On July 14th, a gunman opened fire at a pro-Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania, narrowly missing the former president. On July 15th, former presidential candidate Michelle Bachman was on the scene in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
00:10:58.280And 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.
00:11:11.620So 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.
00:11:18.000And then we see him rise to his feet and he sort of reaches through his secret service agents.
00:11:23.260You know, there's been some discussion that lady in the front wasn't even tall enough to cover him.
00:11:27.140But he reaches through them and he raises his fist and he starts pumping it and chanting fight,
00:11:31.480fight, fight. And the crowd responded in kind. They began cheering and applauding and just
00:11:36.000starting to chant USA, USA. And in that moment, you could sort of feel the relief wash over the
00:11:41.840crowd and the excitement and just the hopefulness that he was still there. And then the president
00:11:46.540is whisked away and the tone of the crowd immediately changes again. But I would say
00:11:51.760hundreds of people in the crowd turning around and looking back at the media booth where I was
00:11:56.060positioned and, and pointing their fingers at the major outlooks that had their cameras positioned
00:12:00.900there and just starting to yell, shame, shame, this is your fault. And I even, I even posted one of
00:12:05.940those videos and you can just see if you're looking over the sea of thousands of people,
00:12:09.220you can see hundreds of people raise their arms into the, into the sky and start shaking it at
00:12:14.680the media. And there was such visceral anger for the media in that moment. And I even went and
00:12:18.320tried to go up to a couple of people and to see, you know, if they were talking about how they
00:12:21.560were feeling in that moment, because I was in the media booth, they said, we don't want to speak to
00:12:25.060you, you know, we don't want to give you any comment. You don't want to hear what we have
00:12:27.480to say anyways. And of course I was able to get interviews later on in the day, but in that moment
00:12:32.100it was such visceral anger directed directly towards the American media. Interesting. Well,
00:12:37.860glad you're okay. I'm glad you were there to report on this for us and see it for yourself,
00:12:42.400but also glad that again, it had the outcome it did for, for president Trump. But I also don't
00:12:48.120want to gloss over the fact that there was a man who lost his life and there were casualties in
00:12:52.880this. And that's tragic. And we send our thoughts and prayers to them as well. I know you'll have a
00:12:56.660full breakdown on Rachel and the Republic this week. Rachel Parker, thank you for coming on.
00:13:01.280Thanks, Andrew. All right. Thank you. And I want to situate this in the broader context here,
00:13:05.620because this has been a tremendously vicious election, the narrative surrounding Donald
00:13:10.940Trump. And again, I'm not having this discussion in a way that pretends that I can vote for him.
00:13:15.200I'm a Canadian. I'm an interceptor of American politics right now, or an interloper, I guess.
00:13:20.620but this does matter and this is meaningful and we're seeing a lot of that same hatred and anger
00:13:25.400and venom and uncivility on both sides of the border. Michelle Bachman is a former Republican
00:13:30.940presidential candidate herself, sought the party nomination in 2012 and served for many years in
00:13:36.160Congress as a Republican representative and she returns to the show now. Michelle, thank you so
00:13:42.320much for coming on. Good to speak to you again. Andrew, good to see you today too.
00:13:46.720You have seen, I mean, you've met Donald Trump, and you know him quite well, and you obviously
00:13:52.240know American politics quite well, and you know the symbolism of it. So when you know,
00:13:57.020is that an image that surprises you given what happened and how you'd expect him to respond?
00:14:03.320Yes, it is. The genius of Donald Trump, if people aren't aware of that,
00:14:07.960what is unique about this man is the fact that he doesn't see any obstacle. If there's an obstacle
00:14:14.800in his path. He goes around. He goes underneath. He goes over. He figures a way to get to what it
00:14:22.320is that he wants to do, especially in this election cycle. You've never seen more curveballs thrown at
00:14:29.500any candidate than what's been thrown at Donald Trump, including this. So his gut instincts are
00:14:35.900amazing. His gut instinct to immediately go straight down was an excellent move. But then
00:14:43.460also his gut instinct was to stand up and communicate to America. Because if you want
00:14:49.520to understand Donald Trump, he's a John Wayne American. If people remember back to John Wayne
00:14:57.100movies, that's really the kind of guy that Donald Trump is very optimistic, loves the
00:15:03.060country, believes that our country can do anything if we put our mind to it. He's a
00:15:08.160very decent man, and he wants a very decent country, and he's a continual fighter. So it was
00:15:14.820what we saw when he was shouting. He was angry, but he was angry at what was happening. And when
00:15:22.540he shouted, fight, fight, fight, that was from his heart. And I read an article this morning. He was
00:15:28.500responding to people over the weekend after he'd been seen by the doctors at the hospital in
00:15:34.960Pennsylvania, that he wanted to stay. He wanted to stay and he wanted to speak to the audience.
00:15:41.260That's very indicative of who Donald Trump is. He has dragon energy like nobody I've ever seen.
00:15:48.940He has incredible stamina, incredible energy. He's older than I am, but actually his body is
00:15:55.240a lot younger than mine. He's just a very impressive individual. Political violence in
00:16:01.140the United States is not, I would say it's not even all that rare. And it's been directed against
00:16:06.380politicians on the left and the right. You've Gabby Giffords, you have Steve Scalise, you have
00:16:10.900Ronald Reagan, you have all of this, you know, Abraham Lincoln. I mean, this is a longstanding
00:16:15.340part of American politics, sadly. And I'm wondering whether this was outside of that,
00:16:22.840whether this was something unique. And what I mean by that is that the temperature in politics has
00:16:28.840seemed a lot higher in the last eight years than it has been, even in that. I mean, the context of
00:16:34.820Reagan and the attempted assassination against him was a heck of a lot different than this attempt
00:16:39.820on Donald Trump's life. No, I think you're right about that. And that's because what we've been
00:16:46.320seeing in the United States is a coup of our culture, a coup, a takeover, if you will, of our
00:16:54.340public schools of our culture of our corporate culture in the united states and so we've gone
00:17:00.900from traditional america thinking of being loving our country loving what our country stands for
00:17:08.260loving the ability of people being able to start their own businesses and keep the money that they
00:17:13.780make and uh people all being held to the same standard under the law enforcement of the law
00:17:20.260That way of life has been completely upended in the last probably 10 years.
00:23:06.380why is that security vulnerability there in the first place?
00:23:10.560Why is that security vulnerability there?
00:23:12.460Why does it exist? And that is a question that will take, I suspect, a great deal of time to
00:23:18.220answer. We have Michelle Bachman back, and I just want to spend just another moment with her here.
00:23:24.400Thank you for coming back, Michelle. What is your read on this? Is your read that this couldn't just
00:23:29.020be basic government incompetence? Well, that's always a factor, basic government incompetence.
00:23:35.460but I think people are worried that this may be more sinister because clearly there are advanced
00:23:42.140men that do all of the work. This was the number one location that you would shoot from. It was the
00:23:47.920direct line of sight. It would offer the best kill shot. And so it's impossible to believe that0.99
00:23:55.400it wasn't covered. But the other thing is you had snipers who were looking directly at that area
00:24:02.800who had the gun on him. And there's a report today that the fellow who had the gun on the shooter
00:24:09.960had it sighted on him for three minutes, that he had asked for permission
00:24:15.700to take this fellow out, and he wasn't given permission. Now, that hasn't been verified,
00:24:24.340but that's been all over the place. And again, it wasn't just one person who saw the shooter up
00:24:30.920there. There were a lot of people that saw the shooter. They were pointing at the shooter. They
00:24:35.840had the attention of the secret service. They had the attention of the local police and a local
00:24:41.520policeman had time to put a ladder up against the building and climb up. And then the shooter
00:24:52.360pointed his gun at the local policeman. He ducked and he went down. So had the local policeman stayed
00:25:00.160there pulled his gun out or maybe he would have been killed himself clearly at that point i think
00:25:05.760the snipers would have taken out the shooter and they wouldn't have shot at president trump but be
00:25:11.300that as it may i mean when you think about this 50 year old fireman who was killed he was in the
00:25:17.600bleachers behind president trump and two other people were severely injured as well so this is
00:25:23.960this is as big as it gets, this assassination attempt against the president. And so it isn't
00:25:30.340that it's, there's no equivalency here about the rhetoric. Rhetoric was strong on both political
00:25:36.620parties, Republican, Democrat, but the calls for assassination, the calls for violence have almost
00:25:43.900been exclusively coming from the Democrat party. They need to own that. They need to apologize for
00:25:51.360They 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.
00:26:03.760They'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.
00:26:12.880Who believes that, that they don't have the ability to open up that cell phone?
00:26:17.940So there are so many things that don't add up right now, and so a lot will unfold.
00:26:25.140Michelle Bachman, thank you so much for coming on today.
00:26:27.900I know it's a busy week in your country, so I appreciate your insights and time very much.
00:26:32.200Thanks again, Andrew. Good to see you again.
00:30:46.900that was 52 seconds of people yelling he's on the roof he's on the roof pointing flagging down
00:30:57.020officers that was I believe two or three minutes before the first shot rang out now again it's
00:31:04.400difficult to make things happen in real time but the fact that a police officer couldn't immediately
00:31:09.040radio his superior and say we've got a gunman and have Trump removed from that stage is absolutely
00:31:15.600astonishing. I get it takes time to find the guy to line up the shot, but when you've got credible,
00:31:21.660credible reports that there is a gunman, get the president, the former president, out of the shot.
00:31:28.020Get him out of the line of fire. Get him out of the room, out of the building, out of the town,
00:31:32.360out of the county. Just get him in that car and go. It's a security failing. I don't want to
00:31:37.280pretend that I am an expert in all things security, but we're not even talking about that.
00:31:41.480And don't let anyone tell you that, oh, well, all these armchair Monday morning quarterbacks don't
00:31:45.340know what they're talking about because we're talking about just fundamental common sense here
00:31:48.840and uh the so-called experts lose their right to claim the moral high ground when the former
00:31:53.860president of the united states a man under secret service protection gets shot they lose the moral
00:31:58.660high ground to start wagging their fingers at other people that start pointing out the holes
00:32:03.120in what happened there and i i should say there's been a tremendous i would say relatively unanimous
00:32:09.500response from canadian political leaders from american political leaders the folks that have
00:32:14.140been reveling in his death are coming from academia. They're coming from social media,
00:32:17.840from the entertainment world. But I was glad that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Justin Trudeau,
00:32:23.760the prime minister, Pierre Palliev, Yves-Francois Blanchet, they all were shared in their
00:32:27.780condemnation of this. Justin Trudeau even spoke to Donald Trump this weekend. I think there's
00:32:32.940probably a realization there that this guy is going to win the election. And I thought it looked
00:32:37.820that way even before what happened this past weekend. But I want to highlight Pierre Palliev's
00:32:42.920response in particular here, because Polyev said the following. He said on X, I condemn in the
00:32:48.580strongest of terms the attempted murder of former President Trump today. I am relieved he is safe.
00:32:54.240My prayers are with other innocent people harmed or killed by this heinous act. I am also happy
00:32:59.740that the suspected shooter is dead. Democracy must prevail. Now, that is a sentiment you don't get
00:33:06.720often, reveling in the death of bad people. It's one that most people cheered for. Most people said,
00:33:12.360yeah, absolutely. I'm happy the guy who tried to kill a president is dead. It's something that0.99
00:33:17.440people in other countries don't have the issues with. When the United States launched a drone
00:33:21.840strike that took out that commander, Solomon, what's his name? Solomon, the Iranian, the IRGC
00:33:28.260commander. I forget his full name. Soleimani, that's it. When that happened, lots of Iranian1.00
00:33:33.880dissidents were cheering for his death when Fidel Castro died. All of the ex-Cubans or Cubanos in1.00
00:33:40.160Miami and elsewhere around North America were cheering for it. So there are people that have
00:33:44.840been very much okay with this. But in Canada, there was a lot of pearl clutching about this.
00:33:50.220You had Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail getting particularly offended. Joel Harden,
00:33:54.440the NDP guy in the Ontario NDP MP that faked getting attacked when he was hit by his own
00:34:02.020megaphone in the head, that guy. What happened though, is that all of these folks were getting
00:34:08.140mad at Polyev for being happy that a guy is dead. Now, what was fascinating there, look, I'm a
00:34:15.620Christian. I don't revel in people's death. I don't revel in people's suffering or misery.
00:34:20.940I don't certainly share any sense of loss or unhappiness about it. Do I celebrate it?
00:34:31.320Not necessarily, but I'm certainly not offended by it. I'm not offended by people such as Pierre
00:34:37.340Poliev saying that they're glad the guy is dead. And I find the parole clutching on this to be
00:34:41.640remarkable. All of these folks that are just, I think it's just because it's Donald Trump.
00:34:48.120It's just because it's Donald Trump. They find it difficult to rebel in the fact that this stopped.
00:34:54.140And I think that says a great deal about them and their perspective on this. And I know that
00:34:58.840there's going to be a lot more that comes out about this in the coming days and in the coming
00:35:02.400weeks. But I'll just to put a fine point on this, say that I am glad this failed, but it was not
00:35:08.780without casualty. It was not at all without casualty. And I am so sad when I when I've seen
00:35:15.300the photos, the photos of the gentleman 50 years old, Corey, his last name, I don't want to butcher
00:35:23.120it, but he was a fire chief and had a young family and was, his crime was sitting in the
00:35:32.900bleachers to hear Donald Trump speak. And that got him executed by a man who's now dead by 20 year
00:35:39.000old Thomas Crooks, who we'll learn more about. Again, there's a lot that's weird about it. You
00:35:43.860had people from his high school saying he was a terrible shot and didn't make the school rifle
00:35:47.280team. He doesn't seem to have any online footprint. And again, how did he get onto a building and why
00:35:52.500was that building unsecure? These are all questions I hope we get answers to. Just because
00:35:57.440this bullet only grazed Donald Trump's ear does not mean that this was not a shot heard around
00:36:04.260the world. So we'll put this to bed for this particular show. As I said, I'm sure we'll
00:36:08.360revisit it in the future, but I do want to bring in our good friend, Chris Sims. She is the Alberta
00:36:14.520Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. No natural segue from that to this, Chris, but I
00:36:19.900know you're a news hound as well so uh you were probably glued to your television and twitter
00:36:24.500just like i was on the weekend weren't you oh yeah we were uh just coming back my kids and i were
00:36:28.900just coming back from a car show here in lethbridge and my daughter um she's trained to check twitter
00:36:33.700all the time now for us which is great and she said uh mama somebody shot president trump
00:36:38.700i had to pull over uh because that was pretty surprising and then yeah needless to say i was
00:36:45.780glued to uh glued to the news and to to the phone um so the taxpayers federation obviously doesn't
00:36:52.100have a comment on this but just personally um it's pretty gripping if i could recommend two
00:36:58.360things to people and i you probably will agree thank goodness for alternative media
00:37:04.140thank goodness for citizen journalists because uh there's an awful lot of information we're
00:37:09.820getting there from the scene needs to be verified but as a journalist thank goodness for independent
00:37:14.740journalism. And two, as a history buff, I encourage everybody to learn about what happened
00:37:21.860in the 1960s in the United States. Like for real. A lot of people think they know or they might have
00:37:29.100heard something and they might have seen the footage, the Zapruder footage of JFK. That's the
00:37:33.840start of it. Read more about it. Read about JFK. Read about what happened with Martin Luther King
00:37:39.220and read about what happened with rfk so there's a lot of echoes happening here right now uh and so
00:37:45.840just for their own understanding i don't care what party they vote for just for their own
00:37:50.140understanding of what's going on in that country that's so near and dear to us and so important
00:37:54.680those were the the two main takeaways i had yeah and that's very fair and to bring things back into
00:38:00.640a canadian context something that seems so trivial by comparison but is relevant to a great many
00:38:05.760Canadians, myself included, we are still dealing with the carbon tax and we are still dealing with
00:38:11.220this and the government is still trying to put that fine point and the happy spin on it, the
00:38:15.140sunny wave spin. This was the tweet that Justin Trudeau put out today telling Canadians, check
00:38:20.100your bank account. Now that is a very dangerous, dangerous thing for Justin Trudeau to ask Canadians
00:38:25.800to do because I think most Canadians have checked their bank accounts and find that after nine years
00:38:29.800of his government, there's a lot less in it than there otherwise would have been and certainly
00:38:33.560than there was before but what he's talking about there is the rollout of the so-called carbon tax
00:38:39.640rebate which they say will make things better for eight out of ten Canadians you're actually
00:38:44.300profiting from the carbon tax don't you know it's it's not making you spend more money on gas and
00:38:48.920groceries you're coming out ahead it doesn't seem to be something that Canadians are buying which
00:38:53.480is why the government forced banks on direct deposit to write in Canada carbon rebate is it
00:38:59.580gonna work chris uh no and uh i hadn't seen that tweet yet and you putting up a picture of prime
00:39:07.840minister trudeau with him telling you to check your bank account why i would agree and probably
00:39:12.480actually just retweeted and say yes canadians please do check your bank accounts please do
00:39:17.360because they need to know did did he freeze their bank account i don't know maybe they said something
00:39:23.420or donated something or tweeted something that they didn't like of course i'm referencing back
00:39:28.080to the terrible time that they invoked the Emergencies Act on people, which thankfully a
00:39:33.320federal court judge said, you know what, that was totally out of your ballpark and you shouldn't
00:39:38.000have done so. The Canadian Constitution Foundation, as you know, did great work on that. And you've
00:39:42.540done very good, very good work on that yourself. So that's pretty chilling for him to say, check
00:39:47.400your bank accounts. No, how about you never mentioned my bank account again, Prime Minister.
00:39:51.880But all this said, this is again, one of those ridiculous things where the government, especially
00:39:57.240led by Prime Minister Trudeau in this context, thinks that they can just pull the wool over
00:40:02.020people's eyes and say, trust us, if you give us a $20 bill, we will magically increase its value
00:40:09.460and give you back 50, no strings attached, no cost to you. That defies common sense. Any
00:40:15.640reasonably intelligent person understands that's not how government works. It is going to always
00:40:21.100cost you money and it is it costs around 200 million dollars just to administer the carbon tax
00:40:28.700like those are all taxpayer dollars too and people understand that when they're filling up their
00:40:34.220minivan or their pickup truck or you know winter will be here again sorry when they're paying 400
00:40:39.120dollars extra over the winter for their natural gas or propane that they're paying to the nose
00:40:43.600they know they're not getting more than they pay back and the parliamentary budget officer has come
00:40:47.980out repeatedly and said that's the case, that they're out money. So it's just weird that he's
00:40:53.200still clinging to this magical idea of but the rebates. And it's particularly cynical for the
00:41:00.140government to force the banks to label these things a certain way, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
00:41:06.520Because again, it's big footing, right? It's getting in there with a private institution
00:41:11.440and saying you must label it this way like people don't like that they don't like no matter what
00:41:19.020political party they're with they usually don't like the idea of the government being able to
00:41:23.120tell the banks to do something like that you have to label it like this now i'm reading your
00:41:28.440excellent book sorry shameless plug but i'm reading your excellent book right so the the
00:41:35.640politics i understand the politics of saying you know what if you're sending out i forget what
00:41:40.460that's called child benefit. Back when I was a kid, they used to call them the baby bonus.
00:41:45.140But if you're sending it out by paper check, people notice it more, right? And all politicians
00:41:52.060have done this before. They've mostly gone to direct deposit now, but there's good retail
00:41:56.100politicians know to send those things out in a paper check with your name on it and money on it.
00:42:01.720But here is one step further because that's just you reading it. You're choosing to read it.
00:42:06.000This 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.
00:42:17.620Ew, they're not doing communications very well lately at all.
00:42:22.000Yeah, 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.
00:42:28.540like it's it's the kind of thing that you're right all parties do it the part of the book
00:42:33.740that you're referencing there is when Pierre Polyev was the ESDC minister and the conservatives
00:42:38.080were increasing the child tax credit Polyev was like doing a photo op as the checks were coming
00:42:43.340off the printing press in Winnipeg and he's saying let's put it out by check so that they have to
00:42:47.620hold it and deposit it and all of that but I but my bigger issue is the gaslighting on the payment
00:42:53.320itself is that there's not a single person in this country that believes that they are making
00:42:57.400money off of the carbon tax. And again, if the carbon tax were just paying people, it wouldn't
00:43:01.720be necessary. Yes, exactly. And this is the funny thing about the carbon tax is that no matter which
00:43:07.200angle you come at it from, it always blows up. Like this is not the Death Star. There's not only
00:43:12.200one route in and one way to get rid of this thing. Any way you turn this thing around, it doesn't
00:43:17.420make any sense. So let's think of it this way. Let's say that somehow Canada was able to reduce
00:43:24.760global emissions to the effect that people want it to. That's not possible because we only emit
00:43:30.240about 1.5%. But let's say for argument's sake, we could. How are you going to do that? Okay,
00:43:35.260let's have a carbon tax. Why would the carbon tax work? Oh, because it makes that stuff so expensive,
00:43:41.380it punishes people and they pull their fingies away from the hot stove and they won't do it.
00:43:46.920If that isn't the financial punishment attached to it, if it's going to give them more money
00:43:51.940by paying more carbon tax, that completely defeats their argument. Again, and it's also
00:43:58.020shown true by the fact that they gave largely Atlantic Canada a carve out, a three-year carve
00:44:04.440out, my friend, on home heating oil. Why'd they do that? Because it was a financial hardship to
00:44:11.340pay the carbon tax on home heating oil. Duh. But they're still clinging on to this strange little
00:44:18.280piece of comms of you get more money than you pay back you don't they should just free communications
00:44:23.160advice they should drop that because it's way too easy to fight them on it chris sims the alberta
00:44:29.600director for the canadian taxpayers federation we will talk to you next monday you betta all right
00:44:34.280thanks very much chris that does it for us for today we will be back tomorrow no sorry i'm off
00:44:39.820tomorrow but i'll be back on wednesday with more of canada's most irreverent talk show this is the
00:44:44.820Andrew Lawton Show on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:44:49.280Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:44:51.820Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.