July 20, 2024 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the political cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the political cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Welcome, everyone, to tonight's live broadcast of TPC.
It's Saturday evening, July the 20th.
We've got the show for you tonight that you probably thought we were going to do last week.
But we are going to comprehensively discuss the attempted assassination of Donald Trump with guests who have informed opinions.
A lot of theories going on out there about what might have happened, what did or did not happen.
We're going to try to give you some informed opinions tonight here on TPC.
I'm James Edwards, along with Keith Alexander.
Welcome to the program.
We're going to be covering this exhaustively.
We're also, in the third hour, going to be breaking down the pros and cons of vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
That is the show tonight, the Trump assassination attempt and JD Vance.
I'll take the first stab at it from my point of view.
As you know, as everyone knows, Donald Trump was nearly assassinated last Saturday night.
The shots rang out just a few minutes before our live broadcast time.
He came within a fraction of an inch of being murdered on live television.
And certainly, that's the logical progression of events, is it not?
We went from the failed Russia Gate hoax that was intended to stop him from beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 to countless impeachments while he was president, to COVID, to vote fraud in 2020, to all of these arrests and indictments in Atlanta and New York and Washington, D.C.
So things were definitely building up to an assassination attempt.
Now, there are still so many questions and so much to process.
One thing that cannot be taken away from Trump, though, and one thing we have to give him right now, regardless of what you think about him, is the poise and presence of mind to stand up with his fist clinched after being shot in the head and striking that iconic Iwo Jima level photograph.
To do that, in that moment, that is boss-level gangster.
And it was, as I said, instantly an historic image.
No doubt about it.
Certainly, I would also like to know how a one-story metal building a few hundred feet away with a direct sight line to the stage wasn't secured.
And how did a kid who just graduated out of high school a year or two before manage to stumble with his rifle into the perfect spot to take a kill shot?
Awful lot of luck there, if you can believe it.
Now, they're saying they can't find a motive, that he really didn't have a political ideology, and that he was most likely doing it for notoriety or to become famous because he was a loner and an outcast at school.
Okay, maybe I'll buy that.
I mean, that's not unprecedented.
I think the guy who shot Reagan, didn't he do that to impress Jody Foster?
And the guy who shot John Lennon said the only reason he did that was so people would know what his name was, to be famous.
So maybe that follows.
Maybe that follows.
But it still doesn't answer how he was able to pull it off.
How is the more important question right now than why?
And I detest a lot of the, I don't even want to say conspiratorial, quote-unquote, conspiratorial takes.
We don't know what happened.
We probably never will.
But there are some serious questions that do need to be answered.
But the Secret Service is an agency that operates under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security.
That's Alejandro Majorkis.
It could boil down to DEI incompetence at the Secret Service to a degree unfathomable.
You've got a woman head of the Secret Service, Kim Chaitle, who says she prioritizes diversity, hires, non-whites, and especially women.
Trump is 6'3 ⁇ .
He's a big boy.
You have all these women who don't even come up to his shoulders trying to shield him.
And, you know, that's a joke.
One woman, of course, we saw pulling out her gun for no apparent reason, waving it around, and then tries to holster it again, but she can't figure out how to re-holster it.
Another takes the time out to adjust her sunglasses.
I got to say, I am very glad Donald Trump wasn't killed for a lot of reasons.
Not the least of which being the thought of the GOP giving us Nikki Haley by acclamation at the convention this week in Milwaukee would have become very real.
But make no mistake about it.
Killing him was the goal of the shooter.
There's just no way he could have intended to graze Trump's ear for dramatic effect.
If Trump had not turned his head in the exact millisecond that the trigger was pulled, he's dead.
So again, it comes down to one of two things.
This kid, by blind luck and DEI-level incompetence, was able to very nearly change the history of this country.
Or, or what?
What's the alternative?
He was a Manchurian candidate who was somehow, some way groomed into doing this.
I don't know which it is, but it's definitely one of those two things.
And yes, as people have pointed out, the media's coverage of Trump for the last nine years, comparing him to Hitler, comparing him to a fascist who's a threat to democracy, has certainly taken a toll.
Although, you know, the comparison is interesting because this would have just been another day of the office for Hitler.
There are about 40 attempts on his life.
But to an extent, I think you've got to say, to that point, perhaps what is most surprising about the assassination attempt against Trump last weekend was that it hadn't happened before.
That's what I've got to say about it.
Just to get things started tonight, we'll turn it over to Keith.
Keith, you watched this as the whole country did last week, last Saturday.
What did you think and what was your reaction?
And how has your opinion evolved over the course of the last seven days?
Well, James, like you, I'm a little bit dubious about the lone wolf gunman theory.
We've been burned on that too many times.
Remember, Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly was some lone wolf who had no other connections.
Same thing for James Orl Ray.
Same thing for Sirhan Sirhan.
They always come up with that canard, basically.
It has become a canard.
Whenever they investigate it, they're not looking for anything else because they know that if you look hard enough and honestly enough, you will find other connections in this.
Now, I don't think that this shooter was a Manchurian candidate.
What I think he was was like a lot of young American males had some training and some background in using firearms.
You can get it now.
You can learn how to fly a plane on flight simulator.
You can learn some base level proficiency with firearms playing Call of Duty in a lot of these games now.
Well, he was a member of an anti-racist gun club.
I don't know if that's true.
Well, I don't know if it's true.
I think he tried out for his high school's rifle team, and he wasn't a good enough shot to make it.
Now, I have read that.
Well, he knew how to use a rangefinder.
He'd been to a shooting range before, I guarantee you.
So he wasn't totally incompetent.
He came darn close to assassinating Donald Trump.
What I think it is, is that the security apparatus, which is part of the Department of Justice, basically, the FBI, the Secret Service, Homeland Security, you know, NSA, all of these groups are anti-Trump.
And none of these people really were being told, you know, to defend him with your life and spare no expense to protect him.
We have an enemy in the White House.
We have an enemy regime running America.
And it would not have upset the regime one iota if Donald Trump had been killed.
In fact, we've been saying this for over a year, that they were going to keep him out of the presidency by hook or crook one way or another, including assassination.
But Tucker Carlson said that just a couple of months ago, that this is gearing up to be.
And we said it a couple of years ago.
And we said it before the year started, that this was going to be a wild year.
All of those weeks leading up to the end of 2023, once that calendar page turned over to January of 2024, I said, this is it.
I mean, this is going to be a year, the likes of which we've never seen.
This assassination attempt, obviously all of the trials and the convictions and the felonies and just, I mean, and we still are in July.
Well, the more that I have read about the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Robert Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King assassination, the attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan, the assassination or the shooting of George Wallace, all of these things were ascribed to lone wolf shooters.
And I've read a lot of very well-written, well-researched papers on all of these.
And in every case, it was not a lone wolf.
So this is what we need to keep in mind.
We've been lied to before.
They've gotten away with it.
It's just like, you know, they say, are we going to run into cheating on the election?
Well, of course we are.
They've done it several times.
And, you know, they're not going to throw away a winning hand.
They're going to continue to.
One thing you can depend on, there will be possibly other attempts on Trump's.
That's what I wonder is.
And the other thing is you're going to also have a, you know, an attempt to, gosh, I wish I had remembered what I was saying.
I just had it there.
But what that means is that they're going to make sure that they cheat on the election.
The election, they will have a cheat component in that.
They're not going to give that up.
And it's really just five states that they have to cheat in.
And every one of those states has a large metropolitan area.
They also know that the Republican parties are too chicken to call them out on it because they would almost rather be called a pedophile than called a racist.
But we got assassination attempt, though.
We understand that.
Well, the point is there are two things you can rely on: voter fraud and assassination attempts.
Well, this is new.
I think this is certainly voter fraud isn't new.
Assassination attempts are a little more rare.
They're not new.
July 1st.
All right, we're going to take a break.
We're going to reset.
We're going to get back on the assassination attempt.
We've got a lot to cover, and we're still working on the guests that are going to help us cover it.
We're playing musical chairs, and I think we'll have a few surprises for you.
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If Planned Parenthood were what they publicly declare themselves to be, they would welcome transparency.
We all know why they hide, because we know what they hide.
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Oh See if I can.
Nothing that's all in faith.
I'm getting back on my feet again.
Everyone's the best shot.
Why don't you hear it?
Everyone's the best shot.
Fire away.
If any of the Trump campaign is listening, that would have to be the most badass campaign song of all time going forward, assuming Trump will even continue to campaign.
And certainly in terms of his massive outdoor rallies, will he even continue to do that?
And psychologically, will this change him?
I told my wife just immediately the first pictures of Trump that I saw the next day, you could tell that there was a change in his face.
He looked softer.
He looked like something had psychologically shifted in him, which is completely understandable.
I'm not saying that that's not something that we would all go through in that moment.
And his speech at the convention this week was a little more subdued and somber.
And he got back on to some of the greatest hits of his rallies in the latter part, but it wasn't with the full force and vigor, which again, that's not something that I'm saying that is an admonition or something that I think is bad, but it's just something that I noticed.
It'll be interesting to see how he continues to campaign going forward after this, because if you don't believe that this was a guy who just managed to get really lucky in being at the right place at the right time, in an undefended position to take a perfect shot, then you got to wonder if it could happen again.
And I'm not making any declaration on I believe it was more or less than the official narrative, but I don't think we know.
I think that Trump may modify his campaign tactics somewhat.
He may go away from the large outdoor gatherings to indoor gatherings that seem to be easier to control.
But the reason that guy got the shot off is because the Secret Service was working in a half-hearted way to protect Trump.
Let's face it.
And you said that voter fraud is a commonplace, but assassinations aren't.
Look, assassinations are as American as apple pie.
Look at Leon Kosloff and William McKinley.
Look at Huey Long.
He was a real threat to FDR.
And if he'd gotten in, we probably wouldn't have fought in World War II.
You had John F. Kennedy.
You had Robert Kennedy.
Both of them went up against the deep state and the deep state won, okay?
You know, Sirhan B. Sirhan is still in jail for the assassination of Robert Kennedy, but none of his bullets hit Kennedy.
Kennedy was actually killed by a member of the security detail right behind him whose gun supposedly accidentally went off and shot him right behind the ear.
So, you know, all of this stuff, you know, then you had George Wallace and you had Ronald Reagan.
Now we've had this.
Been a minute since any of those, though, is what I'm saying.
All right.
Chuck Baldwin has one of the better takes that I've read on all of this.
And again, Chuck Baldwin has been on our show.
Pastor Chuck Baldwin, good friend, great guy, a former presidential candidate of the Constitution Party.
We are going to get into some takes above and beyond the commentators in just a moment.
But this is just, I think, to just set it back here to reset.
This is what Chuck Baldwin writes.
And this is a basic but well-written take.
It defies all logic that the professional federal agency tasked with the sole responsibility of protecting America's presidents, vice presidents, their wives and families, as well as the major candidates, as well as the major presidential candidates, could be as lax, as unprofessional, and as downright inept as what we witnessed last Saturday.
A 20-year-old man with a rifle climbs on and then crawls across the roof of a building a mere 130 yards away from Trump.
Are you kidding?
That's Keystone cops level incompetency.
Spectators saw the man for several minutes crawling his way into position.
They shouted the warning to both local and federal police officers about what was happening, and nothing was done.
Yeah, I know one cop supposedly tried to pull himself up on the roof.
The bad guy pointed his gun at him and he fell off the ladder.
Why is the Secret Service, why did the Secret Service not recognize that rooftop as a high-priority area and have agents posted there before people even started arriving?
Even amateur security people would have noticed and protected that vulnerable position.
To me, this is Chuck Baldwin writing, this is the single most glaring question in this entire episode.
To have not protected that position was imbecilic to a magnitude that is off the charts.
I can easily understand why some people are saying that the Secret Service was told to stand down or deliberately leave this location unguarded.
It's hard to fathom a professional agency trained to protect America's presidential personnel showing themselves to be that inept.
But what if they really are that inept?
When Trump's ear was grazed, he instinctively grabbed his ear and dropped to the ground.
That would have been a very natural reaction.
That was a very natural reaction.
But what the Secret Service did next was more Keystone cops stuff.
First, it seemed to take forever for agents to get into position to protect Trump.
We saw one Secret Service agent so befuddled, she seemed to not have any idea as what to do.
At first, she drew her sidearm, then she fumbled around attempting to re-holster her sidearm.
Indecision, lack of training, unprofessionalism.
And the rest of the agents simply huddled around Trump at the base of the podium.
The podium holding the lectern was quite narrow.
Bodies, including Trump, were exposed to any further shots or shooters.
Question, why did they keep Trump on the stage for so long?
It was almost a full minute before they tried to escort him off the stage in that situation.
A minute was an eternity.
And then when did they attempt to take him out of the area?
When you know, if that one sniper hadn't shot him, if that one shooter, if that one sniper hadn't shot him, he could have been there shooting for a minute at Trump.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And when they did finally decide to take him out of the area, the six foot three inch tall Trump was standing up with his head and orange hair fully exposed to the public as he shook his fist in the air, completely wide open.
He was the most wide open of anybody on that stage, even while they were supposedly protecting him and getting him to safety.
Well, another thing that Chuck Baldwin brought up in that article, which I would recommend that you, we probably ought to run it on our own.
ChuckBaldwinLive.com, you can find it, but yes.
Yeah, we ought to probably run it on our blog roll.
He, Chuck Baldwin, has gotten death threats before, and he has a pulpit that it takes four men to move, and that's because it is lined on the inside with Kevlar to make it bulletproof.
I really doubt that Trump's pulpit had, or stand, speech stand, had that.
If that guy had just been shooting through the stand, he probably would have hit Trump again.
This is this type of stuff, you know, with all of the death threats that Trump has been getting, not just from, you know, random loose cannons on the internet, but from media people, like the people on the view and whatnot, like this.
Why are they not taking the precaution of, for example, having a stand that has Kevlar lining or something like that and makes it bulletproof?
This is, you know, somebody is not using their head, and it's either because they really don't care to use their head or DEI has dumbed down the, you know, the alphabet agencies to such an extent that we just, you know, can no longer rely upon them to do their duty.
All right.
I'm working on guests right now as we are live.
I would just say quickly, just a quick departure from this.
We are going to cover the selection of JD Vance, the nomination of JD Vance as Trump's running mate, in the third hour.
We'll touch on the GOP convention this week.
By the way, if you want to know what it was like or what it would be like if you attended a GOP convention, the RNC convention, I have an article up about that.
When I was there in 2016, it is a freewheeling article about all of my experiences there in Cleveland.
We encourage you to check it out at thepoliticalspool.org.
So much more to come on the convention and the selection of JD Vance in the third hour.
So stay tuned for that.
And by the way, I was in the room when Trump gave his first acceptance speech.
I was in the arena.
It was the Quick and Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
We actually had unrestricted access to that convention.
I mean, we couldn't go into Trump's dressing room.
Well, I don't know.
I didn't try, but we could go everywhere else.
The media could go.
And anyway, it was interesting.
It was a different kind of speech back then than what we saw this week.
You know, I also noticed, Keith, I got to work this in very quickly.
The ADL and the SPLC were awfully quiet about what happened in Pennsylvania last weekend.
There is still nothing on the SPLC's side about the attempted assassination of the former and most likely soon-to-be next president of the United States.
I guess there was no hate involved in an assassination attempt.
The ADL did write about it, but only that they believe that this attempt will cause a dramatic spike in anti-Semitism.
So that's what you're getting.
Where?
Was Matthew Crooks Jewish?
I don't think so.
So that's what you've got from those two.
It was interested to see.
I mean, surely if an assassination attempt isn't born out of some sort of ill will, what is, but no, they couldn't be bothered to write about anything like that.
Well, I think what they do, if they write, it's like they took Joe Scarborough off of the TV for a couple of days because they knew they couldn't rely on him giving an objective reply or observation about the whole thing, that he would just come out and say that he wished the guy was a better shot or something like that.
See, that's look at the people on the view, for example.
That's the type of reaction you get from that.
We're going to talk about that in the next hour.
Exactly right, Keith.
We're going to talk about how this is the DNA of the left.
Now, I'm not saying that this kid was a leftist.
I mean, an anti-racist guy.
I don't know if that's everything you've read about him has been changed.
Yes, that was printed.
It was also printed that he tried out for the rifle team.
Now, just since we've gone on the air tonight, there's a New York Post article saying he didn't try out for the rifle team.
All right, so they changed it.
Supposedly, he was a Republican who donated to Biden.
They don't know anything about it.
All right, or at least if they do, they haven't reported it.
So we don't know anything.
We don't know anything about motive or who he was.
And the establishment of the people.
Well, we do have lives that way.
We do.
Yeah, that's right.
If it was Dylan Roof, what, within a couple of hours, they had it out that he had been to the Council of Conservatives Citizens' website, supposedly?
Yeah, that's right.
Well, anyway, we don't know.
We don't know.
But we are taking it at face value that he was the shooter, and we'll be right back after this break.
Your daily Liberty Newswire.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
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Texas lawmaker Sheila Jackson Lee has died.
The long-serving, often outspoken Democrat was diagnosed last month with pancreatic cancer, after which she wrote in a statement in part: My adult life has been defined by my faith in God, my love for humanity, and my commitment to public service, unquote.
She had represented her Houston-based district since 1995.
From the beginning of her tenure in Congress, she served on the high-profile House Judiciary Committee until 2019.
In reaction to her passing, Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted an online tribute on X saying, quote, her legacy of public service and dedication to Texas will live on.
Sheila Jackson Lee was 74.
George Williams reporting.
Well, Utah officials scrapping plans to use an untested drug combination in next month's planned execution of a man in a 1998 murder case, saying it just won't work.
Breaking news and analysis, townhall.com.
Do you really have to wait a while to go swimming after you've eaten a meal?
No, you don't really have to wait 30 minutes after eating to go swimming.
Doctors say there's no need in most cases to wait.
That old warning stems from worry.
People might drown or struggle because blood will be diverted to their full stomachs instead of their muscles.
But the Cleveland clinics, Dr. Matthew Badgett, says people will still have plenty of blood flowing to their muscles after eating.
That said, those who plan to swim laps may want to wait to avoid cramps.
I'm Julie Walker.
Mail carrier has been shot and killed while on the job in Chicago.
U.S. Postal Service offering a $250,000 reward for tips, solving the case and the death of Octavia Redmond.
11 people are dead in northwestern China, that in the collapse of a large highway bridge.
More on these stories at townhall.com.
Hey there, TPC family.
This is James Edwards, your host of the Political Cesspool.
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Hello, TPC family.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we promised you that we would deliver to you informed opinions tonight on what took place last weekend in Pennsylvania.
And no better man could we find to do that than Gary Byrne.
Gary Byrne served in federal law enforcement for nearly 30 years in the U.S. Air Force Security Police, the uniformed division of the Secret Service, and most recently as a federal marshal.
In his first book, the number one New York Times bestseller, Crisis of Character, he shared his experiences as the first Secret Service employee compelled to testify in a criminal case against a sitting U.S. president.
That was, of course, Bill Clinton.
Gary, great to have you back tonight.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Thank you.
It's nice to be here again.
Thank you.
We say again because Gary and I had a wonderful conversation in 2016 at the aforementioned Republican National Convention.
He was there on Radio Row and we talked about his book Crisis of Character.
If you're wondering, though, what a uniformed division officer or agent does of the Secret Service, this is, if I'm not mistaken, this is the division, Gary, of the United States Secret Service that is your duty was to protect facilities and venues secured for protectees.
We're talking about, this would have been your beat, am I right?
Right, right, exactly.
So the main job of the uniform division is if you look at video or photograph of the White House, excuse me, where all the uniformed security presidents outside, inside.
The Secret Service Uniform Division holds all the fixed posts internally in the White House, externally.
You know, the agent, the agent detail, moves with the president.
And when the president goes out of town or overseas, or whatever, the uniform division manned these posts 24, 7.
They also do the bomb sniffing dogs, um the counter sniper, which has become very famous um, and then uh, they also have a crime scene, um unit in Washington Dc.
Uh, they do all the metal detectors for the president.
So that's their main job, is they do.
Actually, in some ways they do more protection than the agent side does.
So But let me, Gary, if you don't mind, just very quickly for the audience, by the way, you have two books out.
We could spend an hour on either of them.
We'll mention them in a moment.
But when you were in the Secret Service, what were your duties?
What were the things?
What were your positions?
What were your tasks?
So when you first get there, you work outside of the White House, you work the perimeter, you work all three shifts, you kind of earn your dues, pay your dues, so to speak.
And then after a while, you can volunteer for a few jobs.
So there were two jobs that I, one job that I really wanted was to be trained and learn the workouts of the Oval Office, which eventually I did get.
But before that, I had to drive the bomb truck, which is exactly what it sounds like.
You drive a pickup truck with a big trailer on it, and it has a bomb disposal unit on it.
And if they find an explosive device or what they think it is, they put it in this thing, and then the driver would be me.
And you would drive it to the old football stadium and either wait for the guys to disarm it or you would just disintegrate with the weapon.
So anyway, that was my first job at the White House.
And then I worked outside the Oval Office.
All right.
So again, ladies and gentlemen, we are talking to a former Secret Service agent.
Again, a lot of theories out there as to what did or didn't happen, the reasons, how it could have happened.
We've got a retired Secret Service agent on the air right now.
So Gary, let me ask you this.
And then to Keith Alexander, who has some great questions for you.
We were talking about them during the commercial break.
But, all right, former Secret Service agent, what happened last week?
What happened last week was a combination of incompetence and underman, incompetent management, not the individual officers and agents, but just a series of decade after decade of really poor management style.
And they always fall back on.
That's the way we've always done it.
The Secret Service traditionally works their employees into the ground.
If they need 100 agents or officers to do something, they send 50 or 60 and they just work them night and day.
They traditionally have done that.
It has blown up in their faces many times.
But one of the things they're really good at is hiding behind the name Secret Service, which has no more legality to be secret than the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
It's just the words, you know.
And so what you saw was one of the reasons I wrote the second book, Secrets of the Secret Service, was to get the message out that the Secret Service is good men and women.
It's a very important job, but it has all the problems of the Postal Service and the IRS, and then some.
And what you saw was poor communications.
They didn't assign those counter sniper units to that detail till the day before.
They need 24 hours to do a pre-advance in the smallest of venues.
It was poor management decision.
And one of the things that leads to that is to these, excuse me, that leads to one of the things that leads to these problems is that they have so many layers of management.
You've got the director, you've got the deputy director, you've got the assistant deputy directors.
There's probably, when I left, there was like 18 or 19 of them.
And then you have the sacks underneath.
There's a special agent in targeting each field office.
And then there's deputy staffs.
If anybody in the Secret Service ever tries to tell us the truth of what happened, they won't even know what it is because there's so many levels of enhancement.
And every time you try to change it, they fight you on it.
It's insane.
Gary, this is Keith Alexander.
Let me ask you this.
They apparently have a training academy for secret service agents.
Is that correct?
Yes.
They train the uniformed division officers.
and the agent at the same academy.
It's near Beltsville, Maryland.
Yes.
Well, what are the primary tasks that they teach you about in that academy?
Like you said, you protect the president in the White House grounds and whatnot.
What else do you train in?
What order of priority?
So for the agents, the agents' main job is protection, but they're stationed all over the country, actually, in some cases, actually all over the world.
They have field offices in other countries.
But the main thing that they do besides protection, the agents, is counterfeit, you know, counterfeiting money.
They fighting counterfeit.
They also do credit card fraud, phone fraud.
And I think they also have their hand in human trafficking these days.
And that's one of the issues, too.
You could be a Secret Service agent in Detroit, Michigan, and work in a fraud case or any kind of case.
And you get a phone call in the middle of the night, you have to go to Florida because the president's going to Florida in two days.
And then they drop that case.
And not drop it, but they have to set it aside.
And so it's not really getting investigated properly.
But back to the training, they're trained to do protection.
The training that you get in the Secret Service is unbelievable.
Most people, when they graduate, either an agent or an officer, we usually feel like we've been overtrained.
And then when you get on the job, you have to deal with the boredom.
It's a lot of boredom.
You know, 99% of what people know about the Secret Service comes from TV and movies.
And that's not really what happens.
It's 99% boredom, and then there's a little bit of excitement.
What happened to President Trump, unfortunately, was the height of the excitement.
You know, because of this incompetence, because of all this bad communication, because of last-minute planning on the part of the Secret Service, and what looks like that they were moving resources away from the Trump detail to other details.
Because of that, we ended up almost watching Donald Trump be murdered on TV.
I mean, it was.
Yeah, fraction of an inch.
Keith, one more question.
Okay.
Now, has there been a decline in the quality of the services prepared done by the Secret Service lately?
And if so, what's the cause, in your opinion?
Does it have anything to do with political appointees or lack of resources or what?
So lack of resources is one.
And when I say lack of resources, in other words, they're so undermanned that they're picking.
What I hear from my coworkers that still work there is former coworkers is that they have to pick and choose when they use these resources because they can't keep employees because of their bad management style.
And as far as political appointees, believe it or not, it wasn't too bad in the Secret Service when I was there.
There's been a few.
This director now is a political appointee, in my opinion.
Now, she was a former Secret Service agent, and then she left, retired, and got a private security job, and then came back.
And the reason she came back was she was on President Joe Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's detail.
And this is directly from people in the Secret Service at the time.
And then after she got rehired, she was on the details.
She was responsible for when Hunter Biden got in a fight with his dead brother's ex-wife.
And he pulled a gun on her, supposedly, and then allegedly.
And then after he passed out from using drugs, she took the gun and threw it in the dumpster.
A couple of days later, he found out where the gun was.
He went to the Secret Service and they went to the dumpster.
Of course, the trash had been dumped.
And then they sent Secret Service agents to retrieve the gun from the dump and they did.
And that endeared this person to the Biden family.
So when they needed a director, they went back to her and they brought her back.
That's what people tell me in the Secret Service, and that's what they believe.
Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, we are talking right now with Gary Byrne, formerly a Secret Service agent.
He wrote the number one with the bullet, New York Times best-selling book, Crisis of Character.
A White House Secret Service officer discloses his firsthand experience with Hillary, Bill, and how they operate.
He was right there with these two.
And wow, what a book.
We talked about it in Cleveland.
I talked to you earlier today, Gary, eight years ago.
It doesn't seem like it was that long.
Time does fly.
Gary, also the author of Secrets of the Secret Service, the History and the Uncertain Future of the U.S. Secret Service.
As I said, folks, we could talk a full hour, and it would be time very well spent about either of these books.
But check them out at Amazon, Secrets of the Secret Service, and Crisis of Character, both by former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne.
Gary, I got to ask you, though, you're keeping your ear to the ground with this.
This was your former profession, a trained agent in the protective detail.
Paul Krack Roberts, a friend of ours, a guest on this program, former Secretary of the Treasury and the Assistant Secretary, thank you, Keith, of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan.
He wrote this in one of his recent columns.
The question of the unsecured buildings from which the intended assassin fired has produced a dispute between the Secret Service and local police.
Secret Service claims the neglected shooting positions were the responsibility of the local police.
The local police say they are merely the ordered around adjuncts of the Secret Service who are the ones in charge.
Let's assume that the local police were responsible for the security of the nearby sites.
Why did not the Secret Service check if the police performed their alleged duty?
The greatest puzzle in the near assassin's unencumbered access, the greatest puzzle is the near assassin's unencumbered access to perfect spots for successful assassination.
You say it's they're overworked, they're understaffed, there is some incompetence going on, but I mean, this seems to be a glaringly obvious place.
I mean, this was a wide open field with not a lot of places to hide.
This is a one-story metal structure within direct sight line of President Trump.
And quite frankly, it looks like the best purge for an assassin would be assassin.
In fact, the only really good purge for one.
What do you make of it, Gary?
You're 100% right.
And the person that wrote that article is right.
Listen, I've been on, in the 13 years I was there, I've been on probably 75 to 100 of these trips or more.
And I'm telling you, it is reduced local law enforcement.
But to even suggest that it was their responsibility like they're doing is completely false.
The reason it happened like it did, it went down is because they had so few Secret Service employees there.
They didn't have the extra manpower to there should be somebody, an agent and an agent or an officer with the local police department.
And the fact that they were the building that the police were actually in, the local police were in, The counter sniper guys didn't know they were in there.
And if they did, it also, well, they knew that they were in the area.
And this guy is allowed to climb up on the building.
The ladder that he used was only less than 100 feet around the corner from the ladder that they used to get up on the building after the shooting.
It all falls back to the Secret Service.
And like I said, they're going to do whatever they have to to protect their reputation and their budget.
And in this case, they're protecting what looks like pressure from the current presidential administration on the Secret Service.
Don't forget, only a few months ago, eight members of Congress demanded that Joe Biden force the Secret Service to drop their protection of Donald Trump.
That's unheard of.
Yes.
They had that Benny Thompson bill that said that if you're convicted of a felony, you don't get protection.
This is a big point to bring up.
So, yes, I mean, you've got all of Trump's enemies responsible for his protection to some extent, Gary.
Listen, the Secret Service protected Lyndon Bain Johnson's wife for 20, almost 25 years after she died.
And then they're going to turn around and be, you know, this is the problem.
And it's not Trump's fault, but this is the problem with these people.
They suffer from Trump derangement syndrome and they become unhinged.
And the ideal that they wanted to take protection away from him is insane.
I mean, we're still protecting Barack Obama, and he's done some questionable things.
Hillary Clinton admitted, you know, the director, the former director of the FBI, told us that she was a complete criminal, that she destroyed documents.
She destroyed classified information.
She had classified information on an unsecure computer.
And she's sitting up in New York somewhere right now, you know, resting her legs.
It's insane.
All right, Keith, very quickly, and I've got a couple of final questions.
We've got a lot to cover in 10 minutes.
What type of training or background checking and whatnot did they do on the police?
From what I hear, the police went up a ladder.
The shooter saw them, pointed the gun at them, and they fell down the ladder.
It sounds like make Barney Fife look like Rambo.
Well, I think a better question would be: I mean, you trust that the local police are competent, I guess, in these situations when you're working with other agencies, interagency cooperation.
But I guess my question would be: why was this structure not within the area under the Secret Service's purview?
This was outside of their protective areas.
But it was the best perch for that.
That's the thing.
It wasn't.
The only reason it was is because they didn't have the manpower to properly secure it.
That building was 100% inside their zone, but they didn't have the manpower to secure it.
And back to the local.
They had one person.
They had, you know, that was the best sniper perch.
And anybody, you know, you don't have to be a genius to figure that one out.
Well, they had him cited in.
But look, so you're saying it's just that simple.
There's some incompetence going on, some political appointees.
These are Trump's enemies in charge, and they didn't have enough manpower.
But now, let me ask you this.
Some news had come out today that the suspect had a drone.
He had flown a drone.
My question is: you think of all of the trained men, paramilitants, terrorists, people who have training and tactics and maneuvers and deployment.
And how many people would love to get a shot at a head of state?
But this guy just wanders in, climbs up a building to a perfect spot, wide open.
How much luck would this tempted assassin have to encounter in order to pull off what he did?
That's what happened though?
Without any clearness of the authorities.
Right.
So it is luck, but also too, going back to the manpower and the local police.
Listen, local police are always a great resource, okay?
But that's part of my point about the lack of manpower.
There should have been a Secret Service agent with them directing them.
Listen, you know, is the roof secure?
Can you get two guys up on the roof?
The problem is that whoever was in charge of that detail, and I'm not saying, listen, nobody in Counter Sniper, and none of these agents or other officers are to blame directly.
The blame goes back to the director's office and the seven levels at least of management in between.
I'm telling you, there's so many levels of management.
They got a deputy assistant director for copy or ink and post-it notes.
It's insane.
And of course, I'm kind of joking, but that's how crazy it is, you know.
And it's just a complete failure.
It's one of the reasons I wrote the second book.
I didn't predict what happened.
I was afraid it would happen.
And, you know, it goes down to the counter sniper guys.
Again, they were assigned the day before.
And even right now, after all this, nobody in the Secret Service has come out and said how many actual teams of Counter Sniper were, because for each team, you need two response people.
Because it doesn't do any good to spot something.
You can't send somebody to it.
And the other thing I'd like to point out is the Counter Sniper guys that saw this guy.
This is where the confusion comes in.
Because there's not enough agents with the local police.
There's not enough communications.
They thought that he was local police.
He was dressed similar to them.
He had teams.
I saw some of the local police guys.
It looked like they had regular Hunter camo on and whatnot.
Gary, this is an important thing.
I was going to ask you about this because there's a lot of documentation that this individual was reported as a suspicious person nearly an hour before the event.
Reports suggest that the Secret Service had him sort of locked in about a half hour before the shots were taken.
Why were they not able to act and neutralize this or get him under control before he was shot?
Is there a rules of engagement with regards to taking the first shot here?
No, what's going on there?
No, so the sniper guys, like any police officer, nobody tells you when to shoot.
The federal law enforcement, all law enforcement is governed when it comes to the use of force, is governed by the Department of Justice guidelines for the use of force.
It starts with verbal commands.
It goes all the way up to deadly force.
None of those guys, all they had to do is articulate.
I saw a man on the roof.
Boom, I shot him.
But the problem was, for at least a while, they thought he was a local police.
They weren't sure.
And the other thing, too, is they're also guided by the training that they get.
And this should have been a slam dunk.
But because they're so poorly manned and there's so few, you know, again, they didn't have enough people to go look at this guy after they shot him.
It was the local law enforcement.
You know, they were so-they're also poorly managed, too.
It's just, at least it seems to me that.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It goes back to the director's office and the huge amount of deputy directors, deputy assistant directors, special agent in charge, assistant special agent in charge, deputy specific, you know, it's in the stage.
Do we have anything to do with setting up the stage for the speaker?
For example, Chuck Baldwin, who is a person, is a preacher, and he says that he has a pulpit that takes four men to move because it's lined with Kevlar.
I noticed that Trump went down below, but if that was just, you know, plywood, you know, he would be a sitting back.
If that guy had not been killed, they could have just blasted through that and gotten Trump.
Yeah, so good question.
So, two things on the stage that you need to be aware of.
That speaking pulpit is hardened.
That's what I can say about it.
And then in front of that, that little wall that you see that's got like, you know, 4th of July decorations on it, that's also reinforced.
That's why when the shots started, you know, the shots started, Trump grabs his ear when he gets hit and goes down and they jumped on him in place because they're partially protected.
You know, the podium is reinforced and that little wall is reinforced.
Interesting.
So it was.
I understand.
Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Because if you go back and watch the video, a couple of times the agents bounce into it.
And if that was a regular podium, it'd have flown right off the stage.
But you could see it rocks back and rights, you know, holds itself up.
So.
All right.
Well, that's interesting.
That was something that Pastor Baldwin was unaware of.
And thank you for the clarification there, Gary.
So basically, a former Secret Service agent telling us right now that it did just come down to understaffed, poor preparation, poor management.
And if you want to read, and you should, Crisis of Character, you can find it anywhere.
Books are sold by Gary Byrne.
A White House Secret Service officer discloses his first-hand experience with Hillary, Bill, and how they operate.
Being a Secret Service agent during the Clinton administration must have been a story to tell.
Thankfully, Gary told the story indeed, and also get his other book, Secrets of the Secret Service, The History and Uncertain Future of the U.S. Secret Service.
Gary, final word to you before the music starts.
Anything we didn't ask you that you feel as though you need to convey to the audience?
No, I just want to convey one thing is when I talk about this incompetence, I'm not talking about the individual officers, technicians.
You know, one of the things I always say when an incident happens like this, I want somebody in Congress to force the director to tell her how many hours, every agent and officer there, how many hours have they worked in the last 30 days?
When was the last time they got a day off?
When was the last time they were granted vacation?
They'd worked them into the ground.
And I really, something that resonated with me is that you're saying that the Secret Service, if you think of the problems that you have with the Postal Service, you can transfer those to the Secret Service.
And people wouldn't expect that.
People wouldn't expect that.
But you expect the Secret Service to be infallible.
Right.
Go ahead.
Because people's knowledge is basically for movies and TV.
That's part of the problem.
I tell you what, if you want to watch a great movie about the Secret Service, In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood, that's a good one.
John Malkovich.
You like that one?
That's a big hit with the Secret Service.
One of my favorites.
Wow.
Wow.
Hey, what about that?
I'm appointing Gary Burns to be in charge of the presidential candidate protection.
Gary Byrne for head of the Secret Service.
You heard it right here.
Gary, thank you for being back with us tonight.
We'll try to do it again within the next 10 years.
God bless you, and thanks for giving us your informed opinion tonight.