Tate Brown and Sam Nunberg dissect a failed assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where shooter Cole Tomas Allen fired near President Trump and VP JD Vance before being subdued. They analyze Allen's manifesto linking him to "Wide Awakes" and "No Kings" protests, arguing Trump faces unique targeting due to his irreplaceable leadership role. The discussion contrasts this violence with past Republican safety, critiques media handling of hate speech definitions, and advocates for structural security upgrades like a dedicated ballroom to counter modern threats. Ultimately, the episode frames current political instability as a direct result of effective conservative governance provoking radicalized opposition. [Automatically generated summary]
This is Tate Brown here holding it down on this beautiful Monday afternoon.
This is obviously the afternoon.
We're taking you from the morning to the afternoon on the Rumble Daily lineup, and I'm very happy to be back with you guys once again for another week of action.
And boy, was there action over the weekend.
Trump survives a third prominent assassination attempt.
Obviously, there's sort of assassination attempts all the time from any indication, but obviously, ones that get That's close, right?
This is the third instance of that happening.
Now, this one wasn't nearly as dramatic as Butler, obviously, where he quite literally was grazed by a bullet.
I mean, it doesn't get any more action packed than that.
Side note I remember after the shooting in Butler, I had a friend from Brazil reach out and he was like, How is it that the United States is just constantly pumping out Hollywood level scenarios just on almost like a monthly basis?
Just something comes out of the United States that is just so dramatic.
So breathtaking.
And I'm like, look, we're America.
That's what we do.
We are a loud and proud people.
And when we decide for there to be a situation happening, it is kicked up a notch in the United States.
That's just how it works.
And once again, we had an assassination attempt.
Obviously, we saw it happen.
It went down Saturday.
And Saturday night at the Washington Hilton, obviously, where many people know the Washington Hilton from, is yes, the White House Correspondence Center, but also.
That was the site of the Reagan assassination attempt that would have been almost 40 years ago, over 40 years ago now, which is really crazy.
Yeah, and so, you know, we saw this situation.
A man rushed through the security apparatus and he fired a shot off.
Obviously, it hit a Secret Service member.
Luckily, he was wearing a flak jacket, so, you know, he was fine.
But yes, very dramatic.
Obviously, we all saw the scenes.
I don't need to play them at this point.
It's been two days.
If you haven't seen the clips by now, I don't know what to tell you.
But, you know, we see everyone duck down for cover.
Secret Service whisk away Trump and JD Vance.
And, you know, they start diving on top of different members of the administration that are in the presidential chain of, you know, succession.
What's crazy to think about is because everyone was in that room, you know, everyone in the presidential line of succession was in that room.
If heaven forbid something were to have happened, the president would have been Chuck Grassley, who's like 95 years old.
So that kind of shows, you know, I know President Trump has come out and he said, you know, Secret Service did their job, these things happen.
But you got to ask some questions.
I mean, we're seeing different videos that, you know, because I mean, the place was packed with the press.
If there's one place for something like that to go down and you want max coverage, it would be the Correspondence Dinner.
But we saw, you know, some reports from some different journals that were there that security felt a little bit lax.
And this wasn't just the left wing media, this was a lot of right wing conservative press was saying, hey, yeah, they were kind of rushing people through.
It didn't feel too.
You know, locked down, that sort of thing.
Some people said they left early because of just, you know, general anxiety that they kind of felt like a looming feeling, which is neither here nor there.
I guess we had some soothsayers in the audience, but, you know, there's something to be said about that, that, you know, every once in a while they kind of let their guard down and situations like this happen.
Now, how do you stop a guy that's rushing through security?
Well, you would have a perimeter on the outside.
I mean, he was carrying a shotgun.
You know, you would have thought that he would have been stopped before he even got anywhere close to the Washington Hilton, but it is what it is.
President Trump.
Survives another assassination attempt.
You know, you got to think at this point, he has plot armor.
And this is what I don't think these assassins realize is that President Trump, for a variety of reasons, has plot armor, right?
You're not going to remove him from the equation.
It's just not going to happen.
You know, you can try as many before have and failed, but no, you're not going to stop.
You're not going to stump the Trump in this situation.
And yeah, once again, he emerges unscathed in this situation.
You know, he doesn't even have any bullet grazes.
He just trucks on in.
I was following the course, I was watching the correspondence dinner actually, and I watched the whole situation go down.
I mean, I had it up in the car, so I couldn't really watch it, but I could hear the commotion and everything.
And I was like, wow, that's pretty crazy.
And then, like, 30 minutes later, Trump's like, Yeah, we got the situation.
At the time, we thought the shooter was dead.
The initial report was that they just slimed out the guy in the lobby.
And I loved that idea of like, just mop the guy up, mop the blood up, and let's get this show on the road again.
That was like what President Trump wanted to do.
And I absolutely love that.
I think that just epitomizes what makes Trump so great and a myriad of reasons.
But yes, we're going to get into all that.
The latest on the correspondence dinner shooting.
The shooter obviously is in custody and he's scheduled to appear in federal court.
Today, actually, in Washington, D.C., the initial prosecution is going to be, you know, assault of a federal officer, you know, discharging a gun, you know, the kind of basics, but obviously they're going to tack on more and more stuff as they build a case.
Now, before we get into everything, what's interesting about this situation so, you know, the FBI after Butler was communicating with the American people, right?
The FBI after Butler was giving us the latest on what was going down, what their findings were, et cetera, et cetera.
That is pretty rare, actually.
So, usually when there's a situation like that, You know, the prosecutors, the investigators, they're all tight lipped, right?
Because they're trying to build a case.
Now, in Butler, the explanation is well, the shooter was dead, so there wasn't really any, you know, case that needed to be built.
Like, what are you going to do?
What's interesting about this one is that they are communicating.
So the prosecution, the law enforcement apparatus is sort of communicating, you know, what their findings are, what they're seeing, et cetera, et cetera.
They're passing stuff along to the press.
That's pretty rare.
So the shooter is fine, you know, he's in custody, et cetera.
But the prosecution, that's just unprecedented.
I'll say that.
That's unprecedented.
Maybe not unprecedented, but that is rare, right?
Typically, they're very tight lipped.
They're trying to build a case against the guy.
They don't want anything, you know, they don't want to show his defense any cards.
But in this situation, they're, you know, everything they got is being released.
I mean, we already have the manifesto, which is quite crazy because typically in these situations, we don't see the manifesto for quite some time.
So let's just get right into this first story.
I'll get it pulled up here.
This was from NBC News.
NBC News has the story here.
Suspect and White House correspondents' dinner shooting wrote of targeting Trump administration.
So I'll just read the names here.
I know it's like practice, typically not to read the names of these guys because you don't want to sort of.
A lot of these sickos, especially in mass shootings, is where I just won't read the name because typically they want attention.
That's the primary, sometimes or typically the primary reason that they do this sort of thing is because their life sucks, they're losers, et cetera, et cetera.
So they got to sort of make a name for themselves on the way out.
And getting their name plastered all over the press.
And, you know, they like that.
They're narcissists.
They like people combing through their personal details and they love the idea that there's going to be a Netflix documentary on them and that sort of thing.
But in this instance, his name is plastered everywhere.
Like, what are you going to do?
Cole Tomas Allen is accused of rushing a security checkpoint armed with a shotgun, handgun, and knives and exchanging gunfire with law enforcement.
Now, we can play the quick video here from inside the ballroom.
Maybe this computer has been a little sluggish here lately.
I don't know what's going on, but you can see here the video of this dude just charging through the security checkpoint at the Washington.
This is outside the ballroom.
Really, some dramatic stuff here.
You can see everyone ducking for cover.
Secret Service starts scrambling.
They whisk away the president and the vice president.
Boom, these guys jump up.
They got the straps, they're ready to go.
Really dramatic scenes.
And honestly, like, you know.
That would be a pretty scary situation.
I think that's, you know, maybe not the most profound thought in the entire world, but if I were there, I'd be a little nervous, I suppose.
You know, I'd be like, well, this is quite the situation.
I'll have to get my head blown off.
Like, what's going on here?
Very dramatic situation.
It's worth noting that the ballroom at the Washington Hilton, a lot of people don't know this.
The ballroom at the Washington Hilton is down a floor.
So you come in through the checkpoint, it's a hotel.
So there's a lot of guests that are staying at the hotel.
And so, although they're hosting this massive event, obviously, and they do this all the time, so it's not.
You know, the way it works with the Washington and, you know, the White House correspondence dinner is Hilton sort of takes a step back from security and Secret Service takes over.
So, Secret Service and other related agencies are handling all of the security at the White House correspondence dinner.
But what's interesting, a lot of people know this, is that the lobby the guy ran through, the video we're all seeing, is actually up a floor from the ballroom.
So, what he would have to do, and I don't know how he thought he was going to pull this off, is he was going to have to run through and then most.
Most likely run down a staircase, right?
Run down a staircase to get to the ballroom.
Surely he would have known that by that time they've radioed it in.
By the time you see on the video, the guys have already whisked the president away and jumped on the table and they have the guns out and everything, he wouldn't even have made it down into the ballroom yet.
So, you know, again, this guy is clearly a crazy person.
But yeah, a lot of people don't know that.
A lot of people don't know that it's actually on a separate floor and then the ballroom is kind of sunk down a floor so that way they can make it big, right?
So that way they don't have to like build up.
They can just build.
You know what I mean?
It's different floors.
So, again, this guy apparently he had known this because he was running towards the staircase.
I actually have seen some conflicting reports on if he actually made it into the staircase or not.
I had heard that that's where the shot was actually dispatched that hit the Secret Service agent was in the staircase or the stairwell.
But regardless, they neutralized him.
We saw the picture, obviously.
He got owned.
He had a mugshot go up right away.
President Trump just chucked it out in Truth Social.
The guy without a shirt on just pinned down on the floor by Secret Service.
So, okay, they reacted pretty quickly.
Obviously, this is encouraging in that sense.
I guess the question is what was going on on the perimeter of the Washington Hilton that would allow this guy to just steamroll through?
Maybe they assumed because the event had already started that there wouldn't be as much of a need for intense security.
You know, they just had checked, you know, there's 2,500 people there.
You know, they just vetted 2,500 people.
They're tired.
They start to let their guard down a little bit.
That could be the explanation.
I don't know, but you hate to see that.
A lot of questions.
There's a lot of questions regarding, you know, how does this seem to keep happening?
Again, I'm pretty skeptical of any conspiracy theory here because I'll just like full disclosure I don't find it difficult to believe that left wing people hate Trump enough to kill him.
They say it all the time.
If you go on Twitter, they say it all the time.
Like there was a tweet that had like 300,000 likes and they were just like, oh, assassinate.
Why don't assassins hit their target anymore?
Like, what's going on?
So, it's really not hard to believe that there's a sizable chunk of the country that would just put a bullet in every right winger if it were up to them, if they could.
So, again, this is like there's conspiracy, and we'll get into one scintillating conspiracy or at least a lead.
But again, I just don't really find it difficult to believe.
I'll just read here.
The California teacher and engineer is accused of opening fire outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner, believing it was his duty to target Trump administration officials, according to a note he sent family members about 10 minutes before the Saturday attack.
Cole Tomas Allen, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance.
Is the armed suspect federal authorities subdued near the packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton, where President Donald Trump and other White House officials gathered with journalists?
A federal official familiar with the case told NBC News.
I'll just skip a line down here.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch said on Meet the Press on Sunday that authorities believe the suspect traveled by train from LA to Chicago and then Chicago to Washington, D.C., where he checked into the hotel where the correspondence dinner was at at least a day before.
I'm assuming he would have been in the last day or two.
So he'd already been checked in at the hotel.
So here's the manifesto.
This is really hilarious, quite frankly.
Fisher King put some good commentary up here.
Cole Allen's manifesto is glib.
It starts with an exclamation mark and a joke, followed by some apologies he doesn't mean.
But the fact that he calls Trump a pedophile, rapist, and traitor shows he has been marinating in extremist propaganda, and that has consequences indeed.
I mean, again, Um, if you truly were under the impression that Trump was all three things a pedophile, a rapist, and a traitor if you truly believe those things, it wouldn't be hard to believe that you would feel like you needed to do something about that.
If the guy is president, I mean, you'd be like, Oh my gosh, this is like you know, this is it's my duty as an American to do something about this.
That shows you why it's pretty dangerous.
The I mean, I hate to like pearl clutch here, but it's true.
Is the rhetoric that's being you know deployed against President Trump that's just completely false is quite literally putting a target on his back.
This stuff's going to keep happening.
I mean, it's been happening for 10 years now.
But the intro is so Reddit.
Like, look at this intro that he did for his little monologue here.
Hello, everybody.
So, I may have given a lot of people a surprise today.
Let me start off by apologizing to everyone I trust whose trust I abused.
Literally starts the most Reddit.
This guy's clearly a Redditor.
I mean, you can just tell by his intro here.
It's literally like, Well, that just happened.
I mean, it's literally like SNL level writing for his intro here.
It's just like, I can't stand it.
This is like, you know, sorry to all the millennials in the crowd.
I love millennials, I think they're fantastic.
They're great folks.
But the millennial, like, theater kid SNL Americans are just really, like, just off putting.
Like, this language alone, this guy should be facing federal charges just for the way he speaks, quite frankly.
I mean, it's just like, Like nails on a chalkboard.
You know, this guy probably thinks that, you know, Stephen Colbert is like hilarious and he loves the bits that he does and everything.
I mean, it's just like this type of millennial, this millennial archetype really is the most grading type of people that are out there.
Thankfully, you know, the Republican Party has a generational opportunity as JD Vance is.
The vice president.
Obviously, he's the frontrunner right now for the 2028 presidential nomination.
He himself is a millennial and he himself codes very millennial, right?
He's unmistakably a millennial.
Part of me is thinking maybe he could be a de radicalization agent.
Maybe he appears on SNL and he drops a few millennial bars.
Maybe he does a rap from Hamilton or something and just completely disarms these people.
I don't know.
Maybe that could be a situation we could see.
I don't really know.
I'm just speculating here.
I'm sort of throwing around some ideas.
That's what we do on this show.
We throw around ideas.
But just a really sinister intro is to use SNL speak, Redditor speak, to basically declare your intention to murder the president of the United States and other members of his cabinet.
Really just some bizarre.
Despicable stuff.
We can laugh about it because no one died, right?
But if this situation ended up being a lot more egregious than it was, it'd be a little bit of a different mood right now, to say the least.
This is from open source intel commentating on Fox News.
The reporters' findings here.
The shooter's manifesto said he wanted to target administration officials.
Investigators also found extensive anti Trump and anti Christian rhetoric across his social media accounts.
According to reports, Allen's brother alerted the New London Police Department after receiving the alleged manifesto before the incident.
U.S. Secret Service and Montgomery County Police Department later interviewed Allen's sister, Avriana Allen, at the family home in Rockville.
Key points from the interview she said her brother often made radical statements and spoke about doing, quote, something to fix today's world.
She confirmed he bought two handguns and a shotgun from CAP Tactical Firearms and stored them at the parents' house without their knowledge.
He regularly trained with those firearms at shooting ranges.
He was purportedly linked to a group called the, quote, Wide Awakes.
And he attended a No Kings protest in California.
Go figure.
I want to show here a few clips from President Trump's interview with 60 Minutes, which was a doozy.
You know, it's interesting about President Trump is he continues, and this is fine, this is his prerogative, but he continues to give these massive interviews to hostile outlets.
Now, There's a strategy there, which is he's going for max exposure, and he knows that if it's a confrontational interview, then the clips will get syndicated a lot more than if he just goes on Hannity or something and just deals with softballs the whole time.
So these clips did go everywhere, and I think primarily it was because it was a hostile environment.
But he goes on 60 Minutes, and here were some of the clips from the interview.
This one was him commentating on the video that we saw at the lead here of the guy rushing through security.
Yes, if he truly was, and people have made this point before, if he was truly this fascist dictator, if he truly was a king, we wouldn't be dealing with all of this.
The courts certainly wouldn't dare to issue an injunction against any of his regal, royal declarations, proclamations, but he's not.
He's the president and he operates within a republic, which functions more like a democracy these days, unfortunately.
But yes, no, that's.
Quite funny is President Trump's offhand comment here about the No Kings protest.
Here's another clip, and I think this really kind of gets to the kind of crux of the issue here.
President Trump, this is very well said from him.
Take a look at this clip here.
He's commentating on sort of who he sees as responsible for this environment, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, one, political assassinations really aren't unprecedented in general.
I mean, they've been happening like to this point for a very long time.
But what he also is correct there, because that is worth noting, is that political violence, this isn't like it's rare.
Even, I mean, if you go back to like the 1960s, I mean, there were assassinations all the time.
What's interesting about the moment that we are in, right, in 2026, and I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, is that the political violence is coming from one faction within the United States, coming from the left wing.
And President Trump notes that, and I think that should be well emphasized is that, again, during the Biden years, you didn't see any operations like this.
Even when there were instances of high level mischief happening, I suppose, for a better word, it was like the Gretchen Whitmer thing.
And, you know, evidence came out that these guys were groomed by federal agents.
They kept tabs on them the entire time.
So, again, The amount of political violence coming from the right, there's not really much to speak of.
You know, not much comes to mind when you think about these things.
Again, it's coming from the left.
And I mean, the point has to be made for a variety of reasons, but it is true that, look, these politicians aren't directly responsible, right?
These talking heads aren't directly responsible insofar as they didn't say, hey, grab a gun and charge the correspondence dinner.
But what is true is they do have a civic responsibility to turn down the heat.
Because again, When you hammer these points over and over again that President Trump is a dictator, he's a pedophile, traitor, whatever you want to say that's not true, it's going to result in a national environment that will sort of push people that are already on the edge to do things like this.
So, again, I'm not saying that these people are directly responsible, but they are responsible.
What they are directly responsible for is the environment that sort of facilitates these sorts of situations.
That is 100% true.
And President Trump hits the nail on the head there.
This is hate speech from the Democrats.
And the actual definition, like if you actually analyze what he's saying, hate speech is speech that is predicated on hate, the actual definition of hate, not just like microaggressions, but actual hate.
They literally hate President Trump.
And when you really hate someone, we use hate, probably, we overuse it.
When you actually hate someone, you see zero redeemable qualities about someone, then yeah, you're going to get a bit violent.
I don't hate anyone.
I really don't.
I genuinely mean that.
I really don't hate anyone.
But a lot of people cannot say the same.
And they certainly hate the President of the United States.
I'm saying right now on the show, I guarantee this won't be the last time this happens because, again, I just don't see any sort of.
Reckoning from the left.
I don't see any sort of indication that they're going to be backing off of this rhetoric.
Again, we saw Jimmy Kimmel on his show last night doing a mock White House correspondence dinner, and he made a joke basically saying he had a picture of Melania up, and he says, Wow, Melania, you have the glow of a soon to be widow.
Like, what are we doing?
I mean, Melania came out and said this was just absurd, which is true.
I mean, how do you work?
Where is the sort of society that, you know, the societal compact here?
You know, I mean, the right seems to be.
You know, somewhat committed to it.
The left, not really.
They're just actively, not just antagonizing the right and sort of stoking these sort of violent tendencies among their more radical elements.
But in addition to that, you know, you're mocking, you know, a guy who, again, that was a serious threat.
That was a serious threat against his life.
So I want to skip to this before we bring in our guests.
President Trump, I'll just read his quote here.
When you're a consequential president or if you have a consequential administration, things that would happen.
Things that would happen wouldn't happen if you're Joe Biden.
And that's true.
And I think it's the primary reason is because Trump is effective.
That is the primary reason why they keep targeting him.
There's a reason why they don't target, you know, these based radicals.
They target guys that are effective and good at their job.
So I want to get to this.
This was interesting.
So this is kind of the opposite side.
So we saw a lot of people freaked out, a lot of tears, a lot of panic.
Obviously, you know, this is kind of the beauty of having like an every man on the scene.
You know, these are people that.
And I don't want to disparage them because this is like this indicates that you had a good upbringing, which is a good thing.
I don't like, you know, side, I don't like when people glamorize having a bad upbringing because it's like that is an unfortunate thing.
A lot of these people here are well to do, they have, you know, a solid background.
So when they're confronted with violence, you know, at this level, when they're confronted with danger, it can be quite a traumatic experience if you're not used to it.
And that's just the truth.
I'm not used to this, it isn't like a bad thing.
This is like good.
These are like people that are like normal childhoods.
That's a good thing.
I'm not disparaging them.
Dana White.
Kind of an everyman, you know?
His career is built around like fighting, like the UFC.
Like, this is a guy who kind of is used to having, you know, these high, you know, level intense events and these sorts of things.
So his cortisol is at all time lows.
This is happening.
And I love that response.
It's just like, actually, it was awesome.
Actually, it was awesome.
They're screaming to get down.
It was like a movie.
Like, this is awesome.
So I love that from Dana White.
That was hilarious.
Another one.
This is another.
So everyone, you know, everyone throughout the correspondence dinner, there were all these different side quests going on, these side events, subplots, is what people call them.
Wolf Blitzer said he was like literally standing by the shooter as he charged in.
So, Wolf Blitzer's side plot, you know, he's about to get shot by this crazy guy running in to kill the president.
That was wild.
So, Wolf Blitzer has his side, you know, subplot going on.
I don't know if you guys have been following the Michael Tracy subplot.
So, Michael Tracy, you guys may be familiar with him.
He's an independent journalist.
You know, he's just kind of a renegade, I would say.
People would categorize him as a contrarian thinker in the sense of, you know, typically you'll get a.
Take on a situation from him that you didn't think about, and it sort of spurs conversation.
I like Michael Tracy, I think he's really good.
Michael Tracy's subplot I don't know if he was drinking a lot, I don't know what was going on, but he was roaming the streets of DC on Saturday night looking to fight people.
It was really, really a wild situation.
Michael Tracy puts this up literally 1 a.m., a few hours after the shooting, and he's camped outside of the Hampton Inn and he's just saying, Jim Acosta, come fight me.
Come fight me, Jim Acosta.
What's going on?
Why are you hiding in there?
Come out here.
Come fight me.
I'm literally waiting for you right now.
That was his quote.
Because, you know, Jim Acosta had threatened to fight me, you know, Michael Tracy, at the Substack party, which was the night before, which was wild.
There were so many different parties going on in D.C.
I didn't go to any of them, but I did experience the traffic, which was horrible.
I was in D.C., but I was at just a normal social event.
And the traffic was unbelievable from all these different parties.
The Substack party, they had the Grinder party.
Which unfortunately, you know, sources are saying there was quite a large turnout from congressional staff at the Grindr Correspondence Dinner, which is not really a shock, not really unexpected.
I think we could have probably predicted that would be the situation.
The Grindr Party hit capacity pretty much right away because they just said, hey, if you're where.
Anyway, it's neither here nor there.
Substack Party goes down.
Most random cast of characters at the Substack Party.
And yeah, Michael Tracy puts up this tweet and says, Jim Acosta threatened to fight me tonight at the Substack Party.
So I don't know what's going on.
I don't know what's going on in DC right now, but all these guys, Michael Tracy is just roaming the streets looking to fight people.
He puts this, still have no idea whatever went on with Trump tonight.
Just know Jim Acosta threw a effing hissy fit.
Jim, meet me in front of the Hampton Inn.
And then post the address of the Hampton Inn.
Jim, I'm waiting for you right now.
A hilarious subplot from Michael Tracy.
And he puts this up.
He's going at it with Olivia Giuliana, you know, the heavyweight from Texas.
Everyone.
You know, she is very well aware of the presence, you know, her bold presence, expansive reach that she has.
And again, Michael Tracy just starts going, Let's do it.
You want to meet up somewhere tonight?
Meet outside the Hampton Inn at 10 30.
Who are you sending in your stead, Olivia Juliana?
I would love to have to give you the nice beatdown you requested.
No holds barred.
If you stay there, I mean, it's like unbelievable, Michael Tracy, the subplot, right?
He was just on a just going beast mode, just threatening to fight all these different casts, you know, this cast of characters, this motley crew that descended on the city.
Of Columbia, the District of Columbia.
And Michael Tracy was patrolling, you know, monitoring the situation, patrolling the streets again, looking.
He was just looking for a fight.
I mean, what's wrong with that?
Can you not do that anymore?
Is that just the country we're in where you can't even have a good old fashioned throwdown with another journalist?
I mean, people in Congress, congressmen used to beat each other up, like if they disagreed on bills.
Like they would beat each other up on the floor.
There was the caning.
I mean, hello, the caning.
I mean, they literally caned a member of Congress because he was just like being gay or whatever.
I don't know.
I don't know too much about that historical event.
But this was happening all throughout American history.
Well, I understand, and everyone's entitled to feel how they're entitled.
I've been to this event uh three or three times before during uh then President Trump's first term.
It's always a little strange to me, just so everybody can understand, they have this event which they've had.
I mean, at least through the 90s, at the Washington Hilton where President Ronald Reagan was shot right outside.
And I always think about that when you walk in.
So you walk into this venue.
I was a guest of the Washington Times.
And first of all, there were protesters, more protesters than I'd ever seen to any of the previous events.
And these people were, I wouldn't necessarily say they were totally violent Antifa, but they were extremely loud and aggressive.
One of them tried to run through the barrier.
We got cut off, and my car, I had to walk up three or four blocks.
When you go into the Hilton, you're walking down, and either Secret Service or FBI was there, and they just asked for you to present your ticket, which is unique.
And at that point, you then go in and into the hotel.
The ballroom is around a story down.
You go down an escalator.
And oh, no, excuse me.
It's two stories down.
You go down an escalator.
At that point, when you go down the initial escalator, you went through a metal detector.
And between the metal detector and the escalator down to the basement is, let's just say for argument's sake, it's a short distance.
I'll just say for argument's sake, for the way I'll describe the event, it's around 200 yards or so.
And from the wall to the escalator to the restrooms is another 200 yards.
So you have the metal detectors, you walk 200 yards down into the escalator, down into the ballroom, which is in the basement.
And if you want to go to the bathroom, you go to that escalator and you have around a 200 yard walk to the bathroom.
And my table was close to the doors in the back, which I found extremely convenient in general because it's, by the way, it's very difficult to get out of this regardless.
And so I leave to go up that escalator again.
And as I'm going up that escalator, I see somebody in the industry who I know.
I hope your viewers don't pass judgment.
I have to deal with them.
I saw Wolf Blitzer.
And so then I'm making a left to do that 200-yard walk to the men's room.
And I speak to Wolf for under a minute, but over 30 seconds.
And we're at the halfway point.
And then through the corner of my eye, as I'm at the door, thank God, I see somebody running.
And I didn't know if it was a gunshot.
I thought somebody maybe had a clicker or was trying to cause problems for them because it was definitely louder than a silencer, but it didn't sound like a shot if I'm at the gun range, for instance.
And I turn around and I see Wolf on the floor and I see somebody in black on the floor.
And I then hear multiple shots as well.
And then I see a Secret Service, I assumed.
It could have also been FBI.
On top of this person.
And I couldn't even tell if this person had jumped Wolf Blitzer.
So I was even thinking it was somebody who saw Blitzer and maybe wanted to attack him for whatever reason.
Because believe it or not, the leftists, they think that Wolf Blitzer is too pro, is a Republican for argument's sake.
They are so sick in the head.
And at that point, I opened up the bathroom door and I said to everyone, there were just shots fired.
There were shots fired.
Everybody go back.
And then I used the facilities.
And at that point, I was pretty calm.
And you've been around things like this before.
I grew up in New York City.
And then we all waited.
And then they had the, I assume they're the local hotel security, but they were the people that were at the metal detector.
They had them and another couple of staff go into the bathroom.
It was men and women.
And we stood there.
They brought in Wolf Blitzer's shoe.
And we were trying to figure out what went on.
And I asked Wolf, Wolf, was he attacking you?
And Wolf just said no.
So then I immediately knew what this was.
And then, once again, either the Secret Service or FBI, because they're indistinguishable at that point, they're in suits.
Two gentlemen came in.
They counted how many of us are there.
And they said, okay, all of you immediately leave the hotel, whether you work here or not.
And then I called my hosts and I called some other people as I was out, and they said that they, that, These people were all taken into the kitchen or they were taken out.
They were told not to sit at their table.
And now, remember, I'm with the Washington Times and we're sitting right by the door.
So perhaps they took everybody that were in these tables right by the door because they didn't know if somebody was going to try to run in or not.
And, you know, if I hadn't been in the bathroom, it probably would have taken me an extra hour and a half or so to get out.
So that was it for me.
So, ironically, since I was there and And near the incident, I think he was able to get out of the hotel in 30 minutes, less than 30 minutes after.
So, it's not, yeah, I mean, because it's interesting because, you know, I was, I was covering Dana White's reaction, you know, what someone tracked down Dana White after, you know, he was like scanning the room and he was like, that was awesome.
Like, I felt like it was in a movie.
And I was like, guys like you, guys like Dana, you know, you're kind of maybe not used to these situations, but like, it's not like life or death when this happens.
Like, you can stay calm, you can kind of, kind of, kind of analyze what's going on, et cetera, et cetera.
But a lot of the people that were there, and I didn't say this is a bad thing, but, you know, they come from backgrounds that maybe they're not used to these sorts of, Like, I mean, violence, like, you know, outright violence.
So they had to be pretty freaked out.
I mean, was the environment like, was there a lot of panic and were people like freaked out or did they kind of realize that, you know, threat was neutralized right away?
Like, what was the environment like that afterwards?
Well, the people I spoke to, they weren't, you know, hysteric or, or I hate to use that word for this, right?
But they weren't, but let's just say they weren't extremely upset.
And these are two, you know, female reporters who were pretty calm.
One of them was worried that they couldn't get in to get their, that they wouldn't be allowed back in the room to get their purse.
So she wasn't going to be able to leave or get into her home.
It was Alex Sawyer and Kerry Pickett of the Washington Times.
They were pretty calm.
But what I would say is I'm sure, let's say, the ones that are traumatized are the ones on the left and in corporate media who are pushing this junk against President Trump.
And that's pretty ironic to me.
That's pretty ironic to me.
And if you look at the coverage, I was watching, for instance, President Trump's interview last night.
I mean, well, I think he was very well said where he was like, I mean, hello, the left, they're using hate speech, the actual definition of hateful speech effectively inciting violence, at the very least, facilitating an environment that would lead to things like this happening.
It's a safety risk for Nora O'Donnell to start reading this quote unquote manifesto to President Trump in the White House the day after something like this, something terrible like this happened.
And let's also talk about the fact that President Trump is right.
This is a joyous event.
It's almost like a roast, right?
And both sides come together.
And even if I see Brian's stelter, I'll just.
Whatever, you know, and we don't go to the same after parties or anything, but everybody gets along.
And the idea that Nora O'Donnell would do something like that, it's almost as if they're reading, she's rationalizing his manifesto.
So there is just, it's never going to happen to another Republican president either, even though the media in general is extremely unfair to Republicans.
The way they have treated this man, it's just unbelievable.
It's just unbelievable.
And I would also note, I have not seen anybody on the right do any violence.
You know, in the last eight years or so, eight years or so, and you had somebody like Steve Scalise there who had been shot by a leftist.
You know, you had President Trump.
We still, for some reason, don't know all the facts behind that.
That's strange to me.
But President Trump shot by somebody.
We don't know his, we don't know the, you know what I mean?
And I think President Trump explained it quite clearly why he specifically is being targeted.
He said, not verbatim, but he said, it's because I'm effective.
It's because I'm good at my job.
I am good at sort of delivering policy positions.
And I've made this point before.
The great John Doyle over at the Blazers made this point as well is that the guys that are getting targeted, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, the reason they're being targeted is because they're effective, because they are not just occupying the mainstream, but moving it.
You know, moving it, physically moving it in a positive direction.
And, you know, these like really radical, super based guys, they're not getting targeted.
And you got to ask yourself, why is that?
It's because the left is identifying, okay, if I take this guy, because this is the unfortunate thing.
Michael Knowles made this point is like, assassinations do work because they're identifying guys that are linchpins for the movement.
They're identifying guys that are irreplaceable.
And who's more irreplaceable than Donald Trump?
We wouldn't be here without Donald Trump.
I mean, do we need to like, do we need to go into like what would have happened if Jeb Bush was president?
I mean, you know, heaven forbid, but it would have been Hillary Clinton as president.
he's effective he's irreplaceable there's no one like him that that's why i mean it's just and he explained it very well right you know when i worked for him um i had a family connection to him my father had worked for him actually he's a lawyer too but uh what the reason i the reason i knew that he was going to be the next president of the united states was in 2010 at the cpac event he he entered in through the main entrance you know with with uh with these people and i had never seen the paparazzi
I never seen such interest on our side, the Republican side, for somebody that's a politician.
I never seen that.
And when I heard him speak, I felt the way that Democrats on the other side felt when they saw Obama speak at the 2004 convention.
With elements of Ross Perot, with elements of the libertarian view, with other elements.
And that is extremely threatening to both sides of the aisle.
And when you look at what he did, and when you look at when he entered in 2016, you had John McCain and his friend Lindsey Graham giving over that junk.
And then, with I mean, it's hard for me to talk about Charlie Kirk, you know, and you just knew when you saw what happened that he wasn't going to make it.
And once again, I would say it's only happening on one side of the aisle.
And, and you know, they talk about this Epstein thing, this Epstein and this and that.
It's ironic to me because, whatever, whether or not.
We feel that more information should have been released by Pam Bondi.
And I do.
I think a lot of the information that would have been released wouldn't have made a lot of these people happy on both sides of the aisle, but that's neither here nor there.
What I would say is we talk about Epstein.
Let me just defend President Trump here.
It was during President Trump's first term that Epstein was prosecuted.
And I mean, yeah, to your point, I mean, it's one of those things where what we saw, I mean, a lot of that was in the Podesta release already.
So I'm just like, give me some names.
Who should we be like arresting and putting on trial?
And it's like the names they throw at, I'm like, we don't have enough there to charge these guys.
I mean, it's just like, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but I share your sort of analysis.
I guess I have one more logistical question about the correspondence dinner, but it kind of goes to the point of sort of who Trump is, his gravitas.
You guys are escorted out of the hotel.
I just saw some of the videos.
Everyone's calling home base and trying to give a report of what they saw, et cetera, et cetera.
I was watching Fox News, Trey Inks, which shows how bad the cell service was.
He was breaking up while he was trying to talk to the home base with Fox.
Trump had come out, and some of the reports were saying he wanted the show to go, you know, let's get the show on the road.
And it was funny because I was watching the dinner and I saw it all go down.
And the first reports were saying that the shooter was killed.
They were saying they killed him in the lobby.
And I was thinking in my head, I was like, was President Trump just like, mop this guy up and let's get this show back on the road?
Like, that's what I was thinking.
But obviously, we knew that he was detained, and President Trump was probably privy to that knowledge.
But that kind of really illustrates Trump is that he's not even really going to give these guys a time of day anymore.
He's not going to let these guys.
Just derail his agenda broadly, but like derail what's supposed to be a great night, kind of a unifying night for the country.
When you guys were on the outside, were you kind of sticking around, anticipating that he actually might just come back out and let's get the show back on the road?
I didn't believe some people were saying that he, my colleagues and my friends of mine, and I said, there's just no way we can have this.
And I thought that Mrs. Trump, our first lady, was going to tell them absolutely not.
Look, the one thing, I'm not going to talk or criticize the Secret Service or the logistics or the security there because they've had the events there before.
But what I would say, it was strange to me, this is a separate issue.
It was strange to me you had the vice president there.
Well, okay, but you also had the secretary of state there.
You had the secretary, you know, you had treasury, you had, you know, the secretary of war.
So, and then I had the FBI director a couple tables above me.
That's where, and I had asked other people, I mean, Joe Biden maybe went to one of those events once, and that was in 2016 with Obama.
Yeah, like it's just next up, like actual weekend at Bernie's will be the next president.
But, but I mean, yeah, I'm not like dog, you know, I'm not dog.
I trust Secret Service, like, knows what they're doing.
But that was just something that I had heard from a few of my friends that were there, was that they felt it was a little.
Weird, but also they're probably just not used to how these events work.
I mean, like, you know, Secret Service, they got a running log in their head of the situation.
And to be fair, the guy charged, I mean, I think the impetus would be maybe more on the police department as to like the perimeter being secured.
Because from my understanding, it's not Secret Service.
Because, you know, some people are asking, well, how did he even make it to the door in the first place if he had, you know, like obvious contraband on him?
And then, you know, he was able to like kind of sprint through the gate.
I mean, Secret Service did their job once he was in the building.
But, you know, some people are asking, like, well, how did they not clock him before he even got to the door?
Well, I don't know the makeup or the architecture of that place, but it's now there are certain reports that he went down the staircase.
I mean, he was staying there.
That's always strange to me, too, is that we're going to have an event like this, and then you can have God knows who staying in as guests.
So that's a separate issue as well.
And so I just don't know how, but for him, what they're trying, if we were on that second, The level right above, if he was able to get out some door, I would say, I don't know why that door wasn't being blocked or anything.
But is that the Secret Service or is that once again the hotel?
But then we get into the issue about, well, was it the Pennsylvania?
Was it the police at Butler or the Secret Service?
But I'm not here to criticize anyone because what I can tell you is that he fired a shot and this entire event that I described at the beginning of your show to me was less than five seconds for sure, maybe three seconds.
I mean, those guys have nerves of steel to just jump on that.
I mean, that's their job.
I know that's their job, but I mean, come on.
They're going above and beyond.
You're literally putting their lives on the line.
One more point we kind of got to hit on.
It's the obvious one.
I mean, people were almost like, you know, pointing out that almost everybody right of Ted Cruz was making this point, which was this is kind of another reason why we need a ballroom.
I mean, hello.
You know, the opposition to Trump's ballroom just seems like purely predicated on partisanship.
The arch, I mean, I've even seen some Democrats that are like, actually, the arch is kind of cool.
Like, you know, I'm not going to say anything, but it's kind of cool.
But, This kind of gets to the point of like, you know, unfortunately, I mean, I hate this situation, but we do need a ballroom.
Maybe not in the 80s, maybe we wouldn't have, but the situation now, it's like situations like this where, you know, you're dealing with, you know, Hilton, you're dealing with Capitol Police.
It's like, let's just keep everything in house for events like this.
And we could have more events.
I mean, at risk of something like a car driver, we need more.
So, maybe when they had these events in the 80s and the 90s, up until around, let's say, just 2000, you know, I don't know, 18 or so, you didn't have the same kind of threats now that we have.
But let me just give a little anecdote about that ballroom.
You know, that's one of the things David Axelrod used to laugh at President Trump and us.
I was on his team because President Trump immediately called in 2009 to tell Axelrod, who he knew through the Morning Joe show on MSNBC, he connected with him.
Yeah, absolutely no, and I think it illustrates the point And this is all of his agenda is that he, this isn't just like, he just randomly came, he's been thinking.
I mean, to your point with the axle rod story, I mean, he's been thinking about these things for decades, like he's just waiting to be able to implement these things.
These aren't just like spur of the moment ideas, like oh, yeah, maybe we should do a ballroom.
It's like he's been plotting for decades of like, you know, this is down to the granular details, this is what needs to be different with this country.
And I think that's what makes him such an effective leader is that he's thought about every little element, well, including Iran.
Yeah, I mean, that's a great point because I mean, like, you know, everyone has their take on Iran, but I'm like, one thing you can't say is that he hasn't been consistent on.
I mean, there's clips from the 80s of him, like, unbelievable.
Why do they have a nuclear program?
Are we allowing this to happen?
So, right.
Yeah.
Sam, thank you very much for coming on.
I mean, it was an absolute pleasure having you, and please come back to me.