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