explanation.
Here's more of that from the Washington Post today.
Police snipers were inside the building as the Trump rally shooter fired from the roof.
the revelation adds to a growing list of questions about the security arrangements outside the Pennsylvania rally's perimeter.
Quote, the Beaver County District Attorney's Office confirmed that a SWAT team from the county was at Saturday's rally, but declined to release additional information, pointing to ongoing investigations by state and federal authorities.
In a written statement Tuesday, the County District Attorney's Office said, quote, we are proud of the heroic actions taken by our officers.
Richard Goldinger, the Butler County District Attorney, said in an interview that the SWAT teams from his jurisdiction were all inside the security perimeter, Quote, Secret Service was in charge.
And so it was their responsibility to make sure that the venue and the surrounding area was secured, he told the Post.
That's common sense, I think.
That's their job.
Yeah, that seems common sense to me as well.
He then added, quote, Again, imagine that.
local law enforcement is them passing the blame when they hold the blame, in my opinion.
Again, imagine that.
The whole reason the Secret Service exists is to protect presidents, former presidents, leading presidential candidates.
And again, as we talked about last night, this was not some exotic and unpredictable It was the most obvious and primitive thing you could do, which is if you want to kill somebody, you find a nearby location where you can hide and gives you a direct line of sight to the stage that you can shoot them in an unimpeded way.
And it doesn't even take a trained law enforcement professional to look at that map and immediately identify that roof as being a obvious source of danger.
The Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheadle, was essentially required to start doing media interviews because obviously people have a lot of questions.
Now, I was saying before that what amazes me is that I don't think this is getting nearly the attention that it deserves.
And I understand there's a lot of other things going on.
President Trump just selected his vice presidential running mate.
The RNC is going on.
There's major court rulings, such as when we referenced last night of the court in Florida dismissing the entire criminal prosecution brought against Trump.
I understand there are other major news events, but this is an assassination attempt on a former president and a leading presidential candidate of the kind we haven't seen in decades.
And again, it wasn't some devilish and sinister and complex mastermind who devised a way that no one could have anticipated.
This is something a Secret Service should have seen and didn't.
So here is the Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheadle, answering what I think are the most basic questions, but her answers, I think, are extremely strange, as is her whole posture.
Let's watch this.
Director of the United States Secret Service, Kimberly Cheeto, speaks exclusively with ABC News, taking responsibility for that stunning breakdown in security.
This is an event that should have never happened.
Who is most responsible for this happening?
What I would say is that the Secret Service is responsible for the protection of the former president.
So the buck stops with you?
The buck stops with me.
I am the director of the Secret Service.
It was unacceptable, and it's something that shouldn't happen again.
Now, that's what she's saying.
If any journalist asks the director of an agency, so the buck stops with you, of course, they're forced to say yes.
That's the famous Harry Truman quote, the buck stops with me.
What's she going to say?
No, it doesn't stop with me.
It's someone else's.
But what they're doing, although she's saying that, is running to media outlets and blaming the local law enforcement there for what happened, as though it's their responsibility.
To have protected Donald Trump.
So, she's saying this because she's forced to, and you can see she doesn't even want to.
But her agency is out there, not at all accepting responsibility, but instead blaming others for their own failures.
This is after Trump took to stage Saturday in front of thousands of people.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks wounding the former president and three others before a Secret Service counter-sniper took him out.
I'm being told that the shooter was actually identified as a potential person of suspicion.
Units started responding to seek that individual out.
Unfortunately, with the rapid succession of how things unfolded, by the time that individual was eventually located, they were on the rooftop and were able to fire off at the former president.
ABC News now learning that heavily armed local police were actually stationed inside the building.
The gunman climbed, but they missed him.
This video showing a bystander pointing towards the building as police look onto the roof.
Butler Town officials confirming that after they became aware of the threat, a local police officer climbed up to the roof and confronted Crooks, but did not succeed in stopping him.
What was your reaction when you saw... So you see how much Beyond the obvious fact that that roof should have been secured and having local police inside the building obviously doesn't protect against that because the shooter just climbed up the building instead of entering through it.
And why didn't they just have counter snipers on the roof?
All of these questions she's really not answering at all.
And she's actually admitting how much advance warning there was that he was identified as a source of danger But that they couldn't act in time.
There were police officers who saw him and confronted him.
Well before the shooting, there were people who are in the crowd, just ordinary people not trained in detecting dangers and threats, who were able to just look right up at the building and see that somebody was climbing up there and laying down with a rifle.
An AR-15, as it turns out.
And all these things, none of them provoked any intervention.
By the Secret Service.
All the things that they're acknowledging they had notice of.
All the events unfold on Saturday.
I mean, that is, you can see it there as well.
obviously, for the former president.
Investigators now trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down.
The shooter climbing up seemingly unimpeded, about 400 feet from the stage, with a direct line of sight on the former president.
Should that roof have been...
I mean, that is...
You can see it there as well.
Here in the upper left-hand corner, you see the...
Sorry, that was a video, so I don't think I can...
I can just...
Yeah, I can't touch it, so I ruined it.
So we're going to just get that back up in a session.
The director of the United States secrets on the...
All right there, so let's stop it.
Let's just stop it there.
There you see the image.
There's the... In the upper left-hand corner is the shooter on the roof.
He's 400 feet away from President Trump, who's here in orange.
And...
You can see that there's a direct line of fire.
I mean, that building is right next to where the crowd and the stage are.
How is it conceivable that the Secret Service didn't think to look there?
Now, they go on to ask her about that.
And here's what she tries to justify it with.
And so, you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.
And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.
All right.
Now, this is what I mean by not only unbelievable explanations, but also contradictory ones.
The first explanation that the Secret Service gave for why they didn't secure that building was because it was outside of their arbitrary and very tiny, apparently, perimeter.
or Where they just say, we're gonna just take care of threats here, but threats outside, that's not our concern.
Even though we're the Secret Service.
And so, the Secret Service said from the start, that building was not our responsibility because it was outside the perimeter.
But here she's saying, oh no, we were aware of that roof.
We even thought about putting somebody on there, but we decided not to for safety reasons because the roof was sloped.
The shooter had no problem at all climbing up there and being extremely comfortable on this dangerously sloped roof.
If a roof too sloped to allow a Secret Service agent to be on the roof safely, Because he might fall off a two-story building with that slope.
The shooter was able to not only get up there and walk over to where he wanted to be and then lie down and position himself with perfect balance to aim right at Donald Trump's head and get off five or six shots.
But even once he was killed and he no longer had control of his body, his corpse did not fall off the roof.
And the explanation for why there was no Secret Service there was because it was too dangerous to put a Secret Service agent on a two-story roof right next to where President Trump was speaking, even though this 20-year-old kid with no training climbed right up there, was completely comfortable on there, never fell off at all, and not even once he was dead did his corpse fall off.
It's a sloped roof, and that's too dangerous for the Secret Service.
...says the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter of the rally, where Trump was.
But local police were responsible for the outer perimeter, where the gunman was located.
In Washington, lawmakers demanding answers, calling on the Secret Service director to appear before Congress.
We will be transparent, both internally with my own folks and externally with members of Congress and with the American public.
That's what the public deserves.
The President and Homeland Security Secretary said today they had 100% confidence in you, but there are some members of Congress calling on you to resign.
I appreciate the Secretary's comments, and we're going to continue to be transparent and communicate with people.
Do you plan to stay on, absolutely?
I do plan to stay on.
She has no intention of resigning.
Now let me ask you this question.
I mean, it used to be the case that people in public life had a sense of shame.
People would resign all the time if they were responsible for things, but failed to fulfill that responsibility.
In certain cultures, people kill themselves in order to expel that shame from their family.
I'm not suggesting anyone do that.
I'm just saying that there are cultures for accountability far greater than the one in which we live, even when it works.
But there's no accountability anymore.
You look at the corporate media, as I said, Jeffrey Goldberg was more responsible than any other single journalist.
For selling the lie, the crucial lie, that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were in a secret alliance with Saddam Hussein, something that was obviously crucial to get the public to believe, because that was the only way the public would support an invasion of Iraq, is if they believed Iraq had a connection to the 9-11 attack.
And 70% of Americans actually did believe that, even six months after the invasion took place.
A lie of that magnitude would be instantly career ending for a journalist in any sort of minimally accountable society.
And yet not only did Jeffrey Goldberg not suffer any career repercussions, as we've recounted many times, he continued to thrive even more than before that happened.
He was at the New Yorker and he was enticed to go to the Atlantic where the then-editor David Bradley sent ponies to his house, exotic ponies for his kids to play with in an attempt to lure him to run the magazine.
And he now runs that magazine for the large donor billionaire heiress, Laurene Powell Jobs.
So he continued to rise.
Natasha Bertrand, after all of the CIA lies that she spread, including the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, kept getting promoted throughout media.
There is no accountability in corporate media.
When's the last time you've ever heard any of them admit any real error, notwithstanding how many times what they've said proved to be completely untrue, let alone resign for it?
It's a completely accountability-free industry, and that's true of Washington as well.
If you're the director of the Secret Service, and one of the people under your custody that you're duty-bound to protect ends up an inch away from having his head blown off solely because, by mere coincidence, he happened to move his head at the very last second, if that doesn't cause the Secret Service director to resign, what would?
What could possibly cause her resignation?
And I am certain there will be no demands, no pressure from the Biden administration for her to resign because that's the kind of accountability that simply does not exist in our society.
Here at The Hill, Ulster reports on this.
Secret Service Director says she will not resign after the Trump assassination.
This is, I think, something that It's not only disturbing in and of itself, this kind of lack of accountability, but I really do think that it raises serious questions about what actually happened here.
As I said, I'm not in any way suggesting that there was anything sinister going on in terms of an intention to allow this to happen or to cause it to happen, but anyone who's looking into it would have to consider that.
Remember when the Warren Commission was convened, To purportedly find out the truth about the assassination of JFK, one of the major suspicions was that the CIA was involved, which is why it was so bizarre that one of the leading members, in fact, the leading member of the commission, not the chairman, that was our Warren, which is why it's called the Warren Commission, but the person who was given a lot of the authority on the Warren Commission for how it conducted itself,
was the longtime director of the CIA, Alan Dulles.
He was essentially investigating himself, but that was a concern, and that was something the Warren Commission was supposed to investigate.
So the more the Secret Service gives these preposterous explanations about perimeters and blaming the local police and not wanting to put a secret service agent on that roof, Because it was dangerously sloped and could put the secret, the Secret Service is supposed to, a Secret Service agent is supposed to risk their lives to protect the person under their protection.
And you saw how brave they are, how trained they are.
They climbed onto that stage despite having no idea whether more bullets were coming and they took their own bodies and used it to shield President Trump.
They were ready to get shot in order to protect him.
That's the job.
So these people who are willing to put their lives on the line, who are expected to put their own bodies between a bullet and the person they're protecting, none of them could safely go on a sloped roof, despite how obvious of a danger point that was.
And yet this 20-year-old just climbed up it, like what, he was Spider-Man or something?
It was because it was an extremely easy building to ascend, and it was obviously not a very steep slope, given it had the ease with which He managed to do all sorts of things on that roof without even getting close to falling off, including once he was dead.
So the more explanations you have that make no sense, the more effort there is to ship Blaine, the more effort there is to obfuscate, of course the more doubts and skepticism there's going to be about whether we're being given the whole story.
That's irrational.
That's a rational thing to do.
And I think all that's going to happen is these doubts and these questions and these beliefs that there's more to this story than what we're being told are going to continue to grow precisely because of the behavior of the director of the Secret Service and the Secret Service itself.
And obviously doing everything possible to protect themselves and doing almost nothing to ensure that the public is informed in any credible way that they actually have an understanding, that we actually have an understanding of what happened there.
All right.
So as I said earlier in the show, we covered the interview that the Teamster president, Sean O'Brien, did on Fox News regarding J.D.
Vance when Vance was unveiled as President Trump's running mate.
And the Teamster president was obviously very enthused about J.D.
Vance's vice presidential candidacy.
And he didn't just praise J.D.
Vance in general.
But specifically listed numerous actions that J.D.
Vance has taken as a senator in order to benefit and protect and advance the interest of the American worker.
And remember, J.D.
Vance has essentially built his identity on his dedication to the working class.
He was raised in poverty, had all kinds of drug problems in his family, extreme amounts of poverty.
went to college, to Ohio State University on a scholarship, made his way to Yale Law School, and then wrote the definitive book that millions of Americans read on the Appalachian and working class culture, The Hillbilly Elegy.
One of the reasons why he was backed by the populist wing of the Republican Party is precisely because he, along with Josh Hawley and several other Republicans who want to bring the party away from this servitude to large capital and major concentrated corporate power, and instead become the party of the working class, the multiracial working class, which the party is in the process of becoming.
Understand that in order to do that, you actually have to show that your loyalty is not to multinational conglomerates, but instead to the American worker.
You have to actually do things concretely, not just in words, but in actions to demonstrate the authenticity of that belief.
And the Teamster Union president not only believes, but has listed all the things that J.D.
Vance did in order to become one of the most pro-worker members of the Senate.
And I found that extraordinary that he would go on Fox News and he preys on the vice presidential running mate, given how long and how unbreakable has been the connection, the partnership between labor union leaders on the one hand and the Democratic Party on the other.
But after our show was over, maybe even during it when we were live, Sean O'Brien did something even more amazing.
He went to the Republican National Convention and he spoke there.
And he not only he preys again on J.D.
Vance but also Josh Hawley and this wing of the Republican Party that he believes is becoming pro-labor and said some amazing things that I think are so worth watching in part because of who it came from but also because of what he said That is illustrative of this realignment where politics really can't be understood anymore as being between Democrats and Republicans.
I mean, ultimately, what is really the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the one hand and Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell on the other?
Some culture war fights that they kind of half-heartedly have as theater, but not much else.
And then you have this populist wing on the left wing of the Democratic Party and this populist right wing that are agreeing more and more on things like intervention, war and foreign policy, corporatism, and globalist international institutions.
J.D.
Vance gave an interview to the New York Times columnist, Roth Dufat, several days ago before he was named President Trump's running mate.
And one of the things J.D.
Vance said is that there is a part of the Democratic Party whose politics I feel a connection to that I'm actually open to.
And he said it's not the part of the party, the Democratic Party, that is the establishment's center left, because they're basically the same as the Establishment Center, right?
They serve the same big corporate donors.
They have the same neoliberal view, the same view of militarism.
He actually said the part of the Democratic Party with which I share certain beliefs on trade, on labor, on wars, is what he called the Bernie Bros.
Now imagine in the past a Republican senator being considered as the vice presidential choice for the Republican nominee to come out and say the part of the Democratic Party with which I feel some affinity is not the centrist or the mainstream part of the party I have contempt most for them and their mirror image of my party.
It's what's considered to be the left of the Democratic Party.
That would be absolutely unthinkable.
And yet the reason that he can say that is because there is this realignment where less and less it's not about left versus right or Democrat versus Republican or conservative versus liberal.
But about whether you support establishment institutions of authority and their establishment dogma or whether you oppose it.
And increasingly, there are members of the Republican Party who clearly oppose it.
And when Trump ran in 2016, the greatest appeal he had was that he presented himself as a enemy of the establishment and their ideology, not of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, but equally of both.
He promised to drain the bipartisan swamp in Washington, all of that.
And there was a lot of backtracking and a lot of things that happened during his administration that didn't align with that, often contradicted it.
But the fact that he chose a 39-year-old Marine who has built his life on this culture, on this working class culture, and now in the Senate has developed policies that excite the Teamster president, demonstrates this realignment that so many people on the left Including the kind of pseudo-radicals on the left who love to believe that their enemies in the Democratic Party just simply can't accept.
They just have to believe, it's almost like a religious conviction, that the only people who could possibly have any authentic concern for American workers are people who have a D after their name.
That's the only possibility for authentic concern for the working class is somebody who's a Democrat.
If someone has an R after their name, they can pretend to be A protector or believer in the working class, but they're just being fake.
It's just for branding.
They can't possibly have any genuine belief in that.
I mean, it's such a binary and partisan and stunted view of the world because they refuse to acknowledge any kind of realignment at all because they cannot see the world through any means other than this binary Republican versus Democrat, left versus right, etc.
Even though that's a very distortive and obfuscating prism through which to understand politics.
And this incident, I think, illustrates that more than any I can remember in a long time.
Here from The Guardian, Teamster president faces backlash over, quote, unconscionable Republican convention speech.
So his going there, Sean O'Brien's going there, definitely created some division in American labor because a lot of them just have it in their blood that they are tied to the Democratic Party.
Sean O'Brien is accused of bolstering the most anti-union party and president by senior members of his own union.
The Teamsters is one of the largest labor unions in the United States with 1.3 million members.
While other large labor unions and the largest coalition of labor unions, the AFL-CIO, have already endorsed Joe Biden, the Teamsters has yet to make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election.
The credit for Union Facts, an organization founded by staunch Union opponent and lobbyist Rick Berman, has paid for billboards in the Milwaukee area accusing the Teamsters of being a partisan group due to the Union's Political Action Committee predominantly supporting Democratic politicians.
O'Brien's speech at the RNC will be the first time a Teamster president has spoken at the convention.
In January 2024, the Teamsters PAC donated $45,000 to both the Republican and the Democratic National Committees, making its first donation to the Republican Party in years.
And then he goes on to talk more about the internal disputes, but a lot of union members and a lot of top-level union officials, including Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union, obviously believes that the American worker is better off not enslaved or subservient to the Democratic Party, but working with the factions in each party who are pro-labor.
Now, here is the Teamsters president who spoke at the Republican National Convention, and here is part of his speech that we're going to show you a few segments of the speech, because it was really a remarkable speech. and here is part of his speech that we're going He didn't go and say, I love the Republican Party, I'm endorsing Trump and J.D. Vance.
He was much more subtle and therefore interesting in the kind of remarks he made.
So here's how he started off.
You know, corporatists hate when working people join together to form unions.
But for a century, major employers have waged a war against labor by forming corporate unions of their own.
We need to call the Chamber of Commerce and the business roundtables what they are.
They are unions for big business.
And here's another fact.
Now, this is the kind of worldview that has become increasingly pervasive on both the populist left and populist right.
when Americans band together in democratic unions, that we win real improvements on wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Now, this is the kind of worldview that has become increasingly pervasive on both the populist left and populist right.
It's driving populism throughout all of Europe, which is the idea that if you are pro-corporation, sort of embracing Reaganomics or Margaret Thatcher's ideology of economics, which may have applied to the 1980s but no longer applies now because it's just this idea which may have applied to the 1980s but no longer applies now because it's just this idea that whatever big business wants is what we Ronald Reagan's famous phrase for justifying that was, a rising tide lifts all boats.
So if there's growth because you're helping big corporations, it's going to help everybody.
And it turned out that that wasn't really true.
That over the course of the next several decades, the American worker suffered more and more, the middle class disappeared, real wages stagnated.
And the more and more concentration there was in just a few corporate giants, The more the consumer got screwed, the more the worker got screwed.
And that's a major reason why the working class has been migrating rapidly to the Trump-led Republican Party.
Not just the white working class, but increasingly just everybody in the working class of all races.
And the reason is because they know the Democratic Party has tied itself to corporatism and to big corporate donors who don't have any allegiance to the United States.
They're multinational corporations.
They're happy to have huge numbers of immigrants pouring into the country because they've just looked at that as cheap labor to drive down the wages of workers.
And they know the Democratic Party has been behind a lot of that.
And that's why working class people are shifting away from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and the union's leaders understand that they have to recognize that new reality.
Here is another clip from his speech last night.
President Trump!
had the backbone to open the doors to this Republican convention.
And that's unprecedented.
No other nominee in the race would have invited the Teamsters into this arena.
Now, you can have whatever opinion you want, but one thing is clear.
President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid of hearing from new, loud, and often critical voices.
And I think we all can agree, whether people like him or they don't like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.
Now again, I play that because I just want to underscore how extraordinary he is that Labor leader, not a minor labor leader, a major labor leader would go to the Republican National Convention and say these sorts of things.
Part of what Reaganomics was about was about serving corporate leaders, serving big corporations, serving corporate power.
And obviously that often came at the expense of the American worker.
And there's always been a huge animosity toward labor unions inside many sectors of the American right and the conservative movement.
And now there's a backlash against that because people understand that American workers have been decimated.
Through free trade and globalization and the opening of the borders.
And that's why working class towns have become destroyed.
And a lot of people, including Republicans, are starting to understand.
And there's a fascinating interview that I mentioned with J.D.
Vance, with Ross Dupal, where he said he empathizes more with the Bernie Bro wing of the Democratic Party than the neoliberal corporatist wing.
It's also very interesting because there's an antidote that he tells where he was at dinner with some major Republican donor, some extremely wealthy person.
And J.D.
Vance was there and the extremely wealthy corporate executive began saying how great immigration was, because it lets them pay workers very, very little.
And J.D.
Vance said it was in that moment that he realized, wait, I don't want to be part of this mentality.
I don't want to screw over the American worker.
I want to represent the American worker.
I want to build the working class back up.
And he talks about his trajectory of how he became that.
Remember, he's only 39 years old.
People are making a lot of what he said about President Trump in 2016, 2015.
And I don't want to use the youth argument.
He was certainly an adult, but he was 29 or 30.
Lots of people go through their 30s and then have a change of view.
And you should read that interview.
I actually posted a gift article.
A link as a gift article to it on Twitter earlier today for those of you who have access to my Twitter page where you can just click on the link even if you're not a subscriber and read that interview with JD Vance where there's a lot of space given to him to explain his worldview and his evolution.
And a lot of people are having that same realization.
Josh Hawley has often said that the Republican Party's only future is as a multiracial working class party.
And obviously, in order to do that, you have to actually stand up to major concentrated corporate power.
And abandon this idea that the worst thing in the world are benefits or rights for the American worker, because that has been what has been gutted in the United States in subservience to international corporate power and globalist institutions. because that has been what has been gutted in the Okay.
Here is a final excerpt that I want to show you from the speech last night.
And really the whole speech is really worth watching.
It's only about 20, 23 minutes long.
We're just showing you a few excerpts here.
You can listen to this.
In the past, the teachers have endorsed GOP candidates, including Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W.
Bush.
But over the last 40 years, the Republican Party has rarely pursued strong relationships with organized labor.
There are some in the party who stand in active opposition to labor unions.
This, too, must change.
I mean, that's a lot of applause at the Republican National Convention for a line that says the hostility to organized labor must change.
It really illustrates the change in the composition and the base of the Republican Party.
These are working class people, largely, who formed the Trump movement.
They don't want Corporate bosses of major conglomerates to have their way, to be able to drive down wages.
That's not why they went and followed Trump.
Trump promised to, in his 2016 speech, defend the forgotten man.
The working class that has been gutted, the middle class that has disappeared, all of these towns that are filled with fentanyl and opioid overdoses and all of those social pathologies because their towns have been wrecked, the factories have been closed, all from these corporatist policies that Bill Clinton And the Republican Party, both before and after him, pursued because they were basically servants of the Chamber of Commerce.
And there's still Republicans in the party, maybe even in the Trump movement, who still believe in that ideology but many of them do not.
There's a division that I find extremely important, extremely interesting to understand.
And that's why there was a lot of hostility among certain Republican power players like the Chamber of Commerce and the Club for Growth to the selection of J.D. Vance, because he is not a traditional Republican when it comes to those sorts of economic issues. - I wanna be clear.
At the end of the day, the Chiefs are not interested if you have a D, R or an I next to your name.
We want to know one thing.
What are you doing to help American workers?
As a negotiator, I know that no window or door should ever be permanently shut.
In my administration, the Teamsters reached out to eight Republican senators who stood up for railroad Teamsters over our fight for paid sick leave.
Josh Hawley was one of them.
Now every time I mention that there are actually Republicans who are pursuing this more pro-worker, anti-corporatist mentality, that doesn't mean socialism.
It means just standing up for basic rights of workers, for the right to a livable wage, to impose corporate agendas, like a flow of immigration that will drive down wages.
That's why the American left.
had always opposed in the past open border immigration or a huge flow of illegal immigrants entering the country because it was so bad for the American worker until that got through an identity politics prism where now any opposition to immigration is seen as racist or white nationalist,
Even though the groups that are most suspicious of massive immigration flows are African-Americans and Latinos because they understand that it is their jobs first that will suffer, their wages will suffer.
And this just evades traditional left-right distinctions.
But there are a lot of Democrats, a lot of liberals, and even a lot of people who identify as on the left who just cannot believe.
That there's any authentic belief in the working class if you're a member of the Republican Party.
And every time I bring up Josh Hawley or J.D.
Vance...
And Matt Stoller, who we're trying to get on our show this week, if we can get him on, who has been on the show many times, who dedicates his life to antitrust work that JD Vance supports, and so does Josh Hawley, to prevent us from being enslaved by these gigantic monopolistic corporations that leave the consumer with no choice and therefore no rights.
Every time I point that out or someone else points that out, these little liberals and leftists who are just in subservience to the Democratic Party come and say, oh, that's just all rhetoric.
They never actually do anything.
And you can point out very concrete things like the time that Josh Hawley partnered with Bernie Sanders, the only two senators, to filibuster the COVID relief bill because they demanded that there be direct payments not only to corporations but also to American citizens.
That was something Josh Hawley actually did with Bernie Sanders and that resulted in major direct payments to American citizens because of the filibuster by those two.
Or the list of Pro-worker measures that J.D. Vance has taken in the Senate as enumerated by the Teamster Union president on the Fox News interview we showed you last night.
But here he's going to talk about Josh Hawley and the things not that he said that are pro-worker rhetoric, but the things that he has done over the past several years that are classically pro-worker.
We started talking.
Senator Hawley changed his position on national right to work.
Then we started walking.
Senator Hawley walked a Teamsters picket line in St.
Louis and a UAW picket line in Wentzville, Missouri.
More than that, I want to recognize Senator Hawley for his direct, relentless, and pointed questioning of corporate talking heads, lawyers, CEOs, and apologists.
He has shown he is not willing to accept their pillaging of working people's pocketbooks.
I know from a career in negotiating that you get nowhere by slamming your fist on the table.
The first step is to listen.
The Teamsters and the GOP may not agree on many issues, but a growing group has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that aren't funded by big money think tanks.
So again, that's a pretty extraordinary thing to do, especially given that there are a lot of people in the labor movement and his own union who want to stay loyal to the Democratic Party, because I said it's just sort of in their blood.
It's like a lot of people who just were trained to love the Democratic Party and believe that the only good that can come is from the Democratic Party.
He's seeing this realignment that is obviously taking place, where it's not just in rhetoric but also in action, where the populist right of the Republican Party, the anti-establishment populist right, is having things in common with the left-wing populists who oppose the Democratic Party.
Trump talked about that often in 2016.
Bernie Sanders, you could go into a lot of labor unions, and you could go into a lot of rural areas, and people in 2016 would say, the two favorite candidates of mine are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and to a lot of people who only see the world as Democrat versus Republican or left versus right, that's unimaginable.
Because they're so connected to the partisan discourse that they can't understand or conceive politics in any other way, but these ordinary Americans can.
That was the version of Bernie Sanders that was not a partisan hack, that talked way more about trade and the working class than almost anything else, certainly more than social issues.
And Trump would often say, I agree with Bernie on some of these things, including trade.
And obviously when it comes to foreign policy as well, the criticism of the U.S.
security state, these are all things that at least some people on the left still believe in, and there are growing beliefs on the right as well.
And anybody who sits there and doesn't recognize this realignment that's obviously taking place, or who still insists on seeing this world in this archaic way of Democrats versus Republicans, or conservative versus liberal, instead of the only real metric, which is what you think of establishment centers of power and their dogma, is somebody who is just incredibly stunted and blind.
And it's fascinating that this president of the Teamsters Union, whose entire life has been devoted to labor, he's talked about The jobs, the working jobs that he's done over the course of many years to become a labor official is able to analyze the political situation in this much more subtle and sophisticated way and has the courage, knowing that it could jeopardize his position, to stand up and say it because, as he says, what he cares about is not Democrat versus Republican, but where the American worker can actually succeed and can actually thrive.
All right, our good friend of the show, Michael Tracy, who is a, as I always say, very independent, sometimes annoyingly independent, roving journalist, is in Milwaukee covering the Republican National Convention for us.
He's there with our social media and our social media manager and producer, Megan O'Rourke.
And they have been doing a great job covering the convention, doing interviews with all sorts of people.
Rumble has a booth there.
That's how we were able to get credentials.
And over the last week, Michael has talked to, the last couple days, Michael has talked to several different people with really interesting interviews.
As I said, one of them is Mayor John David Longo, who was president at the assassination attempt.
He was a mayor of Slippery Rock, a city of town very close to where that occurred.
He also was able to speak with Congressman Mike Collins, the Republican of Georgia.
And Congressman Michael Oller, the Republican from New York, who is not only a hardcore, probably one of the most vocal supporters of Israel in the entire Congress, but was the sponsor of that law that was implemented that made it illegal in the educational sector to...
To express all sorts of criticism of Israel that had been very common.
You see this on the screen is H.R.
6090 and it passed the House and Senate by an overwhelming majority and went to the president who then signed it because pro-Israel views speed through the Congress with overwhelming majorities for reasons we've covered many times.
And that was one of the gravest assaults on free speech and Many years and Michael was able to talk to him about that as well.
So we're going to show you these interviews.
And before we do, we just want to remind you that we won't be having our local show tonight because myself and a couple of members of our team have an extremely early flight.
I don't even want to mention the time of the flight.
Alright, we are on the floor of the Republican National Convention right now.
get home a little bit early to try and get some sleep before taking that flight.
But we will be back in the studio.
It's just a one-day trip tomorrow night for our show.
We will obviously have the local show on Thursday and have regular scheduling for the rest of the week.
Here is the interviews that Michael conducted for us.
All right, we are on the floor of the Republican National Convention right now.
Gaze out at the amazing sights.
I've never had more fun in my life.
I guess what we're gonna do is just kind of poke around and see if there's anybody of note to speak to?
Let's see who I can spot.
Oh.
Congressman Sparks, how are you?
What's your reaction to the J.D.
Vance nomination?
That's good.
I think we have a lot of great candidates.
We have a very long bench.
But it's all about President Trump and make America great.
What do you expect for a second term for President Trump in terms of Ukraine and Israel as compared to the Biden administration?
I think, you know, as President Trump said, you know, we need to restore peace, we need to restore our economy, that we have ability for people to get wealth back and have a growth in the economy.
Because right now, inflation and the spread is going to destroy a lot of people.
And I think this is something about the future of the country and strengthen the country, strengthen the borders, strengthen the people, and really bring peace around the world.
We have a disaster right now.
It's awful what's happening.
President Trump has said that he has a good relationship with Zelensky.
And some people question that because they think he's Putin's puppet or this kind of thing, which is silly.
So what is his relationship with Zelensky and Ukraine?
Because Representative Sparks, you're Ukrainian, correct?
Originally I grew up there, but I'll tell you, it's about peace through strength.
And President Trump had a lot of peace around the world, and aggressors didn't move.
And his policy is to bring peace and actually put pressure on countries like Russia and China.
He never gets much credit, but what he created in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords, he did to Russia to move further.
He was the one who actually He put sanctions on Nord Stream 2.
Forced more production of energy.
He was put back on China, not to buy... Put many sanctions on Russia?
That's right!
And he's the one who actually forced Europeans and NATO to step up, to create more deterrence, to spend money to deter Russia.
He doesn't get a credit for that.
But his foreign policy was pretty powerful.
Will Trump continue supporting funding for Ukraine?
I've spoken to other members of Congress and the Senate who said that he supported the national security supplemental in April to send many billions to Israel and Ukraine.
Will he continue supporting that?
What about, we cannot be stupid how we spend money.
We need to have strategy and oversight.
Soviet Union was defeated not by weapons, but by smart strategy.
But have smart energy policy.
And that's what it takes.
And financial policy.
And that's what he can bring to the table.
Not to have never-ending wars where it costs a lot of money and a lot of lives.
And that's what, you have to be much smarter.
And he's a very smart man.
What about the Biden administration policy where they allow Ukraine to use U.S.
weapons to hit certain targets within Russia, but it's never clear what the parameters are?
It's all politics, and ultimately, you know, we have a serious war, and we shouldn't be tweeting Biden, you know, what they're doing, and threatening, putting over Twitter or X, and in reality, slow walk the aid.
Okay.
We need to have a serious conversation that Putin understands he shouldn't have advancing.
He cannot do what he's going to do, but force Europeans to step up too.
Do you think Trump would remove some of the constraints that Biden has tried to impose on Ukraine?
I think Trump will do whatever it takes to bring peace back.
And that's what we need.
And he will stand with allies like Israel.
He will put pressure on a lot of countries like Europeans that actually have been not serious about this situation and now it's become a problem for all of us.
And also a serious deal with China that's playing games with Iran and Russia to destabilize the whole world and come here.
So I think he's very serious and he's brilliant on his foreign policy because he's unpredictable.
That deters a lot of aggression.
All right, thank you, Congressman.
Okay, I see Congressman Mike Lawler of New York, so let's go to him.
So I wanted to ask you a couple questions about a forthcoming Trump administration and Israel policy.
You spent a lot of time on that.
Also, issues around anti-Semitism.
Do you expect for Trump to be more aggressive in combating anti-Semitism, using the mechanisms available in the federal government to pursue some of the initiatives that you've tried to advocate in Congress?
What's your general synopsis of that?
Yeah, look, the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act that we passed through the House, 320 to 91, codified President Trump's executive order.
From December 2019, right?
Absolutely, which required the Department of Education to adopt the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism and all of its contemporary examples for Title VI violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
So the President led on this back in 2019.
And obviously, we've seen in the five years since, anti-Semitism on the rise, not just here in America, but around the globe.
The terrorist attack against the State of Israel on October 7.
And so I absolutely expect that in a second Trump term, that he would continue to lead, not only in his strong support of Israel—remember, he's the President that moved the U.S.
Embassy to Jerusalem.
He brags about that to this day, very often.
It's not so much about bragging.
He did what other presidents said they would do and did not.
And I think that speaks volumes, obviously, to his support for Israel, but also, obviously, his support of the Jewish people.
Now, in terms of your legislation that would have required the adoption of the IHRA definition within the civil rights enforcement framework, there's been some controversy among other conservatives on that.
There was famously a claim that it could have criminalized citing the Bible.
I'm not endorsing that, but there was some controversy.
Question the validity of some of the statistics that are used to tabulate anti-Semitic incidents.
Like, sometimes it's a little bit ambiguous, or the criteria, especially for the ADL, comes under scrutiny.
Is it empirically unassailable that there's been this massive surge?
Is there any room for debate or questioning as to whether those statistics are sound?
First of all, on the issue of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, it does not ban the Bible.
It does not criminalize Christianity.
I'm a practicing Catholic.
I would not put forth legislation that would do that.
It obviously has First Amendment protections, both in terms of speech and the right to practice one's religion.
But with respect to stats of anti-Semitism, I don't think anybody really would question that there has been a rise in anti-Semitism.
When you see what we saw on these college campuses, obviously there's been a rise in anti-Semitism.
What statistics somebody cites or how that is compiled, obviously anytime you're looking at stats, you can always look at the numbers and question something.
But I think part of the reason that we put forth the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is because these universities and colleges were failing to act, and in part because the definition of anti-Semitism, frankly, at times is not well understood.
It's fluid and it's often contested.
Well, of course it is, because there are people who hate Jews, and they want to say, no, that's not anti-Semitic, when in fact, it is.
Part of why I ask is because if you look at how the ADL, for instance, tabulates that data, They will take any pro-Palestinian rally, essentially, or a huge array of pro-Palestinian chants or whatever that may not be intrinsically anti-Semitic, but they consider it as such, and therefore they put it in the database.
Is that at all warranted to have skepticism about how that is done?
It's clear, and Congress recognized this, when you engage in a chant from the river to the sea calling for the eradication of the State of Israel, that is anti-Semitism.
But if you're a Jewish activist chanting that?
It doesn't matter what someone's background or ethnicity or religion is.
If you are engaged in that kind of conduct, then yes.
So they're self-hating Jews?
Look, you can label it whatever you want.
The bottom line is, when you have these incidents, which we have seen throughout the course of the last many months, you have seen a rapid rise in anti-Semitism.
And what we are saying as Congress is that these universities These colleges have a responsibility to keep these students safe.
If it was any other group, we know they would crack down on it because they have when it has popped up.
But for some reason, under the guise of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, they think it's okay.
And it's not.
It's wrong.
One final question.
Your wife is from Moldova, is that right?
Yeah.
And so you've taken a special interest in Eastern Europe or Ukraine-Russia conflict.
I've heard you cite that your wife is from Moldova, just throwing it out there.
The Biden administration doesn't really specify the parameters of this new policy that Biden announced in May, whereby Ukraine can use U.S.
weaponry to strike targets inside territorial Russia, but the Biden administration is not telling us what territory exactly.
It's ambiguous.
It seems to be just made up on the fly.
Do you see a problem with that, and might Trump resolve that to your liking?
Well, look, Russia, obviously, under the reign of Vladimir Putin, has committed war crimes here in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin is a vile thug and dictator, and Ukraine Much like other allies of ours, including Israel, has a right to defend itself.
And I think what, from my vantage point, not only should we be helping Ukraine in terms of arming them, we should be allowing them to prosecute the war and defend themselves accordingly.
Would that include, say, striking Moscow if they felt that that was necessary for their self-defense?
Look, at the end of the day, when Russia has invaded Ukraine and is marching towards Kiev, is your position that Ukraine should just roll over?
I mean, at the end of the day, they have to be able to not only defend themselves, but push back.
And that obviously requires the ability to strike the Russian military within Ukraine and potentially, obviously, looking at strikes in Russia.
And that is just a reality of war.
And if anybody thinks that the United States somehow would not defend its country, its borders, its people, they're kidding themselves.
And how do you anticipate Trump and maybe J.D.
Vance navigating that issue?
Look, Russia, China, and Iran are not our friends.
Donald Trump knew that and understood that as President of the United States.
I think it's clear when you look at what has been allowed to happen under Joe Biden, that we need to combat this malign effort.
Thank you, Congressman.
All right, there's Congressman Mike Lawler of New York.
Spelling out some thoughts on what he anticipates for policy regarding anti-semitism and Russia-Ukraine.
There's Scott Walker, former governor of Wisconsin, former presidential candidate.
Hey, Governor Walker.
I'm Michael Tracy.
We're with Rumble.
Yeah, good to see you.
So, um, I don't know about you, but after that terrible incident on Saturday, which I don't even want to think about, but I was struggling how to kind of comport myself.
I didn't want to just delve right back into standard politics.
It felt like there ought to be time to take a pause.
You know, just had to respect for the gravity of the episode.
How have you been thinking through that dynamic?
Because, you know, whether you like it or not, the convention was right upon us.
So what's your thought process been like?
Literally, thank God, by the hand of God, he was spared just by turning his head from a would-be assassin's bullet.
I thought back as a kid, I was just literally a kid when Ronald Reagan was shot more than four decades ago.
I remember how shocked I and the rest of America was.
Now, he actually had to go in for surgery and the whole bit.
Here, I mean, I think That pause and then seeing him standing up and then hearing thereafter that he was survived.
So, such a relief.
At the same time, we were horrified, upset.
But, you know, that's Donald Trump.
He's a fighter.
The idea that anyone would have assumed that under that circumstance, being shoved out into an armored vehicle would be the normal course.
But here's a guy who wants to let America, not just that crowd know, America know, He's not taking it.
He's not backing down.
I just thought that was indicative of the fighter that has been and will be President of the United States.
So you were Governor of Wisconsin from 2011 to 2019, is that right?
See, I know things, people.
I'm kind of a loser.
I didn't even have to Wikipedia that.
And you ran for President in 2016.
I believe you dropped out in September 2015, is that right?
I got out before I got a nickname.
Right, you didn't get, I don't want to speculate whatever nickname it might have been, but you were on a few debate stages with Trump.
So an interesting dynamic now in Wisconsin is that Tammy Baldwin, running for Senate, consistently in the polls with a couple of points, you know, sometimes quite a few points ahead of Biden.
The Democrats now seem paralyzed into inaction.
There may have been some momentum to Well, I think in the presidential, you've got a clear case where both candidates are known.
Everybody knows Donald Trump.
just got frozen after the incident this weekend.
What do you make of that dynamic when you compare the senatorial dynamic to the presidential dynamic in Wisconsin? -Well, I think in the presidency, you've got a clear case where both candidates are known. Everybody knows Donald Trump. Everybody knows Joe Biden. So the no amount of money advantage that the Democrats have will change things.
And so I think that's really the critical difference.
People know what they get with Joe Biden, and it's a mess.
It's not just because he's mentally questionable in terms of stability, particularly after the debate.
It's not just because of age.
It's because his ideas have failed us.
Americans see at high prices, gas, food, housing, you name it.
They see that he's failed on the border.
He's failed with public safety.
They know that Donald Trump's going to fight back on those things.
In the Senate race, I think it's a financial advantage.
She's got ads on all the time.
He has some, but not nearly enough.
And in the end, that's part of it, combined with the fact that even though she's really, really liberal, that is Tammy Baldwin, she's taken an adoptive strategy many Democrats do, which is keep your mouth shut at home, vote crazy in Washington.
And so, her opponent, Eric Covey, is going to have to expose that.
Are you the chair of this convention, or do you have some role at the convention?
What is your title?
So, Tommy Thompson, the former governor, and I are the co-chairs or honorary chairs of the host committee.
Yeah.
Tommy Thompson was a senator, right?
Governor, I'm sorry.
Four terms, so between us, we have seven statewide wins for governors.
He ran for president as well, right?
He did.
In 2008?
You got it.
You're on it, man.
So, I mean, what do you make of the prospects for a second Trump term?
For foreign policy.
Ukraine and Israel in particular, the two hot button issues.
J.D.
Vance having been named vice president is going to make the media scream that he's Putin's puppet or this kind of standard nonsense.
What would you anticipate for a second term Trump policy vis-a-vis Ukraine, vis-a-vis Israel, that would be different from the Biden administration?
Well, if Donald Trump was in his second term right now, Putin wouldn't be there.
But he's not, so let's look forward.
But I think that ties to it.
That's such second-guessing, that's counterfactual.
No, no, no.
Putin didn't make a step in during his four years.
He went in to the Korean Peninsula under Obama.
He went even further in under Joe Biden's Well, Trump did start arming Ukraine and that antagonized Putin.
He's through stink.
That's something we talked about with Reagan, but it's equally as true with Donald Trump.
Foreign leaders didn't mess around with Donald Trump.
They won't going forward.
Well, Trump did start arming Ukraine, and that antagonized Putin.
He said so in his own speech in February of 2022.
But I think in the end, he knows.
The bigger worry to me is not Putin.
It's the CCP and China.
China's a much more formidable foe.
China and Russia are closer than they've ever been, arguably.
Well, that's what I mean, but that's the bigger thing we should be focused on.
You look at our southern border, you look at Peter Schweitzer's book Blood Money, he documents how there's 2,000-some Chinese nationalists acting as chemists that are just across our southern border, that they're providing pill presses at cost, doing all these things to undermine America from within.
China's a much more fierce opponent.
and adversary to the United States right now.
I think Donald Trump's been very clear in pushing back against China.
I think when it comes to Israel.
What does pushing back mean, militarily?
Well, again, I think you don't need to.
Ronald Reagan, when I was a kid, the safest time in American history was when the eight years Ronald Reagan was president, and he built up the military.
Peace through strength wasn't just some slogan.
People were afraid to mess with Donald Trump in the United States because of his actions.
Well, there are some conservatives nowadays who at least claim to be skeptical of what they call the military-industrial complex.
Peace through strength, that cliche, that requires spending massive money on the military budget, payoffs to defense contractors, that sort of thing.
Is that what we're expecting?
Ballooning the military budget even further?
No, I think you should be smart, and the fact is we haven't been for quite some time.
We can be highly effective when it comes to military deterrence.
In the years after Reagan, we had what we called the peace dividend, that by bringing the Soviet Union to their knees, we not only were able to draw down what we had to spend their Those are in the Clinton administration.
He claimed that he reaped the peace dividend and could lower military spending.
Clinton got it because of Reagan.
If the Soviet Union was still a threat, we were still dealing with nuclear proliferation, it wouldn't have happened.
Because of Reagan's strength, we had that.
It's precisely why when Democrats will point to that era and having a balanced budget, it was only because of that and because House Republicans held onto that.
But I think going forward, again, it's one of those where we should take care of America first.
But at the same time, you can still be a deterrent to people taking aggressive actions around the world just by the virtue of strength.
All right, thanks Governor Walker.
Okay, so we are with the mayor of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, and you had an unusual experience recently.
Before you explain it for our audience here, how many times have you Relayed this same story in the past, like, 36 hours?
Too many times to count, sir.
But it's an important story, I think, to tell from the perspective of a Butler County resident who is on the ground there with President Trump and everybody else at the rally on Saturday, July 13th.
So just give a nutshell version of what happened, what you did, what you experienced, and what you make of it now.
Well, I can't help but keep going back to the thought of that hero fire chief, local fire chief Corey Compratore, who lost his life that day, and then of course with the other individuals who were very seriously injured.
That's what my mind keeps going back to that day, but over that shock.
You know, it's just shocking that something like that could happen in our backyard in Butler County.
Butler County is a blood-red Trump country county.
We've adored President Trump since he first came down the Golden Escalator in 2015.
Never would I have thought that President Trump would come to visit us again in Butler County and be greeted with that.
And I'm just so sad right now that the words Butler County are on the lips of everybody in the world for something so ugly because there's just so much good So you spoke to Trump shortly before he went out to start delivering his speech, which was then cut short, as we now know.
You spoke to Trump shortly before he went out to start delivering his speech, which was then cut short, as we now know.
And you were in the front row while the event was underway.
So describe that, and what does it feel like to have been witness to such a monumental event now?
Obviously waking up Saturday morning, you never could have dreamt that that is what you would experience, and you've been on the go ever since.
So what's your mindset right now?
Yeah, well, you know, my vantage point, my perspective was from the front row of what I would call stage left.
If you're the press poll looking at the president, of course, if you are the president and you were looking over your right shoulder at three o'clock, you would have seen me and my wife, Sean and Melanie Parnell, Dave McCormick, Congressman Dan Muser, Congressman Kelly.
We were all right there.
Rico Elmore as well, and a couple of others.
So we had a front row seat to everything.
And so what started off as just a joyous moment and an occasion for hope and inspiration turned very ugly very quickly.
So reflecting back on it now, I go back to that image of President Trump raising his hand in triumphant defiance, simultaneously showing us that he was safe.
And not only that, but showing steadfast leadership, which was so necessary in that time to offer reprieve to everybody on the ground there that was experiencing that horror with him, but also for the world to see a leader who is going to be strong for his people.
If he had showed any weakness in that moment, it would have been to the detriment of the entire nation and the world.
So we're grateful to President Trump for that.
More than anything, I just want to go back one more time to a hero, Fire Chief.
He lived as a hero, he died as a hero, Corey Combratore, and then those individuals who were seriously injured.
My thoughts and prayers and the prayers of the nation are with them, and I do hope that God's healing hands are placed on their families in this moment of need.
So when the shots rang out, How long did it take for you to process what had happened?
We talked before, you told me how you reacted.
Just bring us back to that unfortunate moment and how your natural reflexes just kick in and what you did.
I don't think anybody processed really what was happening when that first shot rang out.
My ear recognized the sound, but I don't think I wanted to believe it.
I really was saying to myself, this has to be a firecracker.
There's no way at a Trump rally, former President of the United States, that a security breach like that would have occurred.
So that's, you know, my first thought there.
But then when the second, third, fourth shots rung out, it was, you know, very much so confirmed what I didn't want it to be and that was gunfire.
Gosh, you know, it's difficult to look back now and feel a sense of relief in that moment that, you know, My family, my loved ones, especially my wife, are safe and that the President is safe and he's here with us right now.
In fact, he just entered the RNC floor.
It's hard to mix those emotions of relief with emotions of sadness and despair and grieving and regret that the event had turned so ugly.
And I just hope this is a learning opportunity for everybody in the United States and the world to understand that You know, violence is not the answer.
It certainly should not have occurred.
So do you have a theory now as to the security failures or how it is that he could have bear crawled apparently up into that tin corrugated roof, I think it was, and have such an easy shot?
I mean, if he were a slightly better shooter, or a slightly better shot, He could have had a fairly easy target.
At least that's what I gather based on people who are much better marksmen than I am.
What do you make of that now with some hindsight from a security standpoint?
What went wrong?
Well, you know, I'm not going to comment on what I think might have happened.
I want to make sure that all of the facts are present for me to study before I make any kind of determination.
So I don't want to talk about what I think went wrong as far as security was concerned.
I do want to take this moment, though, however, to sing the praises of the law enforcement officers and the Secret Service that I saw on the ground with us inside the venue during that time.
From the time that we got in there, they were concise and they were orderly.
They were respectful.
They were making sure that everybody was safe.
They were handing out waters, of course, to people as folks were getting faint from the extreme heat that was there.
They were helping to remove them to the medical tent.
And then, of course, when the shots rang out, I watched those law enforcement officers and Secret Service agents address and assess that situation and neutralize that threat immediately.
And so that's my perspective of the security situation on the ground there.
I can only speak to what I saw.
Most of my time was spent backstage, whether it was before the pre-program or whenever I was waiting.
And you spoke to Trump backstage, right?
I spoke with President Trump 15 minutes before the shots rang out.
And he was such a kind man.
I told him it was an honor to meet him.
He came back even with a compliment.
He had said that he watched my remarks, my speech, During the pre-program and he said that, you know, he told me you're doing a great job.
And I listened to every word.
He asked me how it was going on the ground.
I told him, Mr. President, Butler County is working hard for you.
We're going to deliver Pennsylvania for you to get you back in the White House and take this country back.
And he said, I think we're going to do it.
And I said, I sure hope so, sir.
And that's how I left the president.
Fifty minutes later, he would be the target of this violent maniac.
You saw him bloodied?
I did.
I saw him grab his ear.
I saw the Secret Service jump on top of him to protect him.
I saw him stand up.
I saw the blood.
I'm looking at his right profile, of course, from my angle.
And I saw him wrangle his arms and head out of the huddle of Secret Service agents so that he could show us all that he was alive and that he was well and that he was there with us.
What a moment.
Again, just such a wide range of emotions to try to process.
And of course, it's only now Monday, so in 48 hours, hardly anybody who was there has had a proper moment to really digest and comprehend what it is that happened.
And finally, what is it like for you to transition now to Politicking.
I mean, we're at a Republican National Convention, at least for a short period.
People had an instinct to maybe take a pause from just standard political discourse.
I felt that myself.
But like it or not, the Republican Convention was very shortly upon us and here we are.
So what's that transition been like for you?
How are you navigating that?
Sure.
Well, you know, I want to take this moment to speak directly to President Trump and say that, sir, it's our priority that we're here with you, and that's why everybody's here on the ground at the RNC today.
Our mission is to complete this journey with you and get you back to the White House.
And so, for as much as we might have liked to have taken that moment, It's down to business.
We have a country to save.
We're going to take it back.
We're going to do the right thing.
I'm happy that it's going to be Senator J.D.
Vance, a fellow Marine, that's going to be leading the charge with him.
I know that he's going to take those Marine Corps values of honor, courage, and commitment to the Trump administration and the White House to help President Trump lead the nation and ultimately lead the world as the leader of the free world.
All right, thank you, Mr. Mayor, and we'll speak again sometime.
All right, so we're with Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia.
How you doing, sir?
Doing fine, appreciate it.
There used to be a Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia, so I don't want to get confused.
No relation, no relation.
Okay, okay.
So what is your sense currently of The reverence for Donald Trump that has intensified in the wake of the obviously terrible incident over the weekend.
Is there a kind of new mythology building around him or how would you characterize it?
We hear people talking even in like religious terms about him being spared from the bullets worst impact.
So what do you make of that?
Well, I think anybody that says it wasn't a miracle.
Didn't see what happened.
It is an absolute miracle and I think divine intervention that he is still here.
To move your head and to have that bullet graze your ear like that is something that you can't explain anyway.
But beyond that, you're talking about a person that ever since he actually got elected, I would say even before that, they tried to knock him out.
It didn't work.
He gets elected.
They start indicting his cabinet.
They start impeaching him twice.
Then when he gets out, they run him through these bogus prosecutions.
Then they call him a felon.
They call him a Nazi.
They call him Hitler.
None of that's working.
And so they're the ones, this socialist agenda, the Democrat Party is the one that has been inciting this violence throughout the past seven and a half years anyway.
So why wouldn't that be the next logical step that you would see is somebody take a shot at President Trump?
So when you say there was divine intervention, how does that translate into how ordinary supporters or even more politically oriented supporters like Hubei this convention view Trump?
Does he have some kind of religious Is Zeal backing him or does he have some kind of divine providence that's guiding him?
I know there are some evangelical Christian supporters who believe variations of that with regarding Trump.
So what does that tell you?
Well, it tells me I don't have any other explanation as to why this guy didn't get shot in the back of the head, other than the fact that the good Lord said, "I need you to finish the task." This country's got a lot of issues.
You tie into what I was just saying about seven and a half years of what's been going on in this country, whether it's the BLM movement burning down cities, killing cops, whether it's the fact that we're letting thugs, criminals, murderers, child rapists, Human traffickers come across our border, that southern border, just invading our country.
But you've got one man that's been standing in the gap for seven and a half years saying, this is enough.
We've got a morality problem in this country as well.
But this guy has been standing up, he even stood up after he was shot at, and pumped his fist and said, I'm still here, and I'm still ready to go, and I'm still gonna fight.
And you can't explain that any other way than the good Lord standing there saying, I've got my hand on you.
So you voted in April for the $26 billion in Israel funding in the National Security Supplemental.
Do you view that as also having any kind of biblical justification or basis?
How do you think about that issue?
You know, sure.
As a Christian, our job is to protect Israel.
As long as the United States protects Israel, then God will bless this country.
And that's the way I look at that vote.
And, you know, sure, I think that the good Lord is looking at us.
We are here.
We have been so blessed, and we have been so abundantly blessed, because we have always looked after Israel.
The Jewish people are the chosen people by God.
And it's clearly written in the Bible.
And if you are a Christian and you really believe your Bible, and you should, it's a word written by God, then that's what you'll do is pick up and you'll make sure that you support that country over there and support the Jewish people.
Do you see any tension between the notion of America First and also being a stalwart supporter of Israel, sending billions of dollars, weaponry, other forms of support?
Is there any conflict there between America First and also being very much entangled in the Middle East?
I think what I just said helps America First.
It ensures that America stays first.
You know, as long as we do our job as a Christian community and as my Christian faith tells me, then you will receive the blessing in return.
And that's just like with America First.
We will remain first.
This country is the best country in the world, and it's by far A Christian nation.
And we should act that way, even towards Israel.
So would you hope if Donald Trump were back in power, he would impose fewer restraints or constraints on Israel in their ability to conduct, say, their war effort in Gaza or maybe with Hezbollah?
Would that be the improvement in your mind that Trump could bring in compared to Biden?
You know what I think?
I think that Biden has shown the world that we're weak.
He's a weak leader.
The world doesn't fear us.
We're laughing stock out there, because this country will not do anything to stand up for itself now.
When Donald Trump goes back into that White House, day one, you're going to see a change in this world, because people are going to fear us again, just like when he was in there the first time around.
You didn't have this problem.
You didn't have any problems around the world.
That's because people respected us and they understood that you have somebody in the White House that will do what he says he's going to do.
What about the constraints on Israel in particular?
Would you prefer that, for example, Trump give Israel greater free reign to conduct a war effort in Gaza or in Lebanon or wherever it might be?
I would prefer that Joe Biden would do like what Trump's going to do and just let those people protect themselves over there.
They're not the ones invading countries.
People are trying to invade them.
You've got Hamas over there that said they wanted to wipe them to extinction, wipe them off the face of this earth.
Israeli and Jewish people didn't say that.
They have the right to defend themselves, they have the right to protect themselves, and they have the right to protect their land, and they need to do that, and they're going to do it.
As long as I'm up there, I'm going to be standing there helping them.
Okay, what about Georgia?
In 2020, the Republicans lost both Senate seats.
And Biden, at least we're told, won the presidential election in Georgia in 2020.
What precautions or what measures are Georgia Republicans taking to maybe achieve a different outcome for 2024?
Whether it's election procedure, there's a lot of controversy around that from 2020, whether you want to claim fraud or some other issue.
What's going to be different in 2024?
Well, there's several things different.
Number one, Georgia cleaned up their voting roll, which they needed to.
We also decreased the amount of drop boxes we got out there.
I prefer we didn't have any drop boxes.
Don't think we need them.
But the third thing that it did, which was so huge, it woke up the electorate, whether you thought that the election was stolen, rigged, or whatever.
It woke up that electorate.
The Republican people are fired up.
They understand now.
No matter what the rules are, no matter how many days we got early voting, no matter what absentee... Well, Trump supports early voting now.
He says, if you want to vote early, go ahead.
So I guess there's no problem with that any longer.
No, I didn't say there wasn't a problem with it.
But if that's the rules of the game, then you engage as hard as you can using the rules you can to win.
It's just like on a football field.
Whatever the rules are, you do that.
Even though you don't like them.
This time around, what we've got to do is make sure that we get so many people into those polls, and we vote, and we win that thing so big that it'll never be rigged, and it can't be rigged.