In this emergency episode, we discuss the latest reporting about the attempted assassination of former President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night. The US Secret Service says one rally attendee was killed, and two people have been critically wounded. Trump says he was pierced by a bullet in his upper right ear.
The gunman was positioned on a rooftop outside the rally. He was killed by the Secret Service, seconds after attempting to shoot Trump. We have the latest on the shooting, including Trump’s statement, an interview with a witness, and the reaction from President Biden and other politicians. This episode was taped at 10pmET, about four hours after the shooting.
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Mosheh Oinounou (@mosheh) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. He has 20 years of experience at networks including Fox News, Bloomberg Television and CBS News, where he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and launched the network's 24 hour news channel. He founded the @mosheh Instagram news account in 2020 and the Mo News podcast and newsletter in 2022.
Jill Wagner (@jillrwagner) is an Emmy and Murrow award- winning journalist. She's currently the Managing Editor of the Mo News newsletter and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News, Cheddar News, and News 12. She also co-founded the Need2Know newsletter, and has made it a goal to drop a Seinfeld reference into every Mo News podcast.
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Hey, everybody. It is a late Saturday night on July 13th. This is an emergency edition of the Mo News podcast. I'm most when you're new. And I'm Jill Wagner. We're coming to you over the weekend with this special edition after a shooting at a Trump rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. So Jill, we're recording this at 9.30 p.m. Eastern time, about three hours after it appears an attempted assassin took a shot at former president Trump. The secret service says that the former president Trump is fine, but it appears a bullet grazed his right ear. Let me read to you from the first statement. Trump says in part in his statement, "I knew something was immediately wrong when I heard a whizzing sound shots and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin of the upper part of his right ear." So he is being attended to as we record this. At least one other person attending the rally was killed. Two others are said to be critically injured according to the latest secret service statement just after 9 p.m. Eastern time. Officials say the incident is being investigated again as an assassination attempt on former president Trump. Right. So the suspected gunman was positioned on a rooftop outside of the rally. He is now dead. He was killed by the secret service. Trump himself was rushed to the hospital. Most as you mentioned, he put out that statement himself Saturday night saying that he was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of his right ear. You could see him bleeding around his ear and a couple of streaks of blood on his face. The shooting happened just minutes into his rally on Saturday just after 6 p.m. Eastern time. So let's take a listen to some of the sound from the moments before and during the shooting. You can hear the president speaking and then what sounds like the pop pop pop of gunshots. If you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened. Now as this is happening, you can see Trump grab his ear and then get down. Secret service agents run to surround him. You can hear screaming from the crowd and then also see people looking around. They're trying to figure out where the gunshots came from. Yeah, Joe, multiple witnesses say they thought it was fireworks or firecrackers. They weren't sure right away whether it was bullets. Notably, seeing president Trump go down quickly and crouch down upon being wounded, that apparently is the training they receive as president, as candidates to go down as quickly as possible. Right, so then you see Secret Service agents rush to the stage. They usher the former president off the stage. It sounded like they did that as soon as they got an all clear. Trump himself pumping his fist looking defiant. He did say in that statement that we were both reading from that it is not clear at this time who the shooter is, because he is now dead or what his motivation was. I suspect we will learn a lot more about that in the next few hours and in the next few days. Most shortly afterward, we did hear from president Biden. Yeah, one thing we should mention when it comes to motivation, they're going to be researching the shooter here, their previous statements, what potentially they were doing on social media. We might learn more overnight. There's a lot flying on social media. So we're waiting for confirmation. Remember the guy, John Hinckley, who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan, shot and wounded Ronald Reagan back in 81. He did so because he thought that shooting the president would get Jodi Foster, the actress, to like him. So sometimes the motivations are not specifically political, but people with mental health issues with other motivations. So we're waiting to hear whether this was political or this person had other motivations within minutes of the shooting. We understand President Biden, Kamala Harris, briefed on what was happening by top national security officials. President Biden addressed the nation a couple hours afterwards from Delaware, where he is right now, condemning the violence as sick, saying he hopes to speak to Trump by phone that he's been trying to reach out to him. But Trump is being cared for in a medical facility and condemning the shooting in the strongest possible terms. There's no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick. It's sick. It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this. He said Trump should have been able to conduct this rally peacefully without any problems as for how this could have happened. It appears again that the shooter was outside the perimeter, the security perimeter. Typically, when you go to events like this, you have to go through a metal detector. This guy was on a rooftop across the way. Why Secret Service didn't have that rooftop covered? Unclear. It's among the many questions we're asking tonight about what took place. One witness spoke to BBC News, who was nearby outside the perimeter. And apparently watching this guy crawl onto a roof. He says he attempted to warn nearby police. Take a listen to this witness. This is an interview again with a witness to the BBC. Probably five to seven minutes from speaking. I'm asking him here. I have no idea. But we noticed a guy crawling on the roof of the building beside us. 50 feet away from us. So we're standing there. We're pulling that guy crawling up the roof. He had a gun, right? He had a rifle. He clearly seen with a rifle. Absolutely. We're pointing at him. The police are down there running around on the ground. We're like, "Hey man, there's a guy in the roof of the rifle." And the police were like, "Huh, what?" They didn't know what was going on. We're like, "Hey, right here on the roof, we can see him from right here." We see him. He's crawling. And next thing you know, five shots ran out. So you're almost done. But the shots came from that corner. 100%. 100%. And he was up there for a couple of minutes. He was up there for a couple of minutes. Absolutely. At least three to four minutes. And you were telling, yeah, police from the Secret Service. We were telling the police, we were pointing at him for the Secret Service. We were looking at us from the top of the barn. They were looking at us the whole time when we were standing by that tree. The things binoculars. They see? Probably not. Because the roof, the way the slope went, he was behind where they could see. But why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here? I mean, this is not a big place. Jill, again, that is one witness. I imagine law enforcement is speaking to him tonight to confirm some of the details here. He says he was out partying, then decided to walk over to the rally. That's where he witnessed the shooter on the rooftop. Again, lots of questions here for Secret Service for law enforcement as to how this took place, how they were alerted to it. But a reminder here, once the shot or shots were fired by the attempted assassin here, Secret Service was able to very quickly. It appears to take him out. Right, motion. I think that there's a lot of questions going forward. We still have a few months of this campaign. It's actually just starting to heat up. So whoever the nominee is, whether it's Biden or someone else on the Democratic side, on the Republican side, Donald Trump, it is clear that security will need to be tightened. Now, again, anyone who goes to one of Trump's rallies, they are subject to security screenings. They have to go with your metal detectors, their bags, their possessions are searched for weapons, and any other number of items that could potentially be banned. But again, if you watch this video, you can see that this rally was being held in an open field. No roof on tap. So clearly, there were some type of security laps. Yes, and it happens as the Republican convention is set to get started in Milwaukee on Monday. That's where we were set to learn who Donald Trump has decided to pick his VP choice and the convention goes on for four days. They're in Milwaukee. So questions as to whether that's going to take place as scheduled, whether anything will be changed around that, whether security will be up for that. What this means for the president's security, President Biden's security here in New York, Jill, we got alert from the NYPD that they have more cops out, including a Trump tower, including at the mayor's home as well as they tried to assess again, whether the shooter, what's called is a lone wolf, or was part of some larger effort. Law enforcement has to determine that in the coming hours. Jill, we mentioned Secret Service did have an updated statement out. They talked about the suspected shooter firing multiple shots towards the stage. Secret Service neutralizing the shooter. That's the term they use when they kill the shooter. One spectator killed, two spectators, critically injured. Of course, Trump wounded as well, and that it's being investigated by both the Secret Service and the FBI. We're getting statements from across the political spectrum. Democrats, Republicans, everybody, for the most part, condemning this. Schumer and Hakeem Jeffery is the top Democrats in Capitol Hill condemning this, wishing Trump a quick recovery. You also had presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. the independent candidate, we should mention Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. His father was killed by an assassin. His uncle was killed by an assassin. His father was killed by an assassin while he was campaigning for president in 1968. The statement from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Now is the time for every American who loves our country to step back from the division, renounce all violence, and unite in prayer for President Trump and his family. We should note, by the way, that R.F.K. Jr. has been asking for Secret Service protection for the last year, and is so far not received it, as of this evening. We'll see if that changes now. That has to be approved by both the White House and the leaders on Capitol Hill, and so far they've rejected it based on the threat assessment, et cetera. They haven't been very clear as to that. You also had all the former presidents come out and condemn this, Jill, statements from former president Obama, former president Bush, former president Clinton, Obama, writing, "There's absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy." Michelle and I are wishing Trump a quick recovery. There's a couple of bullet points there from that statement. Bush saying Laura and I are grateful that President Trump is safe. Following the cowardly attack on his life, we commend the men and women of the Secret Service. Bill Clinton saying violence has no place in America. Hillary and I are thankful that President Trump is safe, hardbroken for all those affected by the attack today. Grateful for the swift action of the Secret Service. Now, while we talk about the 1960s, G.F.K. being assassinated, M.L.K. being assassinated, Malcolm X being assassinated, the 1970s, multiple attempts on Gerald Ford's life, including by the Charles Manson gang. Reagan assassination attempt back in '81. He was just a couple months into being president, was wounded nearly gravely. Doctors saved his life in the spring of '81. We actually, while not at the presidential level, have seen political violence in recent years, Republican Congressman Steve Scalise shot at a softball game, has recovered. Gabby Giffords shot, recovers at a rally. Several people killed around her at a rally. So, we have obviously been seeing a political violence, at least at the congressional level in recent years. Jill the rhetoric here in this campaign has basically been Trump saying that if Biden gets another term that this country is over, the same thing from Joe Biden saying that if Trump is elected, this country is over, the world is over. You've seen it escalate in media rhetoric as well, like the cover of the New Republic, the liberal magazine, had Trump's face with Hitler's face combined giving Trump a Hitler mustache. So, the rhetoric here at high pitch when it comes to violence, when it comes to extreme rhetoric, and obviously in the mind of people who are not mentally well and who are armed, can be translated into what we saw happen Saturday evening. Again, we've noted it's too early to know the motivation of this, but we also know that this comes against the backdrop of all of that. So, the hope here is that this potentially is a reset button here before things get even worse. -Most, that would be the hope, and I know that you already said it, but a good reminder that we don't know what we don't know. So, until we have official word of who did this and why they did this, best not to speculate, be careful what you read on the Internet, because this is exactly the type of time when misinformation, rumors, conspiracy theories start to spread. -And it could make things worse, right? Where the most well-armed country in the world is the most well-known country in the world. And so, in the most recent years, the most well-known country in the world is the most well-known country in the world. And so, in the most well-known country in the world, the most well-known country in the world, the most well-known country in the world. -And so, in the most recent years, the most well-known country in the world, the most well-known country in the world. But continue to monitor the headlines here. Please take a breath. Please don't jump on every single thing you might see. Wait for confirmation of what's going on. I think that's super important. It's important on a daily basis, but even more important when it comes to stories like this. And Jill, you know, we here at Monuse will continue our coverage on the Monuse Instagram account. We've been doing it all day on Saturday. The coverage will continue 24/7 as we learn more, as we confirm more things and get it from verified sources. That's what we do here. And look out for potential additional pods this weekend as developments warrant. -All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this special edition of the Monuse Podcast. ♪♪
