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July 15, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:38:53
20240715_the-failed-assassination-attempt-on-donald-trump
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trump As Hitler Comparison 00:14:18
What do you think would have happened if Trump had actually been killed?
I have no idea.
Would it have been a crisis moment in American politics?
Absolutely.
Would it put us one step further on the road to a breakup of the country?
100%.
I can imagine how impressionable minds, if they keep being told someone is Hitler, start to believe they might have a moral justification.
Would you like the left now to stop calling him Hitler?
Who called him Hitler?
Who called him Hitler?
Okay.
He literally quotes Hitler's language.
There's no such thing as contextualizing what they meant when you compared Donald Trump to Hitler.
Here's the problem with society, and if I'm being honest, you are part of the problem.
What do you feel about what is going on with your country?
I know Donald Trump, and he's not trying to incite violence.
Open your eyes.
See what's happening.
They tried to kill him.
Well, let me say about President Trump first.
I'm so proud of him.
You never know what a man is like until his life is in jeopardy.
He's a leader.
We need the best president we can get right now.
Have you had a chance, Richard, to talk to Donald Trump since the attack?
Yeah.
You wouldn't know what happened.
Tell me.
This weekend, America came within an inch of changing, perhaps irreparably, in the most profound and disturbing of ways.
The whole world has now seen the images of former President Donald Trump under attack from an attempted assassin at a rally in Pennsylvania.
But it's worth seeing them again, because this is just how close America came to a cataclysmic disaster.
It's frankly a miracle that Donald Trump is still alive.
If he hadn't momentarily turned his head away from the crowd, which he rarely ever does, Trump would now be dead.
America could be facing deadly unrest, maybe even civil war.
Trump's opponents have screamed about the need to protect American democracy from him.
But there's no greater threat to democracy than the failure to protect our political leaders so that voters can decide who governs them.
Democracy means ballots, not bullets.
There are massive unanswered questions about the failings of the Secret Service.
It seems unfathomable that a shooter with a clear line of sight could be left prowling a rooftop just 130 meters from where the former president was speaking.
Footage clearly shows that many of the supporters at the rally spotted this shooter on the rooftop and tried to raise alarm with police authorities.
Well, we now know that the rooftop itself had been flagged by the Secret Service as a risk in the days before the rally.
So how on earth could this have happened?
These are urgent questions that need urgent answers.
But there are also difficult questions for political leaders on both sides about the febrile and hostile nature of US politics.
If Trump is the new Hitler, a threat to the very survival of the Republic, as so many on the left have been calling him for so long, is there not a moral justification for assassinating him?
How do they explain, if there isn't, why they keep calling him the new Hitler?
That is the grim picture that his critics, of course, have painted for so long.
Only a few days ago, Biden told donors that it was time to put Trump in a bullseye.
That kind of violent language, which Trump himself has often used too often as well, should have no place in a civilized democratic society.
Clearly, America needs to turn the temperature down.
But amid the tragedy and chaos of Saturday night, Trump somehow managed to rise up, his face spattered in blood, and he punched the air in defiance.
has already become one of the most iconic images in American history.
And it may well become the image that defines Donald Trump's historic return to the White House.
Well, in a moment, we'll be joined by my panel.
The first Daily White editor emeritus, Ben Shapiro, joins me.
Ben, an extraordinary moment in history, Donald Trump coming literally within an inch, maybe less, of being assassinated.
First of all, where were you when you heard about this?
So I was on the West Coast.
I'd actually been doing Bill Maher's show, so I was in Los Angeles, and it was Sabbath for me.
My security came in and told me that President Trump had been shot.
They said that he was okay.
They were sort of informing me moment to moment.
But I mean, it is one of those moments in American history where you're going to remember exactly where you were when you heard it, like 9-11.
In my lifetime, that was really sort of the only other one where I remember where I was when I heard it.
This is going to be one of them for sure.
And what was your immediate response in your head to what was unfurling?
I mean, I think that my immediate response was shock, but not surprise.
And I think, unfortunately, that was the response of a lot of Americans was, I'm shocked that this would happen in the modern age.
We haven't had the assassination of a political figure, a really serious attempted assassination since Ronald Reagan in the early 80s.
But by the same token, I wasn't surprised because, again, the pitch of the rhetoric has been so high during this campaign and for the last 10 years, specifically about Donald Trump.
I mean, I think if any other political figure had been shot, it would have been more surprising.
Donald Trump being shot at is incredibly unsurprising, given the fact that, as you said, Piers, there's been an attempt to turn him into orange Hitler since pretty much 2015.
And that has ratcheted up day by day as the Democratic Party becomes more desperate to see him not re-elected.
That has really sort of hit high, high pitch.
In the New Republic, six days before this assassination attempt, ran a cover image of Donald Trump mashed up with Adolf Hitler, like two days before this assassination attempt.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, said that the American people want a president, not a dictator.
When you say that kind of stuff over and over and over, again, the only person responsible for an assassination attempt is the prospective assassin.
But if you keep turning up the heat on the pot of boiling water, you can't at least be surprised when the water boils over.
Right.
I mean, I've got a mashup here of people on the left calling Trump Hitler.
Let's take a look.
Many are openly comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Trump's been compared to the German dictator by some throughout his presidential campaign.
Is Donald Trump really a fascist?
Maria Chappelle Nadal posted this picture to Twitter yesterday.
It appears to compare Donald Trump to Hitler.
Former President Trump doubles down on a phrase many say he borrowed from Hitler.
President Fantasyland decided to take a page out of Adolf Hitler's playbook last week.
Yes, Donald Trump took his Hitler cosplay to the next level.
Do you want to clear the air because you think you're being unfavorably compared to Donald Trump?
A unified Reich?
That's Hitler's language.
That's not America's.
New York's Daily News ran this front page earlier this week.
Trump is Hitler.
According to the Washington Post, Trump has long toyed with the language of fascists.
Former President Donald Trump allegedly praised Adolf Hitler, saying the Nazi leader had, quote, done some good things.
You know, Ben, I appeared actually, by coincidence, on Bill Maher's show several years ago, and I was on with a comedian called Jim Jeffries, a left-wing comedian, Australian.
And we got into a serious debate about the fact the left kept calling Trump Hitler.
And I said, look, you know, I'm not in the tank here for Trump either way.
But what I would say is Adolf Hitler murdered 12 million people.
He perpetrated the Holocaust of Jewish people.
More than 6 million of them were slaughtered in concentration camps.
The idea that Donald Trump should be mentioned in the same breath as somebody like that is deeply offensive and completely factually wrong.
I never mind anything else.
But it didn't stop.
This was like three years ago, I think, when I was on that show saying that.
And I got roundly attacked by Jeffries.
He told me, uttered a profanity and told me to go stick myself and so on.
But it didn't mean I was wrong.
In fact, if anything, like you, the more they call Trump Hitler, the more concerned I've become.
Because as I said in my monologue there, the moral justification of assassinating Hitler is very clear, right?
Most people would agree that Adolf Hitler should have been killed for what he did.
So if you apply that brand to Donald Trump, to a warped, deranged, impressionable young mind, who knows what the motivation of this shooter was.
But it's not entirely surprising that people may want to eliminate the new Hitler.
That's exactly right.
And again, all you have to do to understand how ridiculous the argument is, is to say, you know, actual Hitler, he gets there's assassination at times.
We say, well, we wish our best to actual Hitler.
We hope that actual Hitler and his family are doing well.
Our prayers go out to actual Hitler.
Well, you wouldn't say that, obviously, because you'd want Hitler to be assassinated.
I mean, we celebrate in movies people who tried to assassinate Hitler.
And so if you keep actually making that comparison, and it's not just the Hitler comparison, it's the idea that if Donald Trump wins, there will never be another election in the United States.
If Donald Trump wins, that this place will be the handmaid's tale, which is literally something that the Biden-Harris headquarters tweeted out like two weeks ago.
They tweeted out a picture from the handmaid's tale saying Donald Trump's Project 2025 will effectuate this in America.
The moral argument in favor of then getting rid of that person in order to save the country is fairly strong.
But the whole point is that no one actually believes that.
And that's where the dishonesty comes in.
Democrats don't actually believe that Donald Trump is Hitler any more than Republicans who say that Joe Biden, if he's re-elected, would end the country.
There'd be no further elections.
Nobody actually believes that because if you actually believe that, you would have to have, there's an actual moral case for you to pick up a gun and go do something about it.
That's why this rhetoric, I mean, I've been critical on it from, I think, every side for a very long time.
But the reality is that President Biden gives a speech last night in which he talks about how we need to cool it down.
And all I wanted from him was for him to say, including me.
Or just say including me.
I totally agree.
Because the reality of him not saying that, it makes it sound like, well, you know, now I'm diffusing responsibility among everyone without taking any for myself.
And I would hope that everybody would take a look in the mirror at this point and say, including me.
And if I've said anything like that, including me, right?
I've tried hard not to.
But I think that that sort of catastrophic, the catastrophizing that people do about American politics is really out of bounds.
I mean, I'm very...
Yeah, look, I'm very happy to concede that I've been intemperate in my language over the years about politicians.
But in Britain, we've had two members of parliament murdered in the last 10 years.
This is a very real thing.
There are crazy people out there who want to kill elected officials.
And we saw one again trying to do it on Saturday.
If that had happened, then in the great history of the United States, it would have been the fifth time that an American president would have been assassinated.
Two others have had attempts on their lives.
Trump is now the third.
You know, that's basically like one in seven American presidents have either been assassinated or had assassination attempts on them.
I mean, an alarming statistic.
What do you think would have happened if Trump had actually been killed?
I have no idea.
I mean, one thing I think would not have happened, and I think there was a lot of talk about a civil war would have broken out.
Again, I don't think that Americans were going to go pick up guns and start shooting each other.
But would it have been a crisis moment in American politics?
Absolutely.
Would it put us one step further on the road to a breakup of the country?
100%.
Are we at the point where the tinderbox is so dry that any spark is going to set it off?
I don't think we're quite there yet, thank God.
But I think this is a great warning moment to say, well, we better actually take down that temperature.
We got to prevent that from moving one step further along because effectively speaking, you know, the Civil War in the United States was presaged for literally decades.
And then in the last 15 years before the Civil War, things gradually ramped up and ramped up and ramped up and ramped up.
And at any point along that line, you could theoretically come to some sort of workable solution and move away from that.
It's time for Americans to do that, as opposed to continuing to ramp things up.
And so, again, if he'd been shot, it would have taken us a much further step along the line to an actual breakup of the country for sure.
Yeah, and I actually hope that Donald Trump, and I'm seeing signs that he may have already worked this out for himself, and maybe his brush with death, literally, has cemented his instincts that maybe things have got out of hand now.
And I hope that, you know, given that I think he's almost now 100% certain to be elected president again, you know, I hope he does come with a different tone.
There's no doubt when Democrats say, well, what about Trump?
I do think it's way too early to be saying that when I just literally had an attempt on his life.
But there is a legitimate thing to say that Trump's language, the way he abuses opponents and so on, that he's gone too far.
And it would be incredibly disarming to many of Trump's critics if, unlike Joe Biden, he did actually acknowledge that and say it's time for all of us to dial down the rhetoric.
I mean, I totally agree with that.
And I think that, again, what you've seen from President Trump in this campaign, this is the shocking part of his campaign, because it's very different from 2020, which was very inflammatory, or 2016, which was very inflammatory.
This has been a significantly more moderate campaign in both tone and tenor.
And I think that because of that, it's been disarming for the Biden campaign.
They keep trying to paint him as this fascist, and it was not going over with the American people, which is why Joe Biden was losing.
And that's why he had to keep ramping up the rhetoric with regard to President Trump.
President Trump has already said that he's completely rewritten his speech for the RNC for Thursday night when he gives his keynote address.
He has told everybody who's speaking that they should be speaking about American unity, about moving forward arm in arm together.
And the reality is, again, President Trump is a non-ideological figure.
And people who have been watching his administration and people who watch what he says positionally understand he's a non-ideological figure.
I think that if President Trump gets in his head, and I think he does at this point have in his head, that he can be a transformative American figure and bring Americans back together in a way that actually does make America great again, it could be a signal shift in the trajectory of American history.
I mean, there's another extraordinary story developing today.
The Unbeatable Donald Trump 00:05:35
The judge in Florida has dismissed a criminal case relating to classified documents found at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
That's another major legal win for Trump.
You know, this attempt to weaponize the justice system against him has pretty much spectacularly backfired.
I mean, they went first with the Stormy Daniels attempt over him, you know, shuffling paperwork to hide the fact he played a porn star for an alleged one nightstand 20 years ago.
It all sounded ridiculous at the time it was being brought against him.
It turned out to be ridiculous.
He got convicted, but off the back of that, his poll ratings surged even higher, and he got about $150,000 million worth of donations in about two weeks.
I mean, none of this strategy from the left has worked, has it?
The attempt to go after him and try and incarcerate him to stop him being re-elected.
I mean, that is clearly true.
I'm a religious person, and so, you know, I tend to see the hand of God in history.
It's kind of hard not to see the hand of God when you realize, as you said at the very top of the show, Piers, that if Donald Trump turns his head about two inches, he's dead at this point.
You know, there's something happening that I don't think anybody can really explain without reference to something that they don't understand happening with regard to President Trump.
As far as the dismissal of the documents case, once again, that documents case was the most serious of the cases against President Trump.
Judge Eileen Cannon may be reversed on appeal.
It'll be too late for the election.
And there is a very clear effort to use the legal system to prohibit Donald Trump from becoming president of the United States again.
Everybody could see it, and it's not going to work.
There are a lot of reports today that House Democrats are basically in a state of surrender about this election.
They feel that Donald Trump has already won it.
It's way too early to ever say that.
I mean, we're only in July at this point.
There could be something unprecedented that happened since we've now had two unprecedented things happen in the last month: the collapse of President Biden on the stage, at least immajestically, and then the attempted assassination of President Trump.
There's a long way to go.
With that said, is Donald Trump clearly the frontrunner at this point?
Would it be shocking if he lost this election?
I would be shocked if he lost this election at this point.
I just cannot see anything but a Trump victory now.
One of the problems that Democrats will have is that their whole attack line outside of the weaponization of the justice system has been to basically use the most egregious, offensive, and catastrophic language about Trump.
And I'm not sure that that act is going to play with the American people now.
They keep calling him a dictator.
They keep calling him the new Hitler.
I just think the American people are going to rebel against that and say the guy just nearly got shot because of the consequences of this kind of language swilling around.
Everyone has to stop.
And if the Democrats don't have that as a weapon, if Joe Biden doesn't have that as a weapon against Trump, what's he left with?
He can't run on his appearance, on his faculties, on his cognitive ability, or any of those things.
All he has is Trump is the new Hitler.
He's the devil.
He must be stopped.
If you don't have that in your armory, I don't know what you have.
I think that's exactly right.
And I think this is what they're coming up against.
I think that's why you're seeing a sort of diffusion of Democratic angst among the population for Democrats.
I think Democrats are looking at the situation right now and all the energy that was built up behind maybe we can supplant Joe Biden, get somebody else in there, that other person can beat Donald Trump.
I think they're starting to realize that Donald Trump is not beatable in this election.
And if they try to replace Biden with somebody else, that person is going to run up and against the exact same issue, which is that Joe Biden, the real underlying issue for Joe Biden, put aside the senescence, put aside the fact that he seems to be declining into senility.
The man is not a good president.
He had a 32% approval rating before any of this.
And so, because of that, I think that the supplanting of him with somebody else would then have to make exactly the same case that Biden has made, which is that Donald Trump is an unprecedented threat to the Republic.
I always thought that was a weak attack line because we've seen him be president.
That attack line didn't work in 2016 when he wasn't president.
Now we saw him be president.
And hell, it was pretty good.
And that's what the American people are saying as well.
And I do think that in the reality of, say, if you're Gavin Newsom, you know, what may have looked very appealing last week of stepping in to save the Democrats against the monster and stop the dictator getting re-elected.
If you're Gavin Newsom, you're running a mile from this now, aren't you?
You're thinking, you know what?
Let Biden get completely massacred in November, which is highly likely, and I'll come and save the party after that election.
Because I just don't see that anyone can beat Trump right now.
You look at all these legal wins he's now having, the massive donations, a huge surge in money coming in to help him, but also the fact that if you're in the middle, if you're not on the toxic right or left, really the sort of extremities, if you're a pretty moderate person, which most Americans, in my estimation, are, and you're independent perhaps and sort of working out where to vote and stuff, you cannot but look at what happened at the weekend to Donald Trump and not feel better towards him.
I just, I just think 100%.
You know, that's 100% true.
Yeah.
And that's right.
And by the way, they spent three weeks feeling worse about Joe Biden.
And now they feel better about Donald Trump.
And the unspoken reality of this campaign is that Donald Trump has actually grabbed the middle ground in American politics.
Democrats keep trying to portray him as some sort of rabid right-winger.
Donald Trump is not nearly as conservative as I am on policy by far.
And he's watered down the Republican Party platform to that extent.
I was speaking with Speaker Johnson a little bit earlier today, and Speaker Johnson was saying that the Republican Party platform, it may address sort of the party insiders, but everybody knows that Trump as president is not going to do any of the sort of more right-wing things where he's very unlikely to do a lot of those things because again, he's a pragmatist.
Shots Fired And Chaos 00:06:05
The attempt to turn Donald Trump into some sort of right-wing Hitlerian bogeyman are utterly insubstantial and ridiculous on their face.
Yeah.
Ben Shapiro, I really appreciate you joining me.
Thank you very much.
Thanks so much.
Well, join me now to debate all this.
This is columnist, author, and co-host of Democracy podcast Waja Ali, the former U.S. Navy SEAL Robert Neal and the journalist and commentator Emily Austin.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Let me start with you, Rob O'Neill, because I've been absolutely staggered by what we have seen in terms of video clips from this attempted assassination about the Secret Service here.
And I'll say why.
First of all, the shooter's 20 years old.
He's gone AR-15.
He clambers onto a roof 130 meters from where Trump is speaking.
And members of the public, a lot of them from the video clips I've seen, are alerting authorities to what this kid is doing and warning he looks like he's up there doing something.
And yeah, he's still allowed to go ahead and fire off a bunch of rounds.
He nearly assassinates Donald Trump.
He kills at least one member of the crowd.
It seriously wounds two others.
But then the Secret Service, I found this extraordinary.
I remember when Reagan got shot.
He came out of the hotel in Washington.
He gets shot and immediately the Secret Service are racing to get him straight into the car and get out of there, right?
Here, they seem to let him go to the ground, then prop him up, then allow him to stand above some of the height of some of his agents with his head clearly exposed in what must have been an ongoing live shooter that you don't know if there's more than one.
And he's allowed to address the crowd.
Now, it was a powerful moment when he addressed the crowd.
But I just watched the whole thing and thought, what has happened here?
How is any of this Secret Service protocol?
Now, am I wrong?
Am I being unfair?
No, I think you're on a couple of different things there.
I think it was the president's call himself, even though it's not the principals necessarily called once there are shots fired.
The Secret Service, I think, did a great job getting to him as quick as they could and they covered him up.
And, you know, kudos to them because, again, you don't know how many shooters there are.
There are bullets flying.
And they did get in front.
They did try to cover him as best they could.
You could hear the president saying, you know, I want to get my shoes.
And then he was holding them up because he knew at that moment if he could raise a fist and say fight, he's going to keep people calm.
He's going to keep the unity.
So it's, you know, I wasn't there, so it's very hard to, you know, Monday morning quarterback.
And I think they did a great job there.
Having said that, they completely dropped the ball as far as the perimeter.
I was a counter sniper too, even back in 1998.
My first real job was in Albania doing this kind of counter sniper stuff.
And to have a perimeter that has got to be at least 500 meters, I mean, at the very minimum, and you've got a spot less than 200 meters away.
And we're just lucky.
Well, this shooter, I guess, tried out for his high school shooting team and he was booted.
And they said because he was dangerously bad, like he was a danger, horrible shot.
So the perimeter should not have been there.
And anyone who's ever done any kind of work like this would know a line of sight like that elevated position in the daytime, no, he should not have gotten there.
So I don't know.
I'm amazed someone hasn't been fired or stepped down yet.
Now, to put yourself in the eyes of the counter sniper, you got to realize he's a real person too, probably with a family and he knows how cops are treated.
If you're looking at someone crawling, even if they're yelling, there's someone up there, you can't just take a shot.
I mean, look what happens to vigilantes, you know, for lack of a better word, on a subway that stands up and then they go to prison for doing whatever.
So this sniper is thinking, okay, is that a gun?
Is that someone with a camera?
I don't know if I should shoot.
And I've dealt with that in war as far as rules of engagement.
And you do not need that.
You need to realize the Secret Service's job only is to protect the principal.
That's it.
The military's job is to break stuff and kill people.
That's it.
But our heads get filled with all this nonsense, a lot of it from DEI that they don't, this BS that shouldn't be out there.
So there's so many different moving parts, but whoever was in charge of that, up to the Director Cheadle, they should have been gone yesterday.
I completely agree.
I think it's been a massive dropping of the ball.
And finally, Rob, before I go to the other two, a lot of criticism of the female agents, just for the body language and so on that we saw, and the fact that physically they people are arguing, they should have been bigger to physically be able to protect Trump.
I got to say, one of them was right in front of him on stage when she could have been shot.
So I think they're obviously highly trained, very, very courageous people.
But this idea that Trump's detailed that day seemed to have so many women agents there, given what a massive target he is.
Is that, from your perspective, is that a problem?
Is that something that actually the way the world is going should be encouraged?
Are they as trained?
Are they as effective as their male counterparts?
I don't know the answers.
I'm just putting the questions that X has been raging with.
I mean, you know, as far as I can tell, getting to that detail of a president or a former president, you need to be top of the line.
And the woman can't help how tall she is.
However, that's the unfortunate truth.
One of the jobs is to be a human shield.
And she wasn't tall enough.
And again, I wasn't there.
And I don't understand the stress they were under.
I've never met the three women that we saw.
I know one had an issue holstering her pistol.
But look, there are shots fired, people moving.
You might not be as calm and cool as you are on the range.
So I can't judge that.
But it brings me back to the point.
If they were hired because they were good enough, competent, had merit, fine, hire them.
But if they're simply getting hired because they're women, that's wrong.
And again, they might be awesome.
I don't know.
But we can't just be putting people in places because it checks a block.
We need to take the best people available, hire them, regardless of the color of their skin or their gender.
And that's not happening a lot of places.
And people are getting distracted by a bunch of different crap that's out there.
They don't need to be involved with.
They need to go, where's the principal?
Where's the out?
Where are the potential avenues?
Is it secure?
And the answer to all those is no.
None of that was done.
Well, John, Ali, you posted this.
Biden and other leaders, thankfully, de-escalated, did not make jokes or laugh about the violence like what happened when MAGA and Trump mocked Paul Pelosi.
Fascism And Dictatorship Claims 00:15:29
I mean, look, I've seen a lot of people on the left say that Trump uses just as incendiary language.
He's just as insensitive as people who've been attacked for being insensitive over Trump's shooting.
But do you think that was a timely thing to post?
I mean, do you not think that one of the arguments the left always put against the right in America, particularly after shootings, is there should just be a period of dignity where you treat what's happened with utmost severity and you don't try and play whataboutery?
I just saw your interview with Ben Shamiro where it was nothing but whataboutism.
And I'm not here to BS your audience or gaslight anyone.
There was a registered Republican, a white male, who tried to assassinate Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, also there was a person who was killed, a father, and there were two people who were critically injured.
And Donald Trump, ever since he descended the escalators nine years ago and ascended to power for nine years, has stoked the ultraviolence.
I remember at his protest, he used to openly say, knock the crap out of them.
I'll pay for your legal bills.
This is the same people who've called the press, people like us, people like you.
Pierce, enemy of the people.
And as such, for the past nine years, multiple cases where his followers have tried to commit violence against law enforcement, the press, poll workers.
This is the same man who said, as of this campaign, I want to be dictator for a day.
Last week, he praised the January 6th violent insurrectionists, called them hostages.
He incited a violent insurrection.
When those insurrectionists came to the Capitol with violence, some of them came to assassinate Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, his former vice president.
You know what he said?
Yeah, they're onto something.
He encouraged them to kill Mike Pence, his former vice president.
Two weeks ago, Donald Trump posted that he wants televised military tribunals for Liz Cheney, who used to be the number three Republican.
And also, the head of Heritage Foundation, who has released Trump's Project 2025 two weeks ago, Pierce, said that we're in the process of a second American revolution, and it will be bloodless unless the left allows it to be.
This is what we're dealing with.
It is a toxic environment which has been stoked by Trump's embrace of the ultra-violence and violent rhetoric.
And yesterday, Nancy Pelosi, her husband, Paul Pelosi, folks, for those who don't know, another far-right nut tried to assassinate her.
He opened the door.
He took a hammer to her head.
He survived an assassination attempt.
Do you know what MAGA and Trump did?
They mocked him, ridiculed him, promoted conspiracy theories, and then Trump joked about it with the public.
Nancy Pelosi yesterday, regardless of what you think about their politics, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and President Biden wished Trump well.
They wished peace.
They de-escalated the situation.
And all of a sudden, we have whataboutism from the right wing.
And I want to say one last thing about the right wing.
Mitt Romney was a 2012 Republican presidential candidate.
Do you know what Mitt Romney said, openly admitted?
He has to pay $5,000 a month for security for his family.
He said Republicans in office right now are also terrified for their life.
You know who they're terrified from?
MAGA Republicans.
This is what has happened.
We cannot normalize this.
We cannot normalize this nonsense.
And also, hang on, let me go.
Fathers of fascism.
Yeah, sure, sure.
It's fine.
You mentioned fascism.
I've just put a montage of endless people on the left calling Trump Hitler.
Now, to me, it is an utterly ridiculous comparison.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis murdered 12 million people, 6 million Jews in a Holocaust.
There is no comparison to be made by any sane mind between them, Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and Donald Trump.
And I can imagine how impressionable minds, if they keep being told someone is Hitler, start to believe they might have a moral justification in killing such a person.
Why wouldn't you if you genuinely think this man is Hitler?
Would you like the left now to stop calling him Hitler?
Do you think it's time to stop doing that?
I don't know if the left is, but I know that the most sober scholars of fascism, including Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Giott, and others who have studied the rise of fascism in Europe, the rise of Mussolini, the rise of Nazism, have talked about how MAGA and Trump resemble the rise of authoritarianism.
Furthermore, I want to tell people that Trump himself said he will be a dictator for a day.
And two weeks ago, the Supreme Court said the president has, quote, absolute immunity for official acts.
You don't think it's a problem calling him Hitler.
You don't think it's a problem calling him Hitler?
Who called him Hitler?
They're talking there.
And also, who called him Hitler?
Okay.
He literally quotes Hitler's language.
Do you want me to get him?
He literally quotes Hitler.
Wait.
Do you want me to play again the minute Hitler?
I just literally played a minute-long mashup.
I know, I know.
I'm literally calling him Hitler.
And my question for you, Ajah, is, I think it's incredibly stupid and inaccurate and wrong and inflammatory and dangerous to keep calling an American politician the new Adolf Hitler when he isn't.
And my question to you is, do you agree with me?
I believe calling him Hitler when you said that Hitler did all those, you know, the genocide.
Yeah, they're not talking about that.
They're talking about the pathway towards dictatorship where the pro-democracy coalition bent the knee at advance like you are doing, unfortunately, and they're talking about the rise of fascism.
Also, speaking about Hitler, the language of Hitler, sadly, he uses vermin, poisoning the blood, Third Reich.
He uses that language.
What about Joe Biden?
What about Joe Biden?
Okay, but what about Joe Biden?
He does not.
Joe Biden does not use Hitler's language.
I'm about to read you something Joe Biden said only last week.
This is what he told potential donors.
It's time to put a bullseye on Trump.
Yes, I've heard that.
And guess what?
You know how that was represented?
In the Detroit rally.
I saw that.
I saw the speech.
There is an election happening right now.
He talked about putting the focus on Trump and Trump's rhetoric.
And then you know what happened?
He went to the rally.
I heard the speech.
No violent insurrection.
No dictatorship for a day.
He talked about Trump's rhetoric.
So you don't have a problem.
You don't have a problem.
Okay.
So you don't have a problem with the current Democrat President of the United States saying it's time to put a bullseye on Trump, his political opponent.
Because literally, within days of him saying it, somebody put a bullseye on Trump and tried to assassinate him.
Within days of him saying that and literally campaigning against Trump, a registered Republican male, yes, tried to assassinate Trump.
It was not liberals.
Well, it's also been reported he donated to Joe Biden.
We don't know yet the motivation.
No, he did not.
Well, we don't know nothing about $10.
All I'm saying is, if the President of the United States says it's time to go to the United States, he's a registered Republican.
Well, I'm just saying, it was literally several days' gap between the president saying it's time to put a bullseye on Trump and that being widely reported and somebody putting a bullseye on Trump.
So when it comes to dangerous language or rhetoric, I actually think both sides are culpable.
But Joe Biden and you on his behalf do not see any reason to dial it down on your side.
I refuse to accept this nonsense bullshit both sides framing when literally yesterday the entire Democratic leadership de-escalated the situation and they're not even campaigning right now.
And literally last week, Donald Trump praised the January 6th violent insurrectionists as peaceful hostages and two weeks ago asked for a military tribunal and for nine years has stoked violence against all the groups that I've mentioned, which is why law enforcement has said there has been a rise in stochastic terrorism.
Stochastic terrorism is specific targeted violence against individuals and groups incited by public rhetoric.
There have been more than 70 cases of Trump's MAGA followers attacking literally all of his critics, including media, poll workers, law enforcement, elected officials, people like Paul Pelosi.
He has stoked this political violence for nine years and you have normalized it.
All right.
I have not.
Okay.
I condemn it.
Okay.
I condemn all of it.
Okay.
And what were your personal feelings when you heard Trump had been shot?
It was, I was on a WhatsApp group and someone said he's been shot.
I'm like, no way.
And I immediately checked the video.
I'm like, oh my God.
And then he got up and I'm like, thank God, because I agree with what everyone said.
It would have been disastrous for everyone.
I mean, a political assassination.
And then I thought nobody else was killed.
Later on, I found out that the father tried to protect his family.
He was killed.
And then two individuals are critically wounded.
And then the shooter was also killed.
So it's one of those situations of excel and relief because, again, political violence has no place.
There should be a way where you should look at the record and the rhetorics and the policies.
And that should be enough, in my opinion, to show you that Trump is not fit.
But thankfully, the leadership right now, regardless of what you say about Biden and everyone else, they really de-escalated yesterday.
And I'm glad they did.
That is sober, responsible leadership.
Can you imagine, Piers?
God forbid, if the situation was reversed, what Trump would say?
We know.
We know the violent insurrection.
We know who he is.
All right.
Let me bring in Emily.
You've been waiting patiently.
Your response.
Thank you, Emily, for waiting for me.
Yeah, I'd like to say that.
First of all, as a Jewish person, there's no such thing as contextualizing what they meant when you compared Donald Trump to Hitler.
You can't say, oh, he's the KKK, but minus the part where they hunted down African Americans.
There's no such thing.
But here's the problem with society.
And if I'm being honest, you are part of the problem.
Sorry, I forgot your name.
You cannot justify.
You can't justify the violence because Pierce asked a very head-on question, is this wrong or whatever it was?
And you spent the last 10 minutes trying to explain the other side, but then say you don't believe in two sides.
Political violence is wrong, and I'm glad to hear you condemn that.
But by you trying to make the argument that Trump, because he's XYZ, you almost made it seem like you understood why it could be justified.
And then look for all these reasons that are completely invalid.
You are part of the problem because we live in a society.
where if you don't like a person, we try to delegitimize everything they say.
We invalidate the things that they say.
We come up with outrageous accusations and then we dehumanize them.
And do you know who dehumanized groups of people?
Hitler did.
So the Democrats are actually taking a page right out of Hitler's playbook and then have the audacity to make the Hitler comparison to Trump, which I just find ironic.
Rob, I want to bring you in here.
I talked to you about the security aspect of this, but just as an American, as an American hero who served his country with great valor and heroism, as I said with Navy SEAL Team 6 for so many years, what do you feel about what is going on with your country, particularly in light of what happened at the weekend?
Well, I think that a lot of people are being fed nonsense from different news outlets.
And if you try to bring up a different point, you get silenced.
And it's the whole fascism, admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations.
Your guest, Mr. Aliyah, saying he's a fascist.
Oh, how's that?
Is he silencing his political opponents?
Is he bringing up BS charges, charging them with stuff that he's never done?
All the stuff they're doing to Donald Trump, and then they put a gag order on him, and then they try to assassinate him.
This is like, this is South America nonsense.
And it shouldn't be that way.
And just spinning everything the way they want it.
Like they're saying Donald Trump said suckers and losers and he badmouthed the military and violent insurrection when he said, go down there and have your voice be heard.
I know Donald Trump and he's not trying to incite violence.
And then as far as he's a violent insurrectionist, what about all the cities that the left burned down?
And then no one says anything, mostly peaceful, yet the entire city is burning behind me.
And again, I'm not a Republican either.
I'm not a Democrat.
I'm a registered independent, but I also have a brain in my head.
I don't just sit somewhere regurgitating other people's thoughts in an echo chamber saying it, like Nancy Pelosi admitted, if you say it enough, the useful idiots, that's a communism term, will repeat it.
And that's all that's happening.
Open your eyes.
See what's happening.
They tried to kill him.
That's where they're at right now.
They can't be.
I mean, they beat him in 2020, whatever.
It was miraculous how many millions of votes came in out of nowhere.
It's like, and you're not allowed to even say that because then you get shut off from social media.
Like, just take a deep breath, go outside and talk to people.
It's so obvious.
Who are you going to believe?
Me or your lion eyes?
It's crazy.
I mean, would you, my hope was that we would get to this debate today, having had 36 hours to think about all this, and there would be a concerted, united effort by everybody to try and dial everything down.
An acknowledgement on both sides that the rhetoric on both sides, whether it's the left branding him Hitler all the time or it's Joe Biden talking about putting a bullseye on Trump, whatever it may be.
You know, we've had two politicians in Britain killed in the last 10 years by lunatics.
There are lots of crazy people out there who will act if they believe elected officials are somehow doing stuff that deserves their death.
And to whip up that with this language, and I'm going to say both sides, because it is both sides.
You know, you can construct an argument that Trump's worse than the left and the left can construct an argument the other way around and he can about you.
But to me, where is the concerted will of everybody to try and acknowledge that when one of the two presidential candidates nearly had his head blown off at the weekend and is unbelievably lucky to still be alive, that when that happens, it is the wake-up call that is long overdue for America.
You can believe me or your lying eyes.
And yesterday there was a press conference where President Biden said exactly that, unite, and he had pretty much every Democratic leader now.
I haven't heard you.
Wait, wait, and condemned it.
And speaking about condemning political violence, I'm glad we all do.
And meanwhile, who politicized it?
JD Vance, who's trying to be the VP politicized it, blamed Democrats before there was any evidence about the shooter?
Lauren Bobert, Scott Jennings, Republican on CNN.
They're the ones who did it.
And by the way, it ended up being a registered Republican.
So when you say both sides of the world, who is also reported to have donated to Biden.
So we don't know yet the full motivation.
We don't know.
Yes, I know.
Look, he was a Biden donor and a registered Republican.
We don't know what his motivation is.
I'm just telling you the facts.
I'm telling you the facts.
I didn't know that.
But if you're trying to get that in the back, with respect, if you're trying to explain to me that obviously it was a Republican who did this because he killed the Republican candidate to be president, I've got a slight problem with your logical thinking there.
You know, if he's a Republican, but that's for a Republican, why is he killing the Republican president or trying to?
So unlike the other three guests, I do not blame the left.
They just spent the last 30 minutes blaming the left.
I'm telling you the facts.
And secondly, I'm telling you that we have to do an investigation.
Hopefully we find out why.
But the facts are, and we could trust our eyes, that was a registered Republican and there was a violent insurrection done by Trump.
Why are you only giving half the facts?
Because he wants to be a dictator for gay.
Why'd you have to go back to the fact that he said that to Biden?
You are not giving me the facts.
You're giving me your selected version of the facts.
You're saying he was a registered Republican.
There was no violent insurrection.
There was no violent insurrection.
He was also a Biden donor.
Okay, so continually refusing to acknowledge that doesn't mean you're giving me facts.
It means you're giving me partisan political facts that suits your agenda.
Sure, let's acknowledge the fact.
He gave $15 also to a super PAC a couple of years ago.
Violent Insurrection Facts 00:14:27
And in the last two years, he is a registered Republican.
And we have to find out.
I didn't say he's MAGA because we don't know.
We have to find out that.
But thank you.
We don't know.
We don't know the correct response.
He's one of yours.
You're trying to say he's one of yours that did that.
You guys just spent the last 30 minutes blaming the left, blaming the left.
I'm just giving you facts.
So you've spoken.
Trust your own eyes.
With respect, you have spoken for half of that 30 minutes.
Let me bring in Emily.
Oh, okay.
Well, no, I'm not.
Listen, I like having you on.
There's no problem with you talking.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying you did get.
I'm sorry.
I can't see.
You have had more airtime than either of your co-panelists.
So let me bring them back in.
Sure, sure.
Please.
Emily, I mean, I really do feel strongly that what we need now is proper leadership.
I hope that Donald Trump, and I actually expect this, that in his speech at the Republican convention later this week, I think we're going to hear a very different tone from Trump.
Would you like him to be less aggressive, less bombastic, more conciliatory, more unifying?
You know, not just talking to Republicans, but also talking to Democrats, to independents, to everyone in America, to say, look, I love this country, and I nearly died at the weekend because I'm trying to serve this country as an elected politician.
This can't go on.
You know, it's all got out of hand.
We've got to bring it together.
And then to have Biden respond and say, I wish I'd never said the thing about him, you know, having a bullseye on his head and so on.
I just think it's time that big leaders stood up and led the narrative into a better, calmer, more mutually respectful place, as it used to be.
I have a very strong opinion on this.
Most viewers probably don't know, but I'm 23 years old.
And in my lifetime, this is the first political assassination I've seen and hopefully the last that we will see in my lifetime.
But it sets such a bad precedent to the future of the United States that this is what the government is like.
This is what politicians act like.
You know, we see this level of animosity that, Pierce, you just said it used to not be this way that I have never seen in my life.
Like I mentioned earlier, we started to dehumanize people because we don't agree with their opinion.
As far as Trump goes, listen, you can't kill a man God wants alive.
And I think he will take that to heart.
I think he will change his demeanor a little bit.
Do I want to see Trump less aggressive?
Absolutely not.
America needs an aggressive president.
Would I like to see him watch his mouth more?
Absolutely.
But we saw during the debate with Biden, I think he handled himself very well.
I think he acted very professional, very presidential, kept his cool.
Biden spewed a bunch of BS on that debate.
Lord knows what he was even saying.
And Trump had every opportunity to make fun of him and he chose to take the high road.
Now he's just had an experience where he almost just saw death and met God, but survived that miraculously.
I think any normal person would take that to heart.
They said he already changed his speech for the RNC.
I think he understands now more than ever.
America is on such a bad path towards destruction.
And we need someone aggressive, Pierce, to take back control, not only of the United States, but look what's happened to the people.
Emily, I would use a different word.
I would say not aggressive, but strong.
America needs a strong leader.
Aggressive.
I do believe, look, I'm over across the pond at the moment in London.
I can tell you the general feeling here is that America right now is very weak because people see an 81-year-old president not in control of his faculties.
That's not a good, I don't care whether you're Democrat or Republican.
This is not good for America.
Rob, let me bring you in just on two pictures I want to just discuss with the panel.
The first one, from a technical point of view, it's an extraordinary image taken by a New York Times, a photographer, showing the bullet trail literally whooshing past Trump's head.
We believe that the shooter was using an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
Had that bullet entered Trump's body, particularly in his head, would he be alive now?
No, no, he wouldn't be alive because if you get into ballistics, you got to realize it's not the bullet itself that's going to kill you.
It's the shock waves that follow it.
And there's going to be a temporary cavity, then a permanent cavity.
If that goes into your brain, especially wasn't the back nearest Pons Medulla, that's a sniper shot that would have killed him.
And then again, too, just, I mean, you can tell by the flight, by the vapor trail behind it, that's a bullet.
But right now, I guarantee you, you're going to hear the left saying, oh, he wasn't even shot.
He was hit with glass fragments.
First of all, what glass did it hit?
And why does glass fly that straight?
You're looking at a bullet that flew past his head, potentially through his ear.
Very, very dangerous.
You take, I mean, you take a shot in the head, you're going to die.
I mean, I'm amazed.
That's some Pulitzer Prize stuff right there.
If that's the award they give to photographers, I'm not that smart.
But yeah, that's a crazy photo right there.
Well, it's an amazing picture, and it's only been eclipsed at you.
And I've got to single out the valor of these photographers who ran right to the stage, not knowing if there were multiple shooters, not knowing if the original shooter had actually been taken down.
This photograph I'm going to show you now is taken by Evan Vucci, the chief Washington photographer for the Associated Press.
Now, he's been covering Trump for his entire political career.
He won a Pulitzer actually in 2020 for photographs of protests after George Floyd's death.
But this picture here, when you watch the video of Evan Vucci, he runs into place and then very deliberately gets right in front of the action to take this picture.
And that's the moment where, Rob, you see Donald Trump shouting fight, fight, fight.
Now, he's been criticized for that.
How anyone can criticize anyone, anything they say when they've just been shot at, is baffling to me.
But in terms of the power of that image of a president being shot, being hit in the side of the ear, falling to the ground, and then getting back up, surrounded by Secret Service, to punch the air in defiance and say, fight, fight, fight.
How powerful did you find that image?
It was powerful for a number of reasons.
Obviously, the president was just shot.
His hands in the air saying fight.
And he's not just saying fight for the Republicans, fight for the country.
And if you look in the back, the American flag is almost upside down, which is a symbol for a nation in distress.
That's so powerful right there.
And of course, he's going to be criticized.
Donald Trump could make you the best stack of pancakes in the world.
And the left would say pancakes suck.
It's like you're going to get criticized for everything.
Very, very powerful image.
That's the reason he's going to win right there.
I mean, you're going to see this everywhere.
Yeah, I mean, Waja Ali, I mean, obviously, you have a deep dislike of Donald Trump, but that was an extraordinary moment of personal courage, I would argue.
To get back up when you've had a hail of bullets past you, to get back up and to punch the air defiantly, whoever you are, is a remarkable action, isn't it?
Donald Trump is a remarkable creature of media, and he used that moment and he got back up.
I'm glad everyone was safe.
But I also remember there's nine years' worth of images and rhetoric and behavior.
And that's a powerful image.
It's going to be an iconic image.
So was the images from January 6th.
And I hope enough voters realize that the future of our country should not be based on just one image, but also rhetoric and policies and actions.
But you would view what happened on January 6th as an assault on democracy.
And yet, what we saw here at the weekend was the greatest assault on American democracy imaginable, the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate.
There was one shooter, as what we know right now.
I'm only basing a fact.
There was one shooter who tried to assassinate Trump.
One person was killed.
Two people were critically injured.
On January 6th, the former president of the United States, along with other Republicans, inspired a violent insurrection against a free and fair election and tried his best to engage in a coup.
Thankfully, it failed.
And last week, the same Donald Trump praised those January 6th violent insurrectionists.
And the Supreme Court.
Why can't you do?
Look, here's the thing, Wajo.
Why can't you do what I do, right?
I'm not a conservative.
I'm listening to facts.
I'll explain what I mean.
I'm not a conservative.
I'm not a Republican.
I'm obviously British.
I'm not a conservative here, although I have voted conservative in the past.
But I'm perfectly capable of doing what I did after January 6th and saying I thought those scenes were disgusting, that Trump's rhetoric was deeply unhelpful that day, et cetera, et cetera.
And I wrote columns about it and said it on air.
But I'm also capable of divorcing that for a moment to look at a picture of a man showing remarkable courage under fire and call that for what it is.
You seem completely incapable with respect of saying anything that could be remotely construed or clipped up or anything which could be remotely seen as either supportive or praiseworthy of Donald Trump.
And this is part of the problem.
You can hate someone as much as you like.
You can say there are 20,000 things you hate about them and he shouldn't have done this, this, this, and this, and this.
But sometimes you've got to step back, haven't you, and go, actually, it was appalling what happened to Trump on Saturday, but what he did was actually remarkable.
And I take my hand off to him, whatever you want to say, but to not be capable of doing that.
It's part of the fact, no, the fact that he had the presence of mind to get up and do that, I think it was a very powerful image.
And I think very few people would have understood that moment and done that.
And I believe it will help rally his base.
I've said it won't just help rally his base.
But he understands.
Well, okay, but Emily, it's not going to just help rally Trump's base.
This is going to rally, I think, a lot more Americans who are already beginning to migrate away from Joe Biden.
We know this.
A lot of Latinos, a lot of black Americans and others moving in big numbers now away from Biden towards Donald Trump.
This is not going to make him less popular.
This is going to make him, in my estimation, of knowing Americans for a long time and having huge affection and admiration for American people.
This is going to drive a lot of Americans who were maybe wavering, sitting on the fence, towards Trump, I think.
I'm so glad you mentioned this, Pierce, because for years, especially working in sports broadcasts, I've always felt bullied into shying away from my public support, not necessarily of Trump, but the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
And now, after Trump's assassination attempt, I noticed just to name a few, Bitchell Robinson on the New York Knicks posted something about Trump.
It wasn't even so politically motivated, but so glad he's okay, praying for America.
This is unacceptable.
And then had to apologize for what he said by saying, this doesn't mean I'm voting for Trump.
I'm sad to see a potential president almost assassinated.
And the fact that we're, and then there was another guy on the jet, Sauce Gardner, Ahmed Gardner, who said, this is appalling, blah, blah, blah.
And to see the response from the users who are so outraged.
How dare they have a political opinion that doesn't correlate with mine.
And these, by the way, just for statistic purposes, are two black men that are now publicly supporting Trump after the assassination attempt.
And I think this will delete that stigma a little bit of you can't be public if you support Trump.
You need to keep that in your corner.
And when you go on social media, pretend you like Biden.
So I'm glad to see that people are starting to be more honest about their opinions because we are so quick to cancel one another.
And by the way, Ebony, by the way, I saw, I have seen a steady stream of utterly repulsive posts on X from people, including nurses in this country, to people who are educators, university people and so on in America, just posting their glee and their distress that Trump wasn't killed.
Oh dear, bad shot.
Wish it had been closer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It's disgusting.
And a lot of these people tend to have the hashtag be kind in their bios on X, as if somehow they're kind.
They're not kind people.
They're actually very malevolent, dark-hearted people who in that moment of an American presidential candidate and former president having an assassination attempt just wished it had been successful.
And this isn't.
You don't have to, yeah.
Well, again, it comes back to my point.
America needs more unity now than it's ever needed, not this kind of response.
It is unhuman on both sides.
I thought the reaction to Nancy Pelosi's husband and what happened to him was disgusting, by the way, Wajahat, from people on the right.
I completely agree with you.
But I also think the reaction to what happened to Trump from people on the left is disgusting.
It's perfectly okay and reasonable to call out this kind of crap whenever you see it, whichever side is spewing it.
And my only issue with you, I think you're a very smart guy.
You come on here a lot and I enjoy our debates and so on, is that you just seem so determined not to utter anything that could be construed as sympathy or compassion or empathy or praiseworthiness for the other side, in this case, Donald Trump.
I think it's a shame.
Because I think Trump, knowing him as I do, if you actually, if people on the left were able to do that more with Trump, he probably would turn into a much easier character when it comes to dealing with the left.
He's a pugilist by nature.
And the more he gets punched, the more he punches back.
Try a different tack.
Try and be human.
Am I wrong to say this?
May I quickly respond?
I think the good news here, speaking about unity, is all of the people that you had on the last 30 minutes, we've all condemned political violence and we all condemn the failed assassination attempt.
Secondly, here's an opportunity for unity.
Yesterday, regardless of what you think of him, President Biden and Democratic leaders tried to lower the temperature.
He called Trump.
I agreed with that and I said, I'm so glad, like you tweeted, that he tried to de-escalate the situation.
Final thing I'll say, and you said this earlier in your show, here's an opportunity also for Donald Trump, the RNC is this week.
If he has a different tone, Piers, if he actually echoes unity, if he reaches out to everyone, instead of people calling poisoning the blood and vermin and calling people the deep state or promoting the replacement theory, I think he can win the election.
Let's see if he can do it, if he can learn from this.
Let's see.
I hope he does.
You know the bad news for people on the left, Wajihat?
He's already won the election.
It's over.
Last time I checked the election's four months away.
But here's why I say it's over.
Mutual Respect Needed Now 00:05:32
Because for two reasons.
One, the Democrat candidate, incumbent President Joe Biden, simply will not stand aside and recognize that he is completely unfit now for office in terms of his cognitive abilities.
I mean, only in the last few days, he called President Zelensky the president of Ukraine.
He called him President Putin.
He then called his vice president, Kamala Harris, the first black female vice president of the country, Vice President Trump.
This is the stuff of complete, well, it's humiliation for him.
It's staggering that his wife, Jill Biden, who I've interviewed before, will allow this to happen.
It's desperately sad for America that the President of the United States is rendered now as somebody who literally will call the president of another country his sworn enemy by mistake.
But they're not mistakes.
It's his cognitive ability is just so impaired.
It's very sad, but he won't stand aside.
So for that reason, Trump was already roaring ahead in the polls.
And now there's been an assassination attempt on Trump.
And I think the general reaction from people I've spoken to in America is that they're feeling even more inclined now to vote for Trump.
And so I just think this election ended, actually, in the attempt to end Donald Trump's democratic rights to run for president.
I think the perpetrator has actually accelerated Trump's return to the White House, which is the purest definition of irony.
So that's why I say it.
I think women who actually enjoy having rights and abortion rights will have a different say in four months.
And I also think people who enjoy Social Security and Medicare, which Project 2025 wants to cut, will have a say.
I think young people who believe in climate change, which Donald Trump says is a hoax, will have a say.
And I do believe a multicultural coalition that does not want a quote dictator for a day, I'm just quoting Donald Trump, will have a say.
But let's see, right now, as of right now, this week, tide race almost, 4951 within the margin of error.
Trump has a small nudge.
We'll see in three and a half months.
If Trump emerges this week after this shooting attempt and actually is completely different from the past nine years and heals and is decent and kind and reaches out to people, I think he'll win.
But I've been paying attention for the past nine years and I don't think Donald Trump sadly will emerge as that man.
Do you know who deported the most people from America of any president in history?
Obama, deporter-in-chief.
Yes.
Yeah.
Was that kind?
Yes, and liberals criticize him.
Was that kind, by Jahan?
No, liberals criticize him.
I criticized him then.
I criticize him now.
And that's why we want some sort of decent immigration reform.
What we don't want, by the way, I know you saw this last week, is camps.
And Mike Johnson, the Republican leader, supported Trump's plan for camps and also to deport 15 million people illegally.
That is also a problem.
And that's what's in store for a second.
Piers, can I comment?
Yeah, you can, Emily.
Yeah.
So as a 23-year-old female, Trump has already confirmed that he does not plan on taking away abortion rights for women and that he will leave up to the state.
But as a 23-year-old female, I don't feel safe leaving my house without a worry in New York of being raped by illegal immigrants.
I don't feel safe when I go to gun classes because I, as a five-foot-four woman, can't defend myself.
And I learned the laws, the disgusting laws, that I'm not allowed to shoot someone if they are about to rape me because I don't know the intention, the intention of the person.
That's one thing we could agree with.
But all the criminals will get them anyway.
Did prohibition work when we banned alcohol?
No, they just created more speakeasies.
So can we just be real for a minute that that's not going to work?
Because all of the bad guys still get them.
So your argument that people who enjoy having women's rights wouldn't like Trump as a president is just such a childish thing to say.
I'm a woman.
I'm 23.
I'm the next generation of America.
And I don't feel safe taking public transportation anymore.
How is that?
Why isn't that part of your argument?
We have lawlessness.
We have crime.
We have $10,000 legal in California.
I've got to say there's so many issues that you're neglecting.
Listen, there are lots of issues.
I got you together to talk about one specific one, but there are lots of issues, obviously.
It's been a great panel.
For nearly an hour, actually, we've been debating this.
I thank you all very much indeed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Pierce.
Well, I'm joined now by the former Navy SEAL and Republican Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw.
Dan, thank you very much for joining me on Uncensored.
First of all, your reaction as an American to what happened to Donald Trump.
That was horrific.
I think the same reaction as most people had, just shocked, didn't want to believe it at first.
Followed by extreme relief that he was fine, that he was just grazed.
Followed by more grief because it turns out that a Trump supporter was actually shot and killed and a heroic one at that, one who, former fire chief, who was shielding his wife and daughter.
And all for what?
You know, because some psychopath thinks that it was on his shoulders to change the course of history and that he had some ideations of aggrandizement that would give him that moment in history.
Politics Defined By Cliques 00:02:11
And thankfully he's dead.
It's predictable in a sense.
Surprising, but predictable.
You know, our temperature has turned up really high in politics these days.
All over the world, not just here, all over the world.
And it's commonly, politics is the common refrain is fight the other side.
You know, as Biden said, put them in the bullseye.
Does he literally mean pull them in the bullseye?
Of course not.
Just like none of us mean actual fighting.
That's why I try to use the term actually quite carefully because I have been in real fights.
But you have to stop talking about politics in terms of war because the entire point of politics is to avoid war.
It's disagreement without war.
I would almost say that's the definition of politics.
And so there has to be some kind of mutual respect.
And Trump is handling it quite phenomenally, to be honest.
Not just that fist bump, that call to his supporters right after he'd been shot, but also his comments afterwards about calling for unity.
And I think that's exactly what we need, and good on him for doing that.
I actually thought Melania Trump as well issued an extremely moving and powerful statement about it all.
And I agree with you about the unity thing, but it has to come from the political leaders at the top.
Everything now is political.
I've never known a time where people from families, friendship groups, and so on have been so easily fractured by disagreements about politics that have seeped into the way that they lead their regular lives.
You know, I've noticed it in my family and my friendship groups.
People are getting very, very angry.
It feels very visceral, but everything is now framed around politics.
Have you noticed that?
And what do we do about this?
Of course I've noticed it.
And I speak to high schools a lot.
And one of the things I always say is, I feel bad for you guys.
This wasn't like my experience in high school, you know, 20 plus years ago, or college for that matter.
People didn't segregate themselves into different political cliques.
Social Media Whips Anger 00:03:57
They segregated themselves into music cliques, depending on what type of music they listened to.
It's very different now.
You're expected to have an opinion on everything at a very young age.
And I always say, hold off on those opinions, please.
You don't know what you're talking about.
You haven't had experiences.
You haven't had time to build a framework with which to absorb those facts that you're being inundated with online.
You know, we have all the information in the world at our fingertips, but we don't seem any smarter as a result.
And that's a real problem.
You know, we need some basic civics education in this country, and we need some perspective.
You know, I tell people when they're getting really upset, you've got to get offline.
You've got to get offline.
You've got to go around.
You just got to talk to normal people.
And I promise you that the normal people are still normal.
Yeah.
And the social media makes everyone believe that all of the worst things are right in front of them all the time.
Yes.
And when leaders say stupid things like Trump is Hitler, well, then some crazy people might actually take that seriously.
Because what are you supposed to do with Hitler?
Well, you're supposed to kill him.
That's what you're supposed to do.
Well, that's the point I made, actually.
I made that point, actually, in my opening monologue to this whole debate, is that if you keep calling somebody the new Adolf Hitler, who murdered 12 million people, including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, if you keep doing that enough, then people will start to assume there is a moral justification in killing that person.
I mean, why wouldn't there be?
If you genuinely think this person is the new Hitler, then the only moral course of action that everyone should pursue is to kill that person.
That's the problem with language like that.
That's absolutely the problem with language like that and many other types of language.
You know, it doesn't stop there.
Betty Thompson, who's the Democrat lead for the Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the Secret Service, has repeatedly introduced legislation to actually take away Trump's Secret Service detail.
I mean, can you believe that?
Where does this hatred come from?
It's unbelievable.
Well, I felt the same way, actually.
R.F. Kennedy Jr., who I've interviewed several times, last time he came on several weeks ago, he was deeply impassioned about the fact that despite what everyone knows happened to his uncle and his father, he, despite having 15% of public vote in the polls, is not allowed a Secret Service detail, which seemed to me utterly extraordinary.
And I sincerely hope one of the first things that happens now is that R.F. Kennedy Jr. does get protection until this election because he's a Kennedy.
I mean, what more do you need to have in your family-backed catalogue than two political assassinations if you're then running as a political candidate?
So it doesn't just apply to Trump.
It applies, I think, to Kennedy, to anybody else who puts their head over the political parapet.
They should be properly protected.
I've been telling guests in the last hour, two British members of parliament have been murdered in the last 10 years, brutally murdered, by lunatics.
This is a very real threat to elected officials.
And I think it's whipped up by social media.
I think it's made people extremely tribal.
And the rhetoric is so toxic that you just, I can, you know, I was actually very impressed by you because there are so many on both sides, right and left, who simply refuse to countenance that their own side might be part of the problem.
And you said that the alt-right reminded me of the far left more than anything.
If the third words out of their mouths are rhino and establishment and globalist, rest assured, they're not very thoughtful and they're probably about to lie to you.
I'm sick of it.
I really wanted to applaud when you said that, because the problem applies on both sides.
And I would have liked Joe Biden last night in his address to the American people to acknowledge that some of his own rhetoric, like the one that you quoted earlier about having the bullseye on Trump, that he would accept that that kind of language is part of the problem.
Both Sides Share Blame 00:03:58
Right.
And look, in the sense that both sides need to calm down in a way.
Like, I've seen some members of Congress literally call for Biden to be arrested because he incited this assassination or he ordered the assassination even.
Well, by that logic, then you have to arrest Trump too because of January 6th.
I recall voting against Trump's impeachment because I don't believe he did incite that riot in legal terms.
We all have to just take a step back.
Political rhetoric is heated.
Should it be as heated as it is?
No.
But also, that doesn't mean that the political leaders who say, even if it's irresponsible things, it doesn't mean that they created the violence that manifested inside of a crazy person's head and then their actions.
And we've got to be smart enough to separate those two.
And, you know, the more we're not, the more we're going to go back to this tit-for-tap.
Dan, do you think it's now almost inevitable that Donald Trump wins the election?
Yeah, like I said earlier, I think his chances of losing went to about zero, about zero, as near zero as you possibly can go.
And I think that's further solidified by his current actions post-assassination attempts.
And what would you like him when he has his big speech on Thursday?
What would you like him to say?
Because the whole world would be watching this and crucially watching the tone of what he says, given that he is highly likely to get back the presidency.
What do you want Trump, Mark II, to look and sound like?
If he just doesn't mention Democrats or Biden at all, if he just talks about what he wants to do for the country, unify the country, if he just talks about how great he thinks this country is and how much he loves its people, he'll win in a landslide.
If he lets go of anger, if he lets go of the past and looks to the future, he will win in a landslide.
Dan Credshall, great to have you.
For viewers who may not have seen you before, uncensored, you lost your eye on deployment in Iraq with SEAL Team 3.
So let me please thank you for your tremendous service to your country.
And I appreciate you coming on.
Thank you.
Yeah, got a little in common with the former president now.
He has slightly to the right by his ear.
But yeah, absolutely.
Actually, before I let you go, what was your reaction when he got up and reacted the way he did with the fist bump and the defiant nature of his response?
I think that's Trump 101.
You never know how you're going to react when you get shot.
Right.
I'll say that.
It speaks to the character of a person.
It speaks to what's deep down inside of them when something like that happens.
And you only have a second to react.
Some people cower in fear.
Some people would have crawled away.
Some people would have sobbed uncontrollably.
But he decided that the best option for him was to reassure his supporters and give that defiance, that defiant look, that message to his supporters.
And I think that was absolutely the perfect response.
Dan Crenshaw, again, thank you very much indeed for coming on.
Well, joining me now exclusively as Donald Trump's former lawyer and the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.
Rudy, thank you very much for coming on uncensored.
It's good to see you again.
Can I just get your reaction?
Thank you, Piers, for having me.
It's good to see you.
Can I just get your reaction to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump?
Oh, my goodness.
It's so complicated, Piers.
You know, he's a close friend for... 35 years.
So first there's the friend, and then there's the president that I'm counting on to save my country.
Security Failures Explained 00:11:49
And when I first saw it, I saw it immediately.
We were watching him live.
We were watching his rally.
And my initial reaction was, oh, my God, they shot him, but it looks okay.
I mean, I was in charge of getting Hinkley arrested.
I did all the post-mortem on Hinckley.
Who was Reagan's?
Probably was involved.
Attempted assassin.
I was probably the one who tried to kill Ronald Reagan.
And I've been involved probably in presidential protection for three different presidents.
My initial reaction was that because it was a grazing wound, it appeared to be, and the way he went down, it didn't look bad.
But then I have the experience of Ronald Reagan, who didn't realize until about 15 minutes later that he was almost fatally wounded.
And he didn't realize it until he was in the car.
So you always have to worry about that.
And I was very heartened when he got up.
I wasn't happy with the security, which is a different, maybe nitty-picky, but I was in charge of it.
And those guys wouldn't be doing security again, at least the ones in the front who didn't have them covered.
Well, I was going to ask you, pushing his head up.
Yeah, let me ask you about several aspects of what went on in terms of the protection or lack of it that he received.
First of all, are you staggered that the Secret Service would have allowed a young 20-year-old with a semi-automatic rifle to get onto a roof so close to where Donald Trump was speaking?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If we don't get this solved definitively, we're going to have another Lee Avi Oswald.
There's absolutely no sensible explanation for that building not being covered for two reasons, Piers.
One, line of sight to kill him.
But number two, another reason, which I've checked out with my former police officials, including Bernie Carrick and the people who were in charge of presidential security for me, after all, we did it 100 times.
That building was a perfect vantage point to watch the crowd.
I'd have put five of my cops up there.
Anything going on in the crowd, you're going to see it from above a lot better than being in the crowd.
For the life of me, I can't figure out who the professionals were that decided to give up that building.
So two things, two things.
I just got to answer that question.
Well, two things have emerged, really, about it.
One is that initially, obviously, we've seen video footage of members of the public alerting police on the ground to what they were seeing on the roof.
And some of it goes on for 30, 40 seconds.
In fact, let's take a look at part of one of these videos.
Yeah, come up on top of the roof.
Here he is right there.
Right there.
See him?
He's laying down.
See him?
Yeah, he's laying down.
And Scott here will be fighting like hell to get a sentence.
What's happening?
Yeah, look.
Because we have millions and men and people in our country that shouldn't be here.
We have governments.
He's on the roof.
He's on the road.
Right here.
Get on the roof.
I mean, it's just, it's almost beyond understanding.
Oh, my goodness.
You've got members of the president.
It is, it is, Piers.
They're shouting out the guys on the roof.
And you're like, where is the Secret Service?
Where are the police?
What's happening here?
I've gone over this with professionals who did it for me.
And New York probably protects the president more than any place.
And we do it, I think, perfectly.
It's a great example.
And these people are in a state of shock at what happened here.
But let me say about President Trump first.
I'm so proud of him.
As your former guest said, you never know what a man is like until his life is in jeopardy.
And we find out.
We find out if he's a leader or average or a coward.
He's a leader.
The instinct to get up and show people he's okay is just the natural instinct of a born leader.
Now, I saw him do that in Nevada in October of 2016, where there was a warning that there was a gun in the crowd.
I remember the Secret Service, quite rightly, went batty.
They went batty.
I was there with my son, Andrew.
I just introduced him.
He gets pushed off the stage almost like, and my son was shocked.
He never realized somebody would treat a president like this.
They're treating him like a football player they're trying to hurt.
They hit him.
They get him off the stage.
They push him in the back.
I go in the back with him and I start talking to him.
He's perfectly calm.
Secret Service says, let's get out of here.
Let's get out of here.
He said, Mayor, I don't think I want to get out of here.
I want to make sure my people are okay first.
I don't know what that gun thing's all about.
They said, well, they could be anywhere.
They could be anywhere.
He said, who's in charge here?
Me or you?
And they said, well, you are.
You're the candidate.
He said, we're staying.
He stayed.
Everything got resolved.
He went out and he finished his speech.
I wrote him a text that night.
I said, you just answered every question as to whether you can be president.
This is what we need in the White House.
But let me ask you.
But Rudy, let me ask you on that point, though, that when he was able to stand back up and raise his fist and say defiantly, fight, fight, fight, whilst covered in blood and so on, he was surrounded by Secret Service.
And again, I was reminded of what happened with Reagan, that when he got shot, the first reaction of his detail was just to scramble him into the car as fast as humanly possible.
But here, they seem to allow the principal, the president, to stand up and have his head exposed without knowing.
They couldn't have known that there might have been other shooters.
Was that again a failure by the Secret Service?
Yeah.
I'd say you'd have two failures, though, and you'd have to evaluate them differently in the morning after, because they'll review this.
Where he is absolutely making an attempt to communicate with the American people.
You can't stop him.
But there were times in which when he was preparing for that, they also had his face exposed.
And those are the ones that are the ones that they should be able to prevent.
When he decided, I'm going to put that fist up and say, fight, nobody in the world was going to stop him.
And he is the president of the United States.
And then when he got over to the car, he did a similar gesture of, I'm fine, I'm okay.
Now, that's really important because America, whoever the president or presidential candidate is, when we lose a president, we go into a state of depression.
We go into a state of shock.
You remember after the Kennedy assassination, even after the attempt on Reagan, the idea that he let the American people know I'm okay, and this time it sustained itself.
It wasn't as bad as it originally looked.
That was a great thing to do.
And it shows what a great leader he is and what a brave man.
You don't know that about a man.
And that's what we need right now.
Our country is in the worst shape it's been in in my lifetime.
We need the best president we can get right now.
Have you had a chance, Richard, to talk to Donald Trump since the attack?
Yeah.
You wouldn't know what happened.
Tell me.
I mean, he's remarkable.
He's remarkable.
You know him.
You know him really well, inside and out.
And no matter what you might disagree about or not like about him, I don't think there's anybody that's going to tell you this man doesn't have extraordinary courage and determination.
And the more you try to stop him, the better he gets.
I used to tell him, I'm going to really worry.
I'll start worrying now when you're ahead.
You are the greatest candidate from behind I've ever seen in my lifetime.
I'm afraid if you get too far ahead, you're going to get lazy.
Somebody's coming after him.
He's at his best.
And they also say that, remember, even with debates, he's best in counter-punching.
Remember the debate?
Like, I didn't understand that question.
I don't think anybody else did.
I mean, that was a Reagan-like answer.
Not delivered in anger.
Exactly.
I definitely detected in that debate.
I detected a very different tone from Trump.
I just feel like he realizes he may well get re-elected.
And I would not be at all surprised to see him pivot to be a more moderate president second time around.
I think a couple of reasons, and I think Dan, and you were onto something there before.
Look, no matter who you are and no matter how strong you are, when you go back and reflect, I could have died, it changes you.
It happened to me on September 11th.
All during the day, I had too much adrenaline to realize it.
And then the governor told me he thought I was dead late at night.
And I said, why?
Well, he said, you were trapped in a building for 40 minutes.
We thought the building was crushed.
And then I finally looked at the building coming down.
And I said to myself, if the wind were blowing a little differently, myself, Bernie, Carrick, the fire, we'd all be dead.
And that's the first time I focused on it.
And I don't know that I'm a poet enough or psychologist enough to explain to you all the changes.
It makes you much more serious about life.
A lot of the petty little things that were bothering you just go away.
They just go away.
It's like, why was I worried about that?
And no better time for a man who's got to take on a leadership function to have that kind of readjustment take place.
You expect a very different speech.
Yeah, I agree.
I think the speech is a very different man.
I agree.
I think his speech is going to be extraordinary on Thursday.
But Rudy, just to clarify, when I asked if you'd spoken to him since the attack, did you have a conversation with him?
No, I was just able to get a message to him.
I didn't have a word-for-word conversation with him.
Talked to some of his people, and I got a message to him, and I hope to talk to him today.
And who's going to win this election now?
Is it now a nailed-down certainty that Trump will get the president?
I never like to say, you and I have watched these long enough together to know that, well, I believed from the beginning he was going to win this election.
By the beginning, I mean four years ago, when nobody did.
I endorsed him the first moment I could.
I've been fighting with my friends, some of whom I've kept and some of whom I've lost about it.
I think he's going to win.
I mean, nobody could make a prediction from this point that he's not going to win.
All they can say is things change.
So if you're asking me to predict from now, he's got all the elements to win the election.
And of course, things could go wrong.
Hard to conceive what they would be, but all Republicans, I think, wish that tomorrow was the election.
Rudy, it's good to talk to you.
You agreed to come on just to talk about what had happened to Donald Trump.
I'm going to respect that.
I won't ask you about that.
Yeah, anytime you want me back, I'm happy to come back, Pierce.
Well, I'd like to talk to you about obviously the other things going on with you, which everyone knows about.
Maybe we can do that again when the dust is.
Not too much going on with me.
Very calm.
Well, it's always good to talk to you.
And I know you've got a lot to discuss.
I've got to talk to Pierce.
To talk to you about the other stuff.
Are you in New York?
Are you here in Milwaukee or are you in London?
I'm in London.
I'm coming to the States for a few weeks, actually, end of this week.
Let me know.
We'll go to the next slide.
It'd be good to see you.
Thanks.
Thanks, Rudy.
Take care.
God bless you, Piers.
All the best.
Bye.
Well, joining me now is Luke Beasley, the progressive political commentator who was actually at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania when the attack went down, and C.J. Pearson, who's the co-chair of the Republican Youth Advisory Council.
Well, welcome to both of you.
Attack On Democracy 00:15:28
Luke, I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been in that audience for what should have been a pretty routine rally and to suddenly realize there was an assassination attempt unfurling on the president.
What is your recollection of what went on there?
Piers, good to be with you indeed.
It was pretty frightening.
A lot of confusion, as a lot of people have testified to initially about what was happening, and then just crowds running away, thinking, is this a mass shooting of the crowd?
Is this an assassination attempt?
And so all horrible.
And pretty quickly, once we found out what was going on, I think it was instantly occurring to everybody just how horrific what happened was.
And then, of course, learning that there was a death, Corey, and this is not something that should be happening at a political event.
With any of my differences with the people at that political event, it's absolutely unacceptable in our democratic process.
And that very quickly occurred to us.
And I think was my overwhelming reaction.
Joe Biden addressed the nation last night, but he didn't address comments he made to donors that were reported last week where he said it's time to put a bullseye on Trump.
As a Biden supporter, are you pretty horrified about that rhetoric?
I'm not saying for a moment Trump hasn't used language that's been completely wrong as well, but simply the president of the United States using that kind of language literally days before somebody does put a bullseye on Trump seems at best extremely ill-advised and at worst dangerous.
Yeah, I think for everyone, this is causing us a little bit to reevaluate and do some introspection about how we speak about these things.
I saw Congressman Dan Crenshaw mentioning we've gotten so used to speaking about politics as if it's a war, a battle, and all of these metaphors that align with that.
As you mentioned, Biden is not an exception.
They're very common, but I do think Biden should rethink.
It seems like he is.
He delivered a pretty strong and unifying message a couple of times already about this.
And people across the political spectrum should think about how do we have these political debates because they're important and these issues matter without giving the types of nuggets to be put into the minds of people who are deranged and want to do deranged things.
Do you accept, finally, before I go to CJ, do you accept that the real problem the Democrats have with this election now is that Biden was already really struggling because of the debate, debacle, and the assessment many people made that he's got cognitive issues that make him unfit for office now related to his age.
So he was already in trouble.
And the reaction to what happened to Trump, I mean, of course, it removes in a way one of the biggest weapons that the Democrats have had against him, which is he's a threat to democracy.
Here you have one of the biggest attacks on American democracy of my lifetime, an attempt to try and assassinate, to murder one of the presidential candidates.
It's quite hard for the Democrats to now go after Trump on that narrative they were pursuing so aggressively before that this man represents a great threat to democracy when this has just happened to him, isn't it?
So on those two levels, you know, many people think this election just ended.
Yeah, I would be being dishonest with you if I acted like the imagery that came from that day, the fist up and sort of this happening to a former president is not going to have an impact for Trump's campaign and sort of a rallying around him effect.
I disagree that we shouldn't still make an accurate fact-based case, maybe more mindful, as we mentioned about the language that people use.
But I know myself and many elected Democrats should continue to explain because it's true.
And we shouldn't let this deranged shooter completely derail the political discussions that we're having.
Again, let's rethink them and do our best to unite while also being honest about the ideology that's represented by MAGA and the way that it seeks to deteriorate the foundation of our democracy.
I don't think we should all of a sudden start lying about the observations that we've had, even while understanding the horrific nature of this attack on democracy and Trump.
Okay, let me bring in CJ Pierce and you're the co-chair of the Republican Youth Advisory Council.
You're in Milwaukee for the RNC convention.
Obviously, it's going to be a very different convention now.
First of all, what is the atmosphere like there?
Well, I'll tell you the mood here is definitely a lot more somber than it was going into it.
I think people are retrospective of what just happened this past weekend, which is, as you described it, indeed, an attack on our democracy.
But it's an unsurprising one, especially when you look at the rhetoric of the left over the course of the past several years.
They've equated Donald Trump to Hitler.
They've demonized half of America.
They tried to lock him up.
And when that failed, now they tried to put a bullet inside of him.
And this is the type of rhetoric that has just been commonplace in our politics.
And I would go to say that Joe Biden is the exception, is not the exception, but he is the rule.
You look at him saying that he wants to put a bullseye on the president.
You look at Reid Hoffman saying that he wants to make Donald Trump a martyr.
You then see the advisor of Reid Hoffman going out and sending an email to the press saying we should actually perpetuate the false narrative that this was all staged.
The left has not learned their lesson.
They continue to traffic in this rhetoric.
And hopefully you would think that after Saturday, they would reevaluate what happened.
Okay.
So unlike your co-panelist, Luke, you've at no stage in that statement made any attempt to talk about your own side having similar issues, which they do, or wanting unity and to bring people together here.
And this, again, this is part of the problem, CG, I think.
Actually, I applaud Luke for what he said.
You know, he made no attempt to pretend that on the Democrat side, they're part of the problem.
You've ignored the part of the problem, which is clear and demonstrable, which is people on the right often do things just as bad as the stuff you've been detailing about the left.
And until both sides acknowledge that and make a joint agreement to dial down the collective rhetoric, nothing changes.
Well, Piers, I would push back on that because it's not conservatives or MAGA Republicans going out and committing violence against Democrat elected officials.
It's not them shooting up congressional softball games.
It's not them attacking presidents and former presidents.
It is Democrat politicians.
And at the end of the day, you know, the left wants to talk about January 6th.
They've been talking about it for years.
As Kellyanne Conway rightfully said, every single day a Democrat wakes up.
It's January 6th in the calendar.
They get in their electric vehicle and they drive to Planned Parenthood.
That is the reality.
And so if we actually want to talk about real attacks on democracy, and as you said, Pierce, rightfully so, we just saw one.
We just saw an actual attack on democracy, not a talking point, not some rhetorical attempt to divide, but an actual attack on democracy.
And are you saying, are you saying, are you saying, are you saying that your side is completely blameless in the political temperature reaching these horrific heights?
I'm saying that if you show me a MAGA Republican that has aimed a rifle at the head of any Democrat politician or former president or president, then we can equate the two.
I think rhetoric, you know, we should all, you know, be introspective about what our words mean and what they actually portray.
But what we're seeing is not actually any double take being had by those on the left.
AOC just yesterday said that Donald Trump is a fascist.
She is using the same rhetoric that very well could have led to him almost being nearly assassinated this past weekend.
Okay.
I tried.
I tried, Luke.
So maybe you can directly challenge CJ Pearson.
Yeah, I agree with what you said, Piers.
Super sad, CJ, that immediately you're just sort of back to super divisive and dishonest talking points.
You said that people haven't pointed rifles.
What's dishonest, Luke, about a member of the round?
Let me say, Gabby, you remember Gabby Giffords, Gabby Giffords, was shot.
And then you also had more recently Paul Pelosi.
I was curious.
I was curious.
Hey, I let you go for it.
Let me, let me.
So Paul Pelosi was nearly killed by being bashed in the head with a hammer.
And do you know what we heard in the aftermath of that?
Unlike the response to this horrific attack on Trump, we saw people in positions of power within MAGA, like Trump himself and Don Jr. joking, joking about this elderly man's head being bashing with a hammer.
And so I think I would feel weird with myself if I even walked out of this conversation, allowing for the false equivalency.
I agree, Piers.
Both sides need to be honest about roles they've played and be mindful of their language without completely ignoring important points we need to make.
But also, there isn't an equivalence between the leaders.
Yes, people online, I've seen some deranged people on the left, to Piers' point, celebrating whatever it might be pushing conspiracy theories.
I hate that.
That's terrible.
It should be denounced.
But Democratic leaders immediately came out in unison and have denounced this, whereas jokes were made about Paul Pelosi.
So that should be noted as well.
I think CJ should really do a lot more introspection than we can.
Well, let me come back to CJ.
CJ, you're comparing apples to oranges there, Paul Pelosi.
CJ, CJ, CJ.
Well, the truth is Paul Pelosi was widely mocked and ridiculed in a disgusting manner by people on the right.
That is unquestionable.
Right.
And so when I see people doing the same thing to Trump from the left now, I think, well, yeah, but you were very angry when this was done to Paul Pelosi.
So why are you now doing the same thing?
There's a double standard that runs through a lot of powerful Democrats, though.
Sorry?
No powerful Democrats.
Trump was a powerful person.
I don't care if they're powerful or not.
I just think that if you're interested on X this past weekend, how could you miss?
Like, regardless of whether or not you want to play this game where you see it's not Democrat leaders saying this, it's not Democrat elected officials saying this.
It is the progressive left.
You can find a random person online saying anything about that.
I'll let you talk, Luke.
Let me talk.
I'll let you talk.
The base of your party is actively musing as to why they did not allow this shooter to finish the job.
That is your party.
That is your base.
And it doesn't matter if Nancy Pelosi releases a prominent Democrat.
Your party is actively celebrating what would have been the biggest, most consequential attack on our democracy in American history, at least in our lives.
I'm curious, which prominent Democrat are you citing?
Which prominent?
Because you can find someone saying crazy things online in response to everything.
So I hate that.
I'm just spoken out against them.
We can talk about Destiny.
He's been in the background.
Yeah, a streamer being deranged, not the same as the presumptive nominee of a party, CJ.
Let's be honest.
Come on.
Well, I think a lot more people probably follow him than a lot of the members of Congress you're citing here, right?
And so what Destiny is saying.
CJ, why?
Let me ask you, CJ, why are you so implacably reluctant to accept that anyone on your side has done anything wrong as part of this debate?
I just find that it's a very odd, it's a very odd exhibition of defiance when you've had your own leader, Donald Trump, show a very courageous act of defiance just after being shot.
I think it was a remarkable thing that he did to spring to his feet like that, risking his life potentially again.
You didn't know how many people were there.
But your act of defiance is simply to ignore the bleeding obvious.
I mean, everybody knows that people on the right and the left have done and said disgusting things, that they've all been part of the rising tide of inflammatory incendiary rhetoric.
And I just don't understand why you wouldn't just accept that.
So, yeah, listen, there are people on my side who are part of the problem too.
And we should all dial down.
You're very, determined not to do that.
Why?
Well, Piers, I would say that, you know, I think, as I said earlier, I think we should all be introspective about the words that we use and the fact that they have power.
But I think it's also important for us to be clear-eyed about the fact that actions do matter.
And the action that happened on Saturday was a direct attack on democracy that was inflamed and incited by a radical left that continues to compare this president to Hitler, continues to dehumanize half of America and treat us as if we are second-class citizens in a country and we're all anti-democracy.
Okay, but do you accept then that January 6th was an appalling act on democracy attack on democracy as well?
And people were openly calling for the execution of people like Mike Pence and assassination of other elected officials.
Do you accept that that was an attack on democracy?
Because I do.
I think they both were.
I don't think anyone of any consequence was calling for the execution of Mike Pence.
But of course, I disavow that rhetoric and I disavow any type of political violence.
But I think, again, we have to be mindful of who in this country is committing the political violence.
Trump to be actually after the attempted assassination of President Trump, you didn't see Republicans out here rioting, looting, and burning down America.
Imagine what the left would have done.
Actually, we don't have to imagine because just a few summers ago, they burnt half of this country in the name of social justice.
They're the party of violence.
They are the party of terror.
We are the party of decency.
And we showed it in the way in which President Trump has called for unity, called for grace, and continues to deliver for the American people as he will this week.
All right.
I'll give the final word to Luke on that.
Yeah, I think, Piers, and the audience, what you're seeing is a big difference between the pro-democracy movement right now represented by the Democratic Party with its flaws and this current MAGA ideology.
When someone who I've spent every day talking about the flaws of being Trump, when someone such as him is attacked, universally, people in positions of power, elected Democrats, are able to recognize the attack that that was on democracy.
And we believe the threat that is posed by the MAGA ideology to democracy should be prevented through democracy, which is why we're against this.
And that reaction, Biden denouncing it immediately, wanting this to see justice comes in stark contrast to the conspiracy theories we heard from elected Republicans, not random people on the internet, post-January 6th, what we're hearing here from CJ wanting to further divide and spread falsehoods, and what we saw in the aftermath of the Paul Pelosi attack.
One side incapable, incapable of denouncing this sort of violence, the other very able to.
And I think that's quite the indictment of the two ideologists.
Okay.
You can't call yourself pro-democracy when your side tries to impeach a president, jail him, and then assassinate him.
You failed all of those times.
You'll fail again, come novo.
Do I get to respond to this, Piers, or was that the wrap-up?
You can respond because I'd love to respond.
Yeah, I would just say supporting an attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power is the most prominent example of an attack on democracy.
And so universally, we should be opposed to attacks on democracy, not just when it's politically advantageous.
Okay, I'm going to leave it there.
But thank you both for a spirited debate.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
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