Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
The Effect of the Assassination Attempt on Delegates' Mentality with WTMJ's Steve Scaffidi
And welcome back to Wisconsin Week of Morning News. I'm Libby Collins, Jessica Gazzo is here with us as well. And joining us is Steve Scafidi from the Political Power Hour. And Steve, you were here last night with live coverage, breaking news, along with John Mecure and Vince Vittrano. When did you first learn that former President Trump had been shot? Yeah, almost immediately after it happened, I was watching it, sort of casually watching TV. And as it happened, CNN and Amazon, I saw the reaction, you know, the scroll on the bottom of the screen. And for the next 15 minutes or so, I was mesmerized by what I was reading and seeing. And then I started communicating with, of course, our team here at WTMJ. And I think a half hour later, maybe 35 minutes later, I was in the studio at WTMJ and we broadcast till, I think, nine o'clock last night. So an amazing story, a significant story, not only I listened to your conversation with former Congressman Scott Kluge, I think it does change the tone of the RNC. And certainly, hopefully, I would say, it changes the tone of our country in relation to how we view and talk about politics. Do you think it was getting too ugly out there? It has been for a while, Libby, and you know what my show is like. I try to turn down the temperature. It's not easy, it's never easy. And we've seen the escalation of voices, some even here in our own market, who seem to thrive. Certainly they make money on the idea that we should pit ourselves against each other when it comes to politics. I never got a fan of that idea. I have good friends who are liberals. I have good friends who are Trump supporters and we all seem to get along and we can have conversations. But yes, I do think that we are at a point where maybe it takes an event like this to say, hold on a second here, because here's what was remarkable when we were covering this last night. At some point last night, the current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, had a conversation with the challenger to him, Donald Trump, the former president, 45, and from all accounts, civil, short, but a meaningful conversation. That on its own merit is interesting and amazing. Didn't you think it was interesting that President Biden kept referring to him as Donald? In almost an affectionate tone. Yeah. Again, it has to change the tone here. This is something that we're still learning about, right? We now we know the identity shooter, a shooter, a 20-year-old person from Pennsylvania. We don't know motive yet, obviously, we don't know a lot of the details. How someone, I could do an hour just on how someone could get that close to an event like this. Yeah. And be able to do what he did. If we're really talking about inches here, inches, this is a completely different story. We're going, we're echoing back to the assassination of, of John F. Kennedy. Well, I was talking with a police officer friend of mine last night after this occurred, and she made the point that had former President Trump not turned his head just at that moment that that bullet rang out, that it was, it would have been a completely different result from what we see today. It was just by, by, somebody was watching over him. I mean, the fact that he just tilted his head slightly just at that moment, and you can bet that, that, that gunman certainly had him in his sight. Anybody my age certainly remembers the video of the JFK session. And I've been to Daily Plaza and in Dallas, and I've seen what that looks like, went up to the Texas book, The Pository, the floor, the area that where the shooter was at is now encased in like plexiglass. You can't go to that spot, but you can certainly see where it is. And, and all of those images came to mind yesterday, and again, just but by the grace of God, we still have the candidate Donald Trump, former President Donald Trump able to carry on some of the images, and this is the, the advances in technology and certainly in, in the video side. The imagery of that moment captured by photographers, videographers is incredible. Raised fist, a bloody Donald Trump laying on the stage four surrounded by all the Secret Service people, images that my colleague, John McCur last night said, will probably end up remarkably in campaign ads as we move forward to the election in November. Yeah. No doubt about that, but even more so in, in the history books that here we have a photo of not just a former president, but certainly a political candidate who might be reelected. And with his face bloodied like that and yet survives it, it's just, it, it's a part of history now. One wonders if this will change things. I spent a lot of the morning, early morning, I was up very early this morning. It's one of those things where you just can't sleep and I was watching all the coverage. There's live and there are, you know, many of them are now in Milwaukee, which is kind of an interesting thing, which will come face to face with when we do our shows on Monday from the Panther Arena here in Milwaukee Media Center. And they're all talking about the same thing. And here's what I noticed and going back to that tone comment from former Congressman Scott Clue, the voices of all the commentators, some more political surrogates was more hushed, more reserved, and almost universally, perhaps universally, was a call for calm as we sort of sort out the details and figure out where we had it, not just from this event, where we had it as a country. Yeah. Steve, I'm going to ask you this because you were Mayor of Oak Creek when the shooting of the Sikh temple took place and it affected a lot of people who were there. They were your constituents in the city, you had first responders who were there with the people who were at this rally yesterday and witnessed this shooting. And certainly the man in the stands who was killed, the others too critically injured. What sort of effect, long term, will it have on the people who were present based on your experience? Well, none of the people that were there and none of the people that were in Oak Creek at the time, you never forget that. You'll know the details, you'll remember what you were doing at the time, you'll certainly remember the coverage that's impactful and meaningful and very rapid-paced and that all is happening right now as we cover the shooting of the former presidents in Pennsylvania. I think for those people who can see a positive here and the positive is that the former president thankfully was not seriously injured other than it looks like an injury to his ear, that's a positive. Going forward, and I'm going to go back to what I said before, is this that moment in this year of just divisive politics, hyper-partisanship, angry rhetoric when it comes to the back and forth where people say, you know what, we don't have to do this. We can disagree completely on the issues and there's certainly plenty of things to disagree about from women's health abortion to gun rights to international policy to economic policy. All those things are fair game, but I'll go back to what I said before. You can have those conversations, everybody has them, but you can do it in a way where you're not yelling or you're not angry to the point where you can't have a relationship with the person after the end of the conversation. And I think this is that moment, that critical moment where those who are there, those who are now seeing it, because it's all over media, and those who are talking about it have an important role to play. What positive impact will this have on us? And my hope is that all of us see this and talk about it in a much different way so that whatever happens in the election, America survives, we survive, and we're in a better place because of what happened, not as a result of a tragedy that frankly happens too often in this country. Well, and sadly, I mean, we're also enthused, there was such an upbeat, happy feeling here in Milwaukee with the onset of the RNC. This certainly changes how a lot of people are feeling, and I'm sure that the delegates are feeling this more than anyone right now. Yeah, I'm going to have some, I have a relative that's a delegate, I have some other contacts out there, and I'm trying to just get them so far, they've been pretty quiet, and I can imagine there's some shock and strain in that, and that responsibility they're going to have, but I want to just see where they're at mentally and where they're at as far as excitement. The way I see the week playing out, a lot of uncertainty in the beginning, a little anxiousness, a little nervous energy, and if everything sort of slowly unrolls and we have the roll calls and we meet the delegates and we meet all the elected officials, and we cover that as we're going to do so well in 6-20 WTMJ, then it can sort of normalize to whatever this convention will be by Thursday night when the president speaks, and I know we're all kind of waiting, especially those of you who are going to be right there at the convention doing your shows live. We're not quite sure how this is all going to play out this week. No, I mean, you and I were talking, I think, Friday or maybe Thursday, about my schedule to do interviews across networks, some BBC stuff, PBS, NBC, and there was an interview scheduled in the afternoon. At this moment, Libby, I have no idea if any of those things are going to happen. I know I'm doing an interview tonight for an Indianapolis TV station. That's still happening. It's not going to be downtown. It's going to be at my house. I know I'm hosting a show with Dr. Ken Harris at 8 o'clock tonight talking about the week ahead and certainly looking back at what the events of Saturday will mean for all of us, but everything is up in the air. I can tell you my teammates are all kind of wondering how this is going to shake out. Even the logistics of getting into the Panther Arena or getting down sound, I was promised I'd be able to get an easily yesterday that was not the case and that a parking blocks away. Wait, you couldn't get to the station yesterday? No, there was somebody had either inadvertently or maybe on purpose or just maybe some choker that blocked the access on Michigan. So I had to drive to St. Kate's, parked in their parking structure and then walked it over. So even that little bit of a chaos added to my energy when I got here last night. And I just want to say this real quickly, if you didn't have a chance to listen, it was a classic example of the all hands, all hands on deck approach of six point WTMJ. Vince Watrano, Greg Madsick, John McCure, myself, Wyatt Barnmore Pooley, Adam Roberts, Julia Fellow, other people in a newsroom. I mean, everybody was on deck and often in the building covering that breaking news story. That's why we're so good at it. And again, we played it earlier this morning, a great interview with former Governor Scott Walker and his reaction within a very short time of what had occurred. And of course, he knows, he knows President Trump very, very well. Well, Steve, we look forward to your coverage this week. We will be listening. We'll be watching to see if you make it to any of those network shows that I know you're scheduled for, at least tentatively at this point. Yeah. Speaking, Libby, I bought a new sport coat, so I hope I get to wear it. I hope you do to Steve Scafidi, the political power hour. Thank you so much for spending time with us this morning. We'll be listening eight o'clock tonight, you and Dr. Ken Harris. Great to be on with you, Libby. All right. Take care. We've got just a minute left. I just want to remind you about our conversation at 11 o'clock this morning. When we talk with the son of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now, I did this conversation with him about 10 days ago, so obviously it was before the events yesterday. But he does make reference during that interview to the assassination of his father. He also talks about his lack of secret service protection, which I know a lot of people are going to be looking at here as investigations take places to how this shooter got as close to former President Trump as he did. So you want to hear that? It's at 11 o'clock this morning. I think you'll find it very informative. Jessica, thank you for being here with me this morning.