Juno News - Are you glad Trump's attempted assassin is dead？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:15.680 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here this is the

00:01:25.960 Andrew Lawton show on True North on this Monday, July 15th, 2024. I am going to tell you right off

00:01:32.580 the bat, this is going to be a slightly less irreverent show. In fact, I'd say considerably 0.96

00:01:37.160 less irreverent show than you're used to given what happened over the weekend. Now, I'm assuming

00:01:42.800 you know precisely what I'm talking about, the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate

00:01:47.960 of a former president of the United States, Donald Trump. Now, let me just be first and foremost

00:01:54.880 upfront about this, that we don't typically cover American politics on this show. And it's not for

00:01:59.900 lack of interest. I love American politics. My entry into politics was really covering

00:02:03.700 or being interested in a lot of what was happening in the US. But simply put, as a country of 300

00:02:08.900 and some odd million, there are no shortage of people in that large group willing to share

00:02:14.040 their opinions about what's happening in their country. So we focus on the things we can do

00:02:18.060 better than most of them, which is talking about what's happening in Canada. But some things

00:02:22.660 transcend the border in a way that you can't quite confine to any country and that is what happened

00:02:30.480 on the weekend in my view. Now let me just first and foremost say how grateful I am that the

00:02:36.980 assassination attempt was unsuccessful, how grateful I am that that slight tilt of the head

00:02:43.740 seemed to save Donald Trump's life. Not because I'm a registered Republican, I'm not, I'm not

00:02:49.240 American citizen, not because I have skin in the game as a voter in the U.S., but simply put,

00:02:53.860 this is not how we solve our differences. And my dismay and disgust with this would be equal

00:03:00.920 whether it was Joe Biden or Donald Trump or George Bush or anyone else, as it should be for any of

00:03:07.440 you. And I'm distinctly aware of how different some people are prepared to treat it when someone

00:03:13.460 they've decided is a quote-unquote bad guy. The litany of professors and academics and media types

00:03:20.020 that have been equivocating, that have been saying, oh I wish the shooter had better aim, or saying

00:03:25.260 things like, okay well yes I don't like assassination attempts, but as though there is a moral difference

00:03:31.720 in whether someone deserves to die based on whether you agree or disagree with their politics. We're

00:03:37.020 going to be speaking with former presidential candidate Michelle Bachman in just a few moments.

00:03:42.140 I'm also going to share some more of my own thoughts on this, but I just wanted to first

00:03:46.180 and foremost get a sense of, I guess I did something else first and foremost a few moments

00:03:50.360 ago, so this is second and second most, but I wanted to just get a sense of the atmosphere on

00:03:56.180 the ground. As it happened, True North had a reporter there, I believe the only Canadian

00:04:01.420 journalist to be reporting from the scene of this rally. At first, she went down there just

00:04:07.420 expecting this to be a regular Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and it quickly became

00:04:11.940 one of the most significant moments in United States political history. Rachel Parker is the

00:04:17.840 host of Rachel and the Republic at True North. Rachel, good to be with you. Glad you're safe

00:04:22.560 and okay. I know it was quite an eventful weekend for you, but let me just first ask you about why

00:04:29.200 you were there, because I know that you've launched this new show, and I mentioned we

00:04:32.880 typically don't cover American politics. Why were you there, and why have you taken on this campaign?

00:04:37.160 yeah i mean i think that the american election is very relevant to canada i think there's a lot of

00:04:42.840 canadians who are interested in the outcome of that i think it's probably one of the most

00:04:46.200 important american elections that we've seen there's such a great chasm and divide in america

00:04:51.480 right now and i think everyone's really been watching to see what will happen there we've seen

00:04:55.400 the left in the states go after donald trump from every single angle that they can with this litany

00:05:01.960 of litigation that they've thrown at him and everything has been just really unsuccessful

00:05:06.040 and it's actually caused him to increase in the polls. You know, of course, we can talk about

00:05:10.040 the policies that he would implement and how that would impact Canada, like things on immigration,

00:05:14.540 you know, we know he's going to tighten measures at the southern border, where there is just a

00:05:18.560 flood of illegal immigrants entering the states right now. Those types of policies, we're going 1.00

00:05:22.140 to see an impact on Canada, as well as his plans to import to implement tariffs. You know, those

00:05:26.800 are all things that will directly impact Canadians economy. But I think honestly, this election is

00:05:32.800 just something that Canadians care about because we've been watching the situation in the States

00:05:36.660 and because our economies are so closely intertwined. We don't even necessarily need

00:05:40.440 to come at it from all the ties that we have with America. It's just an election that is

00:05:44.380 of interest to the world. We've seen what has happened under Joe Biden. We've never seen so

00:05:49.280 much war in the Middle East under Donald Trump. And it seems like things are just declining all

00:05:53.660 around the world as our superpower just to the south of us has seen such a decline under Joe

00:05:58.720 biden certainly this election is something that is of such interest to the world and to canadians

00:06:03.980 and so i've just had such an interest in american politics my whole life um i was very excited when

00:06:08.320 i got the okay to cover it for true north and i decided to go down to this butler pennsylvania

00:06:12.720 rally as it happens i was looking at donald trump's schedule and i thought okay what's

00:06:16.720 kind of close by while i'm in ontario maybe there's some events that i could go to there

00:06:20.580 was only two rallies scheduled on his page when i went to look one of them was in florida and one

00:06:25.040 of them was in pennsylvania so i thought pennsylvania is probably not too far i looked it was

00:06:28.780 just over four hours i thought to myself that's very doable for a day trip there and back and so

00:06:33.900 i began to make preparations to go down to that rally i was going to talk to americans about

00:06:37.500 you know what they thought about the election so far why they're voting for donald trump which of

00:06:41.200 his policies they were most interested in what they thought about joe biden if they thought he

00:06:44.540 would resign and we did all those interviews in the hours before that assassination attempt and

00:06:49.400 obviously the event let's let's stop there though and let's actually take this chronologically

00:06:54.540 because I've never been to a Trump rally.

00:06:57.020 I've been to political events.

00:06:59.100 I was at the Republican convention in 2016

00:07:00.940 when Trump was nominated.

00:07:02.220 So I have a sense of the atmosphere there.

00:07:04.060 But what was the atmosphere like?

00:07:05.420 What was it like?

00:07:06.060 What were the people saying

00:07:07.020 when you were talking to them

00:07:07.820 before anyone knew that this would be

00:07:09.880 a tremendously fateful day?

00:07:12.240 I think the rally was very upbeat.

00:07:14.340 It was an insane political rally.

00:07:17.260 I've never been to a political event of such magnitude.

00:07:19.960 We just don't have those types of events here in Canada.

00:07:22.400 we don't have as many people show up to those events. I know that Pierre Polyev is able to

00:07:26.180 attract, you know, an audience often in the thousands. But I mean, there is probably around

00:07:30.360 somewhere from 15 to 20,000 people there that day. There were so many people trickling in. I just

00:07:34.660 couldn't believe how many people took time out of their day and drove down for this rally. And

00:07:39.200 everyone was very excited to be there. Everyone was very excited about Trump's presidency. I

00:07:42.980 think people were feeling and still are feeling very confident that he's going to win on November

00:07:46.960 5th. You know, we heard a lot of similar themes. People are very concerned about inflation in the

00:07:50.900 stays just like they are here in Canada. A lot of people commented on the border crisis. They said,

00:07:55.240 I'm voting for Trump because of his border policies. I would like to see mass deportations

00:07:59.780 of the illegal aliens that are coming into our country under Joe Biden. Some very similar themes,

00:08:04.920 you know, some people even talked about abortion and said, you know, we just don't like what's

00:08:08.600 happening under Joe Biden. So, you know, a lot of commonalities, some of the similar issues that

00:08:12.800 we're seeing here in Canada, but very up, it was, it was felt like 34 degrees Celsius that day. Like

00:08:17.400 I personally saw a couple people pass out and, you know, I'm just one person in a crowd of tens

00:08:21.800 of thousands. If I personally see a couple of people pass out, you know, there was probably

00:08:25.760 well over a hundred people that passed out from the heat, but people were so eager to come out

00:08:29.920 and to show their support and appreciation for Donald Trump, given everything that the left in

00:08:34.280 America has thrown at this man and he's still standing. And they really feel like, you know,

00:08:37.860 he's our voice and he's standing up for us in a way that no one has in a very, very long time

00:08:42.420 in American political history. He takes the stage, and in the moments when the shooting happened,

00:08:50.880 what was going through your mind? What was apparent? Because when you listen to the audio

00:08:55.160 from afar, I mean, I know what gunshots sound like. I'm a gun owner, but you can't be definitive.

00:09:00.960 Was this a balloon popping? Was it an air gun? How quickly and how instantly did you know,

00:09:07.040 and did people on the ground know, oh my goodness, something is happening here?

00:09:10.240 my immediate instinct was that it was a shooting and that they were bullets and i would say that

00:09:14.860 was the immediate instinct of pretty much everyone in the crowd because everyone drops to their knees

00:09:19.360 and gets low you hear a couple people yelling a couple people screaming so my initial instinct was

00:09:23.600 that this is a shooting and then of course you look on the stage and you see the secret service

00:09:27.140 rushing and they've now you know they jumped on they jumped on the president as they're supposed

00:09:31.100 to they're using their bodies to act as a shield against any incoming bullets which is of course an

00:09:35.960 incredible act of bravery i mean we can divorce the discussion about the security issues that

00:09:39.780 went on that day. But that is an insane act of bravery to run into gunfire to protect someone

00:09:46.280 else, which is, of course, their job. And then you know something happened because you see

00:09:50.940 the Secret Service agents, they're on the stage, they're all in a pile, and no one really moves

00:09:56.300 for a couple seconds. And in that moment, I honestly thought to myself that I thought maybe

00:10:01.580 that Trump had been hit and that he was dead. Because I couldn't understand why the Secret

00:10:05.280 service agents weren't rushing him away if if there was just not a lifeless body underneath

00:10:10.540 them and my understanding of their protocol was that if there's an emergency immediately rush him

00:10:15.040 get him to safety get him out of that crowd you don't know if there's going to be more than one

00:10:18.620 shooter in an event like that the first shooter maybe is just a distraction so the fact that

00:10:22.960 nothing really happened in those first few seconds to me indicated that there was something seriously

00:10:27.260 wrong now of course you assume the worst of course yes and then i see yeah so then he gets up and

00:10:33.040 And we've all seen, actually, Sean, put it up on the screen.

00:10:34.940 We've all seen this just legendary photo from the Associated Press photojournalist,

00:10:40.180 Evan Vucci.

00:10:41.220 This photo that just is, will go down in world history, American history of Trump,

00:10:47.840 blood still on the side of his face, raising his fist, American flag, Secret Service.

00:10:51.860 It's got everything.

00:10:52.960 It's a beautiful photograph itself.

00:10:54.780 It's composed perfectly.

00:10:55.920 But the symbolism there is a moment.

00:10:58.280 And explain, if you can, the vibe in the crowd, because you have in the span of seconds here, panic, fear, chaos, and then cheering and celebrating and chanting.

00:11:11.620 So I think everyone in the crowd and those initial moments were wondering the same thing that I was wondering is if he had been hit in the head.

00:11:18.000 And then we see him rise to his feet and he sort of reaches through his secret service agents.

00:11:23.260 You know, there's been some discussion that lady in the front wasn't even tall enough to cover him.

00:11:27.140 But he reaches through them and he raises his fist and he starts pumping it and chanting fight,

00:11:31.480 fight, fight. And the crowd responded in kind. They began cheering and applauding and just

00:11:36.000 starting to chant USA, USA. And in that moment, you could sort of feel the relief wash over the

00:11:41.840 crowd and the excitement and just the hopefulness that he was still there. And then the president

00:11:46.540 is whisked away and the tone of the crowd immediately changes again. But I would say

00:11:51.760 hundreds of people in the crowd turning around and looking back at the media booth where I was

00:11:56.060 positioned and, and pointing their fingers at the major outlooks that had their cameras positioned

00:12:00.900 there and just starting to yell, shame, shame, this is your fault. And I even, I even posted one of

00:12:05.940 those videos and you can just see if you're looking over the sea of thousands of people,

00:12:09.220 you can see hundreds of people raise their arms into the, into the sky and start shaking it at

00:12:14.680 the media. And there was such visceral anger for the media in that moment. And I even went and

00:12:18.320 tried to go up to a couple of people and to see, you know, if they were talking about how they

00:12:21.560 were feeling in that moment, because I was in the media booth, they said, we don't want to speak to

00:12:25.060 you, you know, we don't want to give you any comment. You don't want to hear what we have

00:12:27.480 to say anyways. And of course I was able to get interviews later on in the day, but in that moment

00:12:32.100 it was such visceral anger directed directly towards the American media. Interesting. Well,

00:12:37.860 glad you're okay. I'm glad you were there to report on this for us and see it for yourself,

00:12:42.400 but also glad that again, it had the outcome it did for, for president Trump. But I also don't

00:12:48.120 want to gloss over the fact that there was a man who lost his life and there were casualties in

00:12:52.880 this. And that's tragic. And we send our thoughts and prayers to them as well. I know you'll have a

00:12:56.660 full breakdown on Rachel and the Republic this week. Rachel Parker, thank you for coming on.

00:13:01.280 Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you. And I want to situate this in the broader context here,

00:13:05.620 because this has been a tremendously vicious election, the narrative surrounding Donald

00:13:10.940 Trump. And again, I'm not having this discussion in a way that pretends that I can vote for him.

00:13:15.200 I'm a Canadian. I'm an interceptor of American politics right now, or an interloper, I guess.

00:13:20.620 but this does matter and this is meaningful and we're seeing a lot of that same hatred and anger

00:13:25.400 and venom and uncivility on both sides of the border. Michelle Bachman is a former Republican

00:13:30.940 presidential candidate herself, sought the party nomination in 2012 and served for many years in

00:13:36.160 Congress as a Republican representative and she returns to the show now. Michelle, thank you so

00:13:42.320 much for coming on. Good to speak to you again. Andrew, good to see you today too.

00:13:46.720 You have seen, I mean, you've met Donald Trump, and you know him quite well, and you obviously

00:13:52.240 know American politics quite well, and you know the symbolism of it. So when you know,

00:13:57.020 is that an image that surprises you given what happened and how you'd expect him to respond?

00:14:03.320 Yes, it is. The genius of Donald Trump, if people aren't aware of that,

00:14:07.960 what is unique about this man is the fact that he doesn't see any obstacle. If there's an obstacle

00:14:14.800 in his path. He goes around. He goes underneath. He goes over. He figures a way to get to what it

00:14:22.320 is that he wants to do, especially in this election cycle. You've never seen more curveballs thrown at

00:14:29.500 any candidate than what's been thrown at Donald Trump, including this. So his gut instincts are

00:14:35.900 amazing. His gut instinct to immediately go straight down was an excellent move. But then

00:14:43.460 also his gut instinct was to stand up and communicate to America. Because if you want

00:14:49.520 to understand Donald Trump, he's a John Wayne American. If people remember back to John Wayne

00:14:57.100 movies, that's really the kind of guy that Donald Trump is very optimistic, loves the

00:15:03.060 country, believes that our country can do anything if we put our mind to it. He's a

00:15:08.160 very decent man, and he wants a very decent country, and he's a continual fighter. So it was

00:15:14.820 what we saw when he was shouting. He was angry, but he was angry at what was happening. And when

00:15:22.540 he shouted, fight, fight, fight, that was from his heart. And I read an article this morning. He was

00:15:28.500 responding to people over the weekend after he'd been seen by the doctors at the hospital in

00:15:34.960 Pennsylvania, that he wanted to stay. He wanted to stay and he wanted to speak to the audience.

00:15:41.260 That's very indicative of who Donald Trump is. He has dragon energy like nobody I've ever seen.

00:15:48.940 He has incredible stamina, incredible energy. He's older than I am, but actually his body is

00:15:55.240 a lot younger than mine. He's just a very impressive individual. Political violence in

00:16:01.140 the United States is not, I would say it's not even all that rare. And it's been directed against

00:16:06.380 politicians on the left and the right. You've Gabby Giffords, you have Steve Scalise, you have

00:16:10.900 Ronald Reagan, you have all of this, you know, Abraham Lincoln. I mean, this is a longstanding

00:16:15.340 part of American politics, sadly. And I'm wondering whether this was outside of that,

00:16:22.840 whether this was something unique. And what I mean by that is that the temperature in politics has

00:16:28.840 seemed a lot higher in the last eight years than it has been, even in that. I mean, the context of

00:16:34.820 Reagan and the attempted assassination against him was a heck of a lot different than this attempt

00:16:39.820 on Donald Trump's life. No, I think you're right about that. And that's because what we've been

00:16:46.320 seeing in the United States is a coup of our culture, a coup, a takeover, if you will, of our

00:16:54.340 public schools of our culture of our corporate culture in the united states and so we've gone

00:17:00.900 from traditional america thinking of being loving our country loving what our country stands for

00:17:08.260 loving the ability of people being able to start their own businesses and keep the money that they

00:17:13.780 make and uh people all being held to the same standard under the law enforcement of the law

00:17:20.260 That way of life has been completely upended in the last probably 10 years.

00:17:26.600 It's been upended.

00:17:28.040 And we live in a country in America that we no longer recognize.

00:17:31.300 Part of that is the political revolution that we see primarily coming through one particular party.

00:17:38.500 That's the Democrat Party in the United States.

00:17:41.580 And it seems that they've embraced a revolutionary attitude toward politics,

00:17:46.620 where it's winner-take-all, that we can never lose an election, that everything is about

00:17:52.180 holding on to the power base. It's very unusual from politics, typically, in the United States.

00:17:59.320 And it's moving the United States toward a direction, like I said, that we no longer

00:18:04.800 recognize, the open borders, for instance, and the out-of-control spending that we've never seen

00:18:10.620 before. Really, it's like the United States is in a car going 80 miles an hour, heading directly

00:18:16.420 at a brick wall and there's no breaks. That's really what's been happening in our country.

00:18:21.820 People are reacting to that. They want America back, the happy America that we all knew before,

00:18:27.940 the achieving America where we're not ashamed of what our country is. And so I think that that

00:18:34.040 thinking, that coup thinking has got us into the trouble. And there's too many oddballs that have

00:18:40.040 been calling actually for violence, including the president of the United States, Joe Biden,

00:18:44.660 on Monday called for putting Trump in a bullseye. That's a significant statement. And it isn't just

00:18:50.640 that. In the last two weeks since the United States Supreme Court issued its decision on the

00:18:55.600 immunity ruling for the presidents, there's been daily calls for the assassination of the

00:19:01.960 president of the United States. If you read American press, it's daily calls for assassination,

00:19:07.440 including the famous actress, Bette Midler. She had made calls. In fact, over the weekend,

00:19:12.260 Jack Black, who has a rock band in Australia, one of his bandmates shouted out from the stage,

00:19:19.740 you better have better aim next time. And one of the staffers for the Democrat member of Congress

00:19:26.020 who ran the January 6th committee, his staffer said, hey, why didn't you get shooting lessons?

00:19:32.720 So I mean, these kind of comments are still going out after the attempt on the president's life.

00:19:37.920 and I'm sure your listeners are well aware that President Trump literally was a fraction of a

00:19:45.620 second away from death. This was meant to be a kill shot. And he looked to his right. He looked 0.92

00:19:51.340 over his right shoulder at a chart regarding the numbers on illegal aliens coming into the United

00:19:57.460 States. Only because he turned his head did the shot just take off a part of his ear instead of

00:20:05.640 going into his brain. It was meant for his brain. It was meant to take him out. So this was a death 0.85

00:20:11.540 shot. But probably the thing that everyone is talking about today, Andrew, is the fact that

00:20:16.620 this was the most colossal fail from our Secret Service. I've had Secret Service protection when

00:20:23.540 I ran for President of the United States in 2012. I had President George W. Bush do fundraisers for

00:20:30.400 I saw what that practice was like on the inside, and I'm telling you, there is literally no way

00:20:37.300 security would miss the most obvious sight on that whole campus to shoot from. It was very close,

00:20:45.380 about 130 yards away, and it wasn't covered or protected at all. And for three minutes,

00:20:52.940 people were getting the attention of Secret Service to tell them

00:21:00.400 Oh, we, uh, we lost Michelle for a moment. We'll, uh, we'll hopefully get Michelle back

00:21:05.100 in, uh, in a second here, but, uh, Sean, if you could, while we get, uh, Congressman Bachman

00:21:09.780 back on, if you could put that map back up there, this is incredibly important and it's

00:21:14.040 a little bit small, but I wanted to have a very wide image. So in the middle of the screen at the

00:21:19.540 top, you see three buildings, uh, beside each other. And just below those in front of those

00:21:24.400 is a photo of Donald Trump. That's where the Trump stage was set up. That's where the stage

00:21:27.920 was set up. To the left of that, the red dot, that is where the sniper was. If you were to have

00:21:35.120 no idea how to orchestrate a presidential assassination, and you were to know that

00:21:39.880 Trump was going to be speaking in that spot, and you were going to look at this whole area,

00:21:43.140 what is the most logical building that you would get onto? It's the closest one. It is literally

00:21:50.900 the closest building to the stage except for the three immediately behind the stage and that is so

00:21:59.100 incredibly important here because how could you not look at that building how could you not have

00:22:05.340 someone standing on that building how could you not have your own snipers on that building looking

00:22:11.080 to the right of the stage they had snipers behind the stage on those three building tops but they

00:22:15.920 did not have them apparently on the one that the sniper who took out or attempted to take out

00:22:23.060 Donald Trump did and who took out a beloved Pennsylvania fire chief who was in the bleachers

00:22:28.020 behind Donald Trump. Like this was absolutely a security failing. And I'm always the one telling

00:22:33.600 people to not get conspiratorial. I'm always the one telling people, no, no, no, don't start

00:22:38.380 going down this road of thinking that everything is a conspiracy. But I will be perfectly candid

00:22:42.740 and saying that I have a lot of questions about this.

00:22:45.080 I think it's entirely possible that this was a lone wolf gunman,

00:22:49.940 a mentally unhinged gunman,

00:22:51.600 a guy consumed by political hatred, consumed by something else. 0.91

00:22:55.560 It's possible that that was the case.

00:22:57.080 But how does a 20-year-old kid manage to exploit

00:23:00.980 a security vulnerability of this nature

00:23:03.280 without presumably knowing what he's doing?

00:23:05.320 And more importantly,

00:23:06.380 why is that security vulnerability there in the first place?

00:23:10.560 Why is that security vulnerability there?

00:23:12.460 Why does it exist? And that is a question that will take, I suspect, a great deal of time to

00:23:18.220 answer. We have Michelle Bachman back, and I just want to spend just another moment with her here.

00:23:24.400 Thank you for coming back, Michelle. What is your read on this? Is your read that this couldn't just

00:23:29.020 be basic government incompetence? Well, that's always a factor, basic government incompetence.

00:23:35.460 but I think people are worried that this may be more sinister because clearly there are advanced

00:23:42.140 men that do all of the work. This was the number one location that you would shoot from. It was the

00:23:47.920 direct line of sight. It would offer the best kill shot. And so it's impossible to believe that 0.99

00:23:55.400 it wasn't covered. But the other thing is you had snipers who were looking directly at that area

00:24:02.800 who had the gun on him. And there's a report today that the fellow who had the gun on the shooter

00:24:09.960 had it sighted on him for three minutes, that he had asked for permission

00:24:15.700 to take this fellow out, and he wasn't given permission. Now, that hasn't been verified,

00:24:24.340 but that's been all over the place. And again, it wasn't just one person who saw the shooter up

00:24:30.920 there. There were a lot of people that saw the shooter. They were pointing at the shooter. They

00:24:35.840 had the attention of the secret service. They had the attention of the local police and a local

00:24:41.520 policeman had time to put a ladder up against the building and climb up. And then the shooter

00:24:52.360 pointed his gun at the local policeman. He ducked and he went down. So had the local policeman stayed

00:25:00.160 there pulled his gun out or maybe he would have been killed himself clearly at that point i think

00:25:05.760 the snipers would have taken out the shooter and they wouldn't have shot at president trump but be

00:25:11.300 that as it may i mean when you think about this 50 year old fireman who was killed he was in the

00:25:17.600 bleachers behind president trump and two other people were severely injured as well so this is

00:25:23.960 this is as big as it gets, this assassination attempt against the president. And so it isn't

00:25:30.340 that it's, there's no equivalency here about the rhetoric. Rhetoric was strong on both political

00:25:36.620 parties, Republican, Democrat, but the calls for assassination, the calls for violence have almost

00:25:43.900 been exclusively coming from the Democrat party. They need to own that. They need to apologize for

00:25:51.360 They need to renounce that. And then at this point, I think there's a lot of reluctance to really trust the Secret Service or trust the FBI at this point.

00:26:03.760 They're the ones conducting the investigation. And as of this morning, they're telling the world that they aren't able to open the cell phone of the 20-year-old.

00:26:12.880 Who believes that, that they don't have the ability to open up that cell phone?

00:26:17.940 So there are so many things that don't add up right now, and so a lot will unfold.

00:26:25.140 Michelle Bachman, thank you so much for coming on today.

00:26:27.900 I know it's a busy week in your country, so I appreciate your insights and time very much.

00:26:32.200 Thanks again, Andrew. Good to see you again.

00:26:34.160 Thank you. Likewise, Michelle.

00:26:35.760 Michelle Bachman, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination back in 2012, 0.96

00:26:40.500 also former congresswoman. And I would just say on top of this, and let's actually put up that map

00:26:46.800 again, if you don't mind, Sean, because this is, I am not a tactical expert. I am not military. I

00:26:54.600 am not law enforcement. But if I were putting myself in the mind of someone who wanted to

00:27:00.100 do something bad to a guy that was going to be standing exactly where Trump is marked right there

00:27:05.840 in these three buildings, and you don't, you're not trying to be stealthy. You're not trying to

00:27:09.400 sleuthy. You're not an expert. You're not necessarily a trained shooter. The closest

00:27:13.360 building, the closest building is the one with that red dot. That was the one on which

00:27:17.520 this 20-year-old gunman was situated. It is absolutely a security failing. The fact that

00:27:24.600 someone has not been fired over this already, I find to be astonishing. And I just want to share

00:27:30.300 a video, Michelle Bachman alluded to this, of people that had been trying to alert law enforcement,

00:27:34.860 trying to alert law enforcement about this guy with a gun on the roof. Let's roll that clip.

00:27:40.840 We noticed a guy crawling, bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us,

00:27:49.100 50 feet away from us. So we're standing there, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof.

00:27:55.820 And he had a gun, right?

00:27:56.680 He had a rifle. We could clearly see him with a rifle. Absolutely. We're pointing at him.

00:28:02.340 the police are down there running around on the ground we're like hey man there's guy on the roof

00:28:08.000 with a rifle and the police are like huh what you know like like they didn't know what was going on

00:28:12.820 you know we're like hey right here on the roof we can see him from right here we see him you know

00:28:17.120 he's he's crawling and next thing you know i'm like i'm thinking to myself i'm like why is trump

00:28:23.040 still speaking why have they not pulled him off the stage i'm standing there poignant at him for

00:28:28.140 you know, two, three minutes, Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn.

00:28:32.880 I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this, and next thing you know, five shots

00:28:39.020 ring out. So you're certain that the shots came from that guy on the roof? 100%. 100%. And he was

00:28:46.140 up there for a couple of minutes. He was up there. You saw him up there for a couple of minutes.

00:28:49.060 Absolutely. At least three to four minutes. And you were telling police in the Secret Service?

00:28:52.820 We were telling the police. We were pointing at them for the Secret Service, who were looking at

00:28:56.620 us from the top of the barn. They were looking at us the whole time when we were standing by that

00:29:00.240 tree. Could they see him? Binoculars. Could they see him? Probably not, because the roof, the way

00:29:05.160 the slope went, he was behind where they could see. But why is there not Secret Service on all

00:29:10.620 of these roofs here? I mean, this is not a big place. Yeah, that's a fair question. And when he

00:29:17.520 said that, I mean, that clip was one of the first eyewitness interviews to start circulating and

00:29:21.700 good on BBC for for getting it the thought that I had is okay you can't necessarily picture the

00:29:27.420 place and then you find out where it is you look at it on a map and you see the realization that

00:29:31.020 I concluded that I shared with you of how few buildings there are in this area we're not talking

00:29:35.580 about some urban environment where you've got rooftop upon rooftop upon rooftop windows going

00:29:40.560 up 50 stories this is an easy area to secure it seems like and other security experts have said

00:29:46.900 And that story that that gentleman told BBC, I mean, it sounds, there's no way it could

00:29:51.660 possibly be accurate.

00:29:52.760 Well, doesn't footage emerge showing pretty much exactly what he just described?

00:29:58.100 He was doing this job.

00:29:59.300 I wouldn't even be doing this.

00:30:00.620 I get some beautiful places.

00:30:03.140 Look, they're all pointed.

00:30:04.900 Yeah, someone's on top of the roof.

00:30:08.820 Look, there he is right there.

00:30:12.080 Right there.

00:30:12.760 See him?

00:30:13.640 He's laying down.

00:30:14.460 Yeah, he's laying down.

00:30:16.900 what's happening

00:30:28.820 yeah look there he is

00:30:35.940 dangerous people

00:30:46.900 that was 52 seconds of people yelling he's on the roof he's on the roof pointing flagging down

00:30:57.020 officers that was I believe two or three minutes before the first shot rang out now again it's

00:31:04.400 difficult to make things happen in real time but the fact that a police officer couldn't immediately

00:31:09.040 radio his superior and say we've got a gunman and have Trump removed from that stage is absolutely

00:31:15.600 astonishing. I get it takes time to find the guy to line up the shot, but when you've got credible,

00:31:21.660 credible reports that there is a gunman, get the president, the former president, out of the shot.

00:31:28.020 Get him out of the line of fire. Get him out of the room, out of the building, out of the town,

00:31:32.360 out of the county. Just get him in that car and go. It's a security failing. I don't want to

00:31:37.280 pretend that I am an expert in all things security, but we're not even talking about that.

00:31:41.480 And don't let anyone tell you that, oh, well, all these armchair Monday morning quarterbacks don't

00:31:45.340 know what they're talking about because we're talking about just fundamental common sense here

00:31:48.840 and uh the so-called experts lose their right to claim the moral high ground when the former

00:31:53.860 president of the united states a man under secret service protection gets shot they lose the moral

00:31:58.660 high ground to start wagging their fingers at other people that start pointing out the holes

00:32:03.120 in what happened there and i i should say there's been a tremendous i would say relatively unanimous

00:32:09.500 response from canadian political leaders from american political leaders the folks that have

00:32:14.140 been reveling in his death are coming from academia. They're coming from social media,

00:32:17.840 from the entertainment world. But I was glad that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Justin Trudeau,

00:32:23.760 the prime minister, Pierre Palliev, Yves-Francois Blanchet, they all were shared in their

00:32:27.780 condemnation of this. Justin Trudeau even spoke to Donald Trump this weekend. I think there's

00:32:32.940 probably a realization there that this guy is going to win the election. And I thought it looked

00:32:37.820 that way even before what happened this past weekend. But I want to highlight Pierre Palliev's

00:32:42.920 response in particular here, because Polyev said the following. He said on X, I condemn in the

00:32:48.580 strongest of terms the attempted murder of former President Trump today. I am relieved he is safe.

00:32:54.240 My prayers are with other innocent people harmed or killed by this heinous act. I am also happy

00:32:59.740 that the suspected shooter is dead. Democracy must prevail. Now, that is a sentiment you don't get

00:33:06.720 often, reveling in the death of bad people. It's one that most people cheered for. Most people said,

00:33:12.360 yeah, absolutely. I'm happy the guy who tried to kill a president is dead. It's something that 0.99

00:33:17.440 people in other countries don't have the issues with. When the United States launched a drone

00:33:21.840 strike that took out that commander, Solomon, what's his name? Solomon, the Iranian, the IRGC

00:33:28.260 commander. I forget his full name. Soleimani, that's it. When that happened, lots of Iranian 1.00

00:33:33.880 dissidents were cheering for his death when Fidel Castro died. All of the ex-Cubans or Cubanos in 1.00

00:33:40.160 Miami and elsewhere around North America were cheering for it. So there are people that have

00:33:44.840 been very much okay with this. But in Canada, there was a lot of pearl clutching about this.

00:33:50.220 You had Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail getting particularly offended. Joel Harden,

00:33:54.440 the NDP guy in the Ontario NDP MP that faked getting attacked when he was hit by his own

00:34:02.020 megaphone in the head, that guy. What happened though, is that all of these folks were getting

00:34:08.140 mad at Polyev for being happy that a guy is dead. Now, what was fascinating there, look, I'm a

00:34:15.620 Christian. I don't revel in people's death. I don't revel in people's suffering or misery.

00:34:20.940 I don't certainly share any sense of loss or unhappiness about it. Do I celebrate it?

00:34:31.320 Not necessarily, but I'm certainly not offended by it. I'm not offended by people such as Pierre

00:34:37.340 Poliev saying that they're glad the guy is dead. And I find the parole clutching on this to be

00:34:41.640 remarkable. All of these folks that are just, I think it's just because it's Donald Trump.

00:34:48.120 It's just because it's Donald Trump. They find it difficult to rebel in the fact that this stopped.

00:34:54.140 And I think that says a great deal about them and their perspective on this. And I know that

00:34:58.840 there's going to be a lot more that comes out about this in the coming days and in the coming

00:35:02.400 weeks. But I'll just to put a fine point on this, say that I am glad this failed, but it was not

00:35:08.780 without casualty. It was not at all without casualty. And I am so sad when I when I've seen

00:35:15.300 the photos, the photos of the gentleman 50 years old, Corey, his last name, I don't want to butcher

00:35:23.120 it, but he was a fire chief and had a young family and was, his crime was sitting in the

00:35:32.900 bleachers to hear Donald Trump speak. And that got him executed by a man who's now dead by 20 year

00:35:39.000 old Thomas Crooks, who we'll learn more about. Again, there's a lot that's weird about it. You

00:35:43.860 had people from his high school saying he was a terrible shot and didn't make the school rifle

00:35:47.280 team. He doesn't seem to have any online footprint. And again, how did he get onto a building and why

00:35:52.500 was that building unsecure? These are all questions I hope we get answers to. Just because

00:35:57.440 this bullet only grazed Donald Trump's ear does not mean that this was not a shot heard around

00:36:04.260 the world. So we'll put this to bed for this particular show. As I said, I'm sure we'll

00:36:08.360 revisit it in the future, but I do want to bring in our good friend, Chris Sims. She is the Alberta

00:36:14.520 Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. No natural segue from that to this, Chris, but I

00:36:19.900 know you're a news hound as well so uh you were probably glued to your television and twitter

00:36:24.500 just like i was on the weekend weren't you oh yeah we were uh just coming back my kids and i were

00:36:28.900 just coming back from a car show here in lethbridge and my daughter um she's trained to check twitter

00:36:33.700 all the time now for us which is great and she said uh mama somebody shot president trump

00:36:38.700 i had to pull over uh because that was pretty surprising and then yeah needless to say i was

00:36:45.780 glued to uh glued to the news and to to the phone um so the taxpayers federation obviously doesn't

00:36:52.100 have a comment on this but just personally um it's pretty gripping if i could recommend two

00:36:58.360 things to people and i you probably will agree thank goodness for alternative media

00:37:04.140 thank goodness for citizen journalists because uh there's an awful lot of information we're

00:37:09.820 getting there from the scene needs to be verified but as a journalist thank goodness for independent

00:37:14.740 journalism. And two, as a history buff, I encourage everybody to learn about what happened

00:37:21.860 in the 1960s in the United States. Like for real. A lot of people think they know or they might have

00:37:29.100 heard something and they might have seen the footage, the Zapruder footage of JFK. That's the

00:37:33.840 start of it. Read more about it. Read about JFK. Read about what happened with Martin Luther King

00:37:39.220 and read about what happened with rfk so there's a lot of echoes happening here right now uh and so

00:37:45.840 just for their own understanding i don't care what party they vote for just for their own

00:37:50.140 understanding of what's going on in that country that's so near and dear to us and so important

00:37:54.680 those were the the two main takeaways i had yeah and that's very fair and to bring things back into

00:38:00.640 a canadian context something that seems so trivial by comparison but is relevant to a great many

00:38:05.760 Canadians, myself included, we are still dealing with the carbon tax and we are still dealing with

00:38:11.220 this and the government is still trying to put that fine point and the happy spin on it, the

00:38:15.140 sunny wave spin. This was the tweet that Justin Trudeau put out today telling Canadians, check

00:38:20.100 your bank account. Now that is a very dangerous, dangerous thing for Justin Trudeau to ask Canadians

00:38:25.800 to do because I think most Canadians have checked their bank accounts and find that after nine years

00:38:29.800 of his government, there's a lot less in it than there otherwise would have been and certainly

00:38:33.560 than there was before but what he's talking about there is the rollout of the so-called carbon tax

00:38:39.640 rebate which they say will make things better for eight out of ten Canadians you're actually

00:38:44.300 profiting from the carbon tax don't you know it's it's not making you spend more money on gas and

00:38:48.920 groceries you're coming out ahead it doesn't seem to be something that Canadians are buying which

00:38:53.480 is why the government forced banks on direct deposit to write in Canada carbon rebate is it

00:38:59.580 gonna work chris uh no and uh i hadn't seen that tweet yet and you putting up a picture of prime

00:39:07.840 minister trudeau with him telling you to check your bank account why i would agree and probably

00:39:12.480 actually just retweeted and say yes canadians please do check your bank accounts please do

00:39:17.360 because they need to know did did he freeze their bank account i don't know maybe they said something

00:39:23.420 or donated something or tweeted something that they didn't like of course i'm referencing back

00:39:28.080 to the terrible time that they invoked the Emergencies Act on people, which thankfully a

00:39:33.320 federal court judge said, you know what, that was totally out of your ballpark and you shouldn't

00:39:38.000 have done so. The Canadian Constitution Foundation, as you know, did great work on that. And you've

00:39:42.540 done very good, very good work on that yourself. So that's pretty chilling for him to say, check

00:39:47.400 your bank accounts. No, how about you never mentioned my bank account again, Prime Minister.

00:39:51.880 But all this said, this is again, one of those ridiculous things where the government, especially

00:39:57.240 led by Prime Minister Trudeau in this context, thinks that they can just pull the wool over

00:40:02.020 people's eyes and say, trust us, if you give us a $20 bill, we will magically increase its value

00:40:09.460 and give you back 50, no strings attached, no cost to you. That defies common sense. Any

00:40:15.640 reasonably intelligent person understands that's not how government works. It is going to always

00:40:21.100 cost you money and it is it costs around 200 million dollars just to administer the carbon tax

00:40:28.700 like those are all taxpayer dollars too and people understand that when they're filling up their

00:40:34.220 minivan or their pickup truck or you know winter will be here again sorry when they're paying 400

00:40:39.120 dollars extra over the winter for their natural gas or propane that they're paying to the nose

00:40:43.600 they know they're not getting more than they pay back and the parliamentary budget officer has come

00:40:47.980 out repeatedly and said that's the case, that they're out money. So it's just weird that he's

00:40:53.200 still clinging to this magical idea of but the rebates. And it's particularly cynical for the

00:41:00.140 government to force the banks to label these things a certain way, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

00:41:06.520 Because again, it's big footing, right? It's getting in there with a private institution

00:41:11.440 and saying you must label it this way like people don't like that they don't like no matter what

00:41:19.020 political party they're with they usually don't like the idea of the government being able to

00:41:23.120 tell the banks to do something like that you have to label it like this now i'm reading your

00:41:28.440 excellent book sorry shameless plug but i'm reading your excellent book right so the the

00:41:35.640 politics i understand the politics of saying you know what if you're sending out i forget what

00:41:40.460 that's called child benefit. Back when I was a kid, they used to call them the baby bonus.

00:41:45.140 But if you're sending it out by paper check, people notice it more, right? And all politicians

00:41:52.060 have done this before. They've mostly gone to direct deposit now, but there's good retail

00:41:56.100 politicians know to send those things out in a paper check with your name on it and money on it.

00:42:01.720 But here is one step further because that's just you reading it. You're choosing to read it.

00:42:06.000 This is one step further because the government is telling the banks to make it show up in a certain way and then getting up in your Twitter feed and in your grill saying, hey, by the way, everybody, check your bank account.

00:42:17.620 Ew, they're not doing communications very well lately at all.

00:42:22.000 Yeah, it's like, I mean, it's basically just one step shy of a little memo line on it that says, enjoy, comma, your friend, Justin.

00:42:28.540 like it's it's the kind of thing that you're right all parties do it the part of the book

00:42:33.740 that you're referencing there is when Pierre Polyev was the ESDC minister and the conservatives

00:42:38.080 were increasing the child tax credit Polyev was like doing a photo op as the checks were coming

00:42:43.340 off the printing press in Winnipeg and he's saying let's put it out by check so that they have to

00:42:47.620 hold it and deposit it and all of that but I but my bigger issue is the gaslighting on the payment

00:42:53.320 itself is that there's not a single person in this country that believes that they are making

00:42:57.400 money off of the carbon tax. And again, if the carbon tax were just paying people, it wouldn't

00:43:01.720 be necessary. Yes, exactly. And this is the funny thing about the carbon tax is that no matter which

00:43:07.200 angle you come at it from, it always blows up. Like this is not the Death Star. There's not only

00:43:12.200 one route in and one way to get rid of this thing. Any way you turn this thing around, it doesn't

00:43:17.420 make any sense. So let's think of it this way. Let's say that somehow Canada was able to reduce

00:43:24.760 global emissions to the effect that people want it to. That's not possible because we only emit

00:43:30.240 about 1.5%. But let's say for argument's sake, we could. How are you going to do that? Okay,

00:43:35.260 let's have a carbon tax. Why would the carbon tax work? Oh, because it makes that stuff so expensive,

00:43:41.380 it punishes people and they pull their fingies away from the hot stove and they won't do it.

00:43:46.920 If that isn't the financial punishment attached to it, if it's going to give them more money

00:43:51.940 by paying more carbon tax, that completely defeats their argument. Again, and it's also

00:43:58.020 shown true by the fact that they gave largely Atlantic Canada a carve out, a three-year carve

00:44:04.440 out, my friend, on home heating oil. Why'd they do that? Because it was a financial hardship to

00:44:11.340 pay the carbon tax on home heating oil. Duh. But they're still clinging on to this strange little

00:44:18.280 piece of comms of you get more money than you pay back you don't they should just free communications

00:44:23.160 advice they should drop that because it's way too easy to fight them on it chris sims the alberta

00:44:29.600 director for the canadian taxpayers federation we will talk to you next monday you betta all right

00:44:34.280 thanks very much chris that does it for us for today we will be back tomorrow no sorry i'm off

00:44:39.820 tomorrow but i'll be back on wednesday with more of canada's most irreverent talk show this is the

00:44:44.820 Andrew Lawton Show on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:44:49.280 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:44:51.820 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:45:14.820 We'll be right back.

00:45:44.820 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 15, 2024

Are you glad Trump's attempted assassin is dead？

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