Scott Ritter Extra: Ask the Inspector

Ask the Inspector Ep. 177 Special Report: rump Assassination Attempt

Scott Ritter answers questions from the audience with host Jeff Norman most Friday nights at 5 PM PT/8 PM ET/1 AM GMT and most Tuesdays at noon PT/3PM ET/8PM GMT.

Submit your question in advance and donate to Waging Peace, Scott's campaign for nuclear disarmament, at https://ScottRitter.com.

Opening music by Ed Kliman https://texasmusicforge.com/, Brian Pothier https://www.facebook.com/pothierproductions and ShortBusMusic https://hearthis.at/shortbusmusic-6e/.

Duration:: 2h 1m
Broadcast on:: 15 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] We noticed the guy crawling bare crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us. So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof. And he had a gun, right? He had a rifle. We could clearly see him 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 on the roof with a rifle." And the police were like, "Huh, what?" You know, like they didn't know what was going on. You know, we're like, "Hey, right here on the roof, we can see him from right here. We see him." You know, he's crawling. And next thing you know, I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, "Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I'm standing there pointing at him for, you know, two, three minutes. Secret service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this. And next thing you know, five shots running out. Yeah, baby, it's episode 177 of Ask the Inspector on July 14th, 2024. A special edition of Ask the Inspector focused on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Scott Ritter, as always, is with us. My name is Jeff Norman backstage and joining us shortly, Ryan Milton. And we appreciate the change of schedule. Thanks to our audience for adjusting your schedule. Thanks to Ryan for adjusting his. When you told me earlier today, Scott, you were writing an article about this in Substack. I thought to myself, I wonder what his angle will be. Because there are several angles that were all very much worthwhile, potentially interesting. I, myself, was thinking about what exactly went wrong with the Secret Service. But you focused on the overheated rhetoric that has contributed to what I would call an untenable climate here in the US now. And that was also an excellent angle. And you also named some names in particular. I don't think it's overheated on your part to simply identify who's doing it. They deserve to be called up. And we published the article on Substack, so it's up there for people to review and read. The title is "The Dead Zone Revisited." I don't know if anybody remembers the 1983 thriller. It was a good movie. I watched it in 1983, starting Christopher Walken. It's based on a Stephen King novel. But the premise of the movie is that this high school teacher gets in an accident, goes into a coma. And when he wakes up, he has psychic powers. He's able to see into the future. And he talks with his therapist/neurologist about this. And he ends up doing some good, helping cops solve crimes and things of the age. But it sort of occurs because you can see into the future. But what he found out is you can change the future, meaning that it's not inevitable. And he was out there working a political rally and shook the hands of a candidate named Greg Stilson, played by Martin Sheen. And what he saw was a vision of the future, that Martin Sheen was president, Greg Stilson was president, ordering an unprovoked attack, nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and that the world was going to end. So he went back and talked to his doctor and said, "What do you do? I've seen this. That's the future if something's not done." And the doctor said, "Well, if you could go back in time, kill Adolf Hitler before he committed all those crimes, would you?" Knowing that by killing them, you'd solve all these issues. And so that empowered Johnny Christopher Walken to get a rifle, and now Greg Stilson with the goal of killing them. Now why is this relevant? Because we have a situation where there are people who, in the United States, who have articulated a case against Donald Trump that he represents an existential threat to the United States of America, to democracy, to you, me, to everybody. And there's some quibbling going out there, because I wrote the article, I did some posts, and people were like, "God, he doesn't really mean that. Existential. I mean, come on. Look at the definition of the word. An existential threat is literally, by definition, a life or death issue. Meaning you will be terminated. If this person poses an existential threat and something's not done to stop this, your life is forfeit. It's over. So words matter. We've talked about this before, how we talked about how Russian politicians use their words very carefully. But apparently in America, we don't. We're just out there saying stuff. And we have situations where people are literally saying, "This is 1940. Trump is Hitler. Kill him." I speak in the article about an actress who plays on "Orange is a New Black" or something like that, a show. She literally did an Instagram post where she's out there saying, "To Joe Biden, kill him. Kill him. Assassinate him. Kill him." And Joe Biden himself is up there repeatedly saying, "Trump is an existential, but not just Trump. His MAGA supporters are an existential threat." I just want to remind people out there that, yes, if you believe that Joe Biden won the election, that means he got 81 million votes. There's a whole bunch of people out there that don't believe, like 74 million MAGA supporters. People who voted for Donald Trump, 74 million. Ladies and gentlemen, that means our country is roughly divided. And that's what makes this all so dangerous. I hope everybody understands that if Donald Trump hadn't moved his head, literally the last second, just one little flick, what that did is it aligned the bullet so that it would go over here. So instead of this, and the bullet coming in and hitting his head, it's hard to put it here and blowing out the back of his brains. Literally, that's what we would have seen. I had explode. That's what happens when the 5.56 million ran around or 2.23 fired a high-velocity from an M16-type rifle, hits you in the head. It goes. Pink missed. Yay. You would have seen that. You were born witness to it. But at the last second, he just did this just a little bit. Instead, the bullet hits, I get it pointed. His ear here punches a hole in it, dowses out the side of his head. Any deviation, any further to the head, crack his skull, major brain injury, or blow his head up, it is such a miracle, a miracle. And people say, how can you say miracle? I mean, God is blessing Trump. It's a miracle for America because we come back to the 81 versus 74. The 74 second character, we can call the enemies of America by the 81. The 74 are willing to say, we have a difference of opinion. The 74 clearly think that the 81 are wrong, but you don't see the 74 running around calling the 84 Hitler. Yeah, I mean, that close. Pink missed. It would have been all over. And here we have the 81 saying that we get the slow secret service that we will get into that later, maybe. But the 81 are saying that the 74 are bad Americans, evil Americans, anti-Americans, an existential threat to America. And this is the President of the United States, the sitting President of the United States saying this. He made this in the speech in September 19, or 2023 in Arizona, where he sort of announced his election. Here comes the counter assault group again. Wow, guys. I'm on my watch, man. It took you that freaking long to get into position. You're the counter assault group. You're the agent. Are they secret service or some other agency? These guys are close to the president. They're going to be secret service. But we'll get into this in a minute. I'm sure we'll talk about this. But the point is, this rhetoric is ridiculous, and it's coming from the president. And it's been echoed by Congress. We've got a congressman who's called for stripping the secret service protection from President Trump. And he had that happened. And now his field director in Mississippi is saying, give that boy some lessons. So next time he doesn't admit, hey, shocking, Marson, he's dead. The guy who shots dead. We can get in that later, too. But my point is, yeah, Trump, I'll tell you what, Trump just won the election. I mean, I'm not, I'm, I'm still, I'll get into why I won't commit. We have a program. It's called Operation Don. It's called Making the Candidates Earn Your Vote. And as much as I support a certain candidate right now, and Jeff is probably going, what the hell is he talking about? He hates Donald Trump. I don't like Donald Trump at all. I don't like Donald Trump at all. Yeah, you're reacting to circumstances. I understand. But Donald Trump was killed, almost killed. For simply running for the office of the presidency. His only crime is saying, I want to lead American. I have some problems with his leadership style and things he says. And we probably talk about this, expound on this a little later, too. It comes in time when Joe Biden, the man who was fired up, the notion, put a bull's eye on him. Donald Trump is a threat to America. My God, you got the President of the United States saying this. And you, you know, no wonder if this is indeed what happened. Some 20 year old nut job went, I got a, yeah, there it is. He's literally a threat to everything American stands for. If you're a 20 year old kid and you hear this, maybe you grab a rifle. Maybe you pull a Johnny and go kill Greg Stillson because you were told this guy is the worst thing in the world. We got to do it. Put a bull's eye on him. Well, I'll do that. Joe, I'm going to crawl over on a roof, 150 yards away. How the hell did he get that close? No line of sight. I mean, just pure line of sight. It's point of aim, point of impact. I want to bring that up to a lot of people talking about the flag, even including a former Marine who apparently forgot everything learned about marksmanship school. The flag is a clear indicator. Why did the Secret Service allow that to happen? It gives wind gauge. Look at a wind sock guy. It's not a big flag hanging down flapping. You're not going to get left wide or any wind speed on that, but it doesn't matter 150 yards. Point of aim, point of impact, 5.56 round coming out in M16. In less than a second from the time they pulled the trigger that bull bullets was by. There is no wind deviation on that. It's where he aimed is where the bullet went. But this is the problem. We have people to speculate in all our places. One of the reasons why I didn't write it. One of the reasons why I didn't write an article that got into the Secret Service. We can talk about it. I'm not against that. The other thing is, I don't even think it was necessarily right behind him. That photo that everybody's talking about, it's a different angle. I mean, he's already moved, right? What he's saying is, look, on the rifle range, when I'm shooting, the wind sock is going to be over here. So it's given me a general idea of wind direction, wind velocity, here, here, here, here. That's used for long, distant shooting. I mean, if I'm on the 500 yard line, 500 meter line, doing my prone shooting, I'm looking at the wind sock. I'm going to do my clicks based upon that. And that's why I put 10 out of 10 in the head, because I know how to do it. Expert shot. But anyways, that's another issue altogether. The point is, to me, the big issue is the rhetoric that's going on. But I also wanted to bring it up in context of what we talked about on the last show, which is still very important and still very relevant. Operation Don, it is July. The elections in November. I may be tilting some way right now, but I'm not committing because I want my candidate of choice, if whoever it is, to earn my vote. I want them to commit to a program that addresses what I believe is the only existential issue facing America today, which is nuclear war. And I will continue to say that I want the candidate that I will vote for the candidate, the best, best articulates. But here's another aspect of it too. I want a discussion amongst Americans about this issue, about nuclear war, about disarmament. And I want that discussion to be civil. I want that discussion to be, it can be a debate, it can be emotional. But I want it to be a discussion where Americans who disagree, disagree based on fact, and are rational in their arguments. Maybe establish a tone that could be followed by other Americans who are disagreeing about other issues. We have to retrain ourselves, ladies and gentlemen. We live in a constitutional republic. The Constitution sets the rules. It sets the boundaries and puts the four corners of this republic. We Americans elect representatives to represent us in this constitutional republic. But the constitutional republic requires the peaceful transition of power from president to president to president requires it. We don't survive without it. We have survived good presidents, mediocre presidents, and bad presidents. Why? Because the constitutional republic is bigger than any single president. It's what makes our country fundamentally flawed as we are, the greatest country on earth. Because no matter what, as bad as it gets, in four years we have a chance to reset to put somebody new. People are going to go, Scott, it's a blob, it's a deep state, you're full of shit. I can't say that word. You're full of it, you can't do it. Just take a hike, really. I'm at the point right now where between now and November, I'm not dealing with people that don't respect the fact that this country is a constitutional republic. If you call it something else, you're not part of the discussion. You're the problem, not the solution. The solution is through the democratic process that empowers representatives selected by the people to represent them in a constitutional republic. It is flawed. I admit that. We ain't going to fix it between now and November. What we can do is pick an issue, which we have, nuclear disarmament, preventing a nuclear war, of an existential nature, where we try to empower the vote on this one issue. And if we succeed, we've proven that the vote matters, that the vote can change outcomes, that we don't have to be Johnny sitting up at a church spire waiting to kill Greg Stilson to get the outcome we want. And if we step by voting, participating in the election, we can do things. Now, we aren't taking foreign questions tonight. I just want to say that straight off the bat. Now, let me explain why. I have been inundated, literally inundated. I think it's close to 40 interview requests today. And most of them come from foreign sources. People I've interviewed with before, people I respect, organizations I respect. This is an American issue right now. This is an issue that America's got to wrestle with. We got to come up with some solutions. We got to define what the problems are. And we can only do that by having a dialogue amongst ourselves. So tonight is that dialogue. Come Tuesday, we'll take your questions. Come Friday, we'll take your questions. But tonight, I respectfully ask my foreign audience, our foreign audience, the team, to sit back and listen to Americans wrestle over this issue. You might learn a couple things about how Americans think, how confused we are, what we believe in, because I can guarantee you that there's going to be some differences of opinion. Watch how we struggle with this. Watch how we wrestle with this. Watch how we do this. This is a learning experience. I'm not trying to be insulting to you. It's a learning experience. I take this issue very seriously. I've written the article I talk about when I was a college student. And on March 21st, I think, 1981, as a freshman, I was in the Student Union when the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan took place and we watched it on TV. And one of my fellow students, somebody who was a little bit left of center, said, "I hope they killed them." I put that son of a bitch up against the wall quicker and you can blink. That's my commander-in-chief. And I let him know in no uncertain terms where his throat was going to be and was going to be coming down his throat because I was going to kill him on the spot. The school didn't like that. I ended up in front of the Dean of Student Affairs and I was going to be expelled. And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because we can't tolerate students committing violence against students." I said, "We could damn sure we'll tolerate students promoting the assassination of the President of the United States. I'm sure the Secret Service will be interested in that." And he came back and we had a discussion. And in result, as I stayed in school, I had to apologize for nearly killing these kids. I had to apologize for condoning the assassination of a president. But I take this seriously on my telegram channel, which I, Ryan, Alexandra, and others, we have lovingly built this thing up. We're proud of it. It's a nice little community. I don't know how many times I had to send out warnings today to cease and desist, so certain elements. Primarily foreign, but some domestic, who continued to promote the assassination, mock the assassination, mock America. And so I shut it down. It's a 24-hour shutdown. I may permanently shut it down. Guys, I take this seriously. I created that channel for the purpose of promoting debate and dialogue about podcasts such as this or things that I write. It's not a free speech platform. You don't get to come in and say whatever you want. And this is what I mentioned in the article, too. When we speak of free speech, 1919, Oliver Wendell Holmes was a Supreme Court justice in a famous case that tried to define the limits of free speech. He basically cited, I think it was a case that took place in Boston where somebody stood up and shouted fire and crowded theater and people ran to the exits and they died. He said, "Free speech does not give you the right to stand up in a theater and cry fire. Shout fire. You can't do that." Free speech doesn't give you a right in any platform to condone or promote the assassination of an American president. That's a violation of the law, a violation of the law. Some of the names that I mentioned in my article should be investigated by the Secret Service and I hope they will be investigating by the Secret Service for committing a crime. It's not free speech. You don't get to promote the assassination of a president, a former president, a vice president, a candidate for president. You don't get to do that at all. Zero tolerance, not just for me, but from the government. In America, though, with this heated rhetoric, the standards seem to have slipped. When you hear a president call his opponent an existential threat. When you hear the name calling going back, the kind of name that diminishes somebody to the point where they're not viewed as human anymore. They're viewed as not a legitimate part of the society, a part that can be excised. And once you say excised, the method of excisement becomes debatable, including assassination. You have people openly, prior to this, openly promoting the assassination of Donald Trump. This has to stop. This has to stop. We have no choice, and I will put it the other way around. For all the people who don't like Joe Biden, stop. Stop. We don't promote political violence in America. I know we do, but we shouldn't, and we can't, and I won't. I won't be a part of it. So that's what I wanted to get off my chest before we start, is this is a very, very important issue. Again, I don't understand. I don't know if the people listening understand one micro measurement. And we will have lost Donald Trump, and if we lost Donald Trump, the 74 versus 81 equation would be happening right now. There would be a civil war in America. We're that close. That's how fundamentally important this is. We are so close to losing that which holds us together, a belief in the constitutional republic. There are people right now who believe that Joe Biden is trying to kill Donald Trump. I want to believe that's not the case. There are a lot of questions out there. You know, about the politicization of the justice system, how many this guy with, you know, it seems that, you know, if somebody could logically say, well, they tried to put him in jail. That didn't work. Then they start smearing them with the accusations that didn't work. So the last thing is just to kill them. The final option. And if you look at the Secret Service, my God, the incompetence, they can't even have a press conference to answer questions about this fundamental issue. They screwed that up. There's so many questions that it just gives birth to conspiracy theories. I'm not a big conspiracy theory fan. We don't do political violence in America. I won't tolerate it on anything that I'm involved in, including this show or any show I'm involved in. I welcome questions. I welcome healthy debate and healthy discussion. I fully expect people to disagree with me, but that's just the way it is now. I'll do the first question. Well, I'll go to Japan before we go to the first question. I've been badly not. All right. Well, you're talking about Americans wrestling with what happened, and I was wrestling with it today with respect to Operation Dawn. I was saying, boy, I think it's going to be more difficult now to make it a single issue election after this. I think this is going to be, you know, pretty much Donald Trump is going to get elected now. But then I thought, well, people have a short memory and who knows what's going to happen between now and election day. So there is that possibility that there'll be something else, maybe nothing good, by the way, maybe some other hoax or some other violence or whatever. But maybe it won't be such a big issue when it gets closer to election day. But then I thought with these images, they're just so perfect. I don't mean to turn it into PR, but that's just reality. Trump is going to use this for his campaign. And when you think of like what the issue has been with Biden, that he's weak and he can't even, you know, he's not even up to the job. You couldn't write something that is more starkly the opposite than a guy getting shot and then standing up raising his fist saying, fight, fight, fight. So because of that imagery, I think maybe whereas usually people have a short memory, I think because of these images, this one may not fade away. I mean, I'm in agreement with you. I mean, look, again, you know where I stand on this man. I'm not the biggest Donald Trump fan in the world and I believe with just cause. But as I wrote in the article about Operation Don, we have two candidates, two viable candidates for president. One has a D next to his name, one has an R next to his name. This is the R candidate. One of those two is going to be president. This, if I want a leader, I want this. This is what I want. Okay, I don't like some of the things he does. I don't like a lot of things he says, but when I come down to the ultimate test of character, you know, how somebody performs under pressure. How Trump just passed it, just passed it. All right. And so right now I'm leaning heavy towards Trump. But here's the reason why I continue to support Operation Don, because that issue doesn't go away. Right. Just because we vote Donald Trump in November, if that's what I ended up doing or other people do, we still have that existential issue. And if we don't compel him to address this issue, which is our duty, not just our right, but our duty to do as citizens, then we have failed our country, because there is an existential issue to the survival of America out there and that's nuclear war. And so I think that Operation Don is even more important today than it was before the assassination because even if you're a Trump supporter and say, well, I've already made my decision, then work with me to get him to articulate a sound policy on how to prevent nuclear war. Let's make this an issue that even if you support a candidate, that candidate can't ignore. And that's why we have to do this, because the issue doesn't go away. Nuclear war is still there. The threat of nuclear war. And we just have to make sure that everybody that thinks they could be present or has a chance to be in president that needs to address this issue. Well, I'm still in, but I was just saying, I think it might be a bit more difficult. But before you get on to the question, since you were talking about these people who created this environment, should we just show a couple of examples of it like this women. Leah, Leah Delaria. And please, I'm not, I mean this literally, I don't mean this rhetorically. She really seems mentally ill to me. And I think that a lot of these people who are acting like Trump is Hitler is mentally ill. And what makes it difficult to deal with it is that they all kind of validate each other. There's so many of them doing this that it's hard to like paint them as fringe characters. But it is mental illness, I think, just just listen, I couldn't even take the entire clip. I just want to play the worst part of it that we're talking about here. Fuck you, Clarence Uncle Thomas. Fuck you, Joe. You now have the right to take that bitch Trump out. Take him out, Joe. If he was Hitler, and this was 1940, you'd take him out. Well, he is Hitler, and this is 1940. Take him the fuck out. Blow him up. Blow him up, or they'll blow us up. Facts. Facts. See, she's brainwashed. She really believes that a lot of people believe he is the equivalent of Hitler. I actually, I disagree, because to be honest with you, I mean, she could be brainwashed. But I actually believe that if I sat down with her and had an in-depth discussion about the roots of nationalist socialism in Germany, the Weimar Republic, the transition from Treaty of Versailles, she wouldn't know what the hell I'm talking about. See, I don't think that she's at that intellectually sound, because if he was, she wouldn't be doing that. This is literally the reaction of the most superficially empowered person in the world. She has a passing concept of what Adolf Hitler is and all that, and so she made up this stupid thing. I think she just hates Donald Trump. She hates conservative America, and she's picked up on things that other people said, but I don't think she's intellectually sounded, because I did do some digging into her. She's not. She doesn't post things that imply that she has, you know, a foundation of knowledge that allows her to speak on this. Somebody can have a superficial knowledge, but still perceive Trump as a genuine threat. But I think she really does. She's just using Hitler as the way that it's present. There's no doubt in my mind that she legitimately, from her perspective, used Trump as a threat. I just don't think that she can actually expound on the points that she's doing. Let's take a look at a member of Congress, Dan Goldman. It's unquestionable at this point that that man cannot see public office again. He is not only unfit. He is destructive to our democracy. And he has to be eliminated. What does that mean? Eliminated. Eliminated. It means one thing. You're telling the guy. Again, the Secret Service now, you know, I don't like the idea of going after Congress, but hey, I really do think somebody should not going to say, what did you mean by eliminated, because you should probably have to go explain that to your constituents, because there might be someone out there that 20-year-old confused kid that thinks that you're giving him a green light to kill Donald Trump. It's crazy. I've got any more examples of these wonderful... Well, I got a bunch of... I think I already had the tweet from that woman who works for Benny Thompson, and Benny Thompson. I don't know if you mentioned it tonight, but I know you mentioned it in the article. He was calling for Donald Trump to be stripped of Secret Service. This is what she tweeted, but then she removed it. But as the saying goes, everything on the internet is forever. And she was fired, just so you know, they did fire. Oh, I didn't know that. How long ago was that? Right before I came on, I didn't follow up, and they released her today. But the point is, that's superficial. She didn't learn that by herself. She didn't learn that out of nowhere. She worked for Benny Thompson and said, "Get rid of the Secret Service." Why? Because you want Trump dead. I mean, that's the bottom line. Roger, I agree. It's 100% essential, and I'm going to continue to push forward, because I believe in not only making the vote count, but I believe in making a candidate earn my vote. That's the whole idea. And to get to that point, I have a very good friend whose name isn't Jeff. Jeff is a very good friend. But Jeff and I talk on a regular basis. This very good friend, who I worked with in the Soviet Union, and we've been friends ever since, calls me up on occasion. I have to come up with a pseudonym for him, because he's one of these guys with those backgrounds that you don't know how to talk about. So we're going to call him Stu. That's his real name. And then we're going to call him Stu because his name is Stu. My name is Stu, but professional intelligence man. Oh my God, Marine Corps intelligence, actually more on baby. But Stu calls me up today and leaves a voice message because I'm out. I think I was walking my dogs. And I read it, and I wanted to call him back, but then I realized because it was literally coming up time for the show. If I get on with us, the phone was Stu. It's a four hour conversation because we talk about everything. We saw all the world's problems. Stu used to be sort of a liberal Democrat, not that liberal because he was in the business killing people for a living and he enjoyed it. So he had a little bit of a tell of the hunt in him, but he was he was he was Democrat. He had that Dean next to his name. And I was Republican. And that's one of the reasons why we love each other like brothers because brothers, you know, fight. We don't fight. We argue. But Stu has come over to Donald Trump side. He is one of the 74 million very hardcore 74 million kind of guy, which tells me something because, you know, they always say that MAGA people are stupid. There ain't nothing stupid about Stu that MAGA people are simple. They're nothing simple about this guy. One of the most complex and I don't mean complex in a bad way. I mean that this guy is complex because he has seen things. He has done things. He has lived things. He's a problem solver, not a problem maker. And so I respect his intellect tremendously. And so he calls me up today. And he and Susan follow me as Susan especially follows me and likes. But I think sometimes they they get a little forgive the pun orange in the face when I talk about Donald Trump. It's just like, come on Scott, do better. So he called me up and he's like Scott. And he's saying the obvious that this this assassination attempt changes everything. And Stu is like a mind reader because I agree. I know that photograph with the fist in the air. I'm looking at saying, I can vote for that guy now. Well, there's he learned it from that dude. Somebody said it reminds them of that. Yeah, you know, reminds me of Donald Trump. Look, it's unrehearsed. It wasn't. It wasn't canned. It was real. But, you know, there it is. You know, but stairs. By the way, Evan Fuche is the guy's and we steal photos and videos all the time for everybody. But since that's a special photo, let's give him credit. Evan Fuche from the Associated Press. Yeah, he did a wonderful interview today where he talked about how this photograph came about being and, you know, how he was on the ground and then he realized something was getting to happen. So he, he said, probably said, I'm going to work. And he got over there and he got the angle and he's taking it. So good job because that is going to become one of the iconic images of of this. This is this is somebody. This is a Washington post guy shooting the same angle. But he didn't get the same picture. He's jealous as hell. He's like, I could have that picture. I could have a V8. But, but you can see what these photographers actually experience in a situation like this. They were in a dangerous situation. Those bullets were still flying. Well, see, I don't understand that the counter assault guy right there. Dude, they got cameras and they could be something else. I'd be, I was thinking that too. Yeah. If I was you got to get down, I'm going to blow your head off. Don't move. Drop that camera. But no, there they are. Just click it away. That's another discussion for another day. But then she's got her pistol out finger. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. This is all so bizarre. But yeah, but still, you know, he, I think he was a little concerned that if I continue to beat up on Donald Trump in a post assassination attempt world that I would lose more than I would gain. And he's right. I mean, this was, this was a game changing moment. We've had this discussion about what qualifies as game changing. This literally is a game changing moment. I believe in democracy. I believe in the American people's right to choose whomever they want to. I still believe this is going to be a very close election. But I also believe that people who voted for Donald Trump in the past, probably going to come home after this because for because there was a reason why we voted for Trump. And one of the reasons was the concept of character. And I saw a man who, it's pure character, whether you love him or hate him. That was, that was one of those moments, that's one of those tests in history. Again, we come back to the dead zone. You know what this qualified Greg Stilson? When Johnny pointed the rifle at him. Instead of Greg Stilson staring him down, putting the fist in the air, daring him to shoot. He picked up a child and put the child between him and the shooter. And those pictures were played all over the magazine and that ruined his political career. Donald Trump didn't do that. Donald Trump got off the ground. He wouldn't let him hustle him away. He broke through the crowd fight, fight, fight. That's just saying, let me get my shoes. Let me get my shoes. They may have been $500, you know. Let me fix my hair. You keep the blood. How's the blood looking? But no, I mean, come on. You know, cut the guy some slack. You know, how many of us have been shot in the head, gone on the ground, have secret service guys pile on you. You know, so there you go. But Stu and Sue, I hear you. I hear you loud and clear. But because I know you, Stu, you know that respect is not given. It's earned. And there's time between now and November for Donald Trump to earn my respect. And one of the ways that he can do that is by earning my vote, by promoting a policy that seeks to avoid the one existential threat to America, which is not Joe Biden, but nuclear war. So, but again, thanks for the calls, Stu, and thanks for the support, Sue. Well, speaking of a person in your life, whom you love like a brother, there's someone else who fits that description as well. And that would be Ryan Milton. And since it's kind of a special night and we're Americans wrestling with what happened. Why don't we bring the very muscular yet strangely effeminate Ryan Milton into the picture. But be sure you're wearing the night, Ryan. Bone frog. Beavis and Budhead. All right, you're a gun. You're a gun guy, Ryan. And what do you think about the secret service response? It was it was incredibly incompetent on the one hand. It's my first thought. I've seen these reports. I've seen. Reports of audience people shouting at the police and secret service. Look at look at look at the guy in the roof with the gun. No action. So certainly there is the incompetence factor. That seems well, that's one. I don't know about a malicious role of secret service, but certainly the incompetence. The other thing is that I had worked before and over the years and various other political things and I've done pre speaking event bomb checks and I heard defense where you check for possible entry and exit into a speaking venue. And it just seems, you know, we're talking about 150 yards, 125 yards. This is not far away. So I'm incredibly blown away by the fact that that would not have been checked out at all. That guy in the opening, you know, you never know you some buddy who you don't know, just could be a nutcha, but he sounds like a saying guy. He sounds very credible. And he was saying, there just weren't that many roofs around there. Just wasn't that much territory to check. So how do you leave that out? That's right. You know, when I was at the UN, we have what's called the General Assembly debate every September. All the heads of states come in. And I had an office on the 31st floor looking out over First Avenue, which the president of the United States will come down. He'll make entry into the United Nations and, you know, he will come out entry and make his speech and then exit and then leave. The Secret Service is there. We can advance. They're there. Believe me much more. But when the uniform Secret Service comes in, they do everything. I mean, they weld the manhole covers shut. They get down into the sewer system, seal it off. But the interesting thing is, from where am I where I'm at? I have a vantage point from that window that I could take a shot and kill the president of the United States. So they have people across the street in the Tudor Hotel, and they've gone in and they've really I watch them just sit there, you know, writing on your next weapons inspection. And you're watching the Secret Service come to every window, open it up, and they sit there and they look at the field of fire. They look down and they look over. And, you know, I did it for, gosh, straight years. I did. I was there for the General Assembly near the end. You know, we're sitting there and we see the Secret Service there and their sniper teams looking at. They got the, you know, two-man team shooter, sniper, a spotter. And they also, some of them have the third guy in the back, who's the controller, who's talking to everybody. But, you know, you sit there and you wave to them and they're like waving back and they get back. But they're on both sides of the street. They checked everything out. Now, this is a rally of a presidential candidate. He doesn't have the full Secret Service detail. A lot of the protection is farmed out to local law. They have state police, you know, then you get to local police, things of that nature, which is okay, but there should be a Secret Service supervisor there. Still, you have to have the connectivity of communication. They should have met multiple times by voice, by whatever. How does a guy with a gun get in your perimeter during the event? You know, on the roof and approach. These are things that, you know, I don't want to get into speculation because it starts getting crazy, but... No, well, you know, let's discuss what the possible scenarios are. That's not as irresponsible as saying for sure that it was, you know, some kind of an assassination plot. But I guess one possibility would be not the Secret Service agents who obviously risked their lives, but maybe somebody within the Secret Service was in on it. Another possibility, as you guys have said, is incompetence. I've also heard a lack of manpower. Do you think that could be it? It's not a big area, though. Yeah, you don't need a lot of people to check out the roof, right? First of all, every local, every local law enforcement agency is volunteering for this work. There's no lack of manpower. The Secret Service puts out the call for help, and they will be in and dead. The problem is you want to make sure you have the right people. Look, there's three scenarios, Jeff. One is that this is the Secret Service trying to kill Donald Trump, that this was a setup. Two is incompetence. You know, pure 100% unadulterated incompetence. And then there's middle ground where the Secret Service isn't involved. It could be local, you know, a local cop combat. Somebody let this guy into the perimeter with a gun. Somebody let this guy into the perimeter with a gun. I don't know how the veracity, but they were showing photographs on Twitter that showed a ladder that was already pre-positioned for someone to climb up on the roof. How the hell did that happen? And there was apparently a police officer that was crossing under who looked at him, and he shared, he displayed his rifle at him, he brandished it, and he left, and he still went up. Yeah, so could it be that they weren't maybe somebody like a cop or whomever saw the guy, but maybe thought he was just a spectator who was just getting in a position to watch the rally? Not that that's a good excuse, but I'm not saying that's a good excuse, but I'm not saying that's a good excuse. Not if he was briefed by the Secret Service, and they were all briefed by the Secret Service. There's a literal meeting, because again, they did it in New York City, where the New York, the NYPD, the security from the United Nations, they're all there and the Secret Service is briefing them. And we all get sort of a poor lyric, like the place where you stay the hell out of a gun pre-plan on, I don't know, but the point is, all of that, the gun pre-plan it on site, no, where's the sweep? Where's the group coming in, sweeping beforehand, sealing the area off once it's swept? All of that. So I hate speculating, but I think this will probably come down to local law enforcement being involved in a local political decision to kill Donald Trump, that the Secret Service wasn't involved because I can't, I just don't want to go down that route, but the Secret Service, first of all, incompetence doesn't work. You can't be that incompetent, so I'm not going to buy any incompetence theory. It may come out that they were incompetent, but again, all the things, this would require every single law enforcement officer and Secret Service officer and state to forget basic protocols to forget the basics. So this isn't that somebody failed on a technical issue. This is the basics of event security. This is the kind of stuff that you would fire, the guys that wear the yellow shirts to say security in the back, you know, the rent, the rent the security guys. You would try to infer incompetence for not doing this. This is a, this is also like saying, Hey, look, we don't need such a tight security situation, stand, you can stand back, it can be more relaxed or something like that. I don't know, I'm just saying, I'm just saying there's like a back off order or something like that that also is implied where you're not horrible about these things, because these are little things that you would see you're like immediately. Well, out of all the professional opiners, there is only one who actually worked for the Secret Service, and that's Dan Bongi. So I know that you're not a big fan of his but those are, that's pretty relevant that he was a Secret Service agent. So why don't we take a look at a couple of things he said. Hey, the Secret Service should be very careful. I could tell you an absolutely confirm from the horse's mouth from multiple people, not just one, and I saw Congresswoman Waltz text this out before on X. There have been repeated requests to increase the security footprint around not just the residences of Donald Trump, but the body itself, and they have been rebuffed. Like I said, I can tell you actual quotes, the Secret Service Director's completely failed, and candidly should resign today. Kim Sheedell has failed Donald Trump, and honestly failed Joe Biden too. He's the president right now. Where's the DHS Secretary? I mean, this is your blaming it on manpower. Well, that brings up another issue. Was there requests for additional people? Again, it might be, it could be both, you know, more people, meaning more competent people as opposed to farming it out to local cops. Manpower is always an issue. That's always the case. Even in New York City, you know, when he comes to the United Nations, he had to switch concert as higher security. I'm right. But no, there's always, you always have, you're always wrestling with manpower issues. There's no doubt about that. That's always a crunch. But at the end of the day, it's the mission that dictates the, you know, the mission dictates the commitment of manpower, and then the complexity of the terrain you're operating on. And one of the basics, again, this is just so simple. There was a freaking building that gave a potential shooter an elevated vantage point to shoot at the president that wasn't secured. And no effort, apparently, was made to impede the line of sight between that building. This is basic stuff. This is like one-on-one kind of stuff. It's not, we're not getting into complex stuff. We're not talking about, you know, we're not talking about Carl is the jackal out there planning the most sophisticated long range shot over the mountain, and bending the bullet around, and, you know, taking him out. This is a point of aim, point of impact, 125, 150 yards shot from an elevated position right next to the venue. And the only other one, Scott, there was, there weren't any other buildings but that building. It wasn't like the Secret Service went, well, there were 20 places. We had to secure it. We only had 19 people. So we thought this was the left likely place for the shooter to come from. I don't know, but what about the, what about the so-called DEI issue? The head of the Secret Service is a woman. Some of these agents are women. Now, we're three men so far as I can tell. I haven't seen your papers. So maybe we should tread lightly here, but take a look at this footage here. It seems to me like, not, this doesn't really relate necessarily to checking out the roof. But I think it's relevant that just the size and strength of these people. This looks like, I don't know what to think about this. Take a look at this. Donald Trump is, I think he's 6-3, 6-4, something like that. And a couple of these women, I don't know. Look at her. She went like 3-4, took her a while. Look, I'm not going to criticize these women. They volunteered for this position. I don't know if there were shortcuts made in their training. Because that's always the accusation in Special Forces and Special Operations Forces that women were given more chances, like the Air Force, the special packaging guys are saying that the women that graduated the special taxes pipeline were given multiple chances to go in that they dropped out, they quit, they were doing it, but politically they let them go back and they bent them, whatever. I'm not going to say anything bad about these women because I don't know. And I respect the fact that they volunteered for a job that literally requires them to take a bullet for the President of the United States. And so they deserve nothing but our unfettered respect. Now, if somebody wants to come in and say something else, I don't know what the requirements are for Secret Service agent. I mean, clearly if your job is to take a bullet for the President and you surround him with the Munchkins, he's 6'3. There's a problem. That's my point. I'm not taking on the courage of the Munchkins, but it's like, but again, I don't know what the requirements are for that. You brought up another point, Scott, that applies to men as much as it applies to women, which is the level of experience. And this is a factual issue. I don't know what the facts are. But I would like to know how experience are the Secret Service agents on Donald Trump's detail versus how experienced they are in others. That would be an interesting thing to find out. It would be interesting, as a former President, he deserves the Tier 1 protection. And as a candidate, and again, the Secret Service isn't supposed to get political in this, but he's not just a candidate. Increasingly, it's becoming a better than 50/50 shot that this is the next Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America. You know, guys can disagree until there's evidence. I can't go that route. I literally can't go that route. That's irresponsible speculation. We should also bring up RFK, guys, because RFK asked for Secret Service protection and he was turned down. You know what he said, though, today, they asked him about that, and he said, "Look, this is not about me. This is about Donald Trump." And he took it very seriously with regards to Trump as opposed to making it about himself, which I appreciate, but you're right. They continue to. And that's what I was going to say also because Scott was saying manpower was low. I mean, that has been part of this whole environment that you addressed earlier, where Biden is attacking Trump. I was reading McFall, who was saying essentially that if you say, "I love attacking him," by the way, because he was saying Biden has never incited people against Donald Trump. He himself has called him a fascist dictator. So when you have that kind of environment of tension, strategy of tension, and then you're saying, "Well, we're not going to provide you with all the security that you need, anybody who's a viable opponent." To me, it's almost like opening the door and just inviting everybody to do exactly what we've seen. And I think RFK had two attempts. One guy was armed where they tried to get in and they got him earlier. My wife tells me not to read the comments, but I am. And I just have to tell the crowd. I'm not impressed with half the people who were commenting here. I've never heard more dumber to crap in my entire life. Maybe that's what they do. Maybe they're trying to provoke. Now they've succeeded. But unless there's people out there commenting about what they do when bullets fly, unless you've been shot at, you have no fricking idea what you're going to do when the bullets fly. None of you have an idea. You could be in a crowd. You can hear things that might be firecrackers. Is your brain processed to comprehend what's happening? The guy with the hat just sat there. What would you do? All you geniuses out there. What would you do? Have you been on personal security protection details? Do you know what the protocol is? Or if you watch one too many Clint Eastwood movies? This is why I just dislike doing this kind of stuff. Because we need an audience and I hope to attract a good audience. But I really am getting fed up to hear with the literal ignorance of people out there. I had a guy in X today, Scott. I posted one of these videos or pictures of Trump doing his thing, raising the fist. And he said that it was really stupid of Trump to do that and put himself in danger. In a sense, yeah, but I mean, I think what you just said is you just go with your instincts at the moment. Well, you know, you say it's really stupid. You know, in the Marine Corps, they teach us a couple of things. They teach us that bullets kill. We learned that by calling under fire and listening to the rounds go over your head. And if you raise your head too high, theoretically, you can get it taken off. Actually, the training option is supposed to keep it deflected up a little bit more because there are stupid Marines who will raise their head. You don't want their head blown off. But, you know, you're here. Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. Okay. So you get the idea and you get a whole bunch of other things that teach you that this is dangerous kind of stuff. But you know what else they teach you that when the time is right, when the Marines are suppressed, when you have to get them up, when you have to move, get your ass up off the ground and lead by example. Stand up there and say, follow me. Let's go. And sometimes you take one right here. Sometimes you take three across here. Sometimes it doesn't matter. How smart was that guy? The X guy. This is food. It's called leadership. It's called leadership. And you'll never know how you respond under fire until you come under fire. And so for all you people out there, Chris, he was just scratched. It wasn't just a scratch. The high velocity round that again had it been one millimeter to the other side would have blown his head off. He may in fact have a concussion because it's that kind of stuff. You guys are dumber than dirt. They'll remind me of another thing. I happen to be watching it on CBS, not because I have any affection for them. That was just what came on the TV, what came on the TV. And I don't know if this is anti-Trumpias or they're just stupid or what, but for the longest time, they were talking about it as if it wasn't a bullet that hit him. It was if it was shrapnel or something. And it's like, okay, I guess that's possible. But why would you assume that and rule out being shot? Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Have you heard about this? Do you think that's anti-Trumpias trying to minimize what happened or do you think that's just stupidity? CNN initially said Trump fell. That's how they reported it. The bullet is just incidental. Yeah, that's that's called bearing the lead, right? Hey, I can restore I can restore your faith in our audience. Scott, I have one of our better audience members on the phone now. Let's do it. All right, restore my faith. Hey, Tom in Cooperstown. Scott was just saying he's not thrilled with the comments tonight, but we need you to restore his faith. How you doing? I'm doing okay. Shocked just like all of us are. Scott, happy early birthday. Jeff, thanks for taking my call. I've been trying to process this over the last 24 hours and I have some military experience and it's still hard to process, you know, when you see something like that. And that's unfortunate. I think where our country is going. And people said after this while they think, you know, it's going to be a shame that President Trump is going to be an automatically said, I don't think so. There's a lot of things to play it. We have the Republican Convention and the Democratic Convention, you know, then we have the county of the ballots come November. And there were some issues, you know, last time recently, there was a hearing in Georgia about 380,000 digital ballots. And they asked the people in the hearing, the local vote of election. They said, well, where are they? You know, the commission was asking, they had no idea. So I think we have to go through the process and play. We just make it to election day, then through the whole county and certification process and make it to inauguration. So I just hope I'm playing for peace and, you know, thank you guys for your efforts and coming on today and, you know, it's just been a crazy time, it's a crazy day. Literally crazy. Thanks for calling. And Tom's 100% correct. First of all, let's remove the assassination for just a second. I mean, all three of us have been around for a little bit. You know, this isn't our first rodeo. And we know damn well in America, but Ryan, you've been heavily involved in American politics. What would you say to somebody who says in July, I can predict the outcome of an election in November? I found it crazy, you know, because I was a political science major in college, you know, and you just can't assume everything. You're looking at polls and things of that sort. You know, I was looking at the new term polls yesterday. And okay, Trump is going with the new factor in our of K Jr. And how does that go? You know, you have, particularly in these speech states, anything can happen. Also, there have been reports, according to Washington Times, that when the new immigrants have come in illegally, they have been offered by the local social services, not only social welfare benefits, you know, housing, things of that sort. There have also been offered to register the vote. So let's say we've had about eight, twelve, twenty, whatever many people have come in, if these people are allowed to vote. And, you know, say, Hey, I have my papers. I got, I got my ID. It's like, wait a minute. You're not a foreign naturalized citizen. Tell me there are just so many factors going on. So when people tell me, okay, hey, it's about to be a very delightful team. They know what's going to happen in November. So, Hey, I'm just trying to make it to tomorrow, you know, so. Yeah. Well, nobody knows because the way American politics work, the American people are so fickle, and we are a fickle group. I mean, just look at the impact of yesterday, how it's how it's influenced people, including myself. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a very influential moment, a game changing moment. Who says there's not going to be fifteen game changing moments between now and November? And at the end of the day, there are always surprises. There are always surprises. The only question is what are the surprises going to be, but there are always going to be. Yeah. So we have no way of predicting the outcome here. We have no way of, of saying, you know, this is what it's going to be. It's going to be a wild ride, but what we want it to be is a wild ride within the framework of the Constitution, what the Constitution Republic allows. We don't allow political assassinations. And we have to tone down the rhetoric. This is an absolute crime. You know, somebody, somebody I saw one of the questions that I think you put it up, Ryan. How do you feel about the FBI? Well, there's a fair question because it's the National Security Division of the FBI that's, that's required to do this investigation. They're the ones that crossfire hurricane. That was the National Security Division that undertook the effort to frame Donald Trump about collusion. We can never trust the FBI again. And, you know, Christopher Ray is still the director of the FBI. This is one of the problems. Again, I'm not, everybody knows I'm not a big conspiracy theorist. I hate conspiracy theories. But at some point in time, you're just throwing these dots out on the board because that's what I am. I'm a big, connect the dot kind of guy. And, you know, normally I only get a couple dots. And so you've got to start looking. But now I have enough dots and it's painting a damn picture. And you're going, how can you can't ignore the fact that the National Security Division of the FBI is fundamentally corrupted by its cast when it comes to Donald Trump. And now they're investigating an attempted assassination that has a whole bunch of suspicious elements to it. This is not a good look for America. So, yeah, Tom, it's going to be a rough ride, man. It's going to be a rough ride. If I'm just going to add also this with regard to certain issues that are coming up, we're going to find out who's going to be Mr. Trump's Vice President nominee in the next few days, with the Republican Convention. They're not going to see what happens with President Biden. For example, if he's going to step down voluntarily, will the 23rd amendment be invoked? I don't think it will. But would they elevate Vice President Harris to President and let hold one with somebody else? It couldn't be Gavin Newsom because they're from the same state. I mean, there are just so many different permutations and combinations that we have. Nothing's for certain. So I think we just got to take it day by day and pray for peace and the stuff that you got coming up on. You know, September 24th, it's vital. And I keep spreading the word. And thank you guys for all your hard work with regards to the event itself. The BBC report, which I got a call from a friend of mine, and he was like, they were talking about the guy in the red hat. He was like, wait a minute. They were saying for three to four minutes, they would say, pull in this guy, pull in this guy. You know, I just got a total security breakdown. I just don't get it. How that could happen. So, you know, I'll open up to conspiracy theories. The mind is wide open on that because somebody should have just shouted, shoot or shoot or, you know, up on the roof and keep wearing me. But, you know, like you guys were saying really about the lot of these birds, the guy corns up, it doesn't make any sense. It's like out of some kind of movie or something, literally, you know, you know, then it's Christopher Walken. It's just crazy. It's crazy. It's a bad movie script. Yeah, I mean, if somebody put this to Hollywood, I'm thinking, Jeff, if somebody put this to Hollywood, they never accept the script. But thanks, guys, simplify the good work. Thanks, Tom. We have another call. Robert Sam or Sam Robert, which is it? You're like me. I have two first names, Jeff Norman. Just one more. Yeah, you got it right. That's Robert Sam. The movie movie you can't say, so I'll just keep this simple, Robert Sam. All right. Hey, lower your computer, please, so we don't have feedback. Okay. That's right. What's on your mind, Robert? Okay. Hey, Scott, I really appreciate this show. I enjoy watching you all the time, right, right, right. So, I watched it for clips of what happened yesterday. And then after everything went on, Trump just came out and put up his statement. And then I saw the statement, the very first thing Kevin in my mind was he changed the secret service, whatever it did to bring the guy down. But long ago, a couple of miles, you know, he bring up something like, I think it was a campaign motivation, whatever it's a campaign. He bring some money up. He involved the Bible, but he forgot to mention God. This bullet made him a millimeter, you know what I mean? So, well, he put God first. I was a little bit surprised that God said it. God loved this month. And then God protected whoever tried to hurt this man, God protected. And I think America will do everything support this month. And then he's there for a purpose and a real reason. And I'd like to show you guys keep hard working to support you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. You know, religion, it's always funny. I've been in a couple of environments where religion becomes a thing. You know, people find religion in the war. It's sort of like, I'm going to die. If there's a God, I need to get on this good side. And then there's always people discover religion in prison because they're trying to repent for something and convince people that they've suddenly become very good people. But other than that, you're either a person of faith or you're not. Donald Trump just had a little come to Jesus moment. And if his foundation isn't as deeply faithful as others, maybe he isn't reflecting on that immediately. But I will bet you a dime to a dollar that at some point in time when he's sitting there looking at the scar and feeling that because it's going to itch for a while. You know, that was like closer than it really should have been and I could be dead and thank you. You know, at that point in time, you thank the higher being because whatever made him at the last second and early just that slight movement of that, that's what saved him, the slight movement. Otherwise, the angle of attack would have blown off his brain. I mean, whether you're religious or not, there's no way that he or anybody can't think about how close it was. Now, I got stabbed and the guy, so I can relate to this a little bit. The head of the emergency room said to, while they were working on me in the emergency room, he held his thumb and forefinger together and he said he missed your heart by that much. You would have been a goner. And I'm like, oh, well, Jeff, I was only attacked by a dog. Don't worry. It's not, can you top this, but I'm just saying when it's, it's, I can relate to that. Fix on your wall, Jeff. You what? I didn't see the crucifix on your wall when I visited you. No, no, no, I'm not religious. It means you're to your maker, man. How close? Yeah, if it's all about God, how come people never blame God when it goes bad? How about that? I blame God all the time. That's why I'm going to hell. You know, Scott, something you said earlier. Oh, well, we want to go to this question. Okay. Well, hold that thought, Ryan. Don't forget it. Do you think, well, we kind of talked about this already. Do you think this is secret? Look, we're having a frank and open discussion as if we're three guys sitting around a bar, we're just throwing stuff out there. This is the kind of question that I wouldn't answer. And that I really wouldn't answer if I were doing an interview with a foreign media outlet, because this gets into a lot of speculation and none of it's good for America. And I'm not in the business of bashing America, you know, needlessly. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this show first. I wanted to have an American discussion and lay it out there. And then we can then I'll feel comfortable talking about it with foreign, you know, foreign media outlets. But it's far too early. We just, there's so much we don't know about what happened. There's just some, we're doing a lot of speculation. You know, again, Ryan, you guys both know that there's, there's things that you see on the surface. And then behind the scenes, there's always so much more going on. All these instant, you know, video analysts. Did you see this? Did you see that? Did you see this? Did you see that? You're seeing things that you frankly don't even understand what's going on. Behind that, there is so much more. This is the literally the tip of the iceberg. Underneath it is so much more going on that may put a lot of this into perspective. We're making certain assumptions that things weren't done. When we may find out that things were done, we don't know. So it's far too early to draw a conclusion about something we don't know anything about right now. You know, we really have far too little information to go on. What is the protocol? You know, I'll give you an example. Ronald Reagan was shot in March of 1991. He raised his arm to wave and they shot. He got hit with a 22 bullet right here. And it went inside and it didn't some damage. When the secret service had him in the vehicle, they didn't realize he had been shot. They're looking and it wasn't until he got to the hospital later on that they realized that he's about going to die because there was some interior. I don't know this, but did they change the protocol so that when a president goes down, you have to do some sort of physical exam. Because if you notice his shirt was on button a little bit. Did the secret service have to get him down there and say, "Mr. President, are you getting any blood? Do we get any blood? Check for blood, check for blood." And all that kind of stuff. Just to see what they got here because all they know is there were gunshots. He did this and he went down. I don't know what the protocol is, but that's the point. I don't know. And neither do all the people commenting. Neither do you unless you got your secret service agents in disguise. Let's let the process play out. The only problem with letting the process play out is that the national security division of the FBI is responsible for this investigation. And that just is one giant big red flag. Because this is the crossfire hurricane people who are still lying about the role they played in manufacturing the case against Donald Trump back in 2016. Somebody brought up the issue of his vice president. And there's a school of thought that he ought to pick somebody who in the deep state hates almost as much as they hate Trump because that is protection against assassination. If he picks somebody they like, that makes him more vulnerable to assassination. What do you guys think about that? Well, I mean, look, here's what I wanted to say to what Scott was saying, and this sort of plays into it because you can sort of spin out of control. There are these things that happened behind the scene. And even earlier, Scott, you were saying about elections. So take, for example, behind the scenes kinds of things with elections, right? There's a lot of petitioning. There's a lot of getting on the ballot. And there's a lot of people who are state officials who are very much aligned to the party, even though they're supposed to be neutral. Same thing with these people who are supposed to investigate this incident yesterday. These agencies are supposed to be neutral above the political fray and they're not clearly. So then I think your question, Jeff, is sort of in that thing, right, where it's so politicized that we miss the forest for the trees because ultimately the things that are of existential crisis are now off the table. We're now in this kind of trench warfare mentally with the voters. Well, do you think he should pick a VP that is... I was going to do it yesterday. No, but do you think he should pick one that is sort of like insurance against assassination? If somebody was out to assassinate him, I don't think it would matter either way. Well, it would matter if they're just going to get somebody they don't, they also don't want. I think the second we start picking vice presidents because of the potential assassination, this country should be flushed down the toilet of life. That's not enough. That shouldn't be in anybody's thinking. It shouldn't be in Donald Trump's thinking. Donald Trump should be picking the vice president that's best capable of furthering his objectives as president in case of his incapacitation for whatever reason. That's the purpose of a vice president's continuity of platform. It's not meant to be an insurance policy against assassination or this, that or the other thing. If he picks a vice president for anything other than continuity of platform, that speaks volumes about his ability to be a good leader to the country. His vice presidential candidate is going to be a factor in, hopefully a factor in people's decisions to support him or not. I will tell you what. We got Nikki Haley back on the Republicans' invention speaking thing. She's the vice president. I don't care how many times you show me this photograph, I've got some issues. Yeah, I got another hand gesture. Remember last week you were talking about Rex Tillerson. He was an outsider as far as the policy making establishment. That's immediately what came into my mind, Jeff, when you asked that question. Throw out a name. Don't be shy. Throw out a name. Go ahead. Tulsi Gabbard. I did it first. Tulsi Gabbard. You took the words out of my mouth. I think that would be a good choice for him. Well, Scott was saying you should pick somebody who's competent. Well, maybe that's the same person, somebody who's both competent and insurance against an assassination, the deep state doesn't want Tulsi Gabbard, I don't think. I don't think Trump wants Tulsi Gabbard either. Yeah, that may be. I don't think he's in the running, so we've missed that opportunity. I'm throwing out another name. I'm going wild right now. Yeah, but I don't know. He's got some good things that he says for sure, but I don't know if he is government material. So if you have somebody that you think would be the best pick? I think the best Donald Trump clone out there is JD Vance. Yeah. I think JD Vance is a younger Donald Trump. Yeah. And if you're buying the bread, look, what would make Donald Trump attractive to me is that he would hopefully follow through on radical transformation of the establishment. I told the story before about the INF Treaty reunion where a Biden administration official talked about the interagency, this blob that was preventing the president from carrying out the required reformation of America's nuclear posture so that we aren't on the cusp of nuclear conflict. I want personally, I want the interagency, the establishment, the deep state, whatever we call it, I want it terminated, wiped off, and it's going to be ugly. You know, the people out there mocking Project 2025, there's a lot in there I don't like, but I tell you, one thing I do like is it used to be that you would want a professional civil service so that you had continuity between administrations. That was the, that's the ideal. It's not that way anymore. The establishment is corrupt. It's a duopoly. It doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, it's duopoly that is there only to benefit the establishment, not to benefit the American people. It must be terminated with extreme prejudice, and I'm not talking about killing or anything like that. But I am in favor of firing everybody above a certain pay grade and saying you're done and we're bringing in new people who are loyal to me, the president of the United States, because I am the chief executive. When I'm done and you won an election, you can bring in your own people. But this way, when I promulgate an idea, it's followed through and there's not the interagency blocking it. I didn't, the American people didn't vote for the interagency. We vote for senators, we vote for Congressman, we vote for the president. That's it, baby. And then they work together to come up with this independent judiciary, which ain't independent anymore. But these are the things that we then, as the American people feel empowered. But when you were telling me that this country is run by an unelected blob of bureaucrats who are part of a military industrial complex that controls academia, controls the media, controls the money, and what that's saying is we, the people, don't have any say in this matter anymore, that's problematic. And the one guy out there on his short list of VP candidates, JD Vance, JD Vance would follow through if required to clean it up. And I would tell you this, Donald Trump's a one-term president. I don't know if he'll, he's a dictator, he's going to try to self-liminate, issue guys, he's going to be old. He ain't going to run again. He can't constitutionally and even if he tried, he can't. So a young JD Vance, let's say Donald Trump has a scream in four years, successful. JD Vance can now turn that into a 12-year term and imagine the kind of cleansing you can do of the interagency, of the deep state, all that stuff. And it needs to be cleansed. This is what's going to kill America is this unelected blob that's out there direct, because they're the ones who prevented Joe Biden from implementing sound policy, sound policy saying that the only mission of US nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against America, that we will only use nuclear weapons if we're first attacked with nuclear weapons. I support that. Instead, we now have preemptive nuclear strike, we're talking about lowering the threshold, we're talking about limited nuclear work, all the insanity. Because the deep state, the interagency says, that's what we need to do. We need to purge them from America. And I'm sorry if you've been working in the US government for 16 years and you're four years away from retirement. I don't care because you aren't representing the interests of America anymore. You're representing the end of an unelected power, and you can't be a democratic constitutional republic when you've ceded all of this to unelected power. So that's why I'm a JD Vance guy. And what you're saying online is really important 12 years. It's not going to be a four year thing to clean these people out. It's a huge job. Twelve years you could begin it because what that allows you to do is start cycling out academia. Look, my daughter, I don't want to get mad. You graduate from a certain institution in Washington, D.C. that's very prestigious. George Town. George Town. I don't know. It's like Stu, we don't want to use Stu's name, but we're just called him Stu. Sorry, Stu, see, Stu, I can get pissed off of me. He'll forgive me. Stu, if I get her mad, she will never forgive me. So, Stu, I'm really sorry if I've done anything wrong today. But George Town is a, is this very, very, you can say Mike Pence 2.0, that's your opinion. I mean, I'm just, I'm not saying any of these guys are, are great. Nobody's great. I'm just saying, who's going to carry over Donald Trump's vision? But George Town, Foreign Service Institute, trains the generation of Americans who become the next diplomats and move on. In theory, you'd like an institute that creates open-minded people who are looking how to make America great again, again, but to do the best for the country and who understand how the process works, whatever. But instead, they've stacked the, normally the, the, the argument against academia is that you have free thinking, you know, teachers in there, teaching our kids how to free think. We don't want free thinkers. We want to control them, conservative, not enough. Would George Town, there's no free thinking. They literally don't do free thinking, Ron Paul, that Ron Paul's 2.0. They don't do free thinking. You have to go to George Town and you have to conform to the establishment point of view. That's it. If you don't conform, you're, I took my daughter to Russia. He is a specialist in Russia slash Caucasian Southern Caucasian affairs. Russia is heavily, heavily influences what happens in the Caucasus region. So does the Northern Caucasus, where there's a gentleman named Ron's, Ron's on Kadiro. Now she is in a master's degree program to learn about the Caucasus so that she can empower self-knowledge and information so that she can best express ideas and opinions about that region. She got a meeting with Ron's on Kadiro, not her by herself, but with me. She got to ask him questions. She got an unscripted question. She got to listen to the answers and then she got to watch her father given an unprompted horribly Russian speech to 25,000 Chechen soldiers that was filmed and put her in a difficult position. I get it, politically speaking, that probably wasn't the right thing for me to do to my daughter. Have her there with 25,000. But the point is she got back to Georgetown instead of people saying, "Damn, Patty, pull up a seat. Tell us." How was that? That's crazy. What happened? You met Ron's on. What'd you think about him? They didn't want to hear anything about it and they condemned her for it. That's Georgetown, where they trained foreign service officers. They didn't want to hear anything about this very complex critical issue. Patty's more empowered to talk about Russia, Chechnya, and the Caucasus now because of that trip that everybody in that damn institution, that institution needs to be purged from top to bottom. Every one of their professors has to go because every one of those professors comes from the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense. They're all part of the interagency now that infiltrates into academia. You're not going to do that in four years, Ryan. You may not be able to do that in eight years, but you give me 12 years and next thing you know, we have a different mindset in Washington, DC. All we have to do is guard against them becoming the establishment, and that's the idea. That's why I like the idea of purges. The periodic purges prevent whoever's there getting roots into the system, purge their ass, yank them out by the roots, plant new seeds, begin to grow it again, inefficient Scott. I like interficiency when it allows new ideas to come in and grow and change because the old ideas are only going to get us killed. They're only going to get us killed. Why am I laughing? Scott, can I ask our friend, Ryan, a question? Would you mind? Oh, please. Ryan, is it just me or did Scott scoff at the criterion I propose for vice president and then a minute afterwards describe why JD Vance would be a good vice president for the very same reason, I suggest it. Is it my imagination or did it take time to break it up, Jeff? Your audio is breaking up. I wouldn't catch that at all. Jeff, I dated Mr. what was your criterion for vice president? You said nobody gave somebody else's name. I was just going to some of the things I have to criteria saying somebody who would be as that the deep state wouldn't like would not like as insurance policy to prevent. So I objected to the insurance policy aspect of it. Yeah. All right. I'm more about the continuity aspect of it, which is. We're not. I guess we're saying the same thing just coming in from different directions. All right. Audience. This is what Scott said at the beginning. Americans wrestling with the wrestling. All right. Well, we've been wrestling now for about an hour and a half. Do you want to continue to wrestle or do you want to say good night? Do we have more questions? Well, I think there's one more prepared question. We don't have anybody holding on the phone, but let's see here Tony from Texas. Does this failed assassination mean that they will now be forced to back off? Or will they likely try again? That's a good question. Well, it all depends on who they is and what was if this was a lone gunman acting on his own. It's over. You know, it's over if this is something that the deep state is promoting, they've got to regroup because they screwed up. And now if this is something, if this is one of these great things where some people just put it's going to be found out and now they're running for cover. They're going to try and spin this any, you know, anyway, and if that's the case, they're spinning themselves to try and avoid the consequences. They may not have a chance to regroup and come in, but this is, if this is a conspiracy, somebody made the decision to kill a former president and kill a man who could very well be the future president of the United States. That's not a decision made lightly. That's a decision that's backed by money. It's backed by power. It's backed by, you know, serious people who aren't going to let a failed effort stop them. Whether or not they'll be able to pull it off, look, you know, Valcarai, you remember that operation? Valcarai, Tom Cruise made a movie about it. Yeah. You know, it was an effort to take out Adolf Hitler and it failed miserably and they got rounded up and they got shot, strung up by the neck with piano wire and all that good stuff. They didn't have a chance to regroup if, you know, we'll see what happens here. I pray for America that this was a lone gunman who took advantage of incompetence. That's the outcome I really want to hear. I want to hear that this was a one-off, some confused kid who got motivated by inflamed rhetoric to do something very stupid. And the local law enforcement combined the secret service just didn't do their job right and the combination of factors led to him being able to pull off a couple of shots that thankfully didn't kill the president, tragically killed a firefighter who was protecting his family, wounded two other people seriously and cost the shooter his life. That's the outcome I want. It's the outcome I'm going to get. I don't know. We'll find out. Want to take a phone call? We got one coming in now. Sure. Hey, you're on with Scott, Ryan and Jeff. What's on your mind? Hi, gentlemen and thanks very much for the show tonight. I have a question and it has to do with the alleged shooter. How is it that a 20-year-old kid who by some accounts is just like a science nerd gets a hold of this rifle and is skilled enough to make these shots, that part is just not adding up for me. Like how did he know how to shoot that gun? And conveniently he's dead and we can't ask him anything. Well here's the other one. And moment's commenting on that. So here's the other interesting thing. They interviewed, I guess he tried to join the school shooting team and he was horrible at shooting. And they only shoot on a 25-yard course, but they said that he shot lanes and that he was hitting the wall and he was that bad. The shot he took at 125-150 meters is against, you know, it's the same size target we shoot at in the Marine Corps, you know, the dog target, but you got the body, go for the head. It's a tough shot. In fact, we always, especially if you haven't zeroed your weapon, I don't know what kind of optics are on this weapon, I don't know. But I remember in the Gulf War when I was given the task of accompanying people who were carrying a special package. I was told I need to be prepared to participate in counter ambush drills and counter assault in case we got attacked as the package could never fall in the hands of anybody who wasn't cleared. And I have been issued an M16 and I'm an expert shot at me in the M16, but not this one. I had the PC battle zero of the weapon. So we stopped in the middle of the desert and did a zero course. We put up a plate and I had nine rounds. And I, you know, fire three rounds, we take a look at the grouping, I make the adjustments on the sites. I fire three more, make the final adjustments, get the confirmation rounds, I'm now zeroed in this weapon. I write down the dope on a piece of paper, slap it in the, the, the butt plate. And now I've got a weapon that is zeroed. Now I can go into combat knowing that point of aim is point impact, damn, did this kid zero as weapon? Because I'll tell you what, they say, yes, but he didn't miss by that much. He was literally this far away from being a guy who killed a present United States pink mist. So he didn't miss by that much. And he fired. The story is right. He was literally crawling up into position. A cop came up and grabbed his foot and was, was doing this. He oriented this weapon at the cop, the cop let go around away. He then within a period of three to four seconds reoriented the weapon, got in the shooting position and then fired off the rounds. That again, and let the trade, because I get, did he have a sling, you know, because when I'm shooting, I always got the sling and the sling helps get the weapon right in, because when I zero the round, the zero of the weapon, the weapon has to be resting right where it is every time I practice on it. We spent a whole week in the Marine Corps just getting in the position, just getting in the position, dry click, dry click, second nature. So he, if he was doing this and he got disrupted, he did this. Now he falls right back into position where his seated right and he's shooting and he's damn near hitting the target center mass. Either that's the luckiest worst in the world or this kid received some sort of shooting training from the time he didn't make it to the high school shooting team to the time he nearly killed the president of the United States. There's, yeah, it's a very good question. These are the kinds of questions that have to be asked and hopefully will be answered in any investigation. Yeah, thanks, Scott. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the call. Thank you. We have shots that he got off. Yeah. Yeah. Scott's a singular shot. There's plural shots. Yeah. No, there was, but there was a cycle shots. I mean, you know, it was a five or three or five. What was it? Five. Somewhere between three and five. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. But it was more than one. Yeah. But to be able to stay near target, you know, under the circumstances is pretty. But I mean, you know, one of the things is saying that, you know, if he had a, up here, if he had a halfway decent scope, 125, there's nothing, very easy shot. No, I agree with that. But again, I'm an iron sight kind of guy. I mean, I'm open sight. I admit it, dinosaur. Okay. But when I was at the special, the Spets Dance Academy in Chechnya, and they took me on the firing range and I got this shoot, one of the more advanced modern Russian assault weapons that uses optics, but you still left and the optics aren't automatic. They're still technique training, speeding the weapon properly, getting the, you know, getting the alignment right. You can have the optics, but if you're not a trained shooter, I can guarantee you this. This is what I will guarantee you. If you've never shot before a weapon of that nature, and I put you on the range and just hand you the weapon with optics and say, shoot, you will not hit the target. I guarantee it because you won't have a fricking idea what you're doing. All right. And again, it comes down even with the optics to reorient, to be here, lining up, to point down in a cop, then come back and reorient. You still have to get your eye on the optics to get yourself to get you up right. Optics has to be done properly so that when you pull the trigger, you hit the target. All right. This kid had had training optics or not. This kid had training optics do not solve the problem optics assist people. If you know how to use them properly, but you can't take an untrained person who failed to get on the team and suddenly turn it plus we don't know what kind of optics he had most civilian AR-15s, I mean, Ryan, I'm looking at the image in the back. I know that's not really there right now, but that is a reflection of what could be. I think that's something that, but my point is, do you know your AR-15s, do you have optics on them? Or do you have to buy the optics? Oh, no, I go and buy all of my optics separately. And I train, I test them all out and I pick the one that I want. And depending on what I'm going to use it for, if it's for close or long distance, I have completely different kinds of optics, different kinds of scopes. Some of my scopes have fiber optics in them now. That's a new thing. So you have a scope with what looks like a laser, but it doesn't project out, but it does the same thing. So they don't come that way. You usually have to go and do some research, think about what you're going to do. And then you buy something, you pick it. Right, but what you buy is based upon you as a shooter, and you use the optics based upon how you're going to use that weapon, how that weapon is going to feel. If you can't just buy a weapon with optics and expect to go to the range and immediately go bam, bam, bam, bam, and hit the target. The optics have to be aligned to your, it's like fitting. It's like getting fitted for a golf club. You can't just buy a golf club, you've got your eye relief, you've got the ability to see, depending on what you want, right? If you want a laser sight, it's going to be very different, a reflexive sight, something that's a three. That's my whole point. I'm not an expert on this because, as I said, when I was in the Marine Corps, we didn't have optics. And I had to do it the old school way, the old fashioned way, but I got to shoot modern optics. But again, I had to be, I had to be explained what was going on. We had to adjust it to me. I had to work it out, see to make sure I have the right alignment before I shot. And I tell you what, once you figure it out, optics are very handy. They help you hit the target. All right. I don't know about you guys, but I have Trump energy, not Biden energy. So I'll keep going. I just want to let you know we have other calls coming in. Should we keep going? Sure. I mean, Ryan, how are you doing? Because we're closing on you. Yeah, look, this is an important topic. Let's go for another 20 minutes and then we'll call it a night. All right. Have you got Trump energy or Biden energy? No, I don't have Biden energy. There is no energy. There is no one. All right. Hey, you're on with Ryan, Jeff and Scott. What's on your mind? Good evening gentlemen, and I want to tell you more a comment. So what did Robert E. Pacer, the Slovakian president say, when he got the attempted assassination against him, he said that he blamed these cultivators. No hate for the problem. So even if the guy was like lone numbmen, some person with some problems, the cultivators of hate did this. I watched the country of Yugoslavia where I grew up when the cultivators of hate came to Yugoslavia and we ended up 10 years of war. So, you know, if you really think about it, you always end up like that. The cultivate hate and then it starts with shiny people, minor hate, and it ends up in war. Look at you in World War II. Look at Ukraine. That's all I have to say. Thanks. That's the premise of Scott's article, as a matter of fact. Thanks for calling. Thank you. All right. We got another call here. Hey, you're on with the Scott, Jeff and Ryan. What's up? Hey, Jeff. Thanks, Scott. I thought you were taking my call again. I'm sorry to change the topic of discussion, but I want to ask about the IDF and the bombing in Gaza. And I know, Scott, you've given your opinion analysis of the killers that they've been doing. But like I see in the media, it's very obviously very inflating, the issues are inflating. But I was willing to give like a tactical and strategic analysis of all these bombings that basically the IDF is doing. I'm sure whenever like, is it possible combination, is it just bad intelligence? Is it them thinking like, oh, which is his bomb, this target? And the outcome maybe of killing the terrorists is better than killing the civilians? Or is it even just a set and calculated schedule just bombing them to maintain the press and fire or for Gaza? Or is it just part of like the IDF going in, or drawing the enemy out and bombing them? Like, I wish you could just give like a tactical strategic analysis. To like, maybe what the heck they're actually doing? And maybe just to give like a more like technical analysis over like the just inflating rhetoric that's been in the media. So thank you. Appreciate it. Well, thank you for the call. I'm going to disappoint you right now, but this is strictly about the assassination. That's the only reason why it came on a Sunday. I promise you that your question will be the very first question I answer on Tuesday. Jeff will hold me accountable to this. And I promise I will answer it, but this, this, the whole purpose of this tonight was to have an American dialogue about the attempted assassination attempt and I have to stay on target on message on this one, but I promise, and I'll say if the caller is free at the time of our podcast on Tuesday, we can bring him on again to talk about that. And if he's not though, I guarantee your question will be answered. I promise you. It's a great question, by the way, I respect it to death. But I have to, I have to stay on focus and on mission and that's just the way it's going to be tonight. It's Tuesday at 3 p.m. Now I think we have a lot of people watching that who aren't our normal viewers because of the Trump issue. So for those of you who are joining us for the first time, hello. We do this every Tuesday from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern time and every Friday from 8 to 10 p.m. This is not our normal time. Let's go to another caller. That is your question about the topic that tonight's show is dedicated to. Yeah, hey guys, thanks for doing this. I wanted to piggyback off of that woman that was asking about how he got his shooting skills and just make a note of the fact that they're saying that he had explosives in his vehicle and materials at the house to make explosives. So I mean they're going to figure this all out in the investigation like we've been saying all along. But I wanted to bring up something I saw last night where there was a post by the 79th air brigade, air assault brigade of Ukraine saying that, I mean they were literally claiming this was the FSB, we're really disappointed, hopefully next time they get a better shooter, blah, blah, blah. And then I read the story about the explosives this morning. So it's all crazy, but wanted to throw that at just Scott and just kind of see what you think. Thanks. Well, thank you for the good look. It's not as crazy as you think. I mean, I'm not going to get into any details, but some of the things that I was doing today was fielding calls from very serious people who are very well connected, who were making the case that it was the SPU, not the FSB, that there's a Ukraine link here. And these are very serious people who normally when I hear something like that, I'll go, "Yeah, thank you very much. I'll take you." Try to get the hell off that phone call. It's people I know, people who associate with people I know, very high level, very serious, and they're making that claim as well. So I'm not dismissive of it, and it's just curious. We live in a very strange world. Donald Trump represents a threat to so many people, and some of the people out there might view him as an existential threat. For instance, if you're a member of NATO, Donald Trump literally represents a potential existential threat to the continuation of your Cold War relic alliance. If you're the Ukrainians who have committed to a course of action that requires the continuation of American support beyond November, and you're worried that Donald Trump might somehow start shutting off the vows, his election becomes a matter of existential survival. I don't know if he's on the merits for it, so I don't know that. That's a good question. I'll tell you what though, if he is, and we don't bomb Ukraine because of that, then we stand for nothing as a nation. If there's a government out there that's saying we want to kill an American president or an American president or candidate, that that is our policy, but that's what Article 51 preemptive self-defense is all about. I don't have to wait for you to pull the trigger to kill this guy. I get to kill you, and I'll do it gladly. Remember, I'm not a pacifist. I'm actually a very violent person, and there are circumstances in which violence I believe is justified. If you want to kill my president, then I want to kill you with extreme prejudice. If the Ukrainians are out there targeting Trump, then here comes the question. Are they doing it with the president who, when he was vice president, blackmailed him over a billion dollars? Are they doing it with the man who's president, when he was vice president, had a son working for a Ukrainian holding company, funneling millions of dollars back and forth? This is where it gets really, really complicated, and so now the question is, will the FBI National Security Division be able to investigate this properly because they have been politicized by the Democrats? They are the ones who falsified a case, Operation Crossfire Hurricane, designed to frame Donald Trump. They are still covering that up. They're going to investigate this assassination attempt. Now, if we have a Ukrainian twist at a time when the CIA's special activities staff is working with Ukrainian intelligence to do acts of war in Russia, the CIA who may or may not have been involved in the assassination of JFK, that's CIA, and now they're woven in with Ukrainians who are trying to kill Donald Trump because Donald Trump may actually hit the off switch on what's going on in Ukraine right now because it's very dangerous for America. It could promote a nuclear war. See, Donald Trump is an existential threat to a lot of people. He's not an existential threat to America or American democracy, but he does represent an existential threat to the establishment and how the establishment has manifested itself overseas. So, I am not dismissive. I'm not going to jump on and say, "I know for a fact X, Y, and Z's happened." My job is to put dots on a piece of paper and connect the dots to make them make sense. Unfortunately right now, the dots that are out there, as I said earlier, I don't have to connect anything. They paint their own picture. It's a very scary, very depressing picture that they're painting. Ukraine is a dirty, dirty country. Governed by corrupt individuals who openly try to kill people who speak out against them. I'm on three of their death lists. They made the third one, Jeff, hanging around me long enough you'll get on it too. Everybody who's anybody is on the death list. Nobody cares about me, so that's okay. I don't mind that. But these death lists exist. At least two of the three are funded by the United States Taxpayer, and I know for a fact that one of them is actively promoted and encouraged by the United States State Department. Ah, the same State Department that took my passport because they didn't want me to travel to Russia. I don't know, guys. This sounds conspiracy theory to me. I don't know. The dots just sort of paint the picture, but this State Department, the State Department of the United States, funds and organizes an organization that publishes a blacklist that advocates the killing of American citizens who speak out against Ukraine. Is it a stretch of imagination to think therefore that the State Department or the CIA wouldn't support Ukrainian intelligence service that says if Trump gets elected, our joint project our thing, our little Cosa Nostra thing, isn't, isn't, could be able to continue. That maybe we need to get rid of this guy. Guys, I don't like going down this path, but the picture paints itself. The picture paints itself. We have to ask questions as American citizens, and we have to demand answers that make sense. That makes sense. You know, that nice lady called in about the shooter. These are damn good questions, and they need to be answered. But that's just one question out of an entire ocean of questions that have emerged about this. And again, I watched the Secret Service's press conference today about the upcoming, what do you call it, convention, the Washington National Convention? It wasn't very convincing. If their job was to reassure the American people that they're on the job, they're on the ball, they're on the task. They failed miserably. The picture paints itself. All right, let's take another look at Dan Bungino commenting on the Secret Service. To be clear, we're a four trillion dollar United States government, and we can't fork over enough money to keep our people alive. And then you were sending out tweets like, oh, this is the best technology we have, really, to let us sniper 150 yards away from the potential next president. Shoot a piece of his ear off. If that's your victory lap, give me a break, man. Yeah. Well, again, having watched this many times and talking to people who do this for a living, before this venue should have happened, before Trump showed up, there should have been somebody on that roof simulating a sniper. They should have looked at every vantage point in which Trump could be scoped out by a potential sniper, short range, medium range, long range. And they should have had somebody up there doing that, and then the counter sniper teams get positioned so they can cover it. They go, check. I mean, they have their little range cards, you know, check, check, check, check. We got it. We got it. We got it. We got it. And each one's dinner. So, you know, potential movement, you know, F1, F1, right there, got it, you know, instantly kind of stuff. And when you do that, let's say the sniper says, too much here. We got to, we got to remove this thing. Then you block the line of vision, the line of sight from that to the president. You put some sort of shielding there, something that obfuscates the time. That's a big word for me to use late at night, but you know what I'm talking about. Of course, you skate, I think I said a great word. It's a great word. Yeah. But it's so cool. Are you just, are you just put somebody there? You just, you just. Well, that's the easiest thing. The easiest thing is to have your, your local cop up there, you know, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. I'm a local cop. That's where you put them in places where people shouldn't be that are not trafficked places. And then you solve that. And you give the local cop, it just, you know, you just say, you don't get a long gun. You don't get a rifle because, of course, you know, maybe he hasn't gone through all the screening. You don't know a psychological profile, you know, just give him this standard pistol. I don't care how good you are, you ain't going to kill somebody on him by popping off at 150 yards with a handgun. Okay. So give him a handgun. He can defend the damn roof. He can keep people off the roof, but you have positive control over that roof. You don't let some kid crawl with a long rifle, get up there and take a shot at the president of the United States. I don't like Mr. Bongino, but he's 100% correct on this one. All right. Well, Friday night, we said that it was our last episode before Scott's birthday. And that's because we didn't know we were going to stream tonight. But since we have streamed tonight, I would once again, at the risk of sounding slightly redundant to those of us who joined us Friday night, please pardon my redundancy. But I think I would be remiss if I didn't wish my dear friend Scott a very happy birthday. His birthday is tomorrow, 38 years old. And I told you the last time we talked that I was going to play basketball the next morning. Oh, yeah. Did you? Did you? Oh, yes. And I have to tell you that yesterday afternoon and this morning were some of the most painful moments in the modern existence that's got rid of me, but I'm slowly recovering. So I think I'll be able to get back on the court on Wednesday. So we'll see. All right. Well, 38 is a painful year. Tough year. 38 years, man. It wears on you. Thank God. I'm not old guy. Like I would turn 63. I tell you, it's over, man, it's, but I'm 38. So I got some time. It certainly had a good idea today to come on and do this special episode and another good idea to have Ryan join us. I think it went very well. And as I said earlier, I think that we have a lot of folks watching tonight who aren't our usual viewers. So I hope you nice people enjoyed it and you'll continue to join us. Our regular times are Tuesday, three to four Eastern time and Friday night, eight to ten Eastern time. And if you're watching us, wherever you're watching us, these are the, this is the channel or one of the channels that we always stream. And you can find everything at scottritter.com Scott Ritter dot and the telegram channel will be active tomorrow. If they behave, right? If they know we will not have if they don't, and one last thing are stew and sue, forgive me, man. Thanks for the call, and I hope that I've answered your concerns. Stew is very concerned. And I want to say something about the telegram channel because as a major proponent of free speech, which I am, I actually like that telegram is not a free speech outlet. And it's not a reflection on Scott being a guy who's opposed to free speech. It's at this particular platform is for civil discourse. We don't censor you here. We don't censor you on sub stack and other places. So don't worry about it. It's kind of like if you go over to somebody's house for dinner, yeah, you behave. You're a guest. It's a place your own telegram channel, it's a telegram will allow you to say whatever the hell you want to say that's between you and telegram. So it's a free speech platform, but when I have a chat room that was specifically created for the purpose of facilitating civil debate discussion and dialogue about articles I write and podcasts that I'm on, that's the only reason for this to exist. I didn't want to create it. I wouldn't have people came to me and asked me to do this as a service to you, the audience, so that you can have this discussion, Ryan, how much time does telegram take up more than you can do it in 30 hours a day, literally, I mean, we, it's, it's like around the clock. It's, it's a full time job that babysit this channel and Ryan and Alexandra do a fantastic job of moderating this, but I have a responsibility to come in on occasion and participate, you know, to, to read what they say. So I read every damn thing you guys post. I don't respond to everything because I don't have time, but I read it and I have to tell you there are times and Ryan knows this and Alexandra knows this when I call up and say I just want to shut the whole thing down because you forget what it's there for. It's not there for you to exercise free speech. Never was intended for that and it's not there for you to attack people. It's not fair for you to pontificate ideas that have nothing to do with what I wrote or what I said. Some people say, well, Scott, you're too much of an ego maniac. I'm sorry. I'm not. The purpose of the room is to promote discussion, debate, dialogue about things I write, not because I wanted to do it because you asked me to do it. So I did it. And if you can't stay on target, guys, I'll shut the room down. I don't need it. It would free up so much of my time. I think Ryan would say the same thing. We like it. But it's a time, Ryan would lose his purpose in life, Ryan would just have to join some gang or something. This money is good. I mean, I get the suitcases from Putin, full of cash and then we weren't supposed to talk about the suitcases. Snae on the Utsay cap. Thank you. I did get this Beavis and Butthead shirt as a birthday present because I am a Beavis and Butthead fan. I know that probably discussed a lot of people, but there's a history to it. We had two helicopters in Iraq named Beavis and Butthead, flown by some of the most professional pilots in the world, and it drove the Iraqis crazy when we used that as our call sign. So that's why I love Beavis and Butthead, but this was a birthday present for my wife. We finished joking and smiling, which is the way I want all things to finish. I think life should be about having fun, but tonight was about a very serious topic. And we needed to have this discussion. And I want to thank everybody for participating, Jeff, Ryan, and the audience and people who called in, people who sent in questions. Thank you very much. This is a very, very difficult time for the United States of America. It's a very difficult time to be an American, but there's no more important time than now to be an American or real American. Somebody who believes in the Constitution, somebody who believes in our country, somebody understands we're deeply flawed, but people who are going to work very hard to overcome these flaws and make us live up to the potential that we have. So thanks again for tuning in. Thank you. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]