Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
How the Assassination Attempt on Trump Effects the Election with Former U.S. Congressman Scott Klug on
Welcome back to Wisconsin Weekend Morning News. Joining us on our Tri-County Contracting Hotline is former Madison Congressman, Scott Kluge. He has a podcast. It's called "Lost in the Middle." It's America's political orphans, and Scott, I can't think of anybody I'd rather talk to right now than you because you have been covering a disconnect that so many Americans have felt during this political season. And certainly after yesterday, I think a lot of us, whether you're on the right, the left, the middle, we all are feeling somewhat lost. The other thing, I'm not surprised by this at all. And I can remember, probably 10 years ago, going to the Dallas Museum on the Kennedy assassination. And there's a whole wing of it based on conspiracy theories. And this, I thought, was a really sad comment this morning. There's already posts on social media where Trump haters said it was a false flag operation. In other words, the Trump organization itself planned this to build sympathy for the former president. And then there's another knucklehead on Twitter who said, I guess because the court cases weren't going very well, they decided to take a different avenue. So you and I would hope that most people in normal times would take a deep breath and rally around the institution and rally around Biden and Trump. But unfortunately, Libby, I think this is just going to, in some ways, drive the crazy fringe, even crazier, if they can be that way. Well, you would certainly remember the Kennedy assassination, not just of JFK, but RFK. Ronald Reagan's attempted assassination. The attempted assassinations against Gerald Ford. But it seems like we've been pretty fortunate here over the last, what, 40 years where we haven't seen a situation like this? What has changed? Why do you think, and you've spent a lot of years in Washington, why do you think that this guy was able to get as close as he was and take that shot yesterday? Well, that was the first thing I thought, actually, because I've been at a lot of these events over the years, presidential rallies. I remember introducing President Bush at a big rally in Warsaw. I introduced President Bush another time in Appleton. And the security is so tight. I mean, it's breathtaking. And I would think, in this day and age, the first thing they would see is would be any high vantage points, right? And it surprises me that this guy was able to get on the roof with a rifle and that nobody was in a position to see it immediately when he got up there. And this day and age of drones, you'd think they'd have five drones circling constantly to look for anything like this. So I've got some real questions about where the lapse was and the secret service protection in this. And I think the interviews you had in the newscast leading up to our conversation are going to tell you what the lockdown is going to be like in Milwaukee this week. And then it was going to be bad to begin with. And it's going to be, I think, triple the level of security than it would have been before the incident. And again, as you said, you've been to a lot of these events. You've literally been all over the world with state department, working various areas that are high security. What is it that you expect to see that might be different now than it would have been 24 hours ago? I think people double checking credentials. It's interesting if you ever fly to Israel on one of the Israeli airlines. You get questions and you've had this in line when you travel overseas. Did you have a suitcase, a packed suitcase? How long ago did you pack it? When the Israelis do it, they actually have four or five different people continue to ask that question. Because one person who asks you is old and one's young and one's an attractive woman and one's a good looking guy. And I think they just keep watching to see if any particular profile will rattle you. I think what you'll see is-- so I'm not going to five-service up. I've got media credentials, which allows me to get in the general vicinity of where everything's going on. And then I've got actually credentials to go into the media center. So I suspect in the past, a lot of these would just get cursory looks. I think people are going to get credentials a good check two or three times, which means it's going to be a long, long wait. It means it's going to be a lot of a backup around Fyserv at a different level. I know there are already military folks coming in to support security, so I think you'll see that as an additional layer of security. But again, if you ever go to any of these sort of events anywhere, it's always like it. I think you're just going to see it in spades this week. All right, we've got Scott Klug here. He has a podcast. It's called Lost in the Middle, America's Political Orphans. Scott, can you stick with us a few more minutes? Absolutely. All right, we've got-- and we've got more questions for you about the security, about what's going on, because you've been to so many of these big conventions in the past. You've been to the RNC a number of times. It's all I had on Wisconsin weekend morning news. I'm Libby Collins. We're here with Jessica Gazzo in the newsroom and on our tricunny contracting hotline. We're talking with former Madison Congressman Scott Klug. He's the man behind the Lost in the Middle podcast. One of the first things we heard last night is that the Biden campaign was withdrawing their campaign ads. How does this assassination attempt on former President Trump affect the campaign going forward? I think it's hard to tell. I mean, I think there's two things in play, right? What this will do in terms of the atmosphere in Wisconsin-- I think there's some folks on the left who argue that this may have essentially won Trump the re-election as a sympathetic figure now. The Democrats, meanwhile, think you have to figure out whether Biden's going to stick or not stick. It seems to me they're now so close to their own convention. The odds of him stepping down voluntarily seem very slim to me. So we're going to come out with Biden to some degree at a bit of a low point in his campaign. And Trump, I think, is going to get some kind of sympathetic bounce out of this. But keep in mind, we're still three months away from the election almost. So a lot of whatever those two forces are will change a dozen times before we actually get to November. And the disgusting thing to me was you saw folks today online already posting that somebody wrote, I guess, because the court cases weren't going so well, they decided to try a different avenue to get Trump out of the race. And then meanwhile, there are Democratic postings talking about the fact this was a false flag operation. In other words, that the Trump people planned his own assassination attempt in air quotes because it was really just there to pump up support for the president. So that's the world we live on. I mean, it took a long time for the Kennedy assassination theories to pop out. And these were online within an hour and a half. Yeah, well, again, the magic of social media. As we know, usually right after a convention, a candidate does receive a bump in the polls. But with-- and we talked about this a little bit earlier this morning-- that photo that was taken of former President Trump as the Secret Service was trying to get him off the stage. He had his fist in the hair in the air. His face is bloody. There's an American flag in the background. I mean, if that is not going to become an iconic photo, I don't know what will. I think so. And even if you're not a fan of the president, I think you have to give-- the former president, I think you have to give applause for sort of reacting to the event that way and standing up. I think a lot of people would have just hunkered down and gotten out of there as quickly as they can and not turned around the audience. So I think you're right. And then I think it plays into Trump's self-proclaimed tough guy image. But in this case, I think it turned out to be a sort of a great twist that I hate to say the word photo op for Trump. And so I think he will get a bounce out of this. I think he'll get a further bounce out of the convention. But again, those are always short-lived, right? It will completely fade. And between now and November, there's a million things that are going to happen in the economy and foreign policy and everything else. So whatever happens, I think your listeners who are either fans or opponents of the President Trump, I think we'll find that whatever it is is going to be short-lived and Biden will get a similar bounce. And then it's Labor Day. And really, if you're a political junkie, you know Labor Day is really when the election starts. People are trying to get the occasions in. Ramp up for kids to get back to school. And a lot of people just don't focus on politics on the sort of regular basis that you and I do because we're political junkies. So stay tuned till five weeks from now and we'll see what the issue is and how things look like after Labor Day. Speaking of being a political junkie, you know a lot of people. You know a lot of the people in the conversation. They were saying yesterday that the national media was at that particular rally because they were expecting former President Trump to make an announcement or at least a hint. Who his vice presidential pick would be? What are you hearing? What are you feeling? Who do you think the individual will be? Well the answer is I'm not hearing any secrets. It's not like the Trump campaign asked me to join their conference calls. But I think that if I get the pick, I'd pick Rubio. He does two things for the ticket, for the politics of it. Having a native Spanish speaker I think is valuable, especially at a time when Hispanics for all kinds of cultural reasons. You know Catholic, evangelicals, larger families, a lot of the sort of far left cultural stuff doesn't play well with them are shifting more Republicans. So I think Rubio would be a great ally in the Southwest and Florida and other parts of the country. Secondly, from a selfish perspective, I think he'd give the President foreign policy perspective that really isn't very self-evident at this point in the President's inner circle. And I think we're gonna need that. I meant China's the dangerous place, Russia's the dangerous place, the Middle East is the dangerous neighborhood, the Ukraine's a very scary place. So I think Rubio would really be the best fit. I'm not sure what the North Dakota governor brings other than the fact that he and Trump are sort of kindred entrepreneurial spirits. And then Vance who's sort of on the rail from Ohio, I don't know what he brings you, he's 40, so he's younger, he's more energetic and dynamic. But anybody who thinks Ohio's a battleground state didn't look at the last gubernatorial election. So Gavin Newsom in California, and everybody goes California's so democratic. Gavin Newsom got 58%. Mike DeWine in Ohio almost got 66%. So that'll tell you how red Ohio is these days. So I don't think I'm buying the Vance stuff. I think if I had to guess, I think it'll be Rubio, at least I hope it will. - Is there a problem though, because they're both Rubio and Trump are both residents of the state of Florida? - I can't answer that. That's left the constitutional scholars. Somebody can buy a condo somewhere and solve that problem. - Okay, interesting thought. Finally, Scott, you're going to be here in Milwaukee, obviously, for the RNC. I want to ask you real quick, what do you expect in terms of the excitement? Is this going to put a poll over what's normally a very happy time for, as you said, political junkies? - I think it puts a poll over the nation as a whole. I think for the Trump folks watching him walk into that arena Thursday night to give a speech, I think it's going to be whatever normal amplification applies, levels of cheering you'd hear, I think with Trump it'll be cubed. So it's going to be a rip or a Thursday night. Again, I think you got to distinguish between the party insiders on both sides, who view these very differently. And those of us who live in the real world, where we'll all tune in and watch part of Trump's speech. And then obviously, the buildup is going to be to Wednesday for the speech from the vice president. So I suspect the president will actually make that announcement on Tuesday, so that we know who's going to be speaking on Wednesday. I think it's already decided. I think there's a sense it was held very tightly and Trump's own head and he hadn't shared it very much. But at this point, you've got to vet all those candidates. Somebody's got to be working on a speech. Somebody has to be preparing for this to get family and friends and everybody else into the arena. So I would look for it to start to leak out. I would think sometime late tomorrow, or early Tuesday morning. So it'll be, I'm sorry, it'll be a very interesting convention to watch and I think this has changed the tone for the election as a whole. And I think it's also changed it for the Republican delegates in a different way. They're going to be rallying around their guy. - Former Madison Congressman Scott Klug, we can hear you're lost in the middle podcast, America's Political Orphans, wherever podcasts are. Scott, as always, thanks for joining us today. - You too Libby, thanks a lot. I'll see you sometime this week in Milwaukee, I'm sure.